SOCORRO — The United States was headed to war again. This time in Korea. Anticipation and excitement grew south of the border. The war presented an opportunity for the boys in Mexico, including my father.
So much so that a labor camp opened in West Texas in 1951.
Once a farm for the poor, the homeless and abandoned children during the Great Depression, the Rio Vista Farm in Socorro was transformed into one of a few processing centers for Mexican workers needed by the northern neighbor to help ease America’s labor shortage as young soldiers headed across the Pacific.
Between 1951 and 1964, the camp housed eager sons of Mexico, who trekked north to be adopted by U.S. employers. Many of the young men worked in cotton fields that stretched impossibly far. They came to be known as braceros, Spanish for laborers, a name coined for people who worked with their arms, or brazos.
Among them was my father, Juan Pablo Corchado Ramirez, and some of his brothers and cousins, including Tio Antonio.
Like many Mexican laborers who came through nearby El Paso, they lived in the camp for a few days until employers recruited them. The camp included barracks, recreational centers, a mess hall and buildings with showers.
Later, the camp served as a law enforcement training academy and even made an appearance in the 2000 movie Traffic.
Today, they are the city of Socorro’s administration offices and Rio Vista Community Center.
In December, Rio Vista Farm, about 30 minutes down river from El Paso, was designated by the secretary of the interior as a National Historic Landmark.
“National Historic Landmarks, the highest level of historic designation bestowed by the National Park Service, are awarded to places that tell the ‘stories of national important historic events, places and people for all Americans,’” according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
My parents and I recently sat staring at desert plants blooming near the 18 adobe buildings. Many are crumbling under years of wind and sun.
“I left part of myself here,” said my father. “We all did.”
Mexico’s Greatest Generation
Launched in 1942, the Bracero Program allowed millions of Mexican men to work in the United States on short-term contracts, addressing a national agricultural labor shortage, according to the Library of Congress. The program ended in 1964.
My father received one of nearly 5 million contracts given to Mexicans during that period, according to the Bracero History Archive.
The period dramatically changed lives in both countries, permanently altering the face of the United States and opening a wider valve north for generations of Mexicans to work in 24 U.S. states.
Like the cultural icon Rosie the Riveter, these workers boosted U.S. economic might and became known as Mexico’s Greatest Generation. Their sweat and muscle allowed America to claim victory overseas.
“The United States was desperate for Mexican laborers,” said David Dorado Romo, a historian and author of Ringside to a Revolution. “There were actual celebrations for them. There were speeches, music, food to greet them as heroes, as soldiers of production, because they were going to save the crops.”
The braceros’ story underscores a theme throughout U.S. history, Romo said. Somehow, Mexico has always been a part of the United States’ success, even if Americans, particularly Texans, don’t always see it that way.
In the early 1950s, during negotiations between the United States and Mexico for a more “orderly system” of immigration for Mexican workers, Mexico was opposed to braceros working in Texas, citing a history of labor exploitation and mistreatment, according to Romo.
The pay, compared with other states, was low. And whenever Texans needed to cut back on employees, or whenever they faced workers deemed unruly, they called the U.S. Border Patrol to deport the workers, Romo said.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 made it a crime to contract undocumented workers. Yet Texas’ powerful agribusinesses lobbied under a rule known as the Texas Proviso and got an exception, Romo said.
“Texas has always wanted it both ways, to this very day,” said Romo, pointing to Texas’ current $11 billion border security initiative, known as Operation Lone Star, aimed at cracking down on undocumented migrants and securing the border. “Braceros know this firsthand.”
Rio Vista Farms’ National Historic Landmark designation allows for the building of the country’s first Bracero Museum, which will share the stories and contributions of Mexican guest workers, said Yolanda Chávez Leyva, associate professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso. She’s also the lead oral historian of the Bracero Museum.
“For Mexicans, this is the Ellis Island of the Southwest, but the big difference is that Ellis Island is recognized. People know it’s there,” said Leyva. “Until now, that wasn’t the case with the bracero camp. There’s a sense of urgency to add the story of the braceros to the American story because of their key contributions in shaping U.S. history.”
My father at 14
My father grew up in Durango, Mexico, about 600 miles south of Socorro. The youngest of 10, he recalls hearing from friends that war had exploded in Korea. He couldn’t believe his luck.
At 14, he was too young to apply for the Bracero Program, but he began to plan to join his brothers, cousins, friends, some of whom had left during World War II.
He began saving money, dreaming of what a new life would look like. There was now an option away from the daily chores of watching over his burro, one horse, 14 roosters, more than 50 chickens and the one prized cow he received from his parents. He named her Cenizo.
In 1953, just as the Korean War ended, Juan Pablo took a bus to Durango and registered. He waited weeks, months, until a letter arrived, inviting him to become a bracero.
The night before my father left for the United States, his mother, Rosa, took him to church just around the corner from their house. She prayed with him and in the morning did a spiritual cleansing. She then handed him a rucksack with a pair of pants that she had sewn for him. Three pairs of underwear and two shirts, plus homemade gorditas.
