Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bracero Railroaders: The Forgotten World War II Story of Mexican Workers in The U.S. West
Bracero Railroaders: The Forgotten World War II Story of Mexican Workers in The U.S. West
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BRACERO
RAILROADERS
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BRACERO
RAILROADERS
T H E F O RG OT T E N WO R L D WA R I I S TO RY O F
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Erasmo Gamboa
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Seattle London
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
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List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction3
1. Labor and the Railroad Industry before World War II 10
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Notes201
Bibliography225
Index231
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hen the final story of the American railroads has been written,
a chapter of interest and significance will record the substantial
part that Mexicans played in helping to maintain thousands of
miles of war-burdened tracks at a time when, without this labor, these tracks
would surely have been seriously weakened, with unquestionably adverse
effect upon the war effort. It was a fortunate day back in May 1943 when the
state departments of the two countries, in conjunction with the War Manpower Commission and immigration officers, negotiated agreements permitting the entry of six thousand Mexican citizens into the United States
for unskilled labor on the railroads, a number that was increased to twenty
thousand in June of that year, to forty thousand in March 1944, to fifty thousand the following July, and, early March 1945, to a new ceiling of seventyfive thousand.1
Acknowledgments
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Several early influences inspired this book on the World War II bracero railroad workers. I grew up in rural Washington State, where trains and railroad
tracks intersected with everyones daily lives. My father, Gumecindo Gamboa, shared his memories with me about working on the railroad during
the 1920s. The railroad had taken him and his friends far away from Edinburg, Texas, to Ohio and West Virginia. The omnipresent trains of my youth,
coupled with my fathers railroad history, led to a personal interest in learning more about Mexican track laborers. As a hisflorian, I had written about
bracero agricultural workers in the Pacific Northwest during World War II.
I realized that I had overlooked the important experiences of the wartime
bracero railroad workers. This omission motivated me to write the forgotten
story of more than one hundred thousand Mexican braceros employed in
the U.S., maintaining the all-important network of railroad tracks during
World War II.
Later, in 2000, I worked on a lawsuit to recover decades-old unpaid wage
deductions owed to the wartime generation of agricultural and railroad bra-
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Abbreviations
Association of American Railroads
AFL
ATSF
BMWE
BN
CBQ
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AAR
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CTM
FEPC
GN
LULAC
MCPR
OPA
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PFE
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NP
CNW
SP
UP
USES
WARE
WMC
WP
Western Pacific
RRB
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BRACERO
RAILROADERS
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Introduction
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Introduction
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but before that he had been a track worker with the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, one of the nations oldest railroads. In the 1920s, in the company
of other Mexican track workers, my father repaired rail lines and flagged
trains in Ohio and farther east into Maryland and West Virginia, close to the
nations capital. His generation delineated the beginning of what became a
sustained passage of railroad labor from Mxico to the United States.
Some years ago, at a signing event for my book Mexican Labor and World
War II: Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 19421947, a woman approached to
say that although she appreciated this book on the regions history of Mexican agricultural labor, I had omitted a key component of wartime bracero
labor. Her husband had been a bracero during World War II, but not as a
farmworker. The U.S. government had contracted him to work on the nations railroads. My book, she told me, said nothing about the braceros who
came from Mxico to help keep the war trains moving. She was correct: I had
overlooked the Mexican railroad workers of that period. Not a criticism, but
pointing me to another facet of the bracero program.
I set out to correct this oversight and write the history of Mexican railroad workers like those of my fathers generation and, more to the point,
like this womans husband. In the process, I learned that the agricultural
and railroad industries of the West were inextricably linked. At different
times they were closely interdependent on each other to develop and thrive.
Farmers relied on trains to transport produce and bring supplies, and the
railroads needed farm produce to load their cars. Just as important, beginning in the early 1900s, both industries grew increasingly reliant on, and
developed an identical interest in, an endless supply of Mexican laborers
to take on the most physically demanding and lowest-paid tasks. Beginning
with the Immigration Act of 1924, and except for the 1930s, when the Great
Depression hit the railroads hard, Mexican immigrants gradually replaced
other ethnic and racial communities of railroad workers to become the preferred choice of labor on most western tracks.
The advent of World War II brought an unprecedented and robust fullemployment economy, until railroads and farms with low-wage jobs found
themselves unable to compete with other industries for workers. In response, the U.S. government turned to Mxico to ensure that the economys
privately owned railroad and agricultural sectors had sufficient supplies of
labor. For the duration of the war, U.S. and Mexican federal officials managed the movement of transnational agricultural and railroad workers under the terms of a binational administrative agreement.1 This book centers
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Introduction
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on the history of Mexican railroad workers who participated in that wartime labor compact between Mxico and the United States. Although the
labor agreement, officially called the Temporary Migration of Mexican Nonagricultural Workers, is generally understood as an expedient transborder
transfer of human social capital in times of a national emergency, it represents much more. That is, by World War II the racial inferiority of Mexicans
had been firmly established among railroad companies and the general
public. The wartime labor agreement simply built on existing fixed racially
constructed labor practices to transport braceros to perform low-paid, dangerous railroad jobs. In the face of serious wartime worker shortages in lowwage occupations, it is not difficult to understand why Mexican contract
workers were necessary to U.S. farm production. However, the importation
of industrial railroad labor raises other issues.
