Oral History with Wesley Jeter
CGCC Bracero Oral History Project
KCC: Today is December 11, 2009 and we are interviewing Wes Jeter about the Bracero Oral history project. Please tell your full name and spelling.
WJ: WESLEY JETER [spelling].
KCC: Where were you born?
WJ: Roswell, New Mexico.
KCC: When were you born?
WJ: 12-19-1943
KCC: And where did you grow up?
WJ: Around Roswell, north of Roswell on the ranch, farm.
KCC: How long did you stay in New Mexico?
WJ: I stayed there until I went into the service at age 17. Then 6 years later I came back and stayed maybe 10 years before I was finished with school and started moving sort of all over the country.
KCC: And when did you come to Arizona?
WJ: In 1976.
KCC: What brought you out to Arizona?
WJ: My wife’s parents—my wife’s parents.
KCC: Was that for a certain time for work?
WJ: No, I was a psychologist by that time. And we had been up in Oregon. And my wife’s father had had a heart attack and we wanted to come back closer to home. And I got a job with the VA in Tucson, and we were down there for about 10 years and came up here (Phoenix) in 1987.
KCC: So your growing up years were spent on the ranch. Can you tell us more about the ranch? What kind of ranch was it?
WJ: Farm and ranch. Raised cotton for cash crop and then there was millet for cattle feed, millet and alfalfa for cattle feed and cattle of our own we had leased land along the Pecos River…and in the winter time we would winter cattle for people. They would bring them off the ranches from the high country, you know, where there was nothing to graze on And bring them to our corrals. And we would corral fed them for several months before they came and took them back again.
KCC: How long did your family have the ranch and farm?
WJ: Well longer than me (laughing). My dad died four years ago now…whatever that would be…well he had closed it down when my mother died. By the time they got through paying off all the hospital bills, he was pretty much through with the ranch. He wanted me or my brother to take it, but we’d seen him starve all his life and we decided we didn’t want to do that.
KCC: Tell me the name of your parents please.
WJ: Louis Jeter, which his nickname was “Bud.” That’s what all the Braceros called him was “Bud.” And my mother was Virgie.
KCC: How did you spell “Virgie”?
WJ: VIRGIE (spelling).
KCC: Was the ranch outside of the Roswell area? Where was the ranch?
WJ: North of Roswell along the PecosRiver. The Pecos comes down out of AlamogordoLake and circles up through the middle of the state and it’s just a good trickle when it comes past Roswell, except when it’s raining (laughing). And then it runs into Mexico.
KCC: And how large was the property?
WJ: Oh well, the title property wasn’t all that big—maybe 800 acres. But we had 600 sections…64 sections of leased land via limb land that cattle ran on.
KCC: So had your father started that? Was that even before your father?
WJ: No, I can’t say that he…he bought into it and had a partner…but I really don’t remember that partner…who he was. He was gone by the time I have a memory of the situation.
KCC: So were you born at the ranch?
WJ: No, I was born in the hospital. But on the way to the hospital, the car that we were in broke down at the north end of Roswell and of course St. Mary’s Hospital was on the other end. They were trying to call a taxi but there was not taxi at the time. That was 1943. So one of the people that lived out past us…saw the truck broken down and saw we needed the help and took my mother to the hospital (laughing).
KCC: So what years were your family involved in the Bracero program?
WJ: Well, it had been going on for a long time before my memory of it. I can remember starting it when I was in the 3rd grade. I was in Mrs. Cox’s class, and that’s the year I was big enough to ride in the back of the truck with the Mexicans as we went to town on Saturday nights. And that was big stuff. Everybody else, my sister had to ride in the front but I got to ride in the back with the guys (laughing). The Braceros we took them to town twice on Saturday. My dad thought Saturday was a special day, so you got to quit early, like 4 o’clock instead of 6…so everyone zoomed as fast as they could and then right at 6 o’clock Daddy would take the truck in and leave all the guys in town.
They were shopping and grocery shopping and he’d come back (sometimes I’d get to go then too) and then he would come back and then we would get ready and go to town, taking the truck again ‘cause we had all those guys to go in the back again. This was a ton and a half, with cattle boards on it. And when it was warm, you just had the boards. But when it got cold, you put up canvas inside and made a warm kind of a thing. And believe me, it gets cold in New Mexico. I’ve seen 20 below in Roswell. The fall of the year, the way I remember this more than anything. These were usually…about 20 guys and they would come somewhere in the fall….like in the summer, we wouldn’t have them. Then they would come in the fall and we had this place that they lived, which was just a long rectangular building, maybe 15 feet wide and 60 feet long and it was divided into 3 rooms…3 big rooms.
