Speaker 1: Welcome to Steph you missed in history Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm three Cbe Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. Today,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think concerns about immigration
Speaker 1: are a recent phenomenon. I mean definitely in the United State,
Speaker 1: which is where we live and can talk about from experience,
Speaker 1: but maybe in other nations too, but definitely in the US, right,
Speaker 1: people don't think of this is a thing that's been
Speaker 1: around for a long time. Yeah, I think there's a
Speaker 1: prevailing thought that, uh, you know there colonists came and
Speaker 1: that was the big immigration thing, and then there was
Speaker 1: this big gap and now we're all arguing and worried
Speaker 1: about it again. Yeah, it's been like the last I
Speaker 1: don't know, thirty or forty years. So in a in away,
Speaker 1: in a way, it definitely is a new concern for
Speaker 1: people because for about a hundred and fifty years after
Speaker 1: the nation was founded, there weren't really any immigration laws. Right,
Speaker 1: if you could get here, you got to live here.
Speaker 1: That was basically how it worked until um, you know,
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. So back in the late seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: the country didn't really seem to care about about immigration.
Speaker 1: But to look at another way, it is not a
Speaker 1: new concern at all, because the United States started passing
Speaker 1: immigration laws and a lot of them were targeted at
Speaker 1: immigrants from specific countries in the eighteen sixties. So this
Speaker 1: is both a really new idea given the whole history
Speaker 1: of the United States as a nation uh and a
Speaker 1: really old one given that it's been around for more
Speaker 1: than a hundred and fifty years. So that whole division
Speaker 1: between like legal and illegal immigration is simultaneously new and old.
Speaker 1: And today's story or today's story is part of that
Speaker 1: centuries long story. Because for parts of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the United States and Mexico had agreements in place that
Speaker 1: we're allowing and even encouraging Mexican nationals to enter the
Speaker 1: United States to do agricultural work and other labor, mostly
Speaker 1: in the American Southwest. And one specific program called the
Speaker 1: Brissero program was launched during World War Two to address
Speaker 1: a labor shortage um as American men were needed for
Speaker 1: the war effort. But an unintended side effect of this
Speaker 1: program that was about legally coming to the United States
Speaker 1: to work was this huge increase in the number of
Speaker 1: people who were crossing the border from Mexico illegally, and
Speaker 1: these illegal entries reached a point that the government implemented
Speaker 1: another program, which I'm gonna make it clear this is
Speaker 1: not an acceptable word to use today, but it is
Speaker 1: literally what the program was named. It was called Operation
Speaker 1: Wetback to deport Mexican nationals and huge groups. So the
Speaker 1: intertwined stories of these two government programs is what we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about today. And before nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: there was simply not a lot of regulation of the
Speaker 1: United States border with Mexico. People pretty much crossed back
Speaker 1: and forth as they pleased. And as agricultural industry started
Speaker 1: to really grow in the Southwest, these industries started to
Speaker 1: really rely on this readily available and seasonal workforce that
Speaker 1: was coming in from Mexico in the nineteen twenties. This
Speaker 1: also became true of other industries in the American West
Speaker 1: and Southwest as well, including railroads and mining. But today
Speaker 1: we're talking mostly about agriculture, so using Mexican nationals as
Speaker 1: a source of labor basically came with some benefits. Agricultural
Speaker 1: work and a lot of places is highly seasonal and
Speaker 1: for the most part, migrant workers who were US citizens
Speaker 1: were traveling as families. They would spend the year moving
Speaker 1: from place to place as a family for the most part,
Speaker 1: spending a lot more time looking for work than actually working,
Speaker 1: and when there was work, it was usually worked that
Speaker 1: the whole family did it, including the children, and an
Speaker 1: effort to try to make enough money to last them
Speaker 1: for the rest of the year. So that's not an
Speaker 1: ideal situation in a lot of ways. Mexican workers, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, tended to be young men traveling in
Speaker 1: groups with other young men. A group of young men
Speaker 1: was overall a lot more efficient than a family with children,
Speaker 1: and on the more exploitive side of things, many were
Speaker 1: willing to accept lower wages than what was considered standard
Speaker 1: among Americans. Because of a limited proficiency with the English language,
Speaker 1: Mexican nationals were often unaware of laws or standards that
Speaker 1: could protect them in their work, and as a result,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of growers and farmers in the
Speaker 1: American West and Southwest who were willing to overlook the
Speaker 1: issue of whether a person had come into the United
Speaker 1: States legally or not in order to get cheap, easy
Speaker 1: to exploit labor. By the early nineteen twenties, though an
Speaker 1: increasing number of people were starting to think of this
Speaker 1: basically open border in the way it affected the labor
Speaker 1: pool is a big problem. Large farms were driving down
Speaker 1: their own costs by employing large numbers of Mexican migrant
Speaker 1: workers at a really low rate of pay, and small
Speaker 1: farms considered themselves to be at a big financial disadvantage.