Dating back to the early 1900s, railroad employees, including track workers, successfully organized trade unions to safeguard their jobs from competition particularly among immigrant labor. So how did the railroad industry
manage to win approval from the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE) to import low-wage Mexican workers during World War II?
What do the experiences of these temporary, nonunion contracted laborers
reveal about the work culture of the railroads, the braceros themselves, and
U.S.Mxico relations? In addition, if the blueprint for the World War II bracero railroad program developed well before 1941, how does the experience of
my fathers generation with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad help frame our
understanding of the generation of Mexican industrial workers who came
north to keep the trains running and help the nation win the Great War?
As a result of extensively researching this topic, I have learned to appreciate the enormous human and technological energy expended to generate
and transport record levels of farm, forest, and factory production during
World War II. Because the wartime generation of Mexican railroaders entered the United States at a most critical period, where do the experiences of
these men fit in the historical record of the global war? Where does Mxico
itself fit into this discussion? Relations between Mxico and the U.S. were
gravely strained in the years leading to World War II. Clearly, Mxico was
also conscious of the racism experienced by U.S. residents of Mexican descent, yet the government agreed to permit more than three hundred thousand of its citizens to enter the U.S. as contract workers during the war years.
What did Mxico expect to gain, and were these goals realized? This book
attempts to answer these questions and generate other important inquiries.
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Introduction
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Finally, and purely for intellectual reasons, this book draws particular attention to Pacific Northwest social and labor history. From the viewpoint of
Mexican American and Chicano history, the Pacific Northwest remains one
of the least studied regions of the United States.
Just how and under what circumstances thousands of Mexicans immigrated to the U.S., and subsequently to the Pacific Northwest, is only now
beginning to be understood. In most cases, the recurrent interpretation of
Mexican American migration to and settlement in the Pacific Northwest begins with the postwar arrival of migratory farmworkers of Mexican descent.
This interpretation is so ubiquitous that the term Mexican has nearly become synonymous with migrant worker.
Despite mass worker immigration in the twentieth century from
Mxico and transregional migration to the Pacific Northwest, the history
of industrial workers to the region is largely absent. This failure to visualize the historical importance of nonfarm Mexican labor in facilitating the
development and sustaining the growth of the Pacific Northwest (and the
larger American West) economy has worked to obscure and marginalize
Mexican Americans. This may have been the precise concern raised by the
woman at my book signing years ago. Although it has taken several years
to address her criticism, this volume is a partial response. In the first chapters of the book I examine the development of the railroad industry and
the employment of Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest during the first
half of the twentieth century. This focus is instructive because it serves as
a useful contrast to other regions where the railroads also relied on a similar ethnic Mexican workforce. Moreover, the Pacific Northwest occupies
a particular space that is peripheral and distant from the Southwestthe
customary points of entry and observation for Mexican immigrant labor.
Until the unprecedented economic collapse of the 1930s hit the railroad
industry, a handful of companies had expanded to monopolize Americas
transportation capacity. These years of contraction serve to lay out some of
the immediate problems railroads faced when the nation entered war. The
industry faced having to retool equipment and rebuild infrastructure rapidly. But that was the least of the concerns. Restarting the flow of Mexican
labor that had been cut off by the Depression surfaced as well. Across the
railroad industry, the want of track workers threatened the railroads capacity to the point that the crisis drew the attention of government officials.
The governments emergency war plan to contract Mexican railroaders in
Mxico and transport them to the United States went into effect.
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Introduction
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The second half of the book covers the day-to-day administration and
the failures of the bracero railroad program as well as the experiences of
the men themselves. At times, straightforward problems, such as the recruitment of labor, are often the most difficult to sort out. As clear-cut as it
seemed, a coalition of railroad executives and government officials could
not simply enlist Mexican laborers for employment in the United States.
Labor shortages notwithstanding, any suggestion to authorize the federal
government to contract workers in Mxico also had to address highly sensitive immigration issues, the concerns of the BMWE, opposition from an
ingrained race-sensitive railroad work culture, as well as political opposition. I examine these and other issues from different perspectives in the
U.S. and Mxico. Consider, for example, how Mexican Americans and Mexicans greeted the news about the bracero program. As Ana Elizabeth Rosas
has written, many of the repatriates held vivid memories of the lingering
anti-Mexican sentiment that underscored the Depression-era deportation
of more than six hundred thousand.2 Now the United States was asking
Mxico to send its citizen workers back to the U.S.?
