Bracero programme

The Oxford Companion to World War II | 2001 | 700+ words | Copyright

Bracero programme. The manpower needs of the military, and the internment of some 110,000 Japanese-Americans, many of whom were farmers or farm workers, created an acute agricultural labour shortage in the western USA in the early months of American belligerency. A remedy was found in an agreement with the Mexican government in 1942, which brought in some 200,000 Mexican workers—called braceros—on temporary work visas. Most helped to harvest the fruit and grain crops of the western states, but many also worked on railway construction and maintenance crews. Texas was at first excluded from eligibility for the Bracero programme because of State Department fears that exploitative labour practices there might precipitate a diplomatic incident with Mexico, menacing the Good Neighbor Policy which was a corner-stone of American hemispheric defence arrangements. The Bracero programme outlived the war by two decades, becoming a fixed feature of the agricultural economy in many western states.

David M. Kennedy

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I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "Bracero programme." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 27 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "Bracero programme." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. (May 27, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-Braceroprogramme.html

I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "Bracero programme." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Retrieved May 27, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-Braceroprogramme.html

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