David F. Herrera

David F. Herrera

Biographical Synopsis of Interviewee: David F. Herrera was born in 1925, and soon after, his family moved to Mesquite, New Mexico; he went through two years of college at New Mexico Statue University, where he focused on civil engineering; shortly thereafter, he followed in his father’s footsteps and began farming; he began hiring braceros to help him on the farm in the mid 1950s.


Summary of Interview: Mr. Herrera recalls that in 1946, after attending New Mexico State University for two years, he began farming in Mesquite, New Mexico, with only twelve acres of land; gradually, he acquired more land, and in the mid 1950s he began hiring braceros; with the help of his friends he would pick the braceros up at Rio Vista, a processing center in Socorro, Texas; the braceros primarily helped him with the cotton harvest beginning in late August and continuing through February; he would hire twenty braceros for the harvest; the workers were housed in renovated adobe buildings with electricity and running water; they would often walk to nearby stores to buy necessities or would wait until the weekends to go to Anthony or Las Cruces, New Mexico; he would furnish the braceros with the bags they needed to pick cotton; oftentimes, he and a neighbor would share braceros as necessary for finishing work; in his opinion, it was pressure from the labor unions that ultimately caused the demise of the bracero program.

Morgan, Beth

Herrera, David F.

2003-04-07

Farmer

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

eng

David F. Herrera

Herrera, David F.

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

No

Digital, WAV, MP3

1:00:00

Name of Interviewee: David Herrera
Date of Interview: April 7, 2003
Name of Interviewer: Beth Morgan

This is Beth Morgan. It’s April 7, 2003, and I am visiting with David Herrera at his home in Mesquite, New Mexico. This interview is for the Bracero Oral History Project.


BM: So, if I could ask you, Mr. Herrera, when and where were you born?

DH: I was born in Rosito(??), New Mexico, about four miles from Mesquite, in April 2, 1925.

BM: Okay, your full name is what?

DH: Full name is David Frank, David F. Herrera; I just use the initials.

BM: Where did you grow up and go to school, Mr. Herrera?

DH: I grew up in a village in Mesquite, New Mexico. I went to Mesquite Elementary, and then I went to Anthony Union High School. I attended two years at New Mexico State University, which was New Mexico A&M at that time.

BM: Did you graduate from NMSU then?

DH: No, I just went there two years.

BM: And what did you study there?

DH: Civil engineering.

BM: Were your parents farmers?

DH: Yes.
BM: That was in the Mesquite area?

DH: Yes.

BM: Okay, what did they raise?

DH: At that time, when I was growing up, the main crop was cotton and alfalfa. Now, farming is very diversified with many other crops.

BM: What was your father’s name?

DH: Felipe E. Herrera.

BM: Felipe with an -F-, right?

DH: Yes.

BM: Okay, now he farms here in this area also?

DH: Yes. My folks moved to this area when I was less than a year old. He bought a farm west of town here, and that’s where the farm was.

BM: When did you start farming yourself?

DH: Well, actually I started farming in 1946, two years after I got out of high school. I might add that I became a college dropout to become a farmer.

BM: And was it something that you did by choice or did you need to help your family?


DH: No, farming was always in my blood. I started farming a small patch of land shortly after that. At that time, you could make a real good living on farming, the costs were low, the price of crops were almost the same as they are now.

BM: When you began farming, was it your father’s property or did you buy your own place?

DH: No, I bought a small acreage, I started with small acreage, and I kept on farming. I would lease some ground, and then I started buying some of my own acreage.

BM: Was that also here in this area?

DH: In the surrounding area. When I started farming, if a farm came up for sale that was within my area, where I could farm it without having any trouble with farm equipment, any distance, I’d make an effort to buy it.

BM: How many acres did you start with, if you don’t mind my asking? (phone rings) Should I stop this?

DH: Let me see if my wife—
(Interview interrupted)

BM: I think we had just gotten to the point where I asked you how many acres you started with. You said you had begun with twelve acres, and before that, you said that whenever there was acreage that was in the area, then you would try to acquire it. When was it that you began using braceros?

DH: I don’t remember when that bracero program started, but when it started, I was growing cotton, and there was no mechanical cotton pickers at that time, it was all handpicked cotton, so I started contracting braceros.

BM: I believe the program started in 1942, so—

DH: It wasn’t that early, I wasn’t farming at that time. How long did it last?

