Speaker 1: Hi listeners, just a quick heads up out of the
Speaker 1: shadows tell stories of people fleeing and living in sometimes
Speaker 1: violent environments. I have an old family photo that reminds
Speaker 1: me of the Brady Bunch because it's a blended family
Speaker 1: standing outside an idyllic looking suburban home in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: It's mostly a bunch of young, happy faces, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them are dressing their dopes seventies attire. There's
Speaker 1: Mattia Domingo sitting on the ground wearing what appears to
Speaker 1: be one of those long sleeve button down work shirts.
Speaker 1: Standing over him as wearing a smart, ruffled blazer. Mala
Speaker 1: Manuela while she's dressed like she grew up in the fifties,
Speaker 1: because she did. And then there's my Tia Madi with
Speaker 1: their feathered hair, and next to her dressed like a Mexican.
Speaker 1: Asked Peter Brady is my father with his leave eyes
Speaker 1: button up open and undone from like the stomach up
Speaker 1: to his full beard and afro. I've seen this family
Speaker 1: photo a lot because it's one of my favorites of
Speaker 1: my dad. He looks so fresh and young, and it's
Speaker 1: from his days before he had a family, when he
Speaker 1: spent life traveling back and forth between the US and Mexico.
Speaker 1: But I never really thought about something. My dad isn't
Speaker 1: documented in this photo, which means he was traveling back
Speaker 1: and forth without a green card or passport like whatever,
Speaker 1: Like it was no big deal. And the thing is
Speaker 1: he wasn't alone. It's hard to believe these days, but
Speaker 1: there was a time when the border was more fluid,
Speaker 1: when people like my dad would come to America, work
Speaker 1: for a few weeks, and go back home to Mexico,
Speaker 1: before millions of people like him began to plant roots here,
Speaker 1: before they had to choose between staying home and Mexico
Speaker 1: or having to create a new life in a new country,
Speaker 1: before the border became so dangerous to cross. So what
Speaker 1: changed after nineteen seventy four, when this Mexican Brady Bunch
Speaker 1: pick was snapped that led to my father and countless
Speaker 1: others finally deciding to cross the US for good, well
Speaker 1: for starters. In nineteen seventy five, this thing called the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War ended. I'm Patti Rodriguez and I'm Eric Glendo,
Speaker 1: and this is out of the shadows. Children of eighty
Speaker 1: six immigrants and their children have long lived in the
Speaker 1: shadows of America. Their destinies aren't just shaped by where
Speaker 1: they come from, but by their particular place in history.
Speaker 1: In six the lives of millions of immigrants and their
Speaker 1: children were changed by one lucky stroke of a pen
Speaker 1: by an unlikely ally, President Ronald Reagan. This podcast will
Speaker 1: examine the ripple effects the bill had on first generation
Speaker 1: kids of immigrants, who are navigating intergenerational mobility and transforming
Speaker 1: the cultural landscape. This is an untold story of luck, timing, triumph, opportunity, survival,
Speaker 1: and of course hope. One thing we don't really think about.
Speaker 1: One thing that gets lost in the arguments today about
Speaker 1: immigration is that the border wasn't always this political argument
Speaker 1: slash dangerous barrier. You know. The truth is that many
Speaker 1: of our parents came and went to the US in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies. Yeah, it's wild. I talked to
Speaker 1: my dad Manuel about this, and he said he would
Speaker 1: cross back and forth. Yeah, my dad says he would
Speaker 1: just drive across the border. Sometimes the border agents would
Speaker 1: ask for documentation, which my dad didn't have, so he'd
Speaker 1: be forced to go back. But most of the time
Speaker 1: the agents just waved him through and that's hard to
Speaker 1: believe now, but it was also common prior to there
Speaker 1: were really relatively few limits on immigration from south of
Speaker 1: the border. That's Charles Kalpasaki, author of Immigration reform The
Speaker 1: Corpse That Will Not Die. His book details the amnesty Bill,
Speaker 1: but also the circumstances that led to the migration patterns
Speaker 1: we saw at the time. There was a circular migration pattern,
Speaker 1: mainly in agriculture, but in other seasonal industries to right
Speaker 1: think construction, like where more people would go home for
Speaker 1: the holidays and they would stay home over the winter.
