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Transcription Notes from Oral History Recorded on 25 February 2010
Interviewer: Carla Arias from Chandler Gilbert Community College
Interviewees: Hector and Genie Zavaleta
Location: The Home of Mr. and Mrs. Zavaleta in Tempe, Arizona
{Mr. & Mrs. Zavaleta are responding to written interview prompts given to them by the
interviewer prior to the recording of the oral history. A copy of the interview prompts are
attached to the transcript.}
{Transcription starting ~ 52:20 minutes into recording}
Hector: In 1958, we went to work for Migrant Ministry of the National Council of Churches.
We were field staff. That meant that we were actually working in the fields as advocates to help
meet the needs of farm workers, including the Braceros. We worked with families and Braceros.
Genie: Prior to 1958 I had been very aware of the Bracero program because I was a sophomore
in high school on Dec. 7, 1941. By 1942, our fields were sitting empty of workers and very
suddenly the Mexican laborers began to come. So, the Bracero program became a contract
program between the government of the United States and the government of Mexico. And there
were restrictions; there were orders; there were ways to protect the workers; there were ways to
help the farmer and there were ways to make sure that everything went well.
Without the Braceros in the fields, we would not have won World War II. They [the Braceros]
saved our country, they kept the railroads running they kept the crops going they helped with
various things that had to be done because we had no more men in the community. They were
all in the military. So we owe a great debt to Mexico, the United States does.
Interviewer: Where were you living when you were a sophomore in high school?
Genie: In Lubbock, Texas.
Hector: Then, in „58, the Bracero program had been extended by PL78, public law 78.
Interviewer: Can you explain what public law 78 is?
Hector: Public Law 78 was an agreement between the two governments, Mexico and the U.S. to
allow again certain number of people to come in and work and mostly in the agricultural field. It
was a way in which it operated until the 60s and it was renewed every year; it was not a forever
thing.
Interviewer: Was this part of the Bracero program?
Hector: It was an extension of the Bracero program.
Genie: Actually PL 78 was initiated by Harry Truman because the farmers still needed extra
help in the fields and it was renewed every other year until 1964. That was when it stopped.
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However, our first assignment was in Plymouth, Indiana in the summer of 1958. Most of the
migrants there were family migrants out of the valley of Texas. However, some of the larger
farmers and the corporations were using some Braceros. The Braceros program pretty well
conformed to PL 78 things were not bad. The only thing was sometimes communication. We
had a migrant center in Plymouth. And the growers would bring the people to town on Saturdays
and when they came into town, they parked right out back of our center and the men could come
in and ask questions about anything they did understand and they could then go and do their
shopping. We did not have any real problems in that area. However, we had many problems in
Arkansas.
Hector: In the Fall of 1958, when we were sent to New Port, Arkansas there were large numbers
of Braceros in that area. They were hand-picking cotton in that time in history. There were few
small family farms. Most of them were large family farms along with some corporate farms. At
the small ones, treatment of the Braceros was better than at the large farms. It had to do with
knowing each other. On the large farms and corporate farms, one problem that usually occurred
was the use of an intermediary person that went between the farmers and the bracero workers.
This person was the crew leader.
Interviewer: Was the crew leader an employee of the Bracero program?
Hector: No. The crew leader was an employee of the farmer. He was in fact the one that dealt
with the workers. And sometimes the farmers themselves did not know what the crew leader
was doing. And sometimes, sometimes, the crew leader would say to the Bracero “today your
wages were going to do down for whatever reason”. The Braceros not speaking English and not
knowing anything, did not know where to go for help. This is where some advocacy was needed
to get things straight.
Genie: So we opened a migrant center in New Port, Arkansas. It was kind of an old warehouse
but it was large and spacious and we were able to put in things for entertainment for recreation
for rest and for just coming to visit and communicate with people. The center was our focus on
the weekends but during the week we would go in evenings into the camps in order to do
programs and to just check on things and see how they were. Those evening programs in
Arkansas well some of the conditions were really very bad and the men didn‟t have much. They
were in isolated areas and the men really did not have a chance to mail their letters, to send their
money home and so sometimes we would leave a camp and Hector would have so many letters
and so much money that we were really scared to drive home because he had to take it all to
Western Union the next morning and send everything out through Western Union postal service.
One good thing in New Port was the migrant committee formed by the churches and they were
able to help us a lot because when the farmers were really not doing what they were supposed to
and sometimes they did not know they weren‟t because of the crew leaders, but we would talk to
the ministers and they would talk to the farmers that were members of their church and would
help straighten a lot of things out. So our basic program was to be in the center on the weekend
and in the camps at night. We moved from one camp to another each night. Part of the time we
were in places that were fairly easy to work in. We could show movies, we could have music.
“Pringles Playpen” was one of the big walled off areas without a roof, but it was a place where
we could do a lot of things, we would go in there at night and have a lot of conversation and
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show movies or whatever they wanted. It was a place where a twenty foot wall had been built
and there were about 200 Braceros inside of there.
Interviewer: Did you say there was no roof?
Genie: Yes no roof, just a wall.
Hector: Well their sleeping area was covered.
Interviewer: This twenty foot wall was built by the Pringles because…
Genie: Because the community was afraid of the Braceros.
Hector: They were afraid so the only way they could have Braceros in town was if they were
enclosed so that they were secured at night, because the people were afraid of them.
Interviewer: What was the difference between Arkansas and Indiana? Why were they afraid in
Arkansas and not in other places?
Hector: I think that‟s the way people from Arkansas happened to be…
Genie: No, I think it had to do with the supervision of PL 78. In Indiana, PL 78 was enforced by
the labor department. In Arkansas there was no farm bureau, no enforcement from the labor
department. There wasn‟t anything. Nobody was checking PL 78, and then in Las Cruces in
New Mexico, we had the farm bureau that made sure that every farmer conformed to all the
aspects of PL 78. But there was no supervision in Arkansas and there were hundreds of Braceros
in Arkansas because the crop at that time was hand-picked cotton.
Hector: I agree, there was just not the supervision and adequate checking of these farms of how
many people they need, how people were being treated. I don‟t think there was any of that in
Arkansas which allowed for a lot of abuse of the program of course. The programs that we did
during the week in the camps, we usually had a schedule. They usually knew when we were
coming.