BM: Through 1964.

DH: Okay, I probably started contracting braceros in the midfifties.

BM: All right, that would put us in the middle of the program. How did you find out about the bracero program?

DH: It was pretty well advertised, farm bureau put out a lot of information on it. I had a friend who was running the program, Epifanio(??) Apodaca, he was a graduate of New Mexico State, and he was in charge of the program for this area. The processing base at that time was Rio Vista, below El Paso, that’s where we went to arrange to pick up the braceros, that you made the application, and they would notify you that they were ready to be picked up.

BM: Now, you say Mr. Apodaca was in charge of the program?

DH: Yes.

BM: Was he the labor director for the farm bureau?

DH: I’m not too sure how he was connected or who was his supervisor, whatever.

BM: Is he still in this area?

DH: He passed away; unfortunately, he passed away about ten years ago.

BM: Did you actually go down to Rio Vista to choose the workers that you wanted?
DH: We didn’t get a chance to choose our workers, but the way this was handled, they would assign [them]. If you applied for fifteen braceros, they would pick out fifteen braceros and turn them over to you. This area, all the farmers were trying to get people from the Laguna area in Mexico. They claim that that’s where the good cotton pickers came from, cotton growing area over there. We would go early, and try to mill around with the braceros that were available, and find out a little about themselves. When it came time for us to pick up our braceros, we would tell them to get in a certain line, and maybe we would have a little better chance of getting those braceros.

BM: I see. So, that was because they also grew cotton in that area of Mexico?

DH: There were those who were familiar with this valley, and they liked this area real well.

BM: Where about is Laguna?

DH: I never did find out, but they called it La Laguna, the lake area, but I’m not familiar with that part of Mexico. But that’s where those cotton pickers, there were many of them that would pick five hundred pounds a day, three of ‘em could pick a bale easy.

BM: Is that a lot?

DH: Oh yeah, the average cotton picker would pick around two hundred pounds.

BM: I see, well that’s a lot then. What did you have to do to hire braceros? Was there paperwork?

DH: Oh, yes, uh-huh, we had to apply, and that’s where Mr. Apodaca came in. He processed all the paperwork that we requested from different farmers for braceros.

BM: Did you have to go somewhere to do that or did they come to you? Did he come to you?

DH: Mr. Apodaca had an office here in Las Cruces. The processing center was in Rio Vista, in lower El Paso.

BM: Where was the office that you had to go to in Las Cruces? Do you remember?

DH: I think it was the, if I’m not mistaken, it was the farm bureau office.

BM: Okay, that would make sense. I don’t know who the various directors were at that time. I talked to a Bob Porter. Do you know him?

DH: Oh, yes.

BM: He was the labor director, but only for a couple of years.

DH: Bobby Jack Porter?

BM: Yeah.

DH: He’s from, he used to be a regular from Hatch. I know Bob real well. You know, when we were kids, we used to get in a lot of 4-H clubs. One year, I was awarded an all expense paid trip to Chicago, from this area, and Bobby Porter was awarded one from the Hatch area, we were twelve, thirteen years [old] at that time. (laughs)

BM: You were 4-H buddies.

DH: Yes, from way back.

BM: He did administer that program for a couple of years, but it was probably after—

DH: It was later, after Apodoca—

BM: Must have been the sixties or so. How many acres did you have at the time that you hired braceros?

DH: I had thirty-eight acres at that time.

BM: And that was all cotton?

DH: All cotton. I didn’t have any equipment to process it, cutting, raking, and baling.

BM: Now during the entire time that you used braceros, was that primarily what you grew or did you add other crops later on?

DH: While the bracero program was in effect, all my farming was in cotton. Later, I started growing alfalfa, and I had it custom cut and baled. And later on, I could buy my own equipment, and then I had acquired more acres by that time. I did my own cutting and baling.

BM: Did you have help with that from braceros also?

DH: No.

BM: That was after?

DH: The only use for braceros was for cotton picking. That was the case with most of the farmers.


BM: So, the program was known, you said it was well advertised in this area, and that the braceros were hired for cotton picking, and there was not mechanized cotton picking at that time.

DH: Every acre of cotton was handpicked.

BM: Did you have to meet any specific government regulations in order to hire braceros?

DH: Oh, yes, we had to furnish housing for ‘em with utilities and running water.

