Social Impact of War: Experience of Mexican Americans and Native Americans

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Social Impact of War Experience of Mexican
Americans and Native Americans

• IB History of the Americas

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The Bracero Program

• 1942-1964

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What was the Bracero Program?

• Foreign contract labor program initiated in 1942
  during WWII
• Also known as the Migrant Labor Agreement between
  U.S. Mexican governments
• 4.6 million workers between 1942 1964

Sign outside Texas tavern, 1940s
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What is a bracero?

• Bracero
• Migrant worker. Mexican laborer who sells the
  work of his arms (BRAZOS) in the fields of the
  United States. Similar to farmHAND or HANDyman

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BACKGROUND

• In the US
• Large Mexican agricultural labor force from
  1880s, especially in CA, TX, and southwest
• Transformation of agriculture in 1920s-1930s to
  larger bank-owned enterprises (beginning of the
  end for family farms) instead of year-round
  farmhands, labor became migrant
• Growers did not want to pay fair wages to
  citizens preferred low-wage undocumented
  workers
• Border Patrol established in 1924, and many
  Mexican workers deported during the Depression
  (Mexican Repatriation), creating shortages of
  agricultural workers providing leverage to
  legal workers STRIKES!

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BACKGROUND

• In Mexico
• Many people fled northward from 1910 revolution
• 1930s agricultural crisis harvests were
  insufficient to support many farming communities
• Imagined possibility of earning relative riches
  in the US (even though wages were often lower in
  Texas than in Mexico)

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WWII and the Bracero Treaty

• 1941-1942 growers claimed labor shortage
  refused to raise wages and demanded importation
  of labor instead of organized citizen labor

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The Bracero Program is established

• On September 27, 1942, the first braceros were
  admitted in time for the sugar-beet harvest.
• Reasons The increasingly difficult
  circumstances of the Mexican working class in the
  cities and rural communities in regards to the
  scarcity of nourishment increasing price rates
  and other economic overturnings and Mexican
  workers' hope of earning better wages in the
  United States than in Mexico..."

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Workers in Mexico City hoping to be contracted to
work in the US, 1942
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RECRUITMENT CENTERS
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RECRUITMENT CENTERS
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RECRUITMENT CENTERS
DDT not just used on crops
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• Braceros received an Alien Laborer's Permit and
  signed a contract, usually for 9-12 months, at
  the end of which they had to turn in their
  permits and return to Mexico.

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Bracero Program Documentation

• Although the Bracero Treaty called for contracts
  to be written in Spanish, often they were in
  English, and the Braceros did not understand what
  they were agreeing to.

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Bracero Program Contracts

• Braceros were contracted to one employer only.
  Regardless of labor conditions, if they were
  caught outside the farms specified in their
  documents, they were subject to deportation.

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Living Conditions

• Conditions were often very poor, with workers
  sleeping in crowded barracks.

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Employers

• Underpayment was the most common complaintoften
  employers made braceros sign blank receipts and
  paid them far less than the agreed-upon wage.

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Operation Wetback
Operation Wetback, was devised in 1954 under the
supervision of new commissioner of the
Immigration and Nationalization Service, Gen.
Joseph Swing.
The object of his intense border enforcement
were "illegal aliens," but common practice of
Operation Wetback focused on Mexicans in general.
The police swarmed through Mexican American
barrios throughout the southeastern states. Some
Mexicans, fearful of the potential violence of
this militarization, fled back south across the
border. In some cases, illegal immigrants were
deported along with their American-born children,
who were by law U.S. citizens.
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1954 OPERATION WETBACK

• According to INS Commissioner Swing, the
  alarming, ever-increasing, flood tide of
  undocumented migrants from Mexico constituted an
  actual invasion of the United States. Operation
  Wetback commenced in June 1954 with a direct
  attackupon the hordes of aliens facing us across
  the borderPlanes were used to locate wetbacks
  and to direct ground teams working in jeepsto
  discourage re-entry, many of those apprehended
  were moved far into the interior of Mexico by
  train and ship.