“Your umbilical cord is buried here,” she reminded him. “This will always be home.”
My father recalled getting in the back of a truck with other men, all giddy with excitement. Dollars could somehow close the wealth gap in a Mexico of social extremes and constant droughts. Maybe he’d own his own grocery store someday.
The enthusiasm didn’t last long. Humiliation soon set in. He recalled getting off the bus at Socorro, and even before he had a chance to register, Texas ranchers lined up, begging him to sign with them, salivating over the workers’ callused hands, firm bodies and sinuous muscle that could move Mother Earth.
What happened next, my father will never forget. It’s a story of shame that he’s previously shared only with my mother, or fellow braceros, like my father’s cousin, Tio Antonio.
Years later, as my father sat with me in the old camp, the memories haunted him.
“What do you remember, Papa?” I asked.
His mind was somewhere else. His eyes gleamed wet in the sun. Tears? I watched my father, unsure. He’s so stubborn, I don’t think he even knows how to cry.
Lost in time, like tears in rain, as a friend once told me.
“I remember everyone of us was sprayed head-to-toe with chemicals,” he said. I later learned from Romo and Leyva that the chemicals included a delousing bath with DDT, an insecticide used in agriculture. The United States banned its use in 1972, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I remember they made me and everyone else bend over,” he said, anger rising, recalling his private parts being violated as though “we were prized cattle.”
I flinched. My father hardly ever talks. Now, his raw words took me by surprise.
“They said they wanted to make sure we didn’t carry a disease,” he said. “Never forgot that. Never will. Like it was yesterday.”
‘Remember who you are’
Once in Texas, my father received a lecture from his older brother Edmundo and Tio Antonio. They urged him to leave Texas, which Tio Antonio said didn’t “appreciate” his work, adding, “They pay you nothing. Remember who you are, your dignity, because no one else will.”
He told my father about a job in California, hoeing cotton, at $1 per hour, seven days a week. That was double what he made in El Paso.
My father left, but Texas, particularly El Paso, somehow always felt like his Mexico. It would beckon him back regularly to be closer to his sister there, his mother back in Durango, and his new bride, Herlinda.
And then there was an employer who vowed to provide him and his growing family with green cards if he stayed because, the employer told my father, he was too valuable to lose to a lofty dream back in Mexico.
My father stayed. Soon his family of four, with one on the way, made it to the border. I’m the oldest.
In 1964, my family headed for California. The end came amid pressure from labor rights activists led by United Farm Workers leader César Chávez. He cited abusive practices on both sides of the border. Many of the braceros returned to Mexico empty-handed, their dignity robbed by the United States, their savings stolen by their own government, according to Romo and Leyva.
The two countries had agreed to garnish some of the bracero wages and put them into savings accounts in Mexico to await the tired men back home. The money suddenly disappeared, leading to a decadeslong fight, Romo and Leyva said.
The issue was largely resolved in 2008 when lawyers representing braceros vs. the Mexican government reached a settlement that entitled tens of thousands of braceros to collect back pay, according to Romo and Leyva. Neither my father nor my uncle ever collected a penny.
Remnants of the braceros’ migration pattern continue today. Many Mexican workers, followed by their offspring, stayed behind in states like California, Montana, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Gathering with my family
Recently, I visited the bracero camp with the daughters and grandchildren of Tio Antonio.
We hadn’t seen much of each other in years. When we met as children, our American-born cousins didn’t speak much Spanish and we didn’t speak English. We usually nodded at one another.
In many ways, our gathering during fall was a way to thank my father and their “Papi,” as they call Tio Antonio, since deceased, for their sacrifice.
Allison is a tax accountant; her mother, Carmen, a medical representative; and Sylvia, a former Marine Corps officer, a caretaker. Then there’s Ronnie, a journalist-turned-Park Ranger for Sequoia National Park, and his mother, Lisa, a gas resource specialist for a utility company.
Together we walked the camp, building by building. A haunting, emotional experience. We walked mostly in silence.
“I don’t know why, but being able to see this place, walk in the same footsteps, through this place with my son Ronnie, Papi’s grandchild, was very powerful,” Lisa said. “Grounding for me. ... It made me feel so proud to be his daughter.”
Ronnie was equally reflective. “When I think of the Greatest Generation,” he said, “I think of the braceros, wearing humble peasant clothing, armed with farming tools, enduring exploitation and racism in search of a better future for their families. For their descendants. For me.”
I see parallels between my father and the camp, whose walls once owned him.
The bones of these camp buildings are the aching bones of my bracero father.
Both are dying breeds, the last of their kind.
These days, Papa has grown increasingly silent. Walking is difficult. He’s 87. Yet when he sat in the camp surrounded by ocotillo and cardenche plants, looming large like those back in Durango, he grew animated, imagining himself as a teen strutting the same grounds.
“I have no regrets,” he told me. “Back then, this country needed us and appreciated us. That made all the difference.”
Alfredo Corchado is the former Border-Mexico correspondent for The Dallas Morning News.