Speaker 1: The most famous instance of this circular migration pattern is
Speaker 1: probably the Settle program, and that started because of the draft.
Speaker 1: Our present program were eight hundred thousand additional men of
Speaker 1: this coming year and somewhat left the land men each
Speaker 1: year thereafter. The Settle Program started during World War Two
Speaker 1: as America's men, it's labor force was sent off to
Speaker 1: fight the war, while women and even children worked the factories.
Speaker 1: The farm jobs were abundant and labor was scarce. Again
Speaker 1: the urgently and again the Labor Department's contributions helped to
Speaker 1: set records of uninterrupted war production unequaled in the history
Speaker 1: of this or any other nation. And at that very
Speaker 1: same time, Mexico was suffering from high unemployment in the U.
Speaker 1: S needed workers to grow in harve star food, so
Speaker 1: Mexico in the US reaching agreement that would make it
Speaker 1: easier for people to cross the border for work. America
Speaker 1: stayed fed during the war, and all these people who
Speaker 1: didn't have jobs in Mexico found jobs here. All of
Speaker 1: the Wall America wars in Europe, Korean Vietnam, in almost
Speaker 1: two decades of unrelenting war, American farmers employed more than
Speaker 1: four point five million Mexican men. But I settled men
Speaker 1: who were here legally and exploited for their cheap labor
Speaker 1: with promises of a better life for their families back
Speaker 1: in Mexico. And all up until recently, I've come to
Speaker 1: learn that one of those men was my grandfather. The
Speaker 1: names in the temple, yeah, I even knew. In Ninetta,
Speaker 1: Miguel took a fourteen hour bus ride from Jalisco to
Speaker 1: the contracting station in Impalmisa. Officials would sign up a
Speaker 1: thousand to two thousand braceros a day and load them
Speaker 1: up in busses to the States. The Brato program mostly
Speaker 1: targeted men with families, men like my grandfather with wives
Speaker 1: and children, because there was a higher chance. At one
Speaker 1: all the money earned by the braseros will be sent
Speaker 1: back to Mexico, benefiting the Mexican economy. And two, they themselves,
Speaker 1: so brasettos will returned back home to their families after
Speaker 1: their contracts expired, preventing overstates, which is exactly what the
Speaker 1: US wanted. Command Premier sent a bed I think, will
Speaker 1: leave my grandma and his daughter, my thea three months
Speaker 1: at a time to come to California, and every penny
Speaker 1: he'd make work in the fields was sent back home. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I asked him how much he'd get paid, he laughed,
Speaker 1: not at my question, but at his own recognition of
Speaker 1: the many ways this country took advantage of them. On
Speaker 1: a good week, after working fifteen hour days, seven days
Speaker 1: a week under the scorching sun, me Papa Miguel would
Speaker 1: make sixty dollars a week. Sixty dollars a week. The
Speaker 1: promises made to these Mexican men guaranteed wages, cleaning, free housing,
Speaker 1: affordable meals. We're just that promises. Instead, they were treated
Speaker 1: like criminals, my grandfather recalled. So they were constantly harassed
Speaker 1: by the police. If the rats did not have their documents,
Speaker 1: the men would be immediately deported, no questions asked, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is what that is. Were also isolated from the world.
Speaker 1: When they were not working, they only had a each other.
Speaker 1: They had no social life outside of these camps. My
Speaker 1: first job was taking boys and barriers. That's Dr Rica
Speaker 1: figaroa a retired university professor who grew up in Modesto, California.
Speaker 1: During the sixties, the peak of the Bara setto program
Speaker 1: and I saw firsthand where the farm workers lived. I
Speaker 1: also lived there for the summer, so I had a
Speaker 1: pretty direct and intimate knowledge of what was going on.