BM: Was that provided right on your own place?

DH: Yes.

BM: What was the housing like?

DH: Most of them were renovated adobe buildings that were on the farm, and the farmer could afford to build a new home for himself, and these houses were renovated for bracero use.

BM: So, there were buildings on the acreage that you bought, already existing?

DH: Yes. One of the farms that I bought had a house where the farmer used to live, he sold the farm, and the new owner never moved to the farm, so I bought the farm from him, and it still had the labor house there.

BM: Do you know how many years you used braceros, total?

DH: I think I used them until the program played out.

BM: So, that would have been like—

DH: Eight or ten years.

BM: Can you estimate how many braceros you employed over the course of the year?

DH: My main use was for cotton picking, and I usually contracted anywhere from fifteen to twenty braceros.

BM: And that would be at what time of year?

DH: Cotton picking usually started when we were handpicking, usually started at the very end of August or early September, and it would run into February of the following year.

BM: So, that’s four or five months?

DH: Yes, about four or five months.

BM: Was that typically the length of the work contract for the bracero?

DH: Yes. Normally, I think that there was no, there was a termination date, but if you finished your cotton picking, you were all through, then the braceros were free to go back to Mexico.

BM: Did you ever keep them around to do things other than cotton picking?

DH: No.

BM: Were there different tasks involved in the harvesting of cotton other than just picking it? Did you have any other things braceros do?

DH: No, mainly it was cotton picking. I usually hired a person, a local person, to do the weighing, and keep track of the pounds that each bracero picked.

BM: How did the braceros get to your place?

DH: I had to pick them up at Rio Vista, and bring them to the farm, and get them settled down in their living quarters, and they were there until they left.

BM: So, if you have, like, twenty braceros, they certainly wouldn’t all fit in a pickup [truck]. Did you have to hire a bus or something?

DH: Oh, yeah, I had some friends that would help me.

BM: Did you actually have a bus or did you just bring them?

DH: No, no, the braceros that I hired we could usually fit ‘em into three or four vehicles.

BM: Would that have been like pickup trucks?

DH: Yeah, maybe cars, they would ride in a car, you know, I think we used some pickups, too. Now, the braceros that were contracted to go to Pecos, out of Rio Vista, they hauled them over there in the back of cattle trucks.

BM: That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. I hope they at least they closed them down before they put them in there.

DH: In fact, all the braceros that I talked to, they were fighting for it, so they wouldn’t be sent to Pecos, (interviewer laughs) because that wasn’t the only problem, the transportation. Pecos, at that time, they still practice a lot of discrimination.

BM: You’re talking about Pecos, Texas?

DH: Pecos, Texas, yes.

BM: I understand Texas was kind of a tough place for a bracero. How did the braceros get along in this area?

DH: They adjusted real well. And another thing that happened, a lot of the Anglo farmers, all over, but in my area is where I noticed them, they learned to speak Spanish, some of ‘em became real fluent in Spanish, with the slang and everything. There’s a few of them still around.

BM: That was a good thing?

DH: Um-hm.

BM: I am sure it made it easier for everyone?

DH: Well, it was easier for the farmer to learn Spanish than it would be for some of, the bigger farmers had thirty or forty braceros, for all of them to speak English.

BM: Mr. Herrera, did you ever actually go to the processing center there in Rio Vista?

DH: Yes.

BM: What was it like?

DH: It was, well, to me it reminded me of a, it must have been a CCC camp. Remember those?

BM: Civilian Conservation Corps?

DH: Yes, because they had housing there, and they had facilities to feed them a light lunch, and water available, restrooms available. I’m not sure if that’s what it was, but I’ve seen other areas where the CC project built a camping area like that. There was one such project over there in Glenwood, New Mexico, west of Silver City. I don’t know if you’ve ever been over there.

BM: Yeah, um-hm.

DH: The CC boys built a catwalk over the river there, real picturesque.

BM: Yeah, I’m familiar with that place. You think it may have been a CCC camp at one time?

DH: I think that’s probably what it was. I’m not sure, but—

BM: You were required to provide the braceros with housing and electricity and running water.

DH: Utilities.

BM: What were the requirements as to their pay?

DH: The pay was pretty uniform. At that time, I guess, when I started using braceros, I forget what the rate was, but it was something like eighty or ninety cents per a hundred pounds of cotton or something like that. Labor was cheap at that time, but so was everything else.