Speaker 1: As a result, labor organizations started tacitly excluding Mexican workers
Speaker 1: when they formed unions, and also started using their political
Speaker 1: clout to lobby the government for more enforcement along the
Speaker 1: border and to put a stop to immigration from Mexico.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty four, the United States formally established the
Speaker 1: Border Patrol as part of the Labor Appropriation Act. As
Speaker 1: the US government started taking steps to secure the Mexican
Speaker 1: border and curtail illegal immigration in the nineteen twenties, local
Speaker 1: communities and states began taking steps to regulate their own
Speaker 1: Mexican population as well. As we've discussed in our podcasts
Speaker 1: on Mendoes versus Westminster and Macario Garcia, much of the
Speaker 1: Southwest and West approached its Hispanic and Latino population in
Speaker 1: much the same way most of the rest of the
Speaker 1: Nation did its black population through segregation, which was reinforced
Speaker 1: either through laws or through social customs in places with
Speaker 1: large Mexican and Mexican American populations. Discrimination was widespread and
Speaker 1: socially accepted by much of the Anglo community during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, which lasted roughly a decade beginning in nine nine,
Speaker 1: and the Dust Bowl, which was a devastating period of
Speaker 1: drought and dust storms that struck much of the Southwest
Speaker 1: and Great Plains during the same time, life was pretty
Speaker 1: hard for pretty much everybody in the region, but it
Speaker 1: was especially hard for people of Mexican descent. The Anglo
Speaker 1: community was increasingly hostile towards Mexican migrants, viewing them as
Speaker 1: unnecessary competition for incredibly scarce jobs. The industries that had
Speaker 1: been relying so heavily on Mexican labor for so long
Speaker 1: increasingly tried to exp blued Mexicans from their workforce during
Speaker 1: the Great Depression. Prior to the Great Depression, the United
Speaker 1: States and Mexico had been working together to find ways
Speaker 1: to send Mexican nationals who were in the US illegally
Speaker 1: back to Mexico. During the Great Depression, those efforts increased,
Speaker 1: President Herbert Hoover ordered the Department of Labor to work
Speaker 1: out a deportation program. The Mexican government tried to identify
Speaker 1: its citizens who were in the United States and in
Speaker 1: many cases paid for their return to Mexico. Also, due
Speaker 1: to the Great Depression, Mexico was facing its own labor shortage,
Speaker 1: so part of the reason it paid to repatriot its
Speaker 1: citizens was to try to fill that labor shortage. Between
Speaker 1: nine and ninety five, about eighty five thousand Mexicans voluntarily
Speaker 1: returned to Mexico and another four hundred thousand words deported
Speaker 1: or repatriated, depending on how you want to look at it.
Speaker 1: Most of the ones who tried to return to the
Speaker 1: United States during the Great Depression were turned away at
Speaker 1: the board, which at this point was a lot more
Speaker 1: secure that it had been earlier than the nineteen twenties. However,
Speaker 1: things shifted dramatically once again during World War Two. The
Speaker 1: draft applied to all men residing in the United States,
Speaker 1: whether they were citizens or not. Roughly seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand Hispanic men saw some sort of active service
Speaker 1: in the war, and with so many men serving in
Speaker 1: the war, the job market changed dramatically in the United States,
Speaker 1: many men who had held agricultural jobs went to serve
Speaker 1: in the war, and then other men and women moved
Speaker 1: out of agriculture and into higher paying manufacturing jobs that
Speaker 1: were either opened up as part of the war effort
Speaker 1: or because the people who had been doing those jobs
Speaker 1: joined the armed forces. That were also disrupted trade with Europe,
Speaker 1: which cut off the United States sources of many goods
Speaker 1: and meant that basically America had to make them for ourselves.
