U.S. Frontier Closed To Mexican Braceros

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30847, 4 September 1965, Page 16

U.S. Frontier Closed To Mexican Braceros

(N.Z.P.A.-Keuter) MEXICO CITY. Thousands of Mexican farm workers are this year being denied their long-standing right to walk across the border into the United States and share in what to them is a small fortune to be made during the American fruit harvest.

During recent weeks as many as 2000 stocky young-to-middle-aged men, straw-hatted and obviously up from the country, have waited patiently every day, in the Plaza de la Ciudadela, one of the main city intersections.

Although usually orderly, many were not too well clad,, but all were fired with the same ambition to be hired as a bracero (farmhand) at the nearby offices of the National Farmworkers Central to work on the prosperous fruit farms of the Southern and Western United States. The waiting men ignored repeated official announcements that no longer would braceros be hired in Mexico City because of the expiration on December 31 last year of the United States Public Law Act 78, the “Bracero Act,” which had made it lawful for Mexicans to enter the United States to help with the harvests.

Eventually the city authorities took firm action. Steelhelmeted policemen with truncheons and riot guns moved

on the waiting crowds and dispersed them none too politely, causing one city newspaper to comment: “These eager hands were not out for dole.” An official of the farmworkers’ organisation urged the men “Return to your towns. If the braceros programme is continued you will be hired in your own home States.” Tricksters The farmhands left, but not before registering complaints that confidence tricksters in their home towns were offering “bracero contracts” for anything from £l4 to £37. It was in hope of fair treatment that they had sold up their own crops and sometimes their livestock to make the trek to Mexico City. Although some of the big fruitgrowers in California were reported to have complained that the lack of traditional farm labour would create a critical situation this year, neither of the two Governments have so far thought fit to open the frontier again to the braceros.

In previous years their num-

bers ranged from 14,000 to 70,000 in California alone according to the season, usually in the citrus dates, tomatoes and strawberry plantations.

Mexico’s Interior Minister, Mr Luis Echeverria, announced that United States farmers had made only “minimal” requests for braceros this year. He said that the surge of farmhands to the capital in quest of jobs “over the border” had left some home areas short of farm labour. One of those who waited in in the Plaza de la Ciudadela explained: “Unless you have lots of land or cattle, you can only work a few months of the year in Mexico. In the, United States you can earn; around £3 10s a day. You eat I better, live better and can* bring money home.” Recent Mexican press reports, however, have claimed that American employers paid braceros less than local farmhands, and that the braceros only brought home about £7 2s a week for their work. It was also claimed that tn the cotton plantations of Texas, Tennessee and Arkansas only the third and poorest crop of the year was left for the Mexican migrant workers, who thus earned much less than the American workers. The Mexican Government’s answer to the problem of would-be migrant farm labour was the recent announcement of major plans for the industrialisation of Mexico’s northern border region. The plans were hailed by the Mexican press as destined to create 300,000 jobs for the unemployed and to enable Mexico “instead of exporting braceros, to export manufactured goods.”