HANDOUT 4: Introducing the Migrant Field Workers of the 20th Century
In the latter half of the 20th century, the demand for agricultural laborers increased. Many Mexicans left their homeland to come work in the U.S. Most of these Mexicans were illiterate peasants that had worked under the hacendados system. This system defined a landed and wealthy aristocracy that owned most working land and held their tenant labors to serfdom (similar to that of the Middle Ages in Europe in the 5th to 15th centuries.) These workers were used to servile conditions and meager wages. Thus, when they moved to the United States, they accepted these very same conditions with both an added bonus and an added burden. The bonus was the lure of higher wages than the serf wages they received in Mexico. With such a strong economic pull factor, it was inevitable that many would go to the U.S. The added burden, was that they did not speak the language and did not understand the laws of their new temporary or adopted country. But the bonus of more money to take home was stronger than this added burden. Some of these Mexicans entered illegally, but many came to the United States initially under the ‘Bracero Program’. In this program, Mexicans were temporarily brought over to the U.S. to work during harvest season and then were returned to Mexico. This system was temporary and cheaper than actually hiring the workers to stay permanently. In making their work contract temporary, the U.S. did not have to provide the worker’s children with an education, with welfare or health programs, or any other social services. The Bracero program lasted from 1942 to 1964 when protests led to its end. (Parrillo, 1990)
Of the numerous Mexican workers many managed to stay, becoming legal citizens, and thus forcing the country to address equal rights in the work place and at home for farm laborers. As these disenfranchised people learned the language and the laws they became aware of just how unjust their situations were. It was these early citizen workers that started the move towards educating their fellow Mexican-American migrant workers as well as the continued influx of Mexican migrant workers of how to better their lives and the lives of their children.
Vincent N. Parrillo. 1990. Strangers to These Shores: Race and Ethnic Relations in the United States, 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Farming the United States
After World War II, most field working farm jobs were held by immigrant laborers, with most of them coming from Mexico to work in the United States. Farm workers tended to work long field hours in very un-healthy conditions. Unlike mine workers, who also worked with the land, the farm-workers, were not confined to small work spaces. But like miners, the farmers needed to start addressing worker rights and needed to fight for a proper work day and wages, collective bargaining rights, health and retirement benefits, and health and safety protections. Unlike the miners, their struggle would begin many years later with the organization of the United Farm Workers in 1962.
Why was farm work in the open air so hazardous?
As noted, the farm workers worked out in the open air, making their health abuse more stealthy and difficult to detect. In this era of new and industrial change, came also new and impressive medical and chemical scientific advances. Poisons to kill the insects that historically could damage crops that humans needed for sustenance were developed. These poisons, called pesticides, ensured that humans had healthy crop growth and also ensured a constant supply of food on our tables. Further aided by the technology of aircraft, the pesticides could be sprayed over large areas in one day. But looming over this scientific usage of pesticides why did people not ask, if the poison kills insects how does it affect humans? If the air is open, how does the pesticide not mix with it and move with it to not only its designated place but to the surrounding environments?
Finding a voice to speak out
In a period of labor unions and the fight for equal rights, the farm workers were to be an example of a system that sometimes works against its laborers until the laborers themselves exhibit self-awareness of their conditions and start grass-roots campaigns that educate fellow laborers and then lead to public awareness and government acknowledgement.