Speaker 1: The overall effect of all this on the labor pool
Speaker 1: for agricultural work was, as you might suspect, enormous, and
Speaker 1: it led the US to work out a program specifically
Speaker 1: to recruit Mexican workers. And we're going to talk more
Speaker 1: about that after we pause and thank one of the
Speaker 1: sponsors that keeps our show going to return to the
Speaker 1: Bricero program. That's huge shift in the workforce during World
Speaker 1: War two had immediate and detrimental effects on agriculture. Soon
Speaker 1: after the war began, the Southwest's cotton and vegetable growers
Speaker 1: were petitioning Congress to hire temporary workers to help them
Speaker 1: fill a labor shortfall that basically meant they couldn't harvest
Speaker 1: what they needed to harvest. The key here was that
Speaker 1: this workforce would be temporary. In the words of a
Speaker 1: report from President Harry S. Truman's Commission on Migratory Labor
Speaker 1: later on in nine quote, the demand for migratory labor
Speaker 1: is thus essentially twofold, to be ready to go to
Speaker 1: work when needed, to be gone when not needed. So
Speaker 1: the United States, leaning on Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good neighbor policy,
Speaker 1: started trying to work out a bilateral agreement with Mexico
Speaker 1: that would allow Mexican nationals to enter the United States
Speaker 1: to work and then return home when they were done.
Speaker 1: At first, Mexico was reluctant to do this for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons. Mexican citizens who had previously immigrated to
Speaker 1: do exactly these types of work had faced discrimination and
Speaker 1: exploitive treatment in the United States. Many had been forced
Speaker 1: out of their jobs and stranded during the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: So basically Mexico remembered all of that and just didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of confidence that its citizens would be
Speaker 1: treated fairly if they went back to the United States
Speaker 1: to work. So Mexico insisted that any agreement spell out
Speaker 1: protections for its citizens. One that would protect Mexican laborers
Speaker 1: while in the United States and would protect Mexico's own
Speaker 1: industries from suffering due to a lack of workers. Mexico did, however,
Speaker 1: see some potential benefits to allowing its citizens to work
Speaker 1: in the United States. It was hoped that anyone who
Speaker 1: entered the program would return home with money that would
Speaker 1: be injected into the Mexican economy. Running parallel with that
Speaker 1: was the idea that Mexico's workers would learn new techniques
Speaker 1: relating to agriculture and then bring those new techniques back
Speaker 1: to Mexico. The result of this negotiation between Mexico and
Speaker 1: the United States was the Brissero program, which was launched
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty two by executive order and then formalized
Speaker 1: by a bilateral agreement on April nine. It would later
Speaker 1: be amended by Public Law seventy eight and nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: The basic terms of the Briscero program would be that
Speaker 1: this would be non military work was not acceptable to
Speaker 1: recruit Mexican nationals to work in agriculture and then put
Speaker 1: them into the military service. Mexican nationals would be protected
Speaker 1: from discrimination. Employers would pay transportation and living expenses, as
Speaker 1: well as a fair wage. Workers would get medical and
Speaker 1: sanitary services at no cost to them. People enrolling in
Speaker 1: the Broscero program would sign a Spanish language contract and
Speaker 1: be paid a fair wage that would not be less
Speaker 1: than what was standard for Anglo workers in the area,
Speaker 1: and workers under the age of fourteen were not allowed.
Speaker 1: There were also protections if there was a shortage of work,
Speaker 1: guaranteeing a subsistence level pay. If someone contracted with a
Speaker 1: Mexican national but turned out not to have work for
Speaker 1: them to do, a percentage of the broscero's pay was
Speaker 1: also to be saved and returned to them once they
Speaker 1: returned to Mexico. The criteria for the workers themselves were
Speaker 1: that they had to be young, healthy men who had
Speaker 1: agricultural experience but did not own land of their own.
Speaker 1: They also needed to have a letter from local authorities
Speaker 1: saying that their labor wasn't needed where they actually lived,
Speaker 1: and that was to try to diminish the impact on
Speaker 1: Mexicans Mexico's own labor force. Applicants would go to collection
Speaker 1: points in Mexico, be fingerprinted, be sprayed down with d
Speaker 1: d T, and then be taken to the United States.