BM: Did you have to provide the braceros with food also or did they buy their own?

DH: No, they bought their own. We were fortunate that my farm was within walking distance to the stores there in Mesquite, and they would go buy their own groceries. On Saturdays, they managed to get into Anthony or Las Cruces to buy groceries at the bigger grocery stores.

BM: What did they usually buy? Do you have any idea what they ate?

DH: I think their main staple was beans, corn tortillas. Basically, the foods that their culture was accustomed to, and all those ingredients were available here.

BM: What about medical care? Did you have to provide medical care for your workers?

DH: I don’t remember that I ever had to take anybody to the emergency room or anything like that. They were pretty hardy people, pretty healthy. I don’t recall that I ever had any absences from the braceros to show up for work. I don’t recall that, there may have been some, but I don’t recall.

BM: What about injuries? Did any of them chop themselves with a hoe or anything?

DH: No, not really. When they’re picking cotton, the only thing they could do was fall off the cotton trailer, but the trailer usually had sideboards on it.

BM: Did you ever have any government officials or immigration service, Border Patrol, come around to check on the workers?

DH: We had housing inspection to see if we passed the requirements and everything.

BM: What was that like?

DH: No, usually, when you were hiring braceros, Border Patrol wasn’t involved; they wouldn’t come around and check.

BM: What was the housing inspection? Who did the housing inspection?

DH: I think that was handled also under the farm bureau, I’m not sure. Basically, they came to check and see how sound the building was, if there wasn’t any hazards that might hurt the braceros or whatever, and make sure the utilities were furnished and all that.

BM: Did you ever have any trouble with that? Did they ever write you up for anything?

DH: No, I didn’t have to go through anything. I think some of the farmer’s were asked to repair their wiring on the electrical lights, and that’s about all they had. Most of the old homes didn’t have any wall plug-ins to plug in a toaster, or no toaster was available, but basically all they had was lights.

BM: But if there was work that needed to be done, did the braceros end up doing it themselves? Were they required to do that themselves?

DH: On the house?

BM: On the houses.

DH: No, I don’t recall that they had to do anything, really. If they had a broken window or something, they would report it to the farmer and he would go and repair it.

BM: Okay, so you did that if it was necessary.

DH: We had to do the upkeep on the building.

BM: You said you think that the braceros primarily purchased beans and corn tortillas and that sort of thing. Do you have any idea what their meals were like? Did they ever invite you over for dinner or anything?

DH: No, but I had an experience one time. I was trapping gophers up there on the farm. The irrigation district would pay the farmers fifty cents per tail. If you catch a gopher, you cut the tail off, and take it in, and they’d give you fifty cents. My kids used to do that. One time, I had three gophers that I had trapped, and I had them in the back of my pickup, they were dead, you know, they hadn’t been dead very long, and one of the braceros saw ‘em. He asked me what I was going to do with those animals. I said, “We throw them away, we just cut their tails off.” He said, “Can I have them?” I said, “Sure. Why do you want them?” “We’re gonna eat them.” I said, “You eat the gophers?” “Oh yeah,” he says, “you know,” what he told me made a lot of sense, “you know, people here in the states, they go for chicken, they really like chicken meat, and a chicken will get out in the corral, and eats just about anything. These little animals, they work underground, and all they eat is clean roots from different plants, that’s what they live on, and it’s a very clean animal.” And the fur was real, real soft, you know. He says, “These little animals are cleaner than a rabbit. People eat a lot of rabbit and mostly chicken in this place. You take a chicken out on a farm, they eat anything.” (laughs)

BM: Yes, I’ve heard that a lot of Navajo people eat prairie dogs.

DH: Is that right?

BM: I guess it’s the same thing as gopher.

DH: Okay. Well, prairie dogs are more exposed. You’ll never see a gopher along the surface, they’re always underground. They build those mounds, you know, push the dirt up? I showed my boys how to move the dirt out of the way and dig down until you find the hole. There’s a hole going this way and that way. You set a trap at each one and then cover it up. Within six or seven hours, you go back and you’d catch a gopher.

BM: Huh, interesting. What about moles, are they the same thing or different?

DH: No, I don’t think they have those here.

BM: I didn’t know if we did or not.

DH: We have a bunch of squirrels and gophers, skunks, but no moles.

