Description
Desperate for laborers to keep the trains moving all the way through World War II, the U.S. and Mexican governments created a now mostly forgotten bracero railroad program that sent a hundred thousand Mexican workers around the border to build and care for railroad lines all over the USA, particularly the West. Even supposing both governments promised the employees adequate living arrangements and fair working conditions, most bracero railroaders lived in squalor, worked dangerous jobs, and were subject to harsh racial discrimination.
Making matters worse, the governments held a percentage of the employees’ earnings in a savings and retirement program that supposedly would await the men on their return to Mexico. On the other hand, rampant corruption within both the railroad companies and the Mexican banks meant that most workers were unable to collect what was once rightfully theirs.
Historian Erasmo Gamboa recounts the difficult conditions, systemic racism, and decades-long quest for justice these men faced. The result is a pathbreaking examination that deepens our understanding of Mexican American, immigration, and labor histories within the twentieth-century U.S. West.