Speaker 1: In spite of concerns that Mexican nationals would take jobs
Speaker 1: away from Americans. At first, this seemed like a mutually
Speaker 1: beneficial agreement. The United States would get the farm labor
Speaker 1: it needed, and Mexico would get new, modernized farming techniques,
Speaker 1: an injection of cash into its economy, and jobs for
Speaker 1: citizens who needed them. However, things took a turn for
Speaker 1: the worst pretty much immediately. Most of the work to
Speaker 1: be done was known as stoop labor. This was cultivation
Speaker 1: work that was done using a short handled hoe stooped
Speaker 1: over rose into the in the fields. This was grueling
Speaker 1: and like it could have been done with a long
Speaker 1: handled hoe instead of a short handled hoe that required
Speaker 1: you to literally stoop over, But for some reason people
Speaker 1: thought a long handled hoo was damaging to the crops. Today,
Speaker 1: the short handled hoe is regarded as an occupational hazard
Speaker 1: and many states it is banned as unsafe. There were
Speaker 1: also way more interested Mexican nationals than there were jobs,
Speaker 1: and soon officials processing applications were accepting bribes to move
Speaker 1: people ahead of the line. Recruitment efforts became prone to corruption.
Speaker 1: People who didn't meet these qualifications for one reason or
Speaker 1: another also started using the constant traffic back and forth
Speaker 1: across the border to make the crossing themselves illegally, and
Speaker 1: as was the case before, there were still plenty of
Speaker 1: growers who were willing to hire these people for almost
Speaker 1: no money. Unscrupulous growers also figured out that a lot
Speaker 1: of the Mexican nationals who were actually part of the
Speaker 1: Broscero program didn't have a lot of proficiency in English
Speaker 1: and weren't aware of the pay and protections they were
Speaker 1: legally entitled to under the terms of this program. This
Speaker 1: definitely was not universal. In various parts of the United States,
Speaker 1: broscero's organized themselves and when on strike, to protest wages
Speaker 1: and poor treatment that were specifically outlawed in the Briscero
Speaker 1: program's terms. Many growers flouted the rules of the program
Speaker 1: and hired people who had crossed illegally to get around
Speaker 1: having to worry about all of this. Mexico eventually refused
Speaker 1: to send workers to the entire state of Texas because
Speaker 1: of flagrant hiring of unauthorized workers as well as other abuses.
Speaker 1: So soon illegal border crossings were rampant and the employment
Speaker 1: of people who had entered illegally was widespread. Wages started
Speaker 1: to drop for basically everyone, because there were so many
Speaker 1: low wage workers who had become part of the economy
Speaker 1: in the Southwest that minimum standard housing and medical care
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be part of this program also
Speaker 1: didn't materialize, and a lot of people who actually were
Speaker 1: part of it wound up tightly packed together in barracks
Speaker 1: on canvas cots, where respiratory diseases and other illnesses spread
Speaker 1: like wildfire. Over the twenty two year life of this program,
Speaker 1: four point five million Mexican nationals legally came to the
Speaker 1: United States to work, some of them returning to the
Speaker 1: US repeatedly under new contracts, but far more entered illegally
Speaker 1: outside the bounds of the program. There was actually a
Speaker 1: six thousand percent increase in illegal immigration between nineteen forty
Speaker 1: four and nineteen fifty four. Support for the program, which
Speaker 1: had never been universal, started to wane after World War
Speaker 1: Two was over and Americans who had survived the war
Speaker 1: started to return home and to try to reclaim their
Speaker 1: old jobs. The official wartime program ended on December thirty
Speaker 1: one of nineteen forty seven, although the program continued to
Speaker 1: be extended for peacetime purposes for quite a while after that,
Speaker 1: and eventually Mexico, fed up with what it saw as
Speaker 1: the United States refusal to enforce the terms of their
Speaker 1: bilateral agreement, stopped participating by just declining to send any
Speaker 1: more workers through official channels. According to the Texas State
Speaker 1: Historical Association's Handbook of Texas, the US retaliated against Mexico's
Speaker 1: non participation in nineteen fifty one by allowing thousands of
Speaker 1: people to enter the US illegally, arresting them and then,
Speaker 1: rather than deporting them, turning them over to the Texas
Speaker 1: Employment Commission to be put to work. By the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the Broscero program was officially on the way out. Labor
Speaker 1: organizations had become a lot more influential in policy and
Speaker 1: had started advocating very vocally for jobs in the United
Speaker 1: States to be filled by Americans and not by Mexicans.
