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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2005 
Braceros Storm Interior Ministry
 Wire services
| | Police detain a former bracero who entered a government office in Mexico City during a protest on Wednesday. The aging farm workers were demanding their backpay, while government officials say it is hard to distinguish who truly participated in the bracero program. (Photo: AP) |
Several protesters representing former "bracero" migrant workers forced their way into government offices and were arrested on Wednesday as tempers flared during a demonstration against delays in the distribution of compensation funds.
Mexico's government has created a US27 million fund to partially compensate bracero workers, who toiled in the United States starting in the 1940s, for payroll deductions that the workers never received.
But regulators still are sorting through who is eligible for payment, as surviving bracero workers and relatives fume over delays.
Ventura Gutiérrez, coordinator of the group Braceroproa, was among 10 protesters arrested by federal police after a crowd shattered a glass door and transom, then climbed over a metal gate into offices of Mexico's Interior Secretariat. A protest banner demanding payment to bracero workers was hung from a second story window before police arrived.
Deputy Interior Secretary Felipe González on Wednesday announced that trustees are scheduled to meet in the final week of August to decide exactly who will be compensated and by how much.
"Unfortunately, not all (the surviving workers) have presented proof as the law requires," he said. "We can't get around this law."
Bracero workers, widows and their middle-aged children were spending a third consecutive day outside government offices Wednesday.
"They're complaining that a glass door was broken, but they are not complaining of the hunger, the dispossession, the poverty of our companions," said José Puente, a spokesman for Braceroproa.
Riot police cleared a path through dozens of elderly protesters so that a police vehicle could take away 10 protesters detained inside government offices.
Former bracero worker Salvador Herrera, of Mexico City, said it was humiliating to have police take away Braceroproa leaders.
But the 74-year-old stayed a few yards back from the shoving with police, out of concern for his safety.
"It's just that we already have been waiting a long, long time" for compensation, he said. "The government is waiting for us to die. Who are they going to pay?" |
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