Genie: They would be ready with their problems.
Hector: They knew Monday we would be here, Tuesday we would be there. We had some
movies and once in a while we might find something in Spanish, not too often, but most of the
movies were in English, which meant they were “Abbott and Costello” because you didn‟t have
to understand what they were saying you just see their faces, chase each other, and fall over each
other. The men just had a great time watching. They could laugh. They could just relax.
Genie: And then the people from the churches would go with us and they would bring
something to eat, maybe some cookies and something to drink, so we always had some
refreshments after the movies. Different people from different churches would go with us
different nights. We had good community support, it was just that the lack of supervision of
PL78. And the housing was so miserable because all they did was move in big old barracks that
were already worn out, from some of the military bases.
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Hector: In every city or community we moved into, there was the committee, a local committee
that worked with the needs of that area. We just didn‟t go in there by ourselves.
Interviewer: I was a little confused before but I think you just explained it. You were working
with the church group. Were you volunteering? Were you paid?
Hector: We were paid through the National Council of Churches.
Interviewer: So you were not paid by the government. You were not federally funded.
Genie: No. We were independent. We were free to do what we thought needed to be done.
Hector: There were no restrictions whatsoever. We worked with the churches and most of the
churches in the community would be very supportive of that program. We did not depend on
any help from the government, or the city or state. Most of the community, the citizens were
supportive of the program because it was helpful to them.
Interviewer: So, the farms in the state that you were in were more in charge of the government
end of it and you worked closely hand-in-hand with that farm bureau.
Hector: Yes, we tried to work with them and most of the times we were able to. When we
weren‟t able to, it was because they didn‟t want to.
Genie: On a Saturday in the center, people with small farms and few Braceros, would bring
them into town and they would come into the center and Hector would do the translating for the
workers and the farmers. One woman‟s husband had died and she was running the farm by
herself and she had a wonderful group of Braceros and they liked her and she liked them but she
couldn‟t talk to them. So she would bring them in on Saturday and Hector would talk to them for
her.
Hector: She would line them up and tell me what she wanted to do and I would explain to each
one what she wanted for them to do. Everything was fine. I would just tell them, “This is what
she wants done and you guys need to do it.” Then they would go into town and buy whatever
they needed.
Genie: This farm did not have a crew leader. So the farmer had a direct relationship with the
Braceros.
Interviewer: Was this still in Arkansas?
Genie: Yes. This was when we had the large community center where people could come and
they could rest, they could ask questions, Hector would help them with whatever they needed.
This was where we had hull-a-hoops, dominos, art supplies, and all kinds of music. They would
have a place that they could come and rest if they needed. But it also gave us a place of contact
on the weekend if they had any problems. They knew to come to the center. Well, one time we
found out that the police were “rolling” the guys because they were coming [into town] with
money. And the local police were rolling them and arresting them and taking them in and saying
they were drunk and putting them into jail and taking their money. So we told the ministers on
our committee and they talked to the chief of police and the chief of police said “This is terrible
we can‟t let this happen”, but he didn‟t really believe it. So each Saturday night for a while, he
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wanted Hector to come with him to the jail, but Hector couldn‟t leave the center so I would go
but my Spanish wasn‟t that great. So I would go to the jail and the Chief would stand aside and I
would go up to the drunk-tank and there were guys there that knew some English but they never
let anyone know it. Of course, when I came up to the drunk tank, they would come up to me and
whisper to me all of their stories. There was “Poncho Villa” over in the corner, and he was
drunk there was no doubt that he needed to be there. But most of the others had only had a can
or two of beer, and they were most definitely not drunk. So the Chief of Police stepped in and
corrected the whole situation.
Hector: He was a good man.
Genie: The ministers knew him and they were putting him on the spot, so he was eager to get it
straightened out, which he did. Sometimes, I had to go to court on Monday mornings, because
the ones that were really drunk had to go to court. But we would get them off without having to
pay a fine; they usually just let Poncho Villa go home. Then there was another day, where they
had the strike. The cotton gin was on the north end of town and this was on a Saturday morning
and all the guys that had been in brought into town to shop, but instead of going shopping they
all went to the cotton gin. There were probably about four or five hundred men there on strike
because they had not been paid. But the farmers and the guy running the gin didn‟t know what
the problem was so one of the big old guys came and took Hector back to the gin to translate.
The farmers and the fellows from the gin were all inside the office behind barricades because
they were scared to death, so Hector asked the Braceros outside what was wrong and they said
they didn‟t get paid so Hector went inside and asked the guys inside what they thought was
wrong. “We don‟t know they are just going to attack us!” Hector asked them, “Did you pay the
crew leader?” “Yes, we paid the crew leader.” However, the crew leader had left town with all
the money! So Hector had to find out how much each man was owed and the gin had to make up
the payroll otherwise we would have called in the labor dept and have them solve it. But we able
to solve it without the labor department.
Interviewer: Did that happen very often?
Hector: To my knowledge, not that big of an amount of money. Now in other areas…
Genie: Where there were big farms, we heard reports of it happening more often. Where there
were big farms and crew leaders in between the workers and the owners, there were lots of
problems. There was a lot of abuse. A friend of ours working over in Helena, Arkansas did a lot
of translating and straightening out of misunderstandings. He was the one that has done a lot of
follow up with the men in the Bracero program. He was originally from Mexico and became a
doctor. After he worked for migrant ministry he became a doctor in Baja, California. He knows
a lot of ex-Braceros and according to him, most of the Braceros did very well when they returned
to Mexico by investing in land, in houses, in education for their kids. Most of the Braceros that
he worked with have done very well. As a matter of fact, the richest man in his town started as a
Bracero.
Hector: He came and saved his money bought a piece of land, came back worked a little longer,
bought more land and equipment and is now the richest man there because he know how to use
his money wisely. Now there were many like him, but there others that spent all their money
every Saturday. You have to remember there was nobody to give these men any advice or to
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council them about what to do and what not to do. It was up to them to figure it out. Many,
many of these men had not had one day of school. They just lived from day to day and people
say well “why don‟t they plan?” well, when you live from day to day you don‟t plan. You live
for today, you don‟t know about tomorrow. It was the kind of conditions they lived in without
any help at all, any help at all. I don‟t think there was any preparations for these men about what
they were going to do, what kind of problems they might have, nothing. They were just recruited
and put here.
