Braceros line up for wages withheld during WWII

ShareThis

Crescencio Acevedo, 86, said he could still use the wages he believes were stolen from him more than 60 years ago, during World War II.He needs new dentures.In his apartment in Woodland, Calif., the farm town where he debuted as a bracero in 1944, Acevedo and other octogenarians last week sifted through memories and yellowed papers. They wondered if an injustice of a bittersweet era was finally -- without tricks -- going to be addressed. "We earned that money. It's not something we're asking for that is not ours," said Acevedo, one of about 300,000 Mexican guest workers -- called braceros, a pair of arms -- that the U.S. government recruited to keep farms and railroads going during World War II.Through Jan. 5, Mexican consulates in the United States will accept applications to repay a debt owed to braceros who worked in the United States between 1942 and 1946.As part of the wartime agreement with Mexico, the U.S. government garnished 10 percent of every bracero's wages during that time and sent the money to a savings fund in Mexico as an incentive to return to their home country.The workers assume that an estimated $32 million in braceros' savings was stolen in Mexico. The vast majority of workers never received the payments, whether they returned to Mexico or immigrated here, as many did through marriage or sponsorship by U.S. employers.Records uncovered recently show that plenty of braceros complained to Mexican and U.S. officials about their missing money. Jose Diego, another former bracero in Woodland, said he was told he was "crazy" at a bank in Mexico in 1947 when he and a friend inquired about their savings.During decades of secretive, one-party rule in Mexico, which ended in 2000, such a response was typical. But a binational movement, lawsuits and news reports helped force a more democratic Mexico to acknowledge the grievance.Widows or surviving children of dead braceros can apply for the onetime payment of $3,500, but they must meet requirements -- including Mexican nationality -- which consular officials say they will help survivors obtain.Some of the braceros themselves say they could use that money to pay bills. Payment is also a question of principle."They've put up road barrier after barrier not to pay them, waiting for them to die off," said Lalo Acevedo, Crescencio's son.Lalo Acevedo, who runs a refugee program for Southeast Asians in Fresno, Calif., was born in Arizona. His bracero father met his mother, a native of New Mexico, when both were wartime maintenance workers on trains carrying supplies, soldiers and weapons."The braceros were ... spokes on the wheel that made the whole thing work during the war," he said.The back pay his father and others hope for stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by a Chicago firm on behalf of U.S.-based braceros.California is home to most of the descendents of those who subsequently immigrated. Almost anyone in California's large Mexican American population -- more than one-third of the state -- can trace a family tie to a bracero."This is an American story. It's a story that's still being played out," said Paul Lopez, a California State University, Chico, sociologist whose collection of oral histories, "The Braceros: The Untold Stories," will be published next year.(E-mail Susan Ferriss at sferriss(at)sacbee.com)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)