Speaker 1: Dr Figaro says the barracks where the farmers lived house
Speaker 1: dozens of workers on hard bunks in tight quarters, kind
Speaker 1: of like the ones the soldiers were using off in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and maybe just like the men in Southeast Asia. The
Speaker 1: Bara settles were worried about string too far from the barracks.
Speaker 1: Since Dr Figro was a natural born citizen, he became
Speaker 1: their conduit to the little luxuries. I was a beer
Speaker 1: runner on Saturday nights because workers were not They didn't
Speaker 1: want to go off because of papers or because of guards,
Speaker 1: or because of whatever. You heard that right, These farms
Speaker 1: had guards supposedly to protect the workers. They carried them
Speaker 1: sixteen and they were there at the ranch every day
Speaker 1: when there was harvesting going on. So the BT program
Speaker 1: was not exactly ideal, but it was sold as a
Speaker 1: better alternative to living in abject poverty in Mexico, promising
Speaker 1: Mexican men jobs that they would never find back home.
Speaker 1: That change when the Brassetto program ended in ninet Bras
Speaker 1: settles now found themselves without a job, so a quarter
Speaker 1: millions stay in northern Mexico ready to go back to work.
Speaker 1: Many even sent letters to government officials pleading to reinstate
Speaker 1: the program. My current situation is critical. Economic hardship is
Speaker 1: the biggest enemy in my home. I am contacting you
Speaker 1: for help. I'm not requesting money. Rather, I am attentively
Speaker 1: begging you for a job within the federal government. Out
Speaker 1: of the shadows. Will be right back now, back to
Speaker 1: the show. Historically, the Mexican government actually discouraged people from
Speaker 1: migrating to the US because they didn't want to lose
Speaker 1: their labor force. But in the seventies, Mexico had a
Speaker 1: surplus of workers and a growing population, and instead of
Speaker 1: addressing the issues, they started to fudge the numbers. See,
Speaker 1: the way unemployment works is there's a pull of people
Speaker 1: looking for jobs and not enough of them to go around.
Speaker 1: So what does the Mexican government do, in all its
Speaker 1: celestial wisdom. They basically clear the path for all these
Speaker 1: people to leave to the US, which means that the
Speaker 1: amount of Mexicans looking for work goes down, So unemployment
Speaker 1: technically goes down to Mexico. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Joe
Speaker 1: put it point blank, saying, quote, the United States will
Speaker 1: continue to be, to a greater or lesser extent, the
Speaker 1: safety valve for our surplus labor force. So while the
Speaker 1: Mexican government never really encouraged workers to cross the U.
Speaker 1: S Border illegally, it definitely turned a blind eye towards it.
Speaker 1: Like instead of shouting, hey, don't leave, they quietly whispered, oh,
Speaker 1: come on, no, don't leave. But if you do, make
Speaker 1: sure you wire us to cash Western Union. Please. And
Speaker 1: the US, despite the BRAT program ending in four, still
Speaker 1: benefited from the cheap labor that came from undocumented men
Speaker 1: and women. It too, turn a blind eye towards unauthorized entries,
Speaker 1: all wall spewing propaganda that it llegals we're taking jobs
Speaker 1: away from Americans. The US was all like, hey, don't come,
Speaker 1: we're taking our jobs. But if you do come, we
Speaker 1: have jobs for you. I mean, I'm joking, because this
Speaker 1: was actually a very serious and potentially dangerous move by
Speaker 1: both governments, fueled by politics and fear. With both countries
Speaker 1: benefiting from this unauthorized circular migration, it was more fluid
Speaker 1: for migrants to go back and forth across the border.
Speaker 1: Mexico Secretary of Foreign Affairs even requested that Mexicans not
Speaker 1: be returned to Mexico. They told their consulates to stop
Speaker 1: the official process of helping folks who wanted to go
Speaker 1: back home to Mexico. Author Anna Raquel Minion tells some
Speaker 1: of those stories in her book Undocumented Lives Could as
Speaker 1: a Mexican migrant in Los Angeles who dedicated his life
Speaker 1: to helping Mexican communities recalled that consoles did absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: if somebody came to the consulate and wished to return
Speaker 1: to his homeland, for instance, they gave him nothing surplus
Speaker 1: to the Mexican government and illegal in the US these
Speaker 1: migrant workers no longer had a home. Those who came
Speaker 1: to the States out of necessity to survive were shipped
Speaker 1: out of luck. The circular pattern jammed workers from overpopulated
Speaker 1: Central Mexican regions left their homes, many never to return.