Genie: Some of them did not get home with a lot of money, but some of them did very well. In
Indiana and Arkansas those were seasonal jobs for us. In 1959, we went to southern New
Mexico and for four years Hector was the state director of migrant ministry for the New Mexico
council of churches paid for by the national council of churches. When we got to New Mexico,
we found Braceros there on scattered farms and we were able to employ students for seasonal
help. We worked Carlsbad, Roswell, Hatch and Las Cruces. Migrant ministry in New Mexico
was a joy! We had so much community support everything went so well. When anybody got
sick or anything, the doctors were willing to look at them. The farmers would pay if necessary.
The hospital would look at them. The Braceros were well accepted and well treated. It was a
good situation.
Interviewer: Were there any twenty foot walls on these farms? Problems with fear?
Hector: No. No problems in New Mexico with being accepted. They walked around like any
other human beings.
Genie: Of course, New Mexico has a Hispanic heritage. There wasn‟t a language problem.
They were treated like family members on farms like the Menamora farm. The children played
with them. They took good care of them. They fed them well. In New Mexico was the time
when some of the agricultural professors from New Mexico State University got interested.
They would help the guys understand the modern farming methods, the modern ranching
methods. That was when Dr. Repp and Hector went home to Mexico during the down time in
the growing season and some of the Braceros went back to visit their families.
Interviewer: So, the Braceros could go back? They could leave the country and come back?
While they were under a contract, if they were between picking seasons, they could return to
Mexico and then return. Did they pay for themselves to go back to Mexico?
Hector: Yes. They had to pay themselves to go back home.
Interviewer:
So the government paid only once for them to come over [to the United States]?
Hector: Yes. Only one time.
Genie: They could go back and forth to visit. If their mother or father was not well, they could
return and check on them. They sent money home all of the time to their families. It was really
a great experience for everyone there. When Hector and Dr. Repp came back from Mexico, they
brought back some soil samples and all kinds of water samples so that he could analyze them in
the lab so he could find seeds that were more appropriate for their land and crops in Mexico. So
when the men went home, they had some things to take home to improve their situation in
Mexico. He also worked with them on their ranching, to help them understand some of the
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methods of animal husbandry, some of which they could not grasp. On one of the farms, Mama
Toshiro was out there at eighty years old working the fields together with the Braceros. The
Braceros would keep an eye on her to make sure she didn‟t work too hard! They looked after
her.
Interviewer: Now, Mama Toshiro was part of a Japanese family and they owned their own
farm? Was it a small farm?
Hector: No, it was probably a good sized farm, a big farm.
Genie: The Nakayamas had a larger farm than the Toshiros and the Mitamuras .
Interviewer: And was that common in the Las Cruces area for Japanese to own farms?
Genie: Yes, there were a lot of Japanese in the area. Some of them had come long before World
War II, their roots were already there. But during World War II there was a lot of discrimination
and the Presbyterian minister even took one of the Mitamura girls into his home because she was
being harassed in school. She was in the class with his daughter, so they took her in for a period
of time at their house so she could go to school without being harassed. The Japanese farmers
were very well respected by the farm bureau, the labor department, and the community there. It
was only the war situation that created suspicion, but for the most part those farmers had been
there before World War II.
Interviewer: The relationship then between the Japanese farmers and the Braceros was a good
relationship?
Hector: It was excellent! I never knew any of the Braceros to have a problem with them. If they
sat down and talked about what was needed to be done, there were no problems.
Genie: The real tragedy for us was when they brought in the cotton picking machines. The very
first ones were bought in 1964. That was the same time there was pressure to terminate the
Bracero program. It [the Bracero program] was terminated in 1964. That was the point in time
that migrant ministry of the national council of churches decided that there was more need for us
in California. We were there for about a year and a half. Then came the tomato picking
machines, the nut picking machines, and the tree shaking machines. All this machinery came out
of the labs of the University of California at Davis. We had a lot of families that we worked with
in California, some of which were Braceros. Their contracts had not quite run out yet. This was
in 1964. At this time, the tension began to build up between Cesar Chavez and the Bracero
workers because they did not want to organize the undocumented Braceros; they only wanted to
organize their own people. So gradually, the Bracero numbers began to decline. We went from
two hundred thousand (at the max, there were over four hundred thousand Braceros at one point
in this country), by 1964, we were down to two hundred thousand. By 1965, there were only
twenty thousand in all of the United States, still on unfinished contracts. That‟s when the
undocumented movement started, because they knew where they had been, they knew the
farmers, and they knew the people.
Hector: Well, the farmers invited them to come back the following year. They had a place to
come back to.
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Genie: So a lot of them came back after the Bracero program ended. We were then moved from
California to Arizona with migrant ministry. At this time, people were settling out because here
and in parts of Texas, we had year round growing seasons. The cycles that they had been
following [across the United States] were now destroyed due to the modern machinery changing
the way crops were harvested. But here in Arizona we needed help with the irrigation, we
needed help with the weeding, with the vegetable crops, there was still plenty of need for them.
Hector: They were picking a lot of the green onions. There was a lot of hand work with them,
you had to pick them, you had to clean them, and you had to chop them. You could probably do
it now with machines, but it was cheaper to do it in Mexico than doing it here. So they were still
coming for that and there was sometimes a mixture of these undocumented and families. Local
people here who had been involved in agriculture and they still were. It was not uncommon to
go to a big camp in the west part of the county [Maricopa County] and you would see a bunch of
men and lots of women and children. Maybe some were related, but there were others that were
not related and would just come over and work. It was a mixture of families and non-related
undocumented workers.
Interviewer: What time period was this? Was this in 1965? 1966?
Genie: Yes, this was in 1965, 1966 and 1967. You [Hector] were working mostly then with the
west part of the county with the Braceros. The interesting thing was that the United Farm
Workers still would not help the undocumented. There was fellow named Lupe Sanchez who
had a PhD degree. He came out of the fields, he had been a migrant but he had a PhD degree.
