Bracero Program, Labor Exploitation, and Social Inequality
This paper examines the Bracero Program — a World War II-era executive initiative that recruited Mexican farm laborers to fill agricultural gaps in the United States — and its relationship to social inequality, racial tension, and labor exploitation. Drawing on pay stubs, personal testimonies from the Bracero History Archive, and scholarly sources, the paper traces how cheap Mexican labor benefited large agricultural interests while exposing the racist underpinnings of American society. The Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 serve as a focal example of cultural conflict. The paper also considers multiple perspectives, acknowledging that many Braceros viewed the program as an opportunity rather than merely an injustice, before concluding that the program reflected a fundamental moral ambiguity in the American experience.
- Introduction: The Bracero Program and the American Social Landscape: Origins of the program and its social context
- Labor Exploitation and the Zoot Suit Riots: Wage evidence and the 1943 riots analyzed
- Race, Business, and the WASP Power Structure: Anglo growers and systemic racial exploitation
- Mexican Workers' Own Perspectives on the Program: Worker testimonies show gratitude and complexity
- Personal Histories: Life and Death Among Braceros: Family narratives of hardship and early death
- Conclusion: Win-Win or Lose-Lose?: Moral ambiguity and the American Dream reassessed
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- Uses a concrete primary source — a surviving pay stub — to ground abstract claims about wage exploitation in documented evidence.
- Balances critical analysis of systemic injustice with firsthand worker testimonies that complicate a simple condemnation narrative.
- Connects the Bracero Program to broader contemporary events (the Zoot Suit Riots, Jim Crow laws) to show the program's wider social context rather than treating it in isolation.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of counterargument and nuance. Rather than arguing only that the Bracero Program was exploitative, the author introduces worker voices — such as those of Gregorio Perez Rodriguez and Teodosio Herrera — who viewed the program positively, then synthesizes both views in the conclusion with the "Win-Win / Lose-Lose" framing. This shows a mature awareness that historical events carry multiple, sometimes contradictory, meanings.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with historical context and a thesis connecting the Bracero Program to racial inequality, then moves to primary-source evidence of wage exploitation and the Zoot Suit Riots. A third section analyzes the Anglo business and political power structure. Two subsequent sections introduce personal testimonies from Bracero workers and their families, providing human texture. The conclusion reframes the program as morally ambiguous, offering a reflective close that honors complexity without abandoning the central critical argument.
Introduction: The Bracero Program and the American Social Landscape
The Bracero Program was a World War II initiative decreed by Executive Order that allowed Mexican labor on U.S. farms. Known formally as the Mexican Farm Labor Program, its purpose was to ensure that labor shortages did not cripple the agricultural sector in the wake of so many American men being drafted or volunteering for the war. The temporary use of Mexican labor on American farms was meant to fill the gap. However, the Bracero Program ended up lasting until 1964 because it afforded large agricultural interests the opportunity to exploit cheap labor — and it ultimately exposed a deeper issue in the American social system: the inequality gap rooted in the racist doctrine of American culture.
The Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 in Los Angeles are one example of the chaos that ensued when Mexicans who had come to California under the Bracero Agreement mingled with military men in the city. Tensions were high, and a clash of cultures was inevitable. On top of Jim Crow laws and the Jim Crow Army,1 the Zoot Suit Riots and the "cheap" labor that the Bracero Program essentially fostered revealed a dark underbelly of the American landscape, even as Americans went off to fight the "good war" abroad.
Labor Exploitation and the Zoot Suit Riots
The Bracero Program's exploitation of Mexican labor is best seen in one of the surviving pay stubs of a Bracero worker. The pay stub of Guillermo Bernal shows that he worked for Arena Imperial Co. Growers and Shippers in Brawley, California in February 1960. For 112 hours of work, he was paid $60.39.2 This was essentially 1940s wages in 1960 for a Mexican worker: Bernal made just over fifty cents per hour for his field labor.3 (Still, any wage at all in 1940s America was nothing to dismiss.)4 California had a long history of exploiting the labor of others: as Fogelson notes, from the earliest days of the state, "the Indians, not the Californians, made up the labor force."5
Inequality was the nature of the system, as John Kinloch saw all too clearly upon his arrival in Los Angeles in the 1940s.6 Zoot suits were everywhere among minorities looking to stand out and appear stylish. They clashed, however, with the trim, proper appearance of United States naval men and Marines, who did not view the Zoot Suit wearers in Los Angeles as sufficiently respectful of the patriotism that military servicemen believed should be evident everywhere at all times. The military men particularly resented the ostentatious display that Mexicans and African Americans in the city were making. When they expressed that resentment through beatings and violent assaults on those they identified by their zoot suits, the riots began — and they exposed a cultural divide overwhelmingly born of racist attitudes.
As Mauricio Mazon notes, "Whether spurred by primitive Aztec rituals, Communists, Sinaquistas, or Anglos, the zoot-suiters were anathema. In late 1942, the zoot-suiters became the backdrop against which a changing array of actors were contrasted and brought into brief public prominence."7 In short, by judging Mexican minorities by their external appearance, the fighting face of the U.S. military was able to turn an entire ethnicity into a target. This was merely an extension of what the U.S. government was already permitting growers and shippers to do — and would continue to permit for two more decades.
The Bracero Program lifted the lid off the "clean, white, respectable" veneer of America and showed that profit was the paramount concern for large agricultural interests, while racial purity ranked second in the hierarchy of American patriotism and pride. Respect, dignity, charity, and brotherhood had been displaced in the years between the two World Wars — a period spent expanding credit, inflating economic bubbles, and struggling with the aftermath. Efforts to unwind some of the less noble characteristics of the national character, such as the compulsion to exploit workers, produced little positive effect.