Speaker 1: At the same time, increasing mechanization in the agriculture industry
Speaker 1: meant that a lot of the physical labor that had
Speaker 1: required this huge labor pool was disappearing. The need for
Speaker 1: physical labor became a lot smaller. The Brassero program needed
Speaker 1: to be reauthorized periodically, and there were increasingly contentious debates
Speaker 1: whenever it came up for renewal. Its re authorizations in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty three in particular, were
Speaker 1: extremely hotly debated. There was a lot of pressure to
Speaker 1: end the program after a bus accident killed thirty two
Speaker 1: migrant workers in nineteen sixty three. The Burcero program eventually
Speaker 1: expired the following year in nineteen sixty four. With the
Speaker 1: abolition of the program. One of the things that proponents
Speaker 1: had often said about it turned out apparently to be true.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who were in favor of the
Speaker 1: program insisted that American workers did not want to do
Speaker 1: this work, which is why it needed to be open
Speaker 1: to Mexican nationals. After the abolition of the program, there
Speaker 1: were about five hundred and nineteen thousand unemployed people in California,
Speaker 1: which should have been plenty to cover the seventy thousand
Speaker 1: people who were needed to do stoop labor in the
Speaker 1: agricultural industry, but the nature the nature of the work
Speaker 1: and the wages that were that were offered meant that
Speaker 1: a lot of these jobs went unfilled and tons of
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables rotted in the fields, so that there
Speaker 1: was a lot of argument that this should have been
Speaker 1: like a gradual phase out rather than just an abrupt abolition.
Speaker 1: As we said at the top of the show. Running
Speaker 1: parallel to all of this was a mass deportation program
Speaker 1: focused on Mexican nationals called the horrible name Operation Went Back.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about that after we pause
Speaker 1: once again and take a break and hear from one
Speaker 1: of our fantastic sponsors. To get back to Operation Went
Speaker 1: Back as an example of how the United States thinking
Speaker 1: on immigration shifted. In the nineteen thirties and forties, President
Speaker 1: Franklin D. Roosevelt combined two other government agencies to form
Speaker 1: the Immigration and Naturalization Service in three This agency was
Speaker 1: originally part of the Department of Labor in NTY that
Speaker 1: changed the I n S and the Border Patrol that
Speaker 1: fell under it moved from the Department of Labor to
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice. So with that the I n
Speaker 1: S and the Border Patrol were no longer about work.
Speaker 1: They were about law enforcement. And as we said up,
Speaker 1: Ration Went Back was a mass deportation effort that came
Speaker 1: along after the I and S moved to the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice. It's often portrayed as a swift decisive effort
Speaker 1: to deport people who had entered the US illegally, but
Speaker 1: it was really part of a decades long effort that ran,
Speaker 1: as we said, parallel to most of the Burscero program.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen forties, for example, special Mexican deportation parties
Speaker 1: were established to try to apprehend and deport Mexican migrant
Speaker 1: workers in There was an attempt to reinforce targeted portions
Speaker 1: of the border with chain link fencing. In the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties and nineteen fifties, some border patrol agents ran an
Speaker 1: unsanctioned quote little barber shop, basically clippers that they carried
Speaker 1: with them to cut the hair of repeat immigration offenders,
Speaker 1: sometimes in intentionally humiliating ways. In terms of the more
Speaker 1: above board efforts to control immigration, a lot of them
Speaker 1: really were across national The United States wanted to keep
Speaker 1: illegal immigration from driving down wages and causing housing and
Speaker 1: social issues within its own borders, and Mexico wanted to
Speaker 1: have enough workers to meet its own labor needs, and
Speaker 1: also protected citizens from exploitation and discrimination while they were
Speaker 1: in the United States. In nineteen fifty one, a report
Speaker 1: on Mexican migrant workers in the US pinned all sorts
Speaker 1: of social and economic ills on illegal immigration and characterized
Speaker 1: the situation as an invasion. Soon, the US was diverting
Speaker 1: more and more of the border patrol and I n
Speaker 1: S to the Mexican border, more than doubling the number
Speaker 1: of agents that were stationed there. In between nineteen forty
