The Bracero in California's Imperial Valley PDF Download

Author: Luther William Lawson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural laborers
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Author: Henry Pope Anderson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Author: California. Legislature. Assembly. Legislative Reference Service
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural laborers
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Author: Benny J Andrés
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623491975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Power and Control in the Imperial Valley examines the evolution of irrigated farming in the Imperial-Mexicali Valley, an arid desert straddling the California–Baja California border. Bisected by the international boundary line, the valley drew American investors determined to harness the nearby Colorado River to irrigate a million acres on both sides of the border. The “conquest” of the environment was a central theme in the history of the valley. Colonization in the valley began with the construction of a sixty-mile aqueduct from the Colorado River in California through Mexico. Initially, Mexico held authority over water delivery until settlers persuaded Congress to construct the All-American Canal. Control over land and water formed the basis of commercial agriculture and in turn enabled growers to use the state to procure inexpensive, plentiful immigrant workers.

Author: Deborah Cohen
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807899674
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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At the beginning of World War II, the United States and Mexico launched the bracero program, a series of labor agreements that brought Mexican men to work temporarily in U.S. agricultural fields. In Braceros, Deborah Cohen asks why these migrants provoked so much concern and anxiety in the United States and what the Mexican government expected to gain in participating in the program. Cohen creatively links the often-unconnected themes of exploitation, development, the rise of consumer cultures, and gendered class and race formation to show why those with connections beyond the nation have historically provoked suspicion, anxiety, and retaliatory political policies.

Author: Edgar W. Butler
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 146847006X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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What are the effects on an isolated region when an entirely new and major energy resource is developed to commercial proportions? What happens to the population, the economy, the environment, the community, and societal relations? How does the government frame work respond, the family structure adapt, the economy expand, and life styles change under the impact of new forces which hold a prom ise of much benefit and a risk of adverse consequences? Imperial County, California, has a population of less than 90,000 people. This population has been exceptionally stable for years, cen tered as it is in an agricultural and recreational framework. The county is somewhat cut off from other areas by geographic barriers of moun'" tains and desert, by state and natural boundaries, and is the most remote of all 58 counties of California from the state capitol, Sacra mento. In the decade of the 1950s, geographical explorations for oil re vealed some anomalous structures underlying the desert and agricul tural areas in Imperial County. These, when drilled, seemed to be oil less and hot, and so lacked attractiveness to petroleum wildcatters. In the decade of the 1960s, Dr.

Author: Ernesto Galarza
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Author: Verónica Castillo-Muñoz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520291638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Introduction: the Mexican borderlands -- Building the Mexican borderlands -- The making of Baja California's multicultural society -- Revolution, labor unions, and early movements for land reform in Baja California 1910-1930 -- "Land and liberty": conflict, land reform, and repatriation in the Mexicali Valley, 1930-1940 -- Mexicali's exceptionalism -- Conclusion: the "all Mexican" train

Author: Alina Ramirez Mendez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This dissertation argues that the agriculture industry in California's Imperial Valley has enjoyed ample access to cheap labor since the mid-twentieth century because Mexicali, Baja California Norte, its Mexican neighbor, has subsidized the reproduction of a transborder labor force employed in agriculture but otherwise denied social membership in the United States. This subsidy from Mexicali to the Imperial Valley began in 1942 with the start of the Bracero Program and continued well past the program's end in 1964. The guest worker program produced contrasting socioeconomic transformations on each side of the border: the Imperial Valley obtained a cheap source of labor, while Mexicali faced mounting socioeconomic pressures from a growing and urbanizing population. Cheap for Whom demonstrates that key individuals and institutions on both sides of the US-Mexico border learned important lessons about the profitability of creating a transborder labor force that externalized labor maintenance and reproduction to Mexico. The Bracero Program normalized the practice of employing workers--or as the Spanish term "bracero" suggests, employing brazos (arms)--without incorporating them into the communities where they labored. The social costs of maintaining a seasonal migrant labor force, in other words, remained hidden under the Bracero Program because braceros were employed in the United States during seasonal periods of labor need and expected to return to their families and communities in Mexico once they were no longer required in American fields. The Bracero Program was thus a pivotal moment in the US transition from importing workers to exporting jobs; it served as a first exercise in outsourcing the responsibilities of maintaining and reproducing workers.

Author: Don Mitchell
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 082034401X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 574

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Book Description
At the outset of World War II, California agriculture seemed to be on the cusp of change. Many Californians, reacting to the ravages of the Great Depression, called for a radical reorientation of the highly exploitative labor relations that had allowed the state to become such a productive farming frontier. But with the importation of the first braceros—“guest workers” from Mexico hired on an “emergency” basis after the United States entered the war—an even more intense struggle ensued over how agriculture would be conducted in the state. Esteemed geographer Don Mitchell argues that by delineating the need for cheap, flexible farm labor as a problem and solving it via the importation of relatively disempowered migrant workers, an alliance of growers and government actors committed the United States to an agricultural system that is, in important respects, still with us. They Saved the Crops is a theoretically rich and stylistically innovative account of grower rapaciousness, worker militancy, rampant corruption, and bureaucratic bias. Mitchell shows that growers, workers, and officials confronted a series of problems that shaped—and were shaped by—the landscape itself. For growers, the problem was finding the right kind of labor at the right price at the right time. Workers struggled for survival and attempted to win power in the face of economic exploitation and unremitting violence. Bureaucrats tried to harness political power to meet the demands of, as one put it, “the people whom we serve.” Drawing on a deep well of empirical materials from archives up and down the state, Mitchell’s account promises to be the definitive book about California agriculture in the turbulent decades of the mid-twentieth century.