| | |  Americas & Beyond | October 2008 
Braceros Line Up for US Wages Withheld During WWII
 Susan Ferriss - SacBee.com
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| | Crescencio Acevedo, 86, smiles as he leaves the consulate. His son Lalo tracked down his father's work records at the Railroad Retirement Board. (bpatrick@sacbee.com) | | |
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, 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 – 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 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, 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.
News of the settlement, announced this month, reverberated through California, where most of the braceros worked. The first train arrived in Stockton in 1942.
California is also 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.
Beginning in 2005, braceros and survivors who live in Mexico were allowed to apply for $3,500 to make amends for the lost savings. But those who live here were not included unless they traveled to Mexico.
Unlike the progam here, the payment in Mexico is open to braceros who worked in the United States after World War II. The bracero program was extended, at U.S. farmers' request but was terminated in 1964 because of abuses and irregularities, including explicable wage deductions.
On Thursday, the first day of the registration period, Acevedo went to the Mexican Consulate in Sacramento to inquire about making a claim.
He was joined by Diego, who hobbled on a cane.
Diego immediately hit a bureaucratic wall. He no longer has records from that time – no original contract, no work stubs, which are required.
"It's all in my memories," said Diego, who worked in Colorado, Idaho and California.
In 1954, he was sponsored for residency by a Woodland grower – one of the only ones who didn't cheat him, he said.
Diego's only hope, according to lawyers, may be if Social Security records reflect his bracero work, or if a copy of his contract can be found in governmental records.
"They must have copies," he said. "I saw them make them."
Acevedo may be luckier.
He initially worked on Yolo County farms, but spent most of the war years in Arizona. His son Lalo called the Railroad Retirement Board last week, and an employee found his father's work records.
Another Woodland resident, Elva Acevedo, no relation to Crescencio, also went to the consulate Thursday.
Leaning on her cane, going from window to window, she became frustrated. She met her late husband, Fidel, in Woodland, where he was a bracero. She still had his original work contract, an ID card and even his war rations card.
But Elva, 75, was born in Texas, as her parents were. She was told she would need to obtain Mexican nationality by living in Mexico for six months.
Sacramento Mexican Consul Alejandra Bologna suggested in a meeting with Elva and other applicants that perhaps one of the couple's sons could apply for the payment.
He wouldn't have to live in Mexico to claim his Mexican nationality, she said.
"But it was my husband's money," Elva protested. "I have his documents and shouldn't have to go through this to get what was his."
Matt Piers, one of the bracero attorneys in Chicago, said the Mexican government has flexibility on how it judges documents and could try to help braceros and their families gather records to prove their claims.
Piers called the 10 percent wage deduction "an insult to injury."
He said that one of his clients, now 92, told him how he nearly died when he was a bracero because a Wisconsin farmer refused to take him a doctor when he fell ill.
He went to a hospital on his own and collapsed before a doctor took out his appendix.
"That farmer told him, 'You either dig vegetables or get back on a bus to Mexico,' " Piers said. "The remarkable thing," he added, is that despite experiences like these, "these men are so positive about the United States."
Acevedo, who keeps an American flag on his front door, remembers how eagerly the braceros worked, despite bitter moments when they were banned from restaurants and segregated in movie theaters and on buses. Many were told to strip at the border and sprayed with DDT, and were often stiffed out of pay.
Diego remembered that in Woodland, "Americans used to point at braceros and yell out at them, calling them 'Tortillas, tortillas!' "
"Now," he chuckled, leaning on his cane, "Americans eat more tortillas than we do. Things are different."
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