Books about Bracero from Amazon.com

'Although Mexican migrant workers have toiled in the fields of the Pacific Northwest since the turn of the century, and although they comprise the largest work force in the region's agriculture today, they have been virtually invisible in the region's written labor history. Erasmo Gamboa's study of the bracero program during World War II is an important beginning, describing and documenting the labor history of Mexican and Chicano workers in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and contributing to our knowledge of farm labor' - "Oregon Historical Quarterly". 'A much needed analysis...[Gamboa's] analysis of the ways in which Braceros were active agents of their own lives is probing and insightful. His descriptions of living and working conditions in migrant farm camps are detailed and reveal a deep sensitivity for the men who travelled so far from home in order to find work' - "Pacific Historical Review".'Gamboa has provided intriguing glimpses into the experiences of a Mexican-origin population well away from the border states...[ He] has done an admirable job in broadening our understanding of the bracero experience by underscoring how differently the program operated in the Pacific Northwest...Mexican nationals working in the region suffered from a profound sense of cultural dislocation that led many of them to desert their jobs well before their contracts had expired' - "Agricultural History".'Gamboa claims that the experiences of Mexican contract laborers in the Pacific Northwest were unique. These braceros encountered more discriminatory wage systems, working conditions that 'truly dehumanized' them, strong racial animosity, and little recognition for their role in keeping Northwest agriculture afloat during World War II. These braceros, the most militant of all such laborers, fought back with strikes' - "Journal of the West". Erasmo Gamboa is associate professor of American ethnic studies at the University of Washington..
Price: $13.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents sweep through factories, farms and construction sites from Maine to California herding handcuffed "illegals" into detention facilities. Immigrants and their supporters block highways, repudiating a House of Representatives proposal to make undocumented entry into the United States a felony. National Guardsmen head towards the U. S.- Mexico frontier where hundreds of men, women and children die every year of heat stroke, dehydration, and starvation. Few other issues have provoked such national outrage since integration and opposition to the war in Vietnam crested in the 1960s. Despite the clamor, the rhetoric, the accusations and the arrests, few people really understand who the undocumented immigrants are, how they get into the United States and why they keep coming. Stout explains in vivid detail why Spanish-speaking workers leave their homes--and often risk their lives--to seek employment north of the border. The book includes hundreds of interviews and experiences he has shared with migrants, politicians, law officers and farm and sweatshop employers. "It's a battleground--it never was before," Mexican-born immigrant Jesus Francisco Reyes told Stout as he watched Border Patrol officers follow helicopter searchlights across a brambled mountainside 80 miles east of San Diego, California. The indocumentados the migra apprehend and send back across the border will add to already overwhelming statistics: over 1 million deportations every year, an estimated 600,000 successful new arrivals, and expenditures on so-called border security topping billions of dollars a year. More than 23 million Americans of Mexican descent live in the United States, 7 million of whom do not have valid work or residency papers. Millions of these immigrants live in poverty but more than 90 percent find employment and over 60 percent send portions of their earnings to their families south of the border. Their remittances provide nearly 70 percent of the incomes of thousands of towns and villages throughout northern and central Mexico and much of Central America. Without them, the economies of those countries would have foundered..
Price: $27.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From the Mayo Brothers archive in Mexico's Secretariate of Foreign Relations, the photos represent one of the most controversial cross-cultural subjects of their time: the Braceros Program. This landmark coffee table book offers 83 historical photos and an introduction documenting their importance..
Price: $26.77 [Notify me when price goes down.]