My wife and I were talking about this, and she said--did they have toilets? And I said---outdoor toilets. And she said—that’s really bad. And I said--so did we!! [laughing] You know, we all had outdoor toilets…it wasn’t that we were being discriminatory…that’s what all of us had. My folks built a new house when I was 10 years old without indoor plumbing. And the next year they got alittle more money and an indoor toilet…but until that time, we all had outdoor toilets.
KCC: Do you know why your family became involved in the Bracero program?
WJ: I would think because the population who would work for 60 cents an hour was not available to us in any other fashion. When I was 12, Dad gave me a job of actually working and I got the same as the Braceros---I got 60 cents an hour. There was no competition for our jobs because nobody in town would come out. Now in the fall, people would come out to pick cotton because you picked for so much per 100 weight. I can remember when it went to $2.50 a 100 weight…and everybody was saying—boy now you can make some money—it’s up to $2.50 a 100. Well, I could pick 100 in about a week (laughing)! We had guys who came from town. There was this black man, named Mr. Moss, who came every year. Everybody…he picked at everybody’s place. He picked ours and as soon as ours was done, then went to another field. Everybody called him the “three row cotton picker” because he drug a sack between his legs over the top of one row and picked a row on each side…and his hands were about this big [gesturing wide span]. I can remember…I’d ride on his sack and he’d drag me on the sack while he’s picking cotton. They didn’t let the Braceros pick cotton because they were there for 60 cents an hour; if you were picking cotton, you got paid by the 100 weight. And so it would have been grossly unfair…to pay them 60 cents an hour when everybody else was getting that…[the other wage]. My daddy didn’t do it…I can’t speak to the others but my daddy didn’t do that.
KCC: Do you know anything about where the men came from? Did they come from a certain village or anything about their background?
WJ: All I know is Daddy had the connection and they came from El Paso. I have no recollection of ever knowing…there were only 2 guys I can remember. One’s name Vicente and one’s…well we called him “Salomain”…I’m not sure that’s not some sort of a corruption of his name now…but we called him “Salomain.” But Vicente was with us from the time I remember---then there illegally and then my folks helped him get papers. When I came home from Vietnam, it had all changed. Then these guys had all become illegal. It was the stupidest damn thing in the world—what do you mean they’re illegal? They’ve been here for 20 years…how can they be illegal? But they had this network when immigration would come; they made the same mistake every time. They went to May Marley’s place, which was on the far side of the valley. We didn’t even have a phone.
Even after I came home from the service, we didn’t have a phone until the next year after that. And May Marley, as soon as the immigration people came, May Marley would call the next rancher down and they’d call and call and warn everybody and the Mexicans would go in the back of the fields and get in the culvert. From the time…I didn’t really have the [same] personal contact I had with them before I went to the service as I did after the service because I was in a different place…I was older and had different friends…but they were my playmates and my friends until I went to the service, I mean, because I didn’t have any other people.
KCC: Did your father go to a certain location to pick the men up? Did they arrive at the ranch?
WJ: They came to the bus station in Roswell and we would get them from there. I don’t know how they made the arrangement of how many, because it wasn’t always the same. I do know there was a mechanism where Vincente and Salomaine went and so they could come every year back to us. And there was—everybody knew we had Vincente and Salomaine…and they would say “Hey, come work for me next year…I’ll give you a little better”…something along those lines (laughing).
KCC: You mentioned about the living arrangements. Did the men do their own cooking?
WJ: Yes, if you can call it that. They did cook somethings. They had two-burner propane stoves. There was no indoor plumbing, but there was a sink that had a drain and the drain went outside someplace so you could bring water in and wash up and that sort of thing. But the predominant food was sardines! You could smell sardines before you went into the house (laughing). Well, I mean, that’s country. When we didn’t have enough refrigeration for everything. And there was no fast food. Fast food came out of a can…we called them “Vi-eenies” sausages---Vienna sausages---we called them “Vi-eenies”—there was that and sardines was basic food that they ate. Potted meat was another thing…sort of a ground up “Vi-eenie” sausage stuff.
KCC: So no tortillas and beans?