Speaker 1: three and nineteen fifty three, there were a lot more
Speaker 1: people apprehended in illegal border crossings. The number rose from
Speaker 1: eleven thousand, seven hundred and fifteen in nineteen forty three
Speaker 1: to eight hundred and eighty five thousand, five hundred eighty
Speaker 1: seven in nineteen fifty three, with Mexicans making up more
Speaker 1: and more of those apprehended. At the same time, though,
Speaker 1: the United States didn't actually increase the immigration and Naturalization
Speaker 1: services budgets, so even though there were more agents on
Speaker 1: the Mexican border, there were fewer agents overall, with the
Speaker 1: forces numbers dropping a third between nineteen two and nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one. When Dwight the Eisenhower took office as president
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three, it's estimated that three million Mexican
Speaker 1: nationals in the US had entered the country illegally, but
Speaker 1: previous efforts to deport them had increasingly stalled out because
Speaker 1: so many farms and ranches were dependent on this illicit
Speaker 1: labor pool. In the words of Walt Edwards, who served
Speaker 1: in the Border Patrol from nineteen fifty one to nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, quote, when we caught illegal aliens on farms
Speaker 1: and ranches, the farmer or rancher would often call and complain,
Speaker 1: and depending on how politically connected they were, there would
Speaker 1: be political intervention. Yeah. That political intervention was basically getting
Speaker 1: their workers out of jail and turning away from the
Speaker 1: fact that they were not supposed to be in the
Speaker 1: United States. In nineteen fifty four, Eisenhower pointed General Joseph Swing,
Speaker 1: also known as Jumping Joe, as the commissioner of the
Speaker 1: Immigration and Naturalization Service. Swing started transferring immigration officials who
Speaker 1: had spent a long time in the Southwest to other
Speaker 1: parts of the country with the hope of breaking all
Speaker 1: those social and political ties to all the local farmers, ranchers,
Speaker 1: and political big wigs that was leading the service to
Speaker 1: not actually enforce immigration. Then, on June nine four, Swing
Speaker 1: announced the commencement of Operation Went Back. One arm of
Speaker 1: the operation was meant to physically apprehend and remove people
Speaker 1: who had illegally immigrated into the United States. The other
Speaker 1: was meant to publicize this effort to make sure people
Speaker 1: who weren't in the country legally knew about it and
Speaker 1: see the deportation force as a threat. A lot of
Speaker 1: this publicity deliberately exaggerated the size and aggressiveness of the
Speaker 1: deportation force in the hope of scaring people into leaving
Speaker 1: the country voluntarily. On June seventy four, immigration officials started
Speaker 1: the actual sweeps to apprehend and deport people who had
Speaker 1: illegally immigrated. About seven hundred and fifty immigration agents moved
Speaker 1: north through California and Arizona. They started in those few
Speaker 1: states because the entrenched resistance to deportation was lower there,
Speaker 1: so they were hoping to kind of get a good
Speaker 1: foothold before moving on to places where it was more contentious.
Speaker 1: They had a goal of apprehending a thousand people who
Speaker 1: had entered the country illegally every day. By the end
Speaker 1: of July, fifty thousand people had been arrested in California
Speaker 1: and Arizona, and an estimated four d eighty eight thousand
Speaker 1: had fled the United States on their own, and as
Speaker 1: Tracy had said. It started in California and Arizona, but
Speaker 1: from there it moved into Utah, Nevada, Texas, and Idaho,
Speaker 1: and immigration officials put the people that were apprehended in
Speaker 1: these sweeps onto trains and buses bound for Mexico, far
Speaker 1: enough south that they simply couldn't turn around and re
Speaker 1: entered the United States. Two ships were also used for
Speaker 1: this purpose, the Emancipation In and the Mercurial, carried people
Speaker 1: from Port Isabel in Texas about five hundred miles to
Speaker 1: Vera Cruz in Mexico. At the time, the i n
Speaker 1: S claimed that it deported one point three million people
Speaker 1: during operation went Back, but those numbers have not really
Speaker 1: held up to historical scrutiny. It was definitely lower than that,
Speaker 1: and it might have been as low as three hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: These efforts actually disrupted some of the agriculture industry in
Speaker 1: the states that were targeted by deporting their workforces. Like
Speaker 1: we said, a lot of the agriculture industry in the
Speaker 1: Southwest and West had become highly dependent on this illegal labor.
