These intimate photos chronicle the Mexican worker program that helped ‘feed and build America’

When American men were heading overseas to fight Nazis and the Japanese, they left behind their homes and loved ones. But they also left behind the fields, leaving agricultural producers wondering who was going to harvest the crops. Meanwhile, the Mexican economy was devastated by revolution and depression, and the country was filled with poor men and few prospects.

On August 4th, 1942, the United States and Mexico initiated what’s known as the Bracero Program which spanned two decades and was the largest guest worker program in U.S. history.

The concept was simple. Vetted braceros (Mexican slang for field hand) legally worked American farms for a season. It was intended to be only a wartime labor scheme, but between 1942 and 1964, an estimated two million workers fulfilled 4.6 million contracts—influencing immigration and labor rights in the process.

Their legacy still resonates today. “Through the H2-A visa program Mexican immigrants continue to provide essential labor,” says Mireya Loza, Curator in the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History and award-winning author of Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom. “They still pick the produce that makes its way onto our tables and in many ways like the braceros that came before them, they feed America. Our lives are intimately tied to their labor.”

Mexican laborers applied at government processing centers. Those who passed competency and health exams traveled to the border where American agents conducted secondary screenings, DDT fumigation, and invasive medical checks. Testimonials compiled by the Bracero History Archive speak of being picked out of line-ups, packed into trucks and freight trains, and shipped off to the fields.

Farm work is universally hard but living conditions were defined by individual growers. The Mexican government insisted on basic worker protections because of past abuses. Contracts included a minimum wage and guaranteed decent housing, food, and access to medical care. But with braceros working across 34 states, the few government inspectors were overextended, and many of the laborers slept in substandard housing and were cheated out of wages.

Growers quickly grew to rely on the braceros and victorious GI’s returned with greater ambitions than farm work. Temporary extensions became codified in 1951 when President Truman, under duress, signed Public Law 78.

Politics and economic realities eventually precipitated the program’s demise. Undocumented workers who either couldn’t stomach or survive the bureaucracy worked for less, without guarantees of housing, dragging rural wages down. Mexican businesses wanted cheap labor of their own to industrialize the economy. Unions were frustrated that braceros couldn’t legally organize and labor activists rallied against their exploitation and mistreatment. Even legal migrants were bailing on contracts, either because of unscrupulous growers or just to chase the American dream. Congress, who voted on renewing the program every two years, let it expire in 1964.

“The Bracero Program cemented a system in which Mexican guest workers could come and provide essential labor in America while never having the avenues to lay roots in the U.S.,” says Loza. “They occupied a space in which they are supposed to be perpetual and cyclical migrants and outsiders. They were never suppose to find avenues to become legal residents or even citizens. In many ways they were asked to feed and build America, and quietly return to Mexico. Their story challenges popular ideas about immigration, labor, and who has access to the American dream and who is locked out.”

Bittersweet Harvest, a traveling exhibition curated by the Smithsonian Institution, runs through November 12th at the Napa Valley Museum and UNC Charlotte.