He went to work with the farm workers here, but he did not like to push the ex-Braceros out.
Lupe would get a contract with the farmers because he was so well educated and could negotiate
with the farmers. So we had the Arizona Farm Work Organization here that was run by Lupe
and they were able to get contracts that included the undocumented and the documented.
Anybody could work under these contracts and Lupe supervised it. At the same time, Hector
was able to get the Presbyterian church “self development of people” involved. So Lupe asked
the farm workers, then he asked the farmers, “can you hold ten cents an hour or would you add
ten cents an hour for every undocumented person who is working for you?” At the end of the
season then, the workers had money to go back home and do a community service project or
something like dig a well.
Hector: What they did is if the workers in a particular farm could have the farmer hold this extra
ten cents, it was held in trust. At the end of the season, there was x-number of dollars and the
workers would then sit down and decide what kind of a project and in what community in
Mexico would be most benefited by the project. They would vote and they would say okay, “we
are going to build a water system in Michoacán” for example. So the people in that community
in Michoacán would get the money and organize and develop that project.
Genie: And whenever they didn‟t have enough money for the whole project, Hector would say
we‟ll get Presbyterian “self development of people” money to go along with it. So Hector and
Lupe would go down to Mexico where the project was being completed. So now, the people in
that community did not have to come back. Gradually, a community at a time, they were
illiminating the number of people that needed to come back to work.
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Interviewer: So when these groups would go back to Mexico with these monies that they had
saved or earned or with the extra money that had been held in trust, would they stay in Mexico?
Hector: Most of them would. There was one particular project, where a community needed a
water system. There was water coming out from somewhere and they needed to get that water
into a big tank and then channel it down into the community. They needed x-number of dollars.
While the men were here, the women back in their community in Mexico had developed a co-op
with pigs. They themselves would do all the work.
Hector: During this time we had two farm work organizations in Arizona. Cesar Chavez formed
UFW (United Farm Workers) to improve the lives of the farm workers in THIS country. And
that makes sense. The Arizona Farm Workers included local and undocumented workers.
Genie: Also, at the same time that we were working with the Arizona Farm Workers on all of
these things, [Hector] was also working for the Migrant Opportunity Program which was funded
by the War On Poverty. Lyndon Johnson‟s War On Poverty provided a grant to help do job
preparation and job re-training for most of the folks that were not finding enough work in the
fields at that time.
Interviewer: Was this program for the ex-Braceros?
Hector: It was for anybody. The only condition was if they could do the job. We took anybody
that would work. That did not set well with Cesar and the other folks and I can understand the
reasoning, I just used to not agree with it. As long as we could, we would do something for
anyone that needed it. That whole undocumented issue began to grow and grow and grow
because there were people that knew there were jobs here, and they knew how to get around it,
and there were farmers that knew they could depend on them. Then others began to come. Then
we wanted to secure our borders, which there is nothing wrong with securing our borders but
those people who came they couldn‟t go back and forth; they had to stay here. Back in the good
old days, it was just a matter of knowing your way around, but now you have to pay somebody
to get you across. They used to do it for a hundred dollars but now it costs anywhere from
$1,500 to $3,000 dollars. Where are they going to find the money those poor people? So they
stayed. Back when it cost only a hundred dollars, they could go back anytime; at Christmas, for
birthdays, whatever, now they stay here. Some of them began to bring their families, so now you
have the problem of families having kids born in Mexico and some kids born here in the U.S.
Genie: Things were leveling off fairly well until NAFTA. NAFTA was the agreement between
the U.S. and Mexico where the maquilas, the factories could build on the Mexican side and
provide jobs for Mexicans on that side of the border and that would eliminate the need for some
of them to cross the border. We were working in Agua Prieta and Nogales and those areas.
When the maquilas, the factories, first came in it was really a job opportunity for people who
were from deep down in Mexico like in Chiapas and the southern states. Those very poor people
began to migrate up to the border to work in the factories.
Interviewer: Were the maquilas American owned companies?
Genie: Yes.
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Interviewer: So, if I understand this correctly, American owned companies would build factories
in Mexico and then send American supplies into Mexico to be put together by Mexican labor and
then these finished products were then sent back to the U.S. to be sold.
Genie: Yes, that‟s correct. Then the thing that happened was the factories found out that labor
was cheaper in China and Indonesia so they closed the Mexican maquilas and here are these
hundreds of people that have moved from down in the interior of Mexico to the border area.
What do they do now? The whole problem for them is really tragic because there is nothing
back home for them and there is nothing at the border so a lot of them started crossing the border
into the U.S. They were crossing in large numbers after the maquilas shut down. That was in
about the year 2000. Then September 11 occurred in 2001 and the hatred of brown faces became
so terrible. However, we feel like the bracero program was such a positive thing that if we had
managed it and kept it going it would have been okay.
Genie: We have some evaluation notes on the Bracero program would you like for us to cover
them?
Interviewer: Absolutely. Are these evaluations your own interpretations of the program or from
evaluations the Braceros filled out?
Hector: I think these are mostly our own interpretations from our experience with the Bracero
program, however they came from conversations and feedback from how the Braceros felt about
the program.
Genie: The first thing for me is that the Braceros helped us win World War II. That‟s the
number one thing to remember. We could not have done it without Mexico and we owe Mexico
a huge debt for getting us through World War II. We couldn‟t have done it without the Braceros.
Also at the same time the Bracero program was a great foreign aid to Mexico. It was mutually
beneficial at that point in time. The next thing I would like to talk about is that some of the
Braceros took their money and went home and bought land and invested in a lot of good things
when they got home so it improved the economy in Mexico a great deal. Under the p.l. 78
during the 50s and 60s it helped Mexico a great deal and it helped our farms at the same time
because they were still coming back and forth until 1964 under those work contracts. One of the
other benefits to Mexico was what we were saying about them learning so much about crops and
how to do things that they improved the agriculture and economy of Mexico when they returned.
And most of the Braceros have a positive feeling about the United States. They had a good
feeling about their experience. Some of them were pretty miserable in Arkansas, but they still
got money and a lot of them took it home and they were able to do some good things with it.