BM: Do you happen to remember what the minimum hourly wage was?

DH: No, I sure don’t. It was probably around thirty or forty cents.

BM: It was mostly by the number of pounds of cotton picked that you paid?

DH: When you hired them to do work other than cotton picking, then you had to pay them by the hour.

BM: I see. If it was cotton picking, then it was by pounds.

DH: Right.

BM: Who determined the wages?

DH: I think the Wage and Hour Division.

BM: Of?

DH: It’s the Department of Labor.

BM: Did they kind of dictate then, to the farmers what had to be the—

DH: The Department of Labor still does that. Now they have minimum wage, and they make sure that people out there harvesting onions or whatever, even though they get paid by the pound, they still have to equal minimum wage or better.

BM: Did you have to keep books on what you paid each worker?

DH: We kept records for ourselves; it wasn’t a government requirement.

BM: How did you go about keeping those records?

DH: We had a big tablet with all the braceros names listed on there, and the number of pounds each picked was under their name. At the end of the week, we totaled the number of pounds and paid them by the pound.

BM: All right. Were you required to withhold any taxes or anything else out of their pay?

DH: No, not at that time.

BM: So they just got a lump sum?

DH: That’s right.

BM: The hiring agent would have been your friend, Epifanio(??) Apodaca?

DH: Um-hm.

BM: And you think he was with the farm bureau?

DH: Um-hm.

BM: Did the farm bureau, to your knowledge, have any influence over the operation of the bracero program?

DH: No, I’m not familiar with that. You know, I think, it might not be a bad idea if you could interview Bob Porter; he can give you a lot of that information.

BM: Okay, I did actually; I talked to him already.

DH: Oh, you did? ‘Cause he was a Farm Bureau a long time.

BM: Yes, he was only labor director for a couple of years.

DH: For the Farm Bureau?

BM: For the bracero program.

DH: Oh, yes, but with the Farm Bureau, he was the executive director there after Johnny Augustine left, I think.

BM: Alright, so Mr. Augustine is probably another person I should talk to.

DH: Yeah, Johnny Augustine. He’s up in age but still pretty sharp.

BM: Does he still live in the Las Cruces area?

DH: Yes. Let me get that for you later I can get, I’ll give you the address.

BM: Okay, so we talked about what the braceros did for you. Can you tell me what the typical day for them would be like during harvesting cotton season?

DH: Basically, they came over to earn money, basically, picking cotton. They counted on five or six days, doing that during the week, they didn’t work on Sundays. Sundays, they had a time to do their laundry and go buy groceries, stuff like that. Most farmers only worked until noon on Saturdays, so that gave them another half a day.

BM: What time did their day start in the morning?

DH: Cotton picking is, if you didn’t have any dew on the cotton, they could start as early as they wanted to. We didn’t have a set time for them to start, but on a normal day, if there was no dew on the cotton or no moisture on the cotton, by eight o’clock they were out there picking cotton. They were eager to get into the field and get going.

BM: What kind of tools did they use for picking cotton?

DH: Just their hands.

BM: Did they wear gloves or anything?

DH: No. I think some of them would tape their fingers around the nails here. The cotton bushes are pretty sharp. Sometimes they’ll get sore right in there, and they would tape their fingers, just the tip of their fingers, just like a Band-Aid. That’s about all they used.

BM: What about hats or any particular kind of clothing? Did they wear hats?

DH: Most of them would wear hats, some of them just bareheaded, but most of them would wear hats. That was before the fad where caps came into place, now everybody wears caps.

BM: Did they wear any particular kind of clothes to protect them from the sun?

DH: No, not really. Some of them would wear a heavy shirt over their regular shirt. That’s about it.

BM: That would be to protect them from sunburn?

DH: Yeah, but you know, one year, I had one bracero that came from Cuauhtémoc. Do you know where Cuauhtémoc is?

BM: Down by Mexico City?