No sooner did the Mexican braceros arrive at the work sites when U.S.
officials, in their role as administrators and employers, began to lose sight of
the guarantees and rights that had been promised the laborers. Looking at
the harsh daily reality of these workers exposes the folly of obligating nonEnglish-speaking Mexican laborers to a contract in an alien social and work
environment. The conditions were outlined in individual work contracts,
but the braceros had no voice in the negotiations of the agreement. Building on Kitty Calavitas analysis of the function of the state in labor procurement, this book explores the contradictory role played by Mexican and U.S.
government agencies that determined the difficult experiences many men
endured working the railroads.3 Mexican officials were equally if not more
complicit in the hardships of the braceros; their pattern of general unresponsiveness to their own citizens cannot be exaggerated.
Despite the unintended results of the labor program, the overall experience of the Mexican railroaders offers some instructive lessons. The men,
regardless of their limitations, did not always despair; nor did they resign
themselves to the unfortunate circumstances that came at the hands of their
employers and the indifference of U.S. and Mexican governments. In the
United States, some braceros retaliated by walking away from their employers in protest; others were even more defiant and organized effective local
work strikes to seek relief. In this manner, they shattered the employers ex-
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Introduction
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pectation that fixing workers to a legal instrument would result in an acquiescent labor force. The Mexican women closely related to these braceros
were not passive either. Where other studies on bracero families state that
women did not bring up the continued deterioration of their quality and
standard of living, this book finds otherwise.4 In fact, wives, mothers, and
other relatives tried to intercede on behalf of the bracero men by appealing
directly to Mxicos president, Manuel vila Camacho. Of course, the departure of the workers also served to disrupt families and burden the women
with added responsibilities back in Mxico.
The allied victory in the fall of 1945 signaled the beginning of the final
stages of the bracero railroad program. By the following year, the government had officially repatriated most of the railroaders to Mxico. However,
some of the men deserted from their railroad employers and chose to remain in the United States, an unintended consequence of the program. In
other cases, no sooner did repatriated men arrive home than they began
preparing to return to the U.S. as free wage earners or by reenlisting in the
ongoing U.S.-Mxico bracero farmworker program. After the war, undocumented immigrant labor flows escalated tremendously alongside an increasing number of braceros contracted to work on U.S. farms. This immediate postWorld War II spike in immigration underscores a demographic
phenomenon started by the wartime bracero programs that continued
largely unaffected by numerous deterrence measures until the end of the
twentieth century.
Several other issues remained unresolved after the end of World War II.
One issue that continues to occupy the minds of many surviving braceros
and implicates both Mxico and the United States, is the return of all wages
that had been deducted from the bracero workers, both railroad and agricultural workers. From 1942 until 1947, employers withheld a percentage of all
wages earned for deposit in an obligatory savings plan account in Mxico.
Because the banks never paid many of the men, the deductions were a form
of wage theft. Decades have gone by and despite petitions, lawsuits, and political promises to pay back all of these earnings, the elderly workers and
their descendants, residing in both Mxico and the United States, are met
with a circle of denials and continue to wait for their earned income.
* * *
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Introduction
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The bracero railroad program and its counterpart in agriculture did not
originate entirely from the exigencies of World War II. Its roots lay in the
experiences of my father and the generations of thousands of other Mexican
laborers who emigrated from Mxico beginning in the early 1900s. Largely
unrestricted from migrating north during these years, they came to occupy
the vacancy left by other immigrant workers no longer permitted to immigrate by legal means to the United States or who were fortunate to move out
of low-wage railroad jobs. In the place of controlled Mexican immigration,
the bracero program acted to beckon countless emigrants, legal or not, north
to the United States. The government-sanctioned labor programs of World
War II served as the architect for generating vast postwar transnational Mexican immigration. In many ways the World War II bracero programs served
to engineer the racialized postwar transnational labor flows across the U.S.Mexican border. I agree with Natalia Molina, whose work demonstrates how
racial categories once constructed carry forward to function just as effectively in different spaces and time.5 The racial categorization of Mexican
labor in the decades before World War II was just as important a factor in
the harsh treatment of the men as was the empty promises of the workers
contracts.
Despite lessons learned from the World War II bracero railroad program, the idea of another state-managed bracero-like labor program (disguised as H2A visas for workers or using such euphemistic terms as guest
workers) prevails today among some employers and government officials.
By stepping back to the past, this book urges caution about implementing
such ideas. I tell the story of the World War II Mexican railroaders in the
U.S. by grounding their experience in history, in a straightforward manner,
from the bottom up. My intent is to give the Mexican men and women their
voice. They were, after all, no different from other ordinary individuals who
walked across the stage of history, except their voices are absent in most
World War II narratives. Throughout this book, in certain places, I left their
names and accounts as they themselves wrote them; the braceros limited
written-language skills discloses much about their lives. For the most part,
they were common men who answered the call to serve on the domestic
front of a foreign nation at war. While historians have told the story of World
War II from many perspectives, the history of the Mexican railroad braceros
remains largely obscured.6 With the publication of Bracero Railroaders, this
generation of men and women now find a place in the pages of history.
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