Now for the whole experience, we think the Bracero experience depended a lot on the
enforcement; what kind of people supervised. The labor department was ultimately responsible
for making those laws work but actually it was the local people and the local farm bureaus who
made good experiences. The churches made good experiences. P.l.78 just needed better
supervision in a lot of places.
Hector: The one criticism you hear all the time is that there was a lot of abuse, and there was.
There is no question about that. But anytime you do anything without the proper safeguards, you
will have abuse. And my feeling is that at the time which this law was crafted, really there
wasn‟t much concern about the abuse of these people. This probably goes to my thinking that
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we still have a lot of, I don‟t know the word I‟m looking for. We [the United States] treated
these people not as our equals and therefore we didn‟t worry about what happened to them.
They [the Braceros] would just get used to it. There was nothing really bad about doing this to
them.
Genie: And the farmers on the big farms were so totally isolated from what they were actually
doing to these people. The crew leaders were really responsible. Now, some crew leaders were
great and very kind and worked honestly. But there were those who saw that they really had an
advantage because they were the only ones that could speak to the farmers. The Braceros could
not speak to the farmers. Actually in New Port, Hector was the only fully speaking Spanish
person during the harvest season and the only one that could speak Spanish to both the farmers
and the workers. I was sort of Spanish speaking, enough that I could get into trouble and enough
that I could get some of the guys out of trouble, too. We really feel very positive about the
Bracero program. There were some weaknesses…
Hector: But it [the Bracero program] was good for the agriculture at that time, it was good for
the men that came, and it was good for the economy, it just needed better enforcement.
Genie: Our friend Ernesto, the doctor in Mexico that knows several of the ex-Braceros, came
back and did good things and got established. He said it was very good program even though he
had problems too, because he was assigned to Helena, Arkansas. The stories the Braceros tell
now are very positive and that is why the young men come up here now undocumented because
they want to come up here like their fathers did and their grandfathers did.
Hector: It is just not the same right now, the jobs are not there anymore. Agriculture has
changed so much that it is just not possible.
Interviewer: I think you have answered almost everyone of my questions that I had for the two
of you. I just have a couple of more questions. First of all, I would like to get a little more
information about the two of you. Now, when we were looking at the slides, you [Hector]
mentioned a sister that had come up from Mexico to visit. Are you from Mexico?
Hector: Yes. I was born in Mexico City, born and raised in Mexico City. I came here when I
was about 17 years old to go to school.
Interviewer: When were you born?
Hector: I was born in 1932, a long time ago. Way back. The reason I came to the states is
because I‟m a Presbyterian by birth and by choice and by predestination. We were a very, very
poor family and there was just no way after I finished the equivalent of high school in Mexico to
go on. There was no way that I could do anything else. And a missionary from the U.S. talked to
my father about a school in Texas in Kingsville, Texas that was built specially for kids like me
who didn‟t have anything. It was only for boys. We worked half a day and went to school half a
day. So I was lucky enough to go there. Then I went to college the same way; half a day work
and half a day of classes at Oklahoma Presbyterian College although we took our courses at
Southeastern State College in Durant, Oklahoma.
Interviewer: When did the two of you meet?
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Hector: At Oklahoma Presbyterian College.
Genie: I was working for the Presbyterian church in Oklahoma. I had just gone up there to be
the director of Christian education for the state of Oklahoma for the Presbyterian church. And
my office was at the OPC. Ms. Robinson was a wonderful president of OPC and I had my office
there but she was always worried because I was driving a lot on muddy Oklahoma roads and
coming back late at night so she started sending students along with me and Hector was one of
them so we got acquainted. Then I left Oklahoma after about four years and I went back to
seminary in Austin, Texas. And then Hector went back to teach at Tex Mex high school in
Kingsville, Texas.
Hector: It is no longer Tex Mex, it now called Presbyterian Pan American School.
Genie: At that time, he graduated from Tex Mex, which was a high school. When he came here
from Mexico as a teenager he had to go back to fifth grade because he did not know English. He
needed to repeat high school in English so that he could get into a college. He spent about four
years there before going to Oklahoma for college. When he went back to teach at the high
school, I was in my second year at Austin seminary. We kept running into each other. So we
decided to do something about this and decided to get married. We decided that our first year of
marriage we would give to migrant ministries with the national council of churches. We really
needed money but we figured we could afford to give one year, but we ended up working for ten
years with migrant ministries.
Hector: When we got here [Tempe, Arizona] we had two children and we decided that we
weren‟t going to move any more.
Genie: That‟s when the Presbyterian church asked Hector to go to work for them as the director
of Hispanic ministries. He was working Arizona and New Mexico and developing the
relationship between the church in Mexico and working on all those border projects. Because of
the kids, I went to work half time as the first education director for planned parenthood of
Phoenix. I taught for about five years at Phoenix College teaching the classes that Phoenix
College was doing in the poverty areas. My classes were not on campus, they were out in the
community. Then I went to work for the county health department. At the same time I started
supervising health education for students at Arizona State University. So I was an associate
faculty there and I taught at Arizona State University one class each semester and supervised the
field work students. I taught “Introduction to Public Health” in the fall and in the spring I taught
the class for the graduating seniors. The faculty felt that they were not preparing the graduating
seniors for the real world so I got to work with the seniors. Then we both retired and we did a lot
of things with the Presbyterian church.
Interviewer: The last thing I would like to talk about are your views on the current immigration
issue and your current involvement with the Dream Act.
Hector: The whole issue of immigration, you have to start with the frame work that yes, we need
to protect our borders and yes, we have not only the right but also the responsibility to say who
comes here and how, but we have got to deal with the people that are here now. We‟ve got to do
it in a humane way. We don‟t have to go out there and punish everyone for what they did. For
me, I think we need to crown them. I mean, if you have ever been out in the desert during the
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summer time, you know how unbearably hot it gets and if you had to walk under that for four or
five days under those conditions for what reason? So the children can have something to eat. So
they can have a place to live. After all isn‟t that what parents are supposed to do?