DH: No, it’s by Chihuahua, Chihuahua is down in the valley, and Cuauhtémoc is up on some plains up there. We had a real cold day one time, the wind was blowing from the east, real cold, man it made your eyes water facing the wind. I went out there around 8:30 AM, and there were a few pickers out there, and I told them, “It’s just too cold to pick cotton today, so let’s just take the day off.” Most of them came from the warmer parts of Mexico, and they were cold. I thought they all had left, you know. At noon, I drove to the farm, and there was one fellow picking cotton over there, in short sleeve shirt and everything, he was whistling and picking away. I stopped and walked into the fields to tell him, “Hey, I told the other people that we were gonna take the day off. It’s too cold to be picking cotton.” He said, “This weather is not cold, it’s just right. I come from a part in Mexico where the water freezes in late September, and it doesn’t thaw out until the spring.” (laughs) He’s from Cuauhtémoc, and it’s up on the plains, from an area that gets real cold up there. He was used to that, and he kept picking cotton, by next morning, he had three sacks full, right away. (laughs)

BM: Did they have big bags for picking the cotton?

DH: We had to furnish the sacks for them.

BM: What were those made out of?

DH: Canvas, white canvas.

BM: What size?

DH: Most of them were anywhere from six to nine feet long. Nine feet is kind of clumsy to be hauling around. Most of ‘em were seven or eight feet, and they were about two feet in diameter.

BM: That would hold a lot of cotton, I guess.

DH: Oh, yes, a full sack would weigh right around one hundred pounds, a little less, a little more.

BM: Did you have a lot of contact with your braceros?

DH: Mainly at work, yes.

BM: You were their direct supervisor, then?

DH: Well, yeah. One of my farms was just a little further down, close to the canal, you know, you cross the canal over there, I guess, so they were pretty close to my home.

BM: When you say cross the canal, you mean across—

DH: This side of the canal, right down the canal, on this side.

BM: You mean east of the canal. We’re talking about the canal that would be where?

DH: Well, cross the canal where that white gate is, over there, you know? Which way did you come in? From the east?

BM: Yes.

DH: Oh, you didn’t quite get to the canal. You see that white gate over there? That’s where the canal is, the irrigation canal.

BM: East of Mr. Herrera’s farm in Mesquite, and that would be running what? North and south?

DH: The canal runs north and south.

BM: Okay, along, what is it? 428?

DH: Well, 428 is about four blocks distance away.

BM: We were talking about where the ditch was in relation to where your other place was. So, where is your other place from the irrigation ditch?

DH: I’ve got some farmland here around my house, then it extends to where the bracero house used to be. The house is not there anymore. My pecan acreage runs to the next concrete ditch that I water. I have thirty acres on the other side of that concrete ditch, and that’s where the house was. And then, I’ve got one hundred and sixty acres about a mile and a half down.

BM: That would be about a mile and a half down from 228.

DH: Yes, right, from 228.

BM: And south on 428?

DH: Yeah.

BM: Did you know the braceros by name?

DH: I knew all of the ones that I hired by name.

BM: Does anyone in—

DH: I had a neighbor next to me, that he also contracted braceros. Sometimes, his braceros would come and help me.

2ND: Hi, how ‘ya doing?

DH: That’s my younger son, Andy.

BM: Let me turn this off for a moment.

DH: He’s a farmer now.

(Interview Interrupted)

BM: We were talking about whether or not you knew any of the braceros by name, and then you were talking about one of your neighbors who also used braceros. I don’t know what you were going to tell me about—

DH: Well, we traded labor. If I got a little behind on my picking, he’d lend his braceros, and I’d do likewise. We kinda of worked together.

BM: Does any particular bracero stand out in your memory? Were any of them especially—

DH: No, none of ‘em that I know of came back to this area after they got their residential passport. I’m pretty sure most of them did, they came back later and got their residential visas to reside here.

BM: Was there any particular bracero that became an especially valued employee for you? Like, did you try to rehire the same people every year?

DH: We couldn’t do that, because the braceros had no choice in saying where they wanted to go when they were brought from Mexico. They could have gone to Deming; they could have gone to the Roswell area, anywhere. Deming, Roswell, Artesia, Carlsbad, they all had braceros.

BM: Did you know the foreman for your farm?

DH: I was doing the farming myself.

BM: You were it?

DH: Yeah, I did, like I told you before, I did hire the person to do the weighing of the cotton when we were picking cotton, to keep track of the pound for each employee.

BM: Did he have any other responsibilities in relationship to the braceros?

DH: No.

BM: Do you happen to know what the braceros did on their days off, besides laundry and grocery shopping?

DH: No, I’m not sure. They probably brought some cards or dominoes to play. I’m not sure, really.

BM: Did you have any problems with braceros getting into trouble and drinking while they were staying with you?

