April 28, 2022 • 30 mins
Hosts Patty Rodriguez and Erick Galindo's families were just some of the millions who migrated to the United States during the great migration, a period of circular movement across the border fueled by the Bracero program and shaped by America's wars.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi listeners, just a quick heads up out of the
shadows tell stories of people fleeing and living in sometimes
violent environments. I have an old family photo that reminds
me of the Brady Bunch because it's a blended family
standing outside an idyllic looking suburban home in nineteen seventy four.
(00:25):
It's mostly a bunch of young, happy faces, and a
lot of them are dressing their dopes seventies attire. There's
Mattia Domingo sitting on the ground wearing what appears to
be one of those long sleeve button down work shirts.
Standing over him as wearing a smart, ruffled blazer. Mala
Manuela while she's dressed like she grew up in the fifties,
(00:48):
because she did. And then there's my Tia Madi with
their feathered hair, and next to her dressed like a Mexican.
Asked Peter Brady is my father with his leave eyes
button up open and undone from like the stomach up
to his full beard and afro. I've seen this family
(01:09):
photo a lot because it's one of my favorites of
my dad. He looks so fresh and young, and it's
from his days before he had a family, when he
spent life traveling back and forth between the US and Mexico.
But I never really thought about something. My dad isn't
documented in this photo, which means he was traveling back
(01:29):
and forth without a green card or passport like whatever,
Like it was no big deal. And the thing is
he wasn't alone. It's hard to believe these days, but
there was a time when the border was more fluid,
when people like my dad would come to America, work
for a few weeks, and go back home to Mexico,
(01:52):
before millions of people like him began to plant roots here,
before they had to choose between staying home and Mexico
or having to create a new life in a new country,
before the border became so dangerous to cross. So what
changed after nineteen seventy four, when this Mexican Brady Bunch
pick was snapped that led to my father and countless
(02:14):
others finally deciding to cross the US for good, well
for starters. In nineteen seventy five, this thing called the
Vietnam War ended. I'm Patti Rodriguez and I'm Eric Glendo,
and this is out of the shadows. Children of eighty
six immigrants and their children have long lived in the
(02:35):
shadows of America. Their destinies aren't just shaped by where
they come from, but by their particular place in history.
In six the lives of millions of immigrants and their
children were changed by one lucky stroke of a pen
by an unlikely ally, President Ronald Reagan. This podcast will
examine the ripple effects the bill had on first generation
(02:56):
kids of immigrants, who are navigating intergenerational mobility and transforming
the cultural landscape. This is an untold story of luck, timing, triumph, opportunity, survival,
and of course hope. One thing we don't really think about.
(03:37):
One thing that gets lost in the arguments today about
immigration is that the border wasn't always this political argument
slash dangerous barrier. You know. The truth is that many
of our parents came and went to the US in
the sixties and seventies. Yeah, it's wild. I talked to
my dad Manuel about this, and he said he would
cross back and forth. Yeah, my dad says he would
(04:14):
just drive across the border. Sometimes the border agents would
ask for documentation, which my dad didn't have, so he'd
be forced to go back. But most of the time
the agents just waved him through and that's hard to
believe now, but it was also common prior to there
were really relatively few limits on immigration from south of
(04:37):
the border. That's Charles Kalpasaki, author of Immigration reform The
Corpse That Will Not Die. His book details the amnesty Bill,
but also the circumstances that led to the migration patterns
we saw at the time. There was a circular migration pattern,
mainly in agriculture, but in other seasonal industries to right
think construction, like where more people would go home for
(04:59):
the holidays and they would stay home over the winter.
The most famous instance of this circular migration pattern is
probably the Settle program, and that started because of the draft.
Our present program were eight hundred thousand additional men of
this coming year and somewhat left the land men each
year thereafter. The Settle Program started during World War Two
(05:23):
as America's men, it's labor force was sent off to
fight the war, while women and even children worked the factories.
The farm jobs were abundant and labor was scarce. Again
the urgently and again the Labor Department's contributions helped to
(05:44):
set records of uninterrupted war production unequaled in the history
of this or any other nation. And at that very
same time, Mexico was suffering from high unemployment in the U.
S needed workers to grow in harve star food, so
Mexico in the US reaching agreement that would make it
(06:04):
easier for people to cross the border for work. America
stayed fed during the war, and all these people who
didn't have jobs in Mexico found jobs here. All of
the Wall America wars in Europe, Korean Vietnam, in almost
two decades of unrelenting war, American farmers employed more than
four point five million Mexican men. But I settled men
(06:28):
who were here legally and exploited for their cheap labor
with promises of a better life for their families back
in Mexico. And all up until recently, I've come to
learn that one of those men was my grandfather. The
names in the temple, yeah, I even knew. In Ninetta,
(07:00):
Miguel took a fourteen hour bus ride from Jalisco to
the contracting station in Impalmisa. Officials would sign up a
thousand to two thousand braceros a day and load them
up in busses to the States. The Brato program mostly
targeted men with families, men like my grandfather with wives
(07:22):
and children, because there was a higher chance. At one
all the money earned by the braseros will be sent
back to Mexico, benefiting the Mexican economy. And two, they themselves,
so brasettos will returned back home to their families after
their contracts expired, preventing overstates, which is exactly what the
(07:43):
US wanted. Command Premier sent a bed I think, will
(08:11):
leave my grandma and his daughter, my thea three months
at a time to come to California, and every penny
he'd make work in the fields was sent back home. Yeah.