Again, the reason we have the issue of people immigrating here is because of our policies,
particularly in the area of NAFTA, the free commerce. We made countries in the South, like
Mexico, lift their tariffs; so what happened? I‟ll talk about corn because I‟m more familiar with
it. You have small growers, I mean very, very small farmers who grow corn, they harvest it,
they go to town and they sell it and they do the cycle again. They live in the area, they raise their
families in these communities and they are somewhat in good shape. When NAFTA comes in,
we lift the tariffs and take our corn which is of less quality and is grown here in the U.S. and is
subsidized [therefore cheaper] and we take it to Mexico to sell it and the small Mexican farmer
cannot sell his corn because his corn is more expensive and he can‟t compete with the corn that
comes from the U.S. So what does he do? He comes here to work. Therefore, why are we
punishing these people for a situation that we generated? And this is just one small example.
But that is what is happening. So I think that we need to deal with this situation very caring and
that we can take care of it. There are bad people that come here from Mexico. Yes. There are a
whole bunch of them. Should we put them jail? Yes we ought to! But we should not, just
because you came over without a piece of paper saying you are allowed, say you are going
immediately into the jail by Mr. Joe Arpaio. And I think that we have been, our mindset was
washed with all this stuff you hear and all of them say that these Mexicans are going to kill you,
just exactly like what happened in New Port, you see a whole lot of Mexican and you want to run
away from there.
Genie: And I work more with the students and with the Dream Act. What Hector is talking
about now are some of the people that want to just work and go back. They do not want to stay
here. They do not want to move their families here because the barrios here are not as nice to
live in as the villages in Mexico. So they do not want to bring their families here permanently
they just want to come here to work and be able to go back and forth. The ones that I‟m working
with are families that have been here maybe twenty years, some fifteen, some ten and some of
them came across and brought little children. Well, those little children now are high school
graduates and college students, at least when they could afford it.
So what we are working on is an act of congress called the Dream Act, that if we can get it
passed, would make temporary legal conditions for these kids and it would protect the ones in
high school from deportation just because their skin is brown and once they have graduated, they
could go to work, they could drive, they could go to college because they would be legal
residents here. It is a temporary thing. They would have to meet certain requirements. If they
finish two years of college, or if they finish two years in a vocational school or serve two years in
the military then they can apply for permanent legal residency which is a green card. With a
green card, in five years they can apply for full citizenship.
So what these students are experiencing right now is getting picked up by Arpaio‟s bunch and
they are getting deported. We have one kid right now that we are trying to raise $3,000 for to
hire a lawyer because he was picked up for just for not coming to a complete stop when making
a right hand turn. But we don‟t believe that. There was no basis for stopping him other than the
fact that his skin was brown, when he was stopped, he was asked for his papers, for proof of
insurance and for his proof of citizenship. Legally, they cannot ask this when stopped. This kid
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was a senior at ASU when he was stopped. His name is Manuel Espinoza. Now, normally we
do not give out students‟ names normally, except that he has been publicized in the newspapers
so we can talk about him. He is in his final appeal to be able to stay here until the Dream Act
passes. This is basically what we are trying to have happen.
Our pro-bono lawyers are exhausted and cannot take any more pro-bono cases. In fact, Judy
Flannigan cannot even take any more cases even if they can pay, simply because she is worn out.
Now everyone likes Judy because she is the one that got the Wilson Four off the hook. The
Wilson Four are the reason that we sort of got involved with the Dream Act students. In 2002,
there was a solar powered boat race at the Tempe town lake. High school kids from all over
entered this competition. Now this group of kids won. We are at these kinds of things because
our son teaches high school and his kids enter everything. Now this group got to go to Buffalo,
New York for the national solar powered boat races. While they were up there, they went to see
Niagara Falls. They did not cross the border, but the teacher asked if they crossed the border,
can they come back on their student IDs. Well, the border agents looked over and saw these four
brown faces and went into a tizzy. They took them into interrogation for nine hours straight.
Julieta was crying because she wanted to call her mother and they wouldn‟t let her. She was
only sixteen at this time. Louis was eighteen and knew how things were suppose to be done and
wanted to call a lawyer, but they wouldn‟t let him call a lawyer. The principal of Wilson High
School, who was a great lady, told them to send her kids home. They said, well we will send
them home but they are still under deportation orders and you keep those illegals down there and
don‟t send them up here anymore.
Well the kids were really abused there was no doubt about it. And the judge knew it. It took
three years and we kept waiting for the Dream Act. If the Dream Act passed, they would be
legal. So, finally on July 21, 2005, three years later, the judge decided to talk with the students.
The principal talked about how they had been mistreated. Knowing this was their last chance,
she took the kids the night before and bought them clothes. Then the judge said to the kids, I
want to ask you some questions about what happened up in New York. Well Juliana could
hardly talk about what happened without crying. Well, this gets to the judge and then all four of
them spoke about what happened. The judge said “your civil rights were abused, this case is
dismissed.” But they are still undocumented. They can still be picked up anytime. They are just
laying low waiting for the Dream Act.
Interviewer: Are all children that were not born here but brought here when they were little,
covered by this act?
Hector: That is correct.
Genie: They don‟t have a birth certificate, so they can‟t get a social security number. Without a
social security number they can‟t get a driver‟s license, they can‟t work, they can‟t do anything.
And proposition 300 in Arizona means that if they try to go to college, they have to pay three
times the tuition.
Interviewer: Is this because they have to pay out of state tuition fees?
Genie: Yes. This higher tuition makes school prohibitive. Since January first, most of their
parents are now unemployed. Their parents had good jobs, some holding them for over twenty
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years. Some came with the small children and others came and had their kids here. So we now
have documented children with undocumented parents. This latest law says that if they go for
food stamps, the kids born here are entitled, but if the undocumented parents take them, the food
stamp people are suppose to call immigration on the parents.
Interviewer: So now they are not even going to go for food stamps for fear of being deported.
Hector: Exactly. Now they are not going to go for food stamps.
Genie: That is why we have families telling their school age children to eat all the breakfast they
can at school, and only eat half of their lunch and bring the rest home so they will have
something for supper. This is where we are now. Hunger in this county because of Sheriff Joe
Arpaio is absolutely ridiculous. It is just so cruel. Now Hector works with families and he is
able to get them food from the food banks for the families that know him.