Speaker 1: Migrating north became a lucrative trade in Mexico. Everyone was
Speaker 1: making money every step of the way. Coultas would raken
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars a night. Contractors found work, finally building
Speaker 1: Abolita's home on top of it that animal she had
Speaker 1: owned for years. Mexicans working in the US since stacks
Speaker 1: of cash back to the rancho for food on the table,
Speaker 1: to build homes, churches, and paved roads. Mexico was in
Speaker 1: no hurry to shut that pipeline down. Men who would
Speaker 1: go back to the ranchos with stories about the land
Speaker 1: of jobs and opportunities, stories that would inspire many more
Speaker 1: Mexicans to go to the US because it was a
Speaker 1: goal rush and in north. And one of them was
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old kid from Carbone, Jalisco. My dad,
Speaker 1: that's what you mean. I mean, my mom hostels the
Speaker 1: sas from one of yeah, my dad's neighbors and even
Speaker 1: cousins would come back to my dad's rancho with nice
Speaker 1: cars and cash to spend. My dad was seeing how
Speaker 1: quickly families around his neighborhood were changing when money was
Speaker 1: sent back from the US. They would dress better, eat better.
Speaker 1: And for my dad, who many times only had it
Speaker 1: to eat, these changes were beyond his wildest dreams. So
Speaker 1: he left for the US when he was just nineteen
Speaker 1: years old, hoping to send money back to his family
Speaker 1: in Mexico. At the beginning of this podcast, I told
Speaker 1: myself that I was not going to ask my dad
Speaker 1: to tell me the story of why he came, and
Speaker 1: I was even more sure that I wasn't gonna do
Speaker 1: it after talking to my mom. I was scared, actually,
Speaker 1: no more like selfish. I did not want to hear
Speaker 1: his story because I knew how painful it would be
Speaker 1: for me to hear my dad reflect on such a
Speaker 1: vulnerable moment in his life. But I found the courage
Speaker 1: to ask him a question I never dared to ask.
Speaker 1: He then yes, um, uh, who are you? We'll see
Speaker 1: you the aske renuons, as the answus say, or something
Speaker 1: the only don't know we are. You can hear how
Speaker 1: difficult it was from me asking my dad I growing
Speaker 1: up he had dreams of his own, And when he
Speaker 1: answered that he dreamed of going to school and getting
Speaker 1: an education, you can hear my heart break the sim
Speaker 1: the netflce. Okay, let me fast, take you know your
Speaker 1: My dad was seeing how his Rancho was changing and
Speaker 1: he wanted that too for his family. Houses were being built,
Speaker 1: people were wearing shoes, and he wanted that too. He
Speaker 1: was the oldest and the responsibility weighed heavy on him.