DH: No. I never did get any calls to go bail somebody out of jail.

BM: Did any of the braceros who worked for you bring their families with them?

DH: No, the bracero program was strictly for male employees.

BM: Did you give them any special privileges? Paid vacation days or anything like that?

DH: No, it was seasonal work, you know so—

BM: So, they did not have any holidays off or anything like that?

DH: No. Of course, they had time off when we had weather conditions, like rain or something like that.

BM: So, you don’t know what they did for fun, per se?

DH: No, I really don’t. I knew they enjoyed going to town, they kind of, just looking around, getting to know the country. Most of them, or some of them, were too shy to go out and find out that they couldn’t converse with people, because they didn’t know the language.

BM: So, they kind of kept to themselves because of the language?

DH: There were a lot of Hispanics in this area that they could converse with. If they went to the store, there were no people who would speak Spanish; they would be kind of shy going in there.

BM: That makes perfect sense. When the contract ended with the braceros, did they go straight to Mexico?

DH: Yes, as far as I’m aware, they had to be processed back into Mexico. The program, they had to account for the braceros coming in, and they had to account for the braceros leaving the country, too.

BM: I see, but if it was not necessarily the end of the contract, and your neighbor needed someone, they could go work for him for a few days?

DH: Um-hm.

BM: What were your obligations at the end of the work contract?

DH: I really didn’t, I had completed my obligations. I furnished what I was supposed to furnish for them, like the house and utilities and all that, that was my main obligation, and, of course, providing them a job, that’s a must, they came over to do some work, that was the purpose of the program.

BM: You said you might have up to twenty braceros or so work for you each year.

DH: That was the top number, yeah.

BM: For how many years would you say you hired braceros?

DH: I don’t remember. I started about the midfifties, probably by the end of the fifties, that would be about four or five years. I’m not too sure about the time limit thing.

BM: Let’s see, what else? You said you did not have any problems with the braceros.

DH: No.

BM: No fist fights or anything?

DH: Not that I’m aware of.

BM: Criminal behavior?

DH: Not the ones that I had. Some of the farmers may have different experiences, but I never did have any problems with them.

BM: Did they ever complain to you about their living conditions or wages or anything?

DH: No. Basically, I think that what we furnished them was a lot better than what they had at home.

BM: Did they ever stage any strikes or labor protests in your area? Not necessarily just against you.

DH: No, no, not that I’m aware of.

BM: Did you ever, in addition to the braceros, hire undocumented workers?

DH: There were always a few undocumented workers in the area, there always had been. In 1981, we started a daily operation, and all the employees we would get were undocumented, and that’s basically what we operated the dairy on for a while.

BM: Did you ever have any conflict during the bracero program between hiring braceros and hiring undocumented workers?

DH: No. At that time, when the bracero program went out of existence, that’s when the illegal immigrants came in here to look for work.

BM: So, you never had any undocumented and braceros working at the same time?

DH: No.

BM: In your opinion, what was the quality of the braceros’ work?

DH: Most of ‘em, the ones that I contracted, were real good workers, real dedicated to doing farmwork. They were raised on farms, you know, so they knew farmwork.

BM: How would their work compare to that of say, Anglo farmworkers or Mexican American farmworkers who already lived here?

DH: I don’t know if we can make a good comparison then, because labor was scarce at that time for farms. And for cotton picking, it required a lot of labor for a short period of time. So, they were not, we didn’t have any locals to fill that void, we had to rely on braceros.

BM: Was it that the local people did not want to work seasonally or—

DH: A lot of them already had their jobs lined up, some of them in construction, some of them in sales and whatnot.

BM: What would you say were the advantages and disadvantages of the bracero program?

DH: The program in itself served a purpose, both for the farmer, and to help the people of Mexico, because they came and they earned, I don’t know, I’d venture to say, four times the amount of money they could have made at home. It was a short duration, but we needed the labor to get our crops out. We just didn’t have the labor here to do it. Later on, they started working with mechanical pickers, but there was no comparison between mechanical pickers and handpickers at that time. Now, they have perfected the cotton pickers where they do a real good job. When they started out, it was a big machine that picked the cotton real crashy, and it knocked a lot of cotton to the ground, which is unretrievable, and we lost that cotton.