Then the other problem is the high school kids that are getting picked up. We had one little girl,
Virginia, who graduated from North High School and ranked so high that she received $18,000
in scholarships to the nursing school at ASU. On her first day of school at ASU, she is stopped
for a broken tail light and asked for her papers. She didn‟t have them. She ended up in jail
where they held her for five days in the jail‟s holding tank. This eighteen year old beautiful girl
was held together with all the druggies and prostitutes. However, they were very nice to her.
They tried to help her because she was so upset. When immigration came for Virginia, they
dumped her at the border in Nogales. Finally she was able to call her mother. Her mother has a
brother that is a U.S. citizen. So he dashes down to Nogales, but he can‟t bring her back. The
best solution was to call her grandmother who lived down in Chihuahua. Virginia ended up
spending about six months down on the grandmother‟s farm in Chihuahua doing farm labor, this
gal who is so brilliant. The local school down there found out that she spoke English and asked
her to teach the children English. So she started teaching English and she made the most of a
bad, bad situation. She is still there, but she has made enough money teaching school that she is
now in nursing school in Mexico. Once she has her nursing certification, she still can‟t come
back for ten years.
We are trying to get a few things changed where if those kids come back with a skill that we
need, someplace like Banner Hospital could request her. But we don‟t think it will work anytime
soon. At the same time our stupid state legislature is ruining everything. Also the worse thing at
North High is the other situation that has been in the paper about a boy named Joe that was in
ROTC and was going to join the military and he got hurt and they took him to St. Joe hospital
because of bleeding on the brain. They had him stable, the mother was there and they were
asking her how she was going to pay for all of this and she said I need to sign some papers and
I‟ll pay you a little each month. They told her she didn‟t make enough money to make
payments. So they put him in an ambulance and sent him alone to Mexico, a sixteen year old kid
without anyone with him. They sent him to a small hospital in Agua Prieta. Unfortunately, this
hospital could not handle this complicated case so they told the ambulance to take him to
Hermosillo. By the time the ambulance got to Hermosillo, the mom and one of his teachers had
arrived. When they got there they found out that he needed a blood transfusion, but they didn‟t
have the blood supply. The mother took the money donated by his teachers and went out into the
streets to buy blood for her son when he died. Then we‟ve had three or more other situations at
North High that have turned out bad.
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Hector: That is the kind of thing that doesn‟t need to happen as we deal with the issue of
undocumented people. It is completely inhumane. It is not correct actions of the American
people. This country is better than that, much better than that.
Genie: Maricopa county is probably the worse. I write to my friends in Texas and their
undocumented kids there are not mistreated. They can‟t get a social security number and can‟t
go to work even though they have degrees. But at the same time, they are not being mistreated
like they are here. My friends in Louisiana say the same thing.
Hector: Only if the Dream Act goes through. You have brilliant electrical engineers and
mechanical engineers that cannot get a job. I don‟t know if you watched the ASU graduation
when President Obama spoke, but when he came and spoke, the university featured four or five
individual speakers that had overcome all kinds of problems. This one particular young man
that spoke was one such person who happens to also be an undocumented student. He is a
mechanical engineer that has graduated and can‟t get a job. We have people that have those
kinds of gifts. This one young girl that graduated from ASU in December is a nice, sweet, cute
little young lady with a degree in speech pathology and I was asking her before graduation “how
are you doing?” She replied, “As far as school is concerned, no problems, I have straight A‟s,
but at night I can‟t sleep and I can‟t eat because I don‟t know what is going to happen when I get
out of school. Right now I have a place to stay, sleep and eat but who knows what will happen
when I graduate?”
Genie: We are going to MCC [Mesa Community College] tonight to see a play written by James
Garcia about the Dream Act. We have so many demands for the play to be performed that we
can‟t meet all the demand. It is being performed tonight, but the problem is that the actors are
semi-professionals but they also have to work at other jobs. So tonight we will have to have
some of the parts read instead of acted out because some of the cast will not be there.
Hector: It is a good play that really deals with the issues of the undocumented student.
Genie: They have a panel discussion after the play.
Hector: As a country we are very ignorant about issues of this sort, we want to be ignorant
because if we really begin to think about it, it begins to bother us and we think as long as I don‟t
know, I‟m okay. Well, I don‟t know if we answered all of your questions.
Interviewer: I‟m thrilled; you covered more than I dreamed.
Genie: I think we exceeded the Bracero program.
Interviewer: Thank you very much for your time. If you don‟t mind, I would like to contact you
by phone if I have any questions when I am transcribing these notes. Then, as soon as I have a
transcript ready, I will send a copy for you to review. What I would like to do now, if you would
allow me to take possession of your photos, I would like to take them and make copies or you
could scan them and send them to the college, whichever is most comfortable for you.
Genie: We can scan them and make copies for you.
Arias 17
Interviewer: If you could scan them that would be helpful, If we can get good quality scans for
the college to reproduce them for the library exhibit. If you could please make notes of the
people in the photos on the back that would be helpful. These [large black and white images of
the Bracero workers] would be amazing if we could obtain copies.
Genie: Those I think we could have photographic copies made. Those are too good to just scan.
Interviewer: If you would like to bring them to the college, they may be able to cover the
expense of having them reproduced.
Genie: That‟s not a problem, we can have copies made. It shouldn‟t be too expensive. Besides,
we have to do that anyway for the book we are working on for the national council of churches
on the migrant ministries with the focus on families and children but also the Braceros.
Interviewer: I just thought of one of the questions that we did not cover: did the Bracero
workers bring their families over? At what point did the Bracero workers send for their families?
When the program ended? Did they bring their families over at all?
Hector: Some did and some didn‟t.
Genie: Mr. Padilla, the one we showed you building the house [in the photos], he kept coming
back and working, his wife was from here and his kids were citizens. One thing we didn‟t talk
about was the 1987 amnesty program under President Ronald Reagan. This was a one-time
program that granted amnesty for Mexican citizens working and living here.
Hector: This was a one-time thing for them to apply for amnesty, the problem was there was a
fee to file the paperwork. So those that came and brought their families, it was very difficult to
gather enough money to get papers for everyone, so what they did was gather enough money to
get the man or the women in the family who was the bread winner to get papers so that he or she
could work without any problems. So again, this created problems with only one person being
legal. Again now they are talking about doing this legalization and there would have to be fees
and all that but we have to be very careful because most of these undocumented people are still
very poor and living from day to day and they are not going to have the fees. I don‟t know what
kind of fees they are thinking about charging now, but if they are talking about $500 or $1000 it
will be too much for most of these people. There is no way that a family of five, six or seven
people are going to be able to get that much money. So we will end up with the same kind of
thing with only one or two family members being able to pay the fees.