Speaker 1: Coming to the US. Seemed to be working for everyone
Speaker 1: else around him. Why couldn't he have a piece of
Speaker 1: it too. As soon as my dad arrived, he began
Speaker 1: building my abilite those a home. With the money he
Speaker 1: was sending back. His entire family went from living in
Speaker 1: a shack, everyone sleeping on the floor, to having a
Speaker 1: house of their own with walls and doors. And my
Speaker 1: dad did that for his family. Many young Mexican men
Speaker 1: did just that. But it wasn't just men who came
Speaker 1: to the US looking for work on the farms. My
Speaker 1: mom tells me that she was pregnant and working in
Speaker 1: Washington picking apples. That's Wendy Salasar born in a farmtown
Speaker 1: in Washington State, where both her undocumented parents worked the
Speaker 1: apple harvest. They worked together, so my dad would help
Speaker 1: her out and say, you picked the ones at the
Speaker 1: bottom so you don't have to climb up the ladder
Speaker 1: and be stretching. So I believe at the time she
Speaker 1: was pretty far along in her pregnancy, probably about five
Speaker 1: months or more when she was doing this. I can't
Speaker 1: even imagine having to pick apples well pregnant. But most
Speaker 1: of these people migrated in a circular pattern. They came
Speaker 1: to the chambard then went back home. That's what my
Speaker 1: dad did, but he didn't work on the farms. He
Speaker 1: just kind of hung out and visited his family and
Speaker 1: sometimes would work in a warehouse in southeast Los Angeles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: more were less, but our wow him. My dad says
Speaker 1: he made chairs for theaters stadiums all while undocumented, and
Speaker 1: after two weeks of working he would go back home
Speaker 1: to Sinaloa. Since crossing the border was so easy, he
Speaker 1: didn't even think twice about going back and forth, and
Speaker 1: since some of the employers looking for cheap labor here
Speaker 1: in the US were even asking for legal status, he
Speaker 1: knew he could just keep working until there was no
Speaker 1: more work, and then something else happened thousands of miles away.
Speaker 1: That would change everything. The fall of Saigon. Out of
Speaker 1: the shadows will be right back now, back to the show.
Speaker 1: According to article on the Intercept, the idea of weaponizing
Speaker 1: the border quote reaches back to at least the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: to the presidency of Jimmy Carter, when the US began
Speaker 1: to turn its attention away from Vietnam toward its southern border.
Speaker 1: Within this last decade, the problem of undocumented aliens or
Speaker 1: illegal aliens or undocumented workers has become increasingly severe. Yep,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter, the Democrat liberal saint, requested and got approval
Speaker 1: for about five million dollars to build defense along the
Speaker 1: US southern border. And my dad said, it was simple economics.
Speaker 1: The economy was bad and soldiers were coming home anticipating jobs,
Speaker 1: while at the same time, more and more people were
Speaker 1: fleeing a recession in Mexico. So President Carter and the
Speaker 1: I n S started cracking down. Suddenly the cheap labor
Speaker 1: that both Mexico and the US benefited from that basically
Speaker 1: made it okay for our parents to come back and
Speaker 1: forth to make a quick buck and live a better life.
Speaker 1: Became the problem. Suddenly, our parents became the people that
Speaker 1: nobody wanted. Now picture this. It's a cold and foggy
Speaker 1: night in south San Diego. Waiting in the fog are
Speaker 1: hundreds of Mexican migrants. They're being chased by Mexican police
Speaker 1: from the south and hunted by border patrol in the north.
Speaker 1: The coyotes strategy is to throw rocks at the border patrol,
Speaker 1: creating a diversion so the migrants could cross, But on
Speaker 1: this night, it's a setup. As the coyotes looked for
Speaker 1: the right moment to cast their stones, out of the
Speaker 1: thin fog come three ram chargers rushing at them. Panicky
Speaker 1: fearing for their lives, the migrants turned and start running
Speaker 1: back south. But there's another surprise waiting for them. Police
Speaker 1: officers from Tijuana there to arrest them. All. Suddenly surrounded,
Speaker 1: the migrants are forced back north to the border, this
Speaker 1: time against their will, leading them right into the border patrol.
Speaker 1: The migrants are apprehended, charged, convicted, and incarcerated before being
Speaker 1: sent back to Mexico. This story, told by author and
Speaker 1: Rakiminian in her book Undocumented Lives, captures a sentiment of
Speaker 1: those in power in both the US and Mexico by
Speaker 1: the late seventies and early eighties, migrant workers were people
Speaker 1: without a place. In their presence, their mere existence could
Speaker 1: be denied by those in power in both nations. These
Speaker 1: people were cornered and caught hiding in the fog between
Speaker 1: two countries that didn't want them. Their entrapment was part
Speaker 1: of a larger trend happening that may sound familiar. People
Speaker 1: without a home, without community, unwanted by the nation they
Speaker 1: came from. In the place they we're going, they belonged nowhere.
