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Podcast: New Books in Latino Studies
Episode: Ana Elizabeth Rosas, “Abrazando el Espiritu: Bracero Families Confront the U.S.-Mexico Border” (U of California Press, 2014)
Description: The Emergency Farm Labor Program (a.k.a. Bracero Program) was initiated in 1942 as a bilateral wartime agreement between the governments of the United States and Mexico. The program’s initial objectives were two-fold, address labor shortages in U.S. agriculture, and promote the modernization of rural Mexican peasants through a type of worker training (i.e., contract labor) that would infuse the Mexican economy with cash remittances. In the standard narrative established by scholars over the last few decades, the Bracero Program was a boon to American corporate agriculture as U.S. and Mexican government officials subsidized the pr...