Interviewer: Does this Dream Act legislation cover only children?
Hector: Yes, only the children.
Interviewer: Do you think an amnesty program like the one in the 80s will ever occur again?
Hector: Not in this climate. You mention amnesty and you are done.
Genie: What we are trying to do now is called comprehensive immigration reform. Louis
Gutierrez, a representative from Illinois wrote a bill for the house that is really pretty good that
would enable the family to be able to be free of fear of being arrested, that would have a
temporary legal status same thing we are talking about for the high school and college kids, they
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would be able to work and drive and be legal temporarily. During that time, they can earn a
permanent residency card. Louis Gutierrez‟s bill is very good, but it is not going to pass because
it is too liberal. Nancy Pelosi has said that the house is not going to do an immigration bill until
the senate does. The house is tired and more liberal and the senate won‟t back them up. So they
are going to wait and let the senate do a comprehensive immigration reform. There is a senator
out of New York that is writing a bill but in order to get the republican support he is having to
put in all kind of nasty stuff like big fees, all kinds of things that they will have to do. There is
one republican who keeps saying we will make them [the undocumented] go back to Mexico and
make them come back in again. But they don‟t have the money for them to do that, so what‟s
the point. In the mean time, our senators are anti-immigrant. We have four democrats in the
house who are all for the dream act and for immigration reform. However, we have four
republicans in the house that are going to cancel out the democrat vote.
We need some kind of legislation that takes into account families who have come here but are all
are undocumented, they have been here a long time, their kids go to school, and they are learning
English. We also need legislation for those families that are split, where we have the husband or
the wife or the kids are citizens and one or more members of the family are not citizens. Then
we need legislation that is temporary for the guys that have been coming back and forth for years
ever since the Bracero program. They still need to come and work and the farmers particularly
need them. Now, Hector has been listening to the Spanish news down in Yuma/San Luis where
they have a program that is kind of like the Bracero program. This program is for the lettuce
farmers working in Yuma. The workers come across and work in the fields and go back at night.
Hector: They have a two-way visa. This program has been there a long time, as long as I can
remember.
Interviewer: Why isn‟t this program utilized more?
Hector: I imagine because this kind of program was very common a few years back particularly
in Yuma because it is mainly an agricultural area. Maricopa county has really changed.
Agriculture is very limited here. What we do is limited in agriculture. Construction and medical
and nursing homes and the service areas are where workers are needed. The day basis visas
would not work well here.
Genie: Hector is working with a lot of families that still have their jobs in the resorts, maids,
landscapers, meet-and-greet workers whom are still undocumented.
Hector: There needs to be something done, but I think it is going to be very, very difficult. At
one point we say, let‟s build a fence and keep everybody out. Well the fence is a dumb thing.
Genie: Do you ever read the Texas Observer? They have had many articles about the border
fence issue. Things are really bad there. They went through farms in the valley and put half of
their property on one side of the fence and the other half on the other. They have done this all
the way down to the country club and then resume it again on the other side. The Texas
Observer is also hot on the issue of the detention centers. They are picking up some of the
undocumented and holding them in the detention centers and holding them instead of deporting
them. The detention centers are cruel in Texas. They have children and women in a lot of those
detention centers because for some reason maybe the father had some sort of a felony crime that
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he has been arrested for and they are keeping the wives and children in the detention centers until
they can figure out what to do with them. And they have children separated from families as
well.
They had two Honduran girls that were recently caught crossing the border along with a coyote.
When they heard border patrol coming, everyone scattered under the brush, leaving behind this
little eleven year old girl. Her sister kept crying saying you have to find my sister. Finally, they
turned this little girl over to border patrol and went back and found the scared and exhausted
little girl in the desert the next day. They took both of the little girls over to the Honduran consul
and the consul sent them to a detention center here in Phoenix for children while they are looking
for their parents. Hector has been over there once. They needed a translator one time. It is very
isolated, nobody gets in over there.
Interviewer: They have holding cells for children?
Hector: It‟s a nice house.
Genie: This one in Phoenix is just one of several. Now the detention centers in Texas have
massive amounts of people in them. Now the other thing that is interesting, we are way off the
Bracero program now, that we are working on regarding the border situation includes a project
that Hector started thirty years ago with the church in Mexico. Deportation receiving centers
have been set up along the border on the Mexican side where the people deported have a place to
stop when they get there. Like when Virginia was deported, there wasn‟t anything like this.
Hector: They still drop you on the street and you have to walk to the center. They just open the
door and say “go.” Now small children, ten or twelve, they have to take them to the consul, but
seventeen year olds are just dropped on a street somewhere across the border.
Genie: We are telling the teenagers if they ever get deported, to tell them that they crossed at
Agua Prieta because they usually return you to where you crossed the border. In Agua Prieta,
there are about a dozen shelters. One is a nice place for teenagers run by the YMCA of Mexico
and paid for by the YMCA of the U.S. This is a nice, clean place with computers and all kinds
of stuff that kids need to work with.
Interviewer: Is Agua Prieta a small or big city? I am not familiar with it.
Hector: Agua Prieta has grown tremendously but it is a kind of small city. Every city on the
Mexican side is bigger than the cities on the U.S. side.
Genie: Mainly because of the maquilas that went in that caused the cities to grow.
Hector: It is a small city about forty miles from Naco.
Genie: We have San Luis on the west side, Nogales is next, then Naco then Agua Prieta. We
have these deportation receiving centers in all this places now. We also have shelters that we can
send people to except in Nogales. They can‟t keep up with all the people in Nogales.
Interviewer: You mentioned that we had gotten off of our topic, however there really is a
connection between the undocumented issue and the Bracero program. If we had such a program
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now, then maybe some of these problems would not exist, or maybe some of them would be
eliminated or taken care of.
Interviewer: I appreciate you for giving me so, so much of your time. Thank you.