Speaker 1: Nidia key, Nidia, Yeah, living in the shadows. So from
Speaker 1: that unhappy picture, we come back to the Mexican Brady
Speaker 1: Bunch photo at the top of the show. That was
Speaker 1: one of the last times my dad crossed as an
Speaker 1: undocumented Peter Brady into the US, just by driving here
Speaker 1: in the early part of the seventies before the crackdown.
Speaker 1: Then in December of nineteen seventy nine, on a rainy night,
Speaker 1: my father put on some rain boots, some levies and
Speaker 1: crossed the hills under helicopter searchlights, being chased by border
Speaker 1: patrol agents and crossed into a much different version of
Speaker 1: the America. He used to come visit for weeks at
Speaker 1: a time. My dad and millions of others planted roots
Speaker 1: here in the US, just as much of the country
Speaker 1: had decided people like him or the problem plaguing the nation.
Speaker 1: At the end of a socially and economically turbulent decade,
Speaker 1: and in the unlikely hero of our story gets elected President.
Speaker 1: President mcgans courageous and talented leader. He's making admirable progress
Speaker 1: in the difficult task of moving El Salvador toward democracy.
Speaker 1: I let my preoccupation with the hostages intrude into areas
Speaker 1: where it didn't belong. She used eighty names, thirty addresses,
Speaker 1: fifteen telephone numbers to collect food stamp social security for
Speaker 1: The key to our anti drug strategy is to call
Speaker 1: instead for the national crusade against drugs. And we could
Speaker 1: have a very hostile and strange neighbor on our border.
Speaker 1: Rather than making them for talking about putting up offense,
Speaker 1: Why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems.
Speaker 1: Make it possible for them to come here legally with
Speaker 1: the work per myth, and then while they're working and
Speaker 1: earning here, they pay taxes here like the migrants and
Speaker 1: the fog our parents were trapped between two forces, the
Speaker 1: businesses who were exploiting them for their cheap labor, in
Speaker 1: a growing conservative movement that wanted a crackdown at the border.
Speaker 1: Something needed to be done. What's come in next time
Speaker 1: on Out of the Shows the story of a six
Speaker 1: foot giant, the grandson of an immigrant and author of Urka,
Speaker 1: the bill that ended up changing the course of this generation.
Speaker 1: So we had to do something. Character third inuit of
Speaker 1: doing Nothing. Out of the Shadows is written by Caesar Hernandez.
Speaker 1: It's also written, edited, hosted, an executive produced by Patti
Speaker 1: Rodriguez and Eric Galindo. It's produced by Bets Cardanas, Karen
Speaker 1: Lopez and Gabby Watts. It's sound design, mixed and mastered
Speaker 1: by Jesse nice Longer. Our studio engineer is Clay Hillenburg.
Speaker 1: Karen Garcia That's Me is our announcer. Out of the
Speaker 1: Shadows is the production of Seeing Me, Other Productions and
Speaker 1: School of Humans in partnership with My Heart's Michael Tura
Speaker 1: podcast Network. The podcast is also executive produced by Giselle Banzes,
Speaker 1: Virginian Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Chad Crowley. Our marketing and
Speaker 1: our team is led by Jasmine Mahia, original music by
Speaker 1: a Arenas, and if you loved his cover of Los
Speaker 1: Caminos La Vida, this podcast theme song, you can listen
Speaker 1: to it on all music platforms. Historical audio for Out
Speaker 1: of the Shadows comes from the Reagan Presidential Library and
Speaker 1: the National Archives. Special thanks to Ian Vargas, Alex and Ali,
Speaker 1: Caitlin Becker, gob Chabran, Daisy Church, Angel Lopez Glendo, Julianna Gamiz,
Speaker 1: Ryan Gordon, Brian Matheson, Claudia Marty Corina, Oscar Ramidez, John Rodriguez,
Speaker 1: Juan Rodriguez, Joshua Sandoval, Eric Sclar, Tony Sorrentino, and Megan Tan.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts, visit the I Heart Radio app or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.