Search Results

Using the correspondence of U.S. government officials and Mexican immigrant children, women, and men of varying legal status, this chapter examines how censorship was used to maintain the separation of bracero families across the U.S.-Mexico border. This historical consideration of how the U.S. government’s censorship and obstruction of these families’ correspondence emerged as an underestimated and, in turn, effective border enforcement measure in support of the Bracero Program’s conditions and terms illustrates this government’s selective acknowledgment of bracero families. It also proves most revealing when striving to understand the deep-seated anxiety, restlessness, and silences of the program.

This chapter uses bracero family oral life histories and photographs to historicize the urgency with which Mexican women and men documented their romantic love for each other as a way of not becoming completely lost to each other across the U.S.-Mexico border. These women's and men's commitment to each other and the longevity of their romantic relationships motivated them to be cautious in their love for each other, so that they reassured each other of their feelings for each other without jeopardizing their Bracero Program contract or public reputation. Their refusal to draw unwanted attention to their love made being in love and documenting their love a most demanding undertaking and feeling.

This epilogue addresses the Bracero Program’s far-reaching consequences, as well as efforts designed to document and learn from the experience of bracero families to render productive approaches toward acknowledging and confronting the enduring trauma of the program. By focusing on the resonance of the program and this family experience, this discussion of the spirit with which these families confronted being separated from each other for indefinite periods of time across the U.S.-Mexico border enhances our understanding of the rigors of bracero family life. Treating this family experience as a meaningful and invaluable history finally provides a discussion that does not underestimate the costs and consequences of the program and, in turn, binational guest-worker programs writ large.

Using a combination of bracero family oral life histories and songs of love, this chapter traces the romantic love, loss, and longing that inspired Mexican women and men to be most resourceful in their pursuit of personally satisfying romantic relationships in Mexico and the United States. These women’s and men’s dedication to acting out of love—but with their family integrity and reputation intact—moved them to become most resilient when celebrating and mourning their love for each other when alone and in public. In capturing the emotional rigors of the Bracero Program, this historical examination of the expansiveness of the program’s reach is a most humanizing move toward unearthing an almost forgotten history of love and longing.