Speaker 1: The government tried to reassure people that they could get
Speaker 1: new labor through the Brascero program, which was still in
Speaker 1: effect at this point. In addition to the immediate impact
Speaker 1: that it had on the agriculture industry, there were other
Speaker 1: problems with Project Wipe Back as well, aside from its name,
Speaker 1: which I'm going to say again is a racial slur
Speaker 1: we would not normally say. On this show, everyone of
Speaker 1: Mexican to scent was suspect, whether they had entered the
Speaker 1: country illegally or not, and a lot of the lawful residents,
Speaker 1: some of them American citizens, were deported in error. Families
Speaker 1: were broken up when some members were caught up in
Speaker 1: a sweep and others weren't. Children were left with anyone,
Speaker 1: without anyone to look after them when their parents were
Speaker 1: arrested and deported. Mexican American communities were disrupted when their
Speaker 1: populations were basically decimated, and then that would basically leave
Speaker 1: whoever was left without the basic life amenities that they needed,
Speaker 1: and the problems did not end north of the border.
Speaker 1: People who were dropped off in Mexico were often left
Speaker 1: in completely unfamiliar territory where they had no friends or family,
Speaker 1: without any food, without water, and with no money. Eighty
Speaker 1: eight people from just one roundup died of heat stroke
Speaker 1: after being left in remote territory without food or water.
Speaker 1: Conditions on the emancipation and the mercuria were also appalling,
Speaker 1: incredibly overcrowded and dismal. On one voyage a Ryan, it
Speaker 1: broke out and the use of ships was eventually stopped
Speaker 1: after seven people drowned during one voyage. Apart from all
Speaker 1: of that, that ten percent of their pay that was
Speaker 1: supposed to be withheld for legitimate participants of the Burcero
Speaker 1: program and then returned to them when they returned to Mexico,
Speaker 1: A lot of people never saw it. A settlement was
Speaker 1: in the works in two thousand and eight to restore
Speaker 1: this pay to the former workers and their descendants, but
Speaker 1: as of there were still marches and protests going on
Speaker 1: to have this money restored because it had never actually happened.
Speaker 1: So that is the basics of like this long kind
Speaker 1: of convoluted, intertwined effort to both recruit and deport Mexican
Speaker 1: nationals in the United States. Uh. I know for sure
Speaker 1: that there are folks in the world whose mindset is, well,
Speaker 1: they're illegally in here. It serves them right. I personally
Speaker 1: think that if you are traveling hundreds of miles away
Speaker 1: from your family to do physically grueling, stoop labor for
Speaker 1: little money. Like imagine what your life is like to
Speaker 1: lead you to that decision? Right, Like what other option
Speaker 1: might you have? Have empathy? That's what I'm saying. Uh,
Speaker 1: do you have some listener mail that is empathetic or otherwise? Oh?
Speaker 1: It is, It's so empathetic. It's from Richard, and it
Speaker 1: is about our recent podcast on Desmond T. Doss and
Speaker 1: Um And Richard says, Dear Tracy and Holly, I want
Speaker 1: to drop you a note and tell you how much
Speaker 1: I enjoy listening to the podcast. I go for a
Speaker 1: walk every morning before I go to work, and I
Speaker 1: listened to podcasts as i walk. I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: friends and family are tired of me telling them things
Speaker 1: I have learned by listening to you. Your recent podcast
Speaker 1: on Desmond T. Doss really struck a chord with me.
Speaker 1: I didn't learn about him in history class, but I
Speaker 1: was familiar with his story. When I was a boy,
Speaker 1: I love to read. My favorite place was the public
Speaker 1: library and long Mont, Colorado. During the time I was
Speaker 1: going to school in long I read just about every
Speaker 1: book in the kids section of the library. I still
Speaker 1: remember being disappointed that I was only allowed to check
Speaker 1: out three books at a time. I also didn't understand
Speaker 1: why I couldn't check out books from the adult section
Speaker 1: on my kids library card. I'm gonna pause from this
Speaker 1: for this, from for this. This was exactly my experience
Speaker 1: as a child, so it was pretty close to mine.
