Feliciano H. Ordoñez

Title

Feliciano H. Ordoñez

Description

Biographical Synopsis of Interviewee: Feliciano H. Ordoñez was born June 9, 1930, in Arizona; his father was from México, Distrito Federal, but as a boy he immigrated to the United States during the Mexican Revolution; he met his wife while working in the fields of Texas, and they moved to Arizona in the 1920s; Feliciano was the second born of his nine siblings; they grew up in the rural area of the west valley in Phoenix, Arizona; by the time he was six years old, he was already laboring in the fields; the entire family worked as migrant farm laborers, and his father was a foreman; as an adolescent, he often interacted with braceros while in the fields.

Summary of Interview: Mr. Ordoñez talks about his family and his parents in particular; he also comments on the general Hispanic community in Phoenix; he recalls working in the fields by the time he was six and how the entire family worked as migrant farm laborers, including his father who was a foreman; the bracero program began in 1942, when he was twelve year old, which led to constant interactions with the men; his first impression of them was that although they were not very well educated, they were humble and very hard workers; he recalls that they were well received as they were close to the ancestral roots of much of the working community; even so, they worked in different fields than the locals, because their boss did not want them to know how much less they were earning in comparison; they earned nine to ten cents an hour; in general, they were kept separate and had little if any interaction with the people in the community; there were also discrepancies in the language, and the locals discovered how little Spanish they really knew; because they used the short hoe, they developed a gradual curvature of the spine, not unlike many of the locals; Feliciano also remembers reading articles in the local newspaper about how well the program was going and how much the braceros helped while the local men were off at war; he also recounts other anecdotes and details their housing, accommodations, living conditions and provisions.

Creator

Loza, Mireya
Ordoñez, Feliciano H.

Date

2008-01-09

Subject

worked alongside braceros

Rights

Institute of Oral History, The University of Texas at El Paso

Language

spa

title (Spanish)

Feliciano H. Ordoñez

creator (Spanish)

Loza, Mireya

Rights Holder

Institute of Oral History, The University of Texas at El Paso

Online Submission

No

Duration

48:00

Bit Rate/Frequency

24 bit
96 k

Interviewer

Loza, Mireya

Interviewee

Ordoñez, Feliciano H.

Location

Phoenix, Arizona

File Name Identifier

Ordonez_AZ048

Citation

Loza, Mireya and Ordoñez, Feliciano H., “Feliciano H. Ordoñez,” Bracero History Archive, accessed March 29, 2024, https://braceroarchive.org/es/items/show/739.