Race, Business, and the WASP Power Structure
The Bracero Program was a mechanism of social injustice in America. As Ronald Mize and Alicia Swords point out, "Anglo growers used race as a line of division within class blocs to ensure themselves a steady and cheap supply of Mexican immigrant labor."8 The white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) stronghold on American business made such exploitation easy, as business and government increasingly merged over the decades between the two World Wars. If World War II was officially about fighting fascists and communists, the domestic reality was more complicated: American government and business had been merging for decades, and the nation was simultaneously allied with Stalin, the leader of the world's largest communist state. Thus, in the 1940s when the Bracero Program was initiated, hypocrisy was widespread, and the use of Mexican labor to expand agricultural profits was further evidence of the social corruption undermining the American Dream.
Conclusion: Win-Win or Lose-Lose?
Nonetheless, it is evident that the Bracero Program was not designed with the intention of affording Mexicans the chance to better their lives in America. Conditions were rough for many Braceros, some of whom died in the cold, some of whom were exploited in singular ways. Some were beaten, as was the case in Los Angeles in the 1940s, when their skin color and style of dress signaled to U.S. servicemen that these field laborers were somehow unpatriotic. Some were unable to find in the land of opportunity a place where they themselves could live and start a family. But large agricultural interests still made their profits.
Thus it was a win-win, as Herrera pointed out — but it was also a lose-lose. America sacrificed a portion of its integrity by taking advantage of an impoverished neighboring culture, recognizing in its poverty an opportunity that workers would leap at even if it meant being exploited, all so that large agricultural enterprises could enjoy higher profit margins for decades. In the 1940s, when the program was initiated, racism was still codified in law and evident in city streets, as the Jim Crow statutes and the Zoot Suit Riots made plain. Yet not every Mexican was embittered by the inequality. In fact, most were glad to be in America, working for a wage, collecting a paycheck, and having a cot to sleep in at night. For the Braceros, it was a time to work hard and make something of oneself.
Perhaps in this way they did achieve something of the American Dream after all — not in the sense imagined by the men and women of the 1920s in their post-war euphoria, dreaming of effortless and imagined wealth. Perhaps the Braceros' sense of and appreciation for the Dream was, of the two, the more realistic one.
Notes
1 Maggi Morehouse, Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Men and Women Remember World War II (NY: Rowman, Littlefield, 2007), 3.
2 Elizabeth Bernal, "Guillermo Bernal Paystub," in Bracero History Archive, Item #3252, http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3252 (accessed April 30, 2016).
3 Marilyn Sworzyn and United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wartime Wages, Income, and Wage Regulation in Agriculture: Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 883 (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1946), https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/scribd/?title_id=4338&filepath=/docs/publications/bls/bls_0883_1946.pdf (accessed April 30, 2016).
4 Dian Petro, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The 1940 Census: Employment and Income," Prologue Magazine, vol. 44, no. 1 (2012),
5 Robert Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis (LA: University of California Press, 1993), 8.
6 R. J. Smith, The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance (NY: Public Affairs Publishers, 2007), 26.
7 Mauricio Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation (TX: University of Texas Press, 1984), 28.
8 Ronald Mize and Alicia Swords, Consuming Mexican Labor: From the Bracero Program to NAFTA (CA: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 30.
9 Mario Perez, "The Lemons Are Freezing!," in Bracero History Archive, Item #3229, http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3229 (accessed April 30, 2016).
10 Anonymous, "Manuel Lopez Hurtado," in Bracero History Archive, Item #3228, http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3228 (accessed April 30, 2016).
11 Luis Lopez, "My Father Was a Bracero," in Bracero History Archive, Item #3210, http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3210 (accessed April 30, 2016).
12 Ted Herrera, "Braceros in Michigan," in Bracero History Archive, Item #3216, http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3216 (accessed April 30, 2016).
Bibliography
Anonymous. "Manuel Lopez Hurtado." In Bracero History Archive, Item #3228. http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3228 (accessed April 30, 2016).
Bernal, Elizabeth. "Guillermo Bernal Paystub." In Bracero History Archive, Item #3252. http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3252 (accessed April 30, 2016).
Fogelson, Robert. The Fragmented Metropolis. LA: University of California Press, 1993.
Herrera, Ted. "Braceros in Michigan." In Bracero History Archive, Item #3216. http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3216 (accessed April 30, 2016).
Lopez, Luis. "My Father Was a Bracero." In Bracero History Archive, Item #3210. http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3210 (accessed April 30, 2016).
Mazon, Mauricio. The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation. TX: University of Texas Press, 1984.
Mize, Ronald, and Alicia Swords. Consuming Mexican Labor: From the Bracero Program to NAFTA. CA: University of Toronto Press, 2011.
Morehouse, Maggi. Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Men and Women Remember World War II. NY: Rowman, Littlefield, 2007.
Perez, Mario. "The Lemons Are Freezing!" In Bracero History Archive, Item #3229. http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3229 (accessed April 30, 2016).
Petro, Dian. "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? The 1940 Census: Employment and Income." Prologue Magazine, vol. 44, no. 1 (2012).
Smith, R. J. The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance. NY: Public Affairs Publishers, 2007.
Sworzyn, Marilyn, and United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Wartime Wages, Income, and Wage Regulation in Agriculture: Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 883." Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1946. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/scribd/?title_id=4338&filepath=/docs/publications/bls/bls_0883_1946.pdf (accessed April 30, 2016).
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.