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Racial Tensions in LA during WWII

• Racism against Mexican Americans and the fear of
  teen crime
• Mexican American teenagers who wore zoot suits
  were targeted.
• June 1943 2500 soldiers and sailors attacked
  Mexican American neighborhoods in LA

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Hispanic Americans on the Homefront

• Many Hispanics wore zoot suits
• Long coats, baggy pants, duck tail hair styles
• The Zoot suits were thought to be un-American,
  leading to riots in Los Angeles
• Zoot Suit Riots ( 1943)

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Zoot Suit Riots

• Sailors and soldiers on leave, especially in
  California, frequently attacked zoot suiters as
  draft dodgers or foreigners. Ripped their
  clothes, and cut their hair. These violent
  culture clashes are known as the Zoot Suit Riots.

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Zoot Suit Riots

• In Oakland and Venice, Calif., sailors and
  marines "raided" Chicano gatherings and attacked
  the zoot-suiters, stripping them of their
  clothes.
• On June 3, 1943 in Los Angeles, a reported
  dispute over Chicanos set off a military riot.
  For five straight nights, Whites in uniform
  stormed the streets. They dragged zoot-suiters
  out of bars and nabbed them in movie theaters by
  turning the lights on.
• What started as an assault on Mexican Americans
  quickly expanded to include blacks and Filipinos.
  Each night, police officers waited until the GIs
  left and then swooped in to arrest the victims of
  the violence.

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Zoot Suit Riots

• Military officials declared the downtown district
  off limits to military personnel.
• The measure restored order, but real peace was
  harder to achieve.
• In a national newspaper column, first lady
  Eleanor Roosevelt blamed the riots on
  "long-standing discrimination against the
  Mexicans in the Southwest."

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Native American Contributions during World War II

• 25,000 Native American joined armed forces
• 23,000 worked at Wartime plants and factories
• 33 of eligible Native Americans Serve in War
• Notable were the Navajo codetalkers (Communicated
  in the Navajo language)

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Native Americans on the Homefront

• Many Native Americans moved from reservations to
  cities for jobs
• Many volunteered for military
• Some used native language as code.
• Never broken by Japanese or Germans

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Harold Ickes

• Secretary of the Interior said In view of the
  long period of strained relationships between
  Indians and the Government it is heartening that
  everywhere and in every tribe the Indians have
  responded willingly and gladly to the opportunity
  to share in the defense of the country.

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Women

• Many Native American women volunteered as nurses.
• In the forests of Minnesota and Wisconsin, women
  helped plant new trees to help meet the increased
  demand for lumber that resulted from the war.
• 10 women from the Lac du Flambeau reservation
  received Red Cross pins for 150 hours of knitting
  and sewing

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Stereotypes

• Indians are good warriors and can accomplish
  feats the ordinary soldier could not.
• 550 Indians died trying to live up to this image.
  40 were Sioux, who had a reputation of being
  fierce warriors.

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Navajo Code Talkers

• The Navajo code talkers took part in every
  assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific
  from 1942 to 1945. They served in all Marine
  divisions, transmitting messages by telephone and
  radio in their native languagea code that the
  Japanese never broke.

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Why Navajo?

• The idea to use Navajo for secure communications
  came from Philip Johnston, the son of a
  missionary to the Navajos and one of the few
  non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently.
• He also knew that Native American
  languagesnotably Choctawhad been used in World
  War I to encode messages.
• Johnston believed Navajo answered the military
  requirement for an undecipherable code because
  Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme
  complexity.
• Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention
  dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone
  without extensive exposure and training.
• It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only
  on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest.

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Success in the Pacific

• At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine
  Division signal officer, declared, "Were it not
  for the Navajos, the Marines would never have
  taken Iwo Jima.
• Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around
  the clock during the first two days of the
  battle. Those six sent and received more than 800
  messages, all without error.
• The Japanese chief of intelligence, Lieutenant
  General Seizo Arisue, said that while they were
  able to decipher the codes used by the U.S. Army
  and Army Air Corps, they never cracked the code
  used by the Marines.

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Honors for Navajo Veterans

• Long unrecognized because of the continued value
  of their language as a security classified code,
  the Navajo code talkers of World War II were
  honored for their contributions to defense on
  Sept. 17, 1992, at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.