When American troops went to fight in World War II, Mexico and the U.S. agreed to a U.S. Labor Department-sponsored program that sent millions of Mexican workers to the U.S. to work on the railroads and in the fields picking fruits and vegetables.
More Top Picks Best Travel Tote Bags For Women
To guarantee that the workers, or braceros, did not return home broke, the Mexican government deducted 10 percent of their pay. But the money mysteriously disappeared, and an organization representing the elderly workers says that the Mexican government owes them at least $3 billion.
The government acknowledges that some funds existed, but an investigation has so far failed to turn up evidence that any money is left.
More than a half-century ago, Luz Lopez de Sierra’s husband, Nicolas Sierra Santos, heard about the new jobs program and left home to work the railroads in Chicago.
“The opportunity came up, and he asked me, `What do you think?’ ” said the 90-year-old widow, who still works in the family’s shoe repair shop. “As man and wife we discussed it, and he decided to go.” Because families were not welcome, she stayed home with their four children.
Sierra, who died at age 75 in 1982, was one of the millions of Mexican guest workers who performed backbreaking work in the U.S. from 1942 to 1965, when the program ended. Upon their return to Mexico, however, not everyone got their money, and today many of the aged laborers and their kin are questioning what became of their savings.
Representatives of the braceros estimate that only 1 percent of the 4.5 million Mexicans who participated in the program received any money. With interest, they say, the savings fund should total about $3 billion.
On Monday, the Banrural bank released a summary of its investigation into the savings fund, and, as expected, the findings angered the braceros.
Although Banrural confirmed the fund’s existence, the bank said it had found no evidence that any money was still in the fund. The bank also said it appeared that the 10 percent deductions had lasted only until 1949.
“We have no way of proving the existence of that fund in the bank,” said Alejandro Romero Gudino, the legal counsel for Banrural, noting the age of the program. He added, however, that if individual braceros had the proper documentation, the bank would review their claims.
The braceros, whose representatives were read the summary at the Foreign Ministry, said Banrural and the government were trying to “divide and conquer” to weaken the movement. They said they would urge the Mexican Congress to find the money.
“We would like to believe that those funds exist, since it was a savings fund,” Ventura Gutierrez of the California-based Union Without Borders said at a recent breakfast here. “That (money) should not have been touched.”
An additional $7 million, the braceros say, was deducted as union dues and is owed to 100,000 laborers who worked the railroads in the U.S.
Organizations representing migrant workers first began looking into the savings fund about a decade ago when elderly ex-braceros came across yellowed pay stubs that recorded the 10 percent deductions.
American employers were responsible for deducting the money, according to Jorge Bustamante, an immigration expert at Mexico’s College of the Northern Border in Tijuana. The employers were to turn the money over to various U.S. government agencies, including the now-defunct Farm Service Administration. U.S. officials in turn were responsible for sending the money to the Mexican government for deposit into three banks.
With Banrural now saying it has no paper trail to indicate there was money left in the fund, the braceros say they will review records in the National Archives in Washington to see whether they can find evidence of the deductions.
Published reports have said that Banrural may have inadvertently used money from the savings fund for farm loans. The braceros have threatened a series of protests if they do not get a satisfactory answer.
“People deserve that money– their families, their children,” Lopez de Sierra said, noting she still struggles to make ends meet.
Although the existence of the savings fund was no secret, the braceros said they did not look into it until recently because of their lack of familiarity with Mexican law.
Many former braceros, retired and living in the U.S., still may not realize they could be due financial compensation from the Mexican government.
Jose Rodriguez Reyes worked at a warehouse in Chicago, loading and unloading boxcars. He also worked at a meat packing plant under the bracero program. It was 1945, and he made about 80 cents an hour.
Rodriguez, 84, heard of the efforts to compensate the former braceros from a reporter.
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Rodriguez, who went back to Mexico after the war ended. He eventually returned to the U.S. and bought a home in Chicago’s western suburbs.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry, which has confirmed the fund’s existence, is at odds with the braceros over the number of years that a portion of their pay was withheld.
Miguel Angel Gonzalez Felix, a legal consultant with the Foreign Ministry, said it appeared that the money was taken between 1942 and 1949.
The braceros say the deductions continued until 1964.
Bustamante, who confirmed the existence of the fund 20 years ago while serving on Mexico’s National Commission on Migratory Labor, said it appeared that the 10 percent had been taken from the workers’ paychecks at least in the first years of the program.
More Top Picks Best Premium Noise Canceling Headphones For Focus
Bustamante said it is possible that the American employers withheld the money and decided to keep it for themselves, or did not bother to withhold it at all. Others suggest that Mexican government officials may have plundered the fund.
Bustamante cautioned that the figures the braceros were quoting were unreliable because they do not have the appropriate records. They are using the $3 billion figure, he said, “because it sounds good in the media.”
He said the braceros should demand an independent government investigation of the savings fund and not rely on the Banrural results.
“They should not accept the excuse that the records do not exist,” said Bustamante, who is on sabbatical at the University of Notre Dame.
The bracero program began Aug. 4, 1942, eight months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. With the U.S. facing a labor shortage, the U.S. and Mexico entered into an agreement to provide Mexicans to work in the U.S.
American farmers, who benefited from the cheap seasonal labor, repeatedly lobbied the U.S. Department of Labor to extend the program.
The program expired in 1965 with the advent of new technology and an excess of agricultural workers.
Lee G. Williams, the Labor Department officer in charge of the program, once described it as “legalized slavery.”
But for people who barely had enough to eat in Mexico, the program was a godsend. “It was a better life than here,” said Simon Moyo Vazquez, 63, who attended a meeting of former braceros at a downtown park.
Moyo, a retired telephone technician, said he was living well on his pension. But he wanted the money he had coming to him, he said, because he worked for it– two separate times in California picking fruit. “Even if you have a lot of money,” he said, “you have to fight for it.”
Lopez de Sierra said the money her husband earned enabled him to open a shoe repair shop that she still runs with the help of relatives.
As she stood behind the counter, with the occasional neighborhood acquaintance stopping by to say hello, Lopez de Sierra implored the government to be fair.
“My husband went with enthusiasm and he returned when it was over,” she said. “He never ran away from hard work.”