Speaker 1: And I will say when I first read this email,
Speaker 1: when it first came in, my first thought was, Tracy
Speaker 1: is going to fall in love with this? Yep. I
Speaker 1: also had the problem of when I was in preschool,
Speaker 1: I had read all the books in the classroom and
Speaker 1: then there weren't anymore, and I was very frustrated by
Speaker 1: the situation as a as just as a comparison. My
Speaker 1: solution was to kind of sweet talk the librarian and
Speaker 1: I got books on the down low. I was too
Speaker 1: I was too socially anxious to do this. In kindergarten,
Speaker 1: my teacher wanted me to go to the library by
Speaker 1: myself to get books to read, because like I already
Speaker 1: could read, so I didn't really need the lessons about
Speaker 1: how to read, and I would just I would just
Speaker 1: cry because I couldn't handle the idea of going to
Speaker 1: the library by myself and asking a stranger to help
Speaker 1: me find a book. Anyway, I'm gonna get back to
Speaker 1: the letter now, which is much more positive than the
Speaker 1: story that I just told. So Richard says, I would
Speaker 1: take my three books home and have them read in
Speaker 1: a day or two, and then beg my MoMA to
Speaker 1: take me back to the library. I kept a flashlight
Speaker 1: handy for reading after I was supposed to be asleep
Speaker 1: the long mom The long Mont Public Library was my
Speaker 1: access to knowledge. One of the books that I read
Speaker 1: that made a big impression on me was The Unlikeliest
Speaker 1: Hero by Bouten Herndon, was a story of Desmond Doss.
Speaker 1: I had the honor of listening to Desmond Doss speak
Speaker 1: to a group of young people. I had taken a
Speaker 1: group of young boys, they just ten to fourteen to
Speaker 1: hear him. After his talk, my boys wanted to meet him.
Speaker 1: We waited for a chance to talk to him. Doesn't
Speaker 1: state until everyone who wanted to meet him had a chance.
Speaker 1: He took the time to visit with each one of
Speaker 1: the boys personally. After he talked, the boys loved him
Speaker 1: and were very impressed. They said to me, we got
Speaker 1: to meet a real American hero. I am proud to
Speaker 1: have been able to meet this gentleman. His story made
Speaker 1: an impression on me when I was a boy, and
Speaker 1: when I met him, I was impressed by his humility.
Speaker 1: Even though everyone in the audience wanted to hear about
Speaker 1: his medal of honor, he was uncomfortable talking about his actions.
Speaker 1: He focused more on being prepared and being willing to
Speaker 1: help others. He stressed the importance of standing up for
Speaker 1: your convictions. I remember talking him talking about the poster
Speaker 1: that showed the Ten Commandments in the Lord's Prayer and
Speaker 1: what an impression it made on him. Thank you for
Speaker 1: making more people aware of this humble American hero, Richard.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Richard. I don't have anything else
Speaker 1: to add because I interrupted a letter to add all
Speaker 1: of my commentary support your local library. I can say
Speaker 1: that sure, I so much of our work is tied
Speaker 1: directly to our local library. And I have such such
Speaker 1: fond memories of my local library when I was a
Speaker 1: child and summer reading programs, and where we lived was
Speaker 1: kind of rural, so it took us a little while
Speaker 1: to get to the library, but all summer long, I've
Speaker 1: basically looked forward to go into the library and getting
Speaker 1: as many books as possible. Uh. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to us about this or any other podcast,
Speaker 1: we're a history podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash miss
Speaker 1: in history, and we're on Twitter at miss in history.
Speaker 1: Are tumbler is miss in history dot tumbler dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also on panterst at pinterest dot com slash miss
Speaker 1: in history. Our instagram is at missed in History. Also,
Speaker 1: if you would like to learn more about what we
Speaker 1: talked about today, you can come to our parent company's website,
Speaker 1: which is how stuff Works dot com, and you will
Speaker 1: find all kinds of articles on all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: You can also come to our website which is at
Speaker 1: missed in history dot com, and you will find show
Speaker 1: notes and an archive of every podcast we have ever done,
Speaker 1: and lots of other cool stuff. You can do all
Speaker 1: that in a whole lot more at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com or missed in street dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
Speaker 1: stuff Works, not home h