BM: Initially, when mechanization began, and the braceros were preferable to—

DH: They terminated the bracero program, I think on account of the labor unions. They always complained the bracero program was taking the jobs that the American people should be doing. That wasn’t really true, because there weren’t enough of them anyway to fill the void in the farms. So, they terminated the bracero program, and that stimulated the work on the mechanical pickers.

BM: Do you think the bracero program should be reinstated?

DH: At this point, I don’t think so, not for cotton anyway. The cotton, there is no way you could pick it the way the cotton picker does, in volume.

BM: So, it has improved to the point where it’s more efficient than hand labor?

DH: Oh, yes, it’s very efficient. One cotton picker can pick what sixty or eighty braceros could pick in one day.

BM: Wow!

DH: Just one cotton picker. So, you get your crops out a lot faster, preventing the exposure to weather elements and everything else on the farm. No, at this point, the bracero program wouldn’t do any good for the cotton crop.

BM: What about other crops?

DH: I farmed until 1990. I was involved in growing vegetables, I grew onions, lettuce, spinach, which at that time required a lot of hand labor, some of that labor still needs to be done by hand. But now, a labor contractor goes to the border, and picks up the workers from the border, and brings them to the farmer, wherever there is a need for them. They work through labor contractors. That’s the way I worked when I was farming vegetables. I’d do the ground preparation, the planting, and everything, but once the lettuce started growing, that all had to be thinned out by hand labor, there’s no machine that could do that. The lettuce has to be thinned out, so that there is only one plant every eight or ten inches, if there is two plants there, neither of them would make marketable lettuce, because they grow oblong instead of round, but it has to be done by hand.

BM: So, we are still using farm laborers from Mexico, but under other circumstances.

DH: Another method now, not braceros. There’s quite a few people that have residential status, but they live in Juárez, it’s cheaper for them to live over there, but they still come and work in the states.

BM: So, they would be people that have basically green cards?

DH: Yes, but they only cross the border. The labor contractor, he owns a bus, he picks them up at the border, brings them to the farmer, and charges the farmer for transporting the labor and keeping records on them, and the farmer pays the labor contractor and he pays the labor.

BM: In a way, the program has continued, but it’s in a different form.

DH: In a different form, that’s correct. I think in Florida, and other states, they still bring in labor from South America to harvest the apple crop or cherry crop or whatever.

BM: From South America? You mean beyond Mexico?

DH: From Central America, mainly.

BM: Honduras and—

DH: That’s right.

BM: All right, well—I gather that you don’t think it’s appropriate for the bracero program to be reinstated.

DH: I don’t think there’s much of a possibility of it being reinstated, because the labor unions will fight it. They feel that bringing in foreign labor is going to take jobs from the American people. That’s their thinking, so they’ll fight it. Labor unions have a lot of power, you know, so for that reason, I don’t think the bracero program will be reinstated.

BM: Is there anything that we haven’t covered about it, that you would like to discuss, about the program?

DH: The bracero program would fill a void right now for the chile industry, because they’re working on a mechanical chile picker, but it hasn’t been perfected to be real efficient. If you gave it a little more time, they’ll probably have a chile picker that’ll work as good as a cotton picker does for picking cotton.

BM: How long would you expect that window of time to be?

DH: That depends on the need for it. Right now, they seem to get by with bringing in labor for chile picking from Juárez. But if that labor gets a little too costly, now it is more costly than what the bracero program used to be, then the work on the mechanical picker will be accelerated to the point where they can get it perfected in a short amount of time. I think the university over here is working on that.

BM: Probably. The chile industry is kind of hurting for labor right now.

DH: Yeah, right now, that’s the only thing. But with the free trade agreement they worked out. The chile processing plants in this area are bringing chiles grown in Mexico cheaper than they can buy it from the local farmers. So, that’s another point to consider. (laughs)

BM: Well, is there anything that you would like to say about your years of working with the bracero program and what it contributed to your farm in particular?

DH: All I can say is the bracero program, when it was in operation, it provided a real service for the farmer that was badly needed, and it also provided the people of Mexico a job where they could improve their living in Mexico, too.

BM: So, you think it was a good thing for both sides?

DH: I think it was good for both countries really.

BM: I think we pretty much covered this, so I’m going to stop this, unless you have anything else to add.

DH: No, I guess not.




End of interview

Morgan, Beth

Herrera, David F.

Mesquite, New Mexico

Herrera_ELP028