WJ: Oh yes, yes, always that. These guys were…this one was a real young guy. He used to always do this trick to me because I liked the tortillas and chorizo. And see they didn’t have refrigeration. So on the way back from town on Saturday night, he’d always give some tortilla and chorizo. In the summertime, one of my jobs was to go and get the guys; there was a couple of miles from where they lived to the main barns, and we had this old hand-clutch Case tractor and a flat-bed trailer that was hooked on to it. And I could drive the hand-clutch Case because the foot clutch on the tractor is real strong…and I probably weighed 60lbs. I could drive the hand-clutch but not the foot-clutch. So one of my jobs was to go get them.
And I had this lunch bucket and had my lunch and I’d go get them and drop them at the barns, and I was working at the barn for raising hogs. And this guy (I can’t really remember his name) but he was one of the youngest ones there and he always gave me the chorizo. And he wanted to know did I want to trade lunch? And I asked him—what ya got? And he said—good stuff…good stuff. And so finally he talked me into trading. And as soon as I looked in there and there’s two pieces of bread and about 10 of little those hot peppers scattered back and forth across the bread! And he took off and ate my sandwich! (laughing) So I couldn’t trade back, you know. But he probably gave me two chorizos the next Saturday night, or whatever!
KCC: Did you speak Spanish? How did you communicate with the men?
WJ: No, these guys were very motivated to learn English and they wanted to learn English and they wanted to teach me Spanish….which they mostly succeeded in just the cuss words, which I learned very quickly! But I never had the feel for the language. I probably knew a thousand nouns and nothing else. But these guys were motivated and they were basically wanting to speak English and between grunts and points and those sorts of things…my dad probably had more Spanish than I did, but he certainly couldn’t speak…he probably had more nouns than I did. Like I said, these guys were motivated because they came there because it was better than where they were.
KCC: You said they didn’t pick cotton, so what kind of work did they do?
WJ: Well, on ours anything that was to be done: we raised alfalfa to bale. We raised cotton, which you have to irrigate and take care of up until the stage you’re going to pick it. And we raised millet…the colloquial name for it is “maize”…but that’s colloquial. Maize is actually corn. Millet grows with a head on the thing and it’s got a million little “bb” sized tissue that’s the meat for it. Well that head is cut off and then separated from that and you have pure grain, but the stalk and the what it grows from is just as important for us because that’s what you make silage of. And that stalk is cut off and put into a shock, so it stands there and dries. And after it dries, you have to load that onto a trailer and lay it into a silage which is just a big dip in the ground. You lay it in there in layers and put galvanized tin between layers and that is all covered. And in a couple of months, the tissue starts to break down and you use that to grind it down into cattle feed. They did all those kinds of things. I can remember when I was first going and getting them, even Vicente couldn’t even drive the tractor. They just couldn’t drive the trucks; they couldn’t drive anything. They just didn’t know how. But, like I said, these were bright guys and were motivated. And pretty soon they could do anything from running the hay balers to running the dump for buckin’ bales. They did everything on our place except pick cotton…branding…whatever was going on they were part of that.
KCC: So how were they paid? Were they paid weekly?
WJ: Yes.
KCC: Do you know if any of the men sent money back home?
WJ: All of them sent money back home. That was a big thing on Saturday night…they had to do it all by mail. They had to get there—Horn’s food stores—is where they bought the money orders they sent in.
KCC: Was that something your father helped them with?
WJ: I’m sure he did at first. But with Vicente and Salomaine, they were both really bright guys and I’m sure they were taking care of the new guys as they came along because they did that on the farm. I just making the number up…but if 10 new guys came…it was Salomaine and Vicente who told them what to do and how to do it and taught them how to live in the situation and what was expected and how to get this and how to get that. But they were…Vicente especially was just an exceptional person and bright…and handsome devil! I can remember my dad was a handsome devil, and my mother was always kidding him how handsome Vicente was! (laughing)
KCC: So what was a typical workday like?
WJ: 10 hours-- 6 to 6…that was the basic hours. The worst thing was chopping cotton. They …it is just steady going up and down that row from basically sunup to sundown. We …that was my first job and see that was the newest guy’s job. Like Vicente and then probably never even chopped cotton…they were smart enough they could do something else. But the new guys always wound up chopping cotton. That was the worst job. The best job was working raising pigs. We had a bunch of hogs and probably 5-6 guys year-round worked there…taking care of hogs.