(08:37):
When I asked him how much he'd get paid, he laughed,
not at my question, but at his own recognition of
the many ways this country took advantage of them. On
a good week, after working fifteen hour days, seven days
a week under the scorching sun, me Papa Miguel would
(08:59):
make sixty dollars a week. Sixty dollars a week. The
promises made to these Mexican men guaranteed wages, cleaning, free housing,
affordable meals. We're just that promises. Instead, they were treated
(09:19):
like criminals, my grandfather recalled. So they were constantly harassed
by the police. If the rats did not have their documents,
the men would be immediately deported, no questions asked, Yes, yeah,
(09:40):
that is what that is. Were also isolated from the world.
When they were not working, they only had a each other.
They had no social life outside of these camps. My
(10:03):
first job was taking boys and barriers. That's Dr Rica
figaroa a retired university professor who grew up in Modesto, California.
During the sixties, the peak of the Bara setto program
and I saw firsthand where the farm workers lived. I
also lived there for the summer, so I had a
(10:24):
pretty direct and intimate knowledge of what was going on.
Dr Figaro says the barracks where the farmers lived house
dozens of workers on hard bunks in tight quarters, kind
of like the ones the soldiers were using off in Vietnam,
and maybe just like the men in Southeast Asia. The
Bara settles were worried about string too far from the barracks.
(10:48):
Since Dr Figro was a natural born citizen, he became
their conduit to the little luxuries. I was a beer
runner on Saturday nights because workers were not They didn't
want to go off because of papers or because of guards,
or because of whatever. You heard that right, These farms
had guards supposedly to protect the workers. They carried them
(11:11):
sixteen and they were there at the ranch every day
when there was harvesting going on. So the BT program
was not exactly ideal, but it was sold as a
better alternative to living in abject poverty in Mexico, promising
Mexican men jobs that they would never find back home.
(11:32):
That change when the Brassetto program ended in ninet Bras
settles now found themselves without a job, so a quarter
millions stay in northern Mexico ready to go back to work.
Many even sent letters to government officials pleading to reinstate
the program. My current situation is critical. Economic hardship is
(11:53):
the biggest enemy in my home. I am contacting you
for help. I'm not requesting money. Rather, I am attentively
begging you for a job within the federal government. Out
of the shadows. Will be right back now, back to
(12:21):
the show. Historically, the Mexican government actually discouraged people from
migrating to the US because they didn't want to lose
their labor force. But in the seventies, Mexico had a
surplus of workers and a growing population, and instead of
addressing the issues, they started to fudge the numbers. See,
(12:45):
the way unemployment works is there's a pull of people
looking for jobs and not enough of them to go around.
So what does the Mexican government do, in all its
celestial wisdom. They basically clear the path for all these
people to leave to the US, which means that the
amount of Mexicans looking for work goes down, So unemployment
technically goes down to Mexico. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Joe
(13:08):
put it point blank, saying, quote, the United States will
continue to be, to a greater or lesser extent, the
safety valve for our surplus labor force. So while the
Mexican government never really encouraged workers to cross the U.
S Border illegally, it definitely turned a blind eye towards it.
(13:29):
Like instead of shouting, hey, don't leave, they quietly whispered, oh,
come on, no, don't leave. But if you do, make
sure you wire us to cash Western Union. Please. And
the US, despite the BRAT program ending in four, still
benefited from the cheap labor that came from undocumented men
(13:52):
and women. It too, turn a blind eye towards unauthorized entries,
all wall spewing propaganda that it llegals we're taking jobs
away from Americans. The US was all like, hey, don't come,
we're taking our jobs. But if you do come, we
have jobs for you. I mean, I'm joking, because this
(14:14):
was actually a very serious and potentially dangerous move by
both governments, fueled by politics and fear. With both countries
benefiting from this unauthorized circular migration, it was more fluid
for migrants to go back and forth across the border.
Mexico Secretary of Foreign Affairs even requested that Mexicans not
(14:35):
be returned to Mexico. They told their consulates to stop
the official process of helping folks who wanted to go
back home to Mexico. Author Anna Raquel Minion tells some
of those stories in her book Undocumented Lives Could as
a Mexican migrant in Los Angeles who dedicated his life
(14:55):
to helping Mexican communities recalled that consoles did absolutely nothing
if somebody came to the consulate and wished to return
to his homeland, for instance, they gave him nothing surplus
to the Mexican government and illegal in the US these
migrant workers no longer had a home. Those who came
(15:16):
to the States out of necessity to survive were shipped
out of luck. The circular pattern jammed workers from overpopulated
Central Mexican regions left their homes, many never to return.
Migrating north became a lucrative trade in Mexico. Everyone was
(15:36):
making money every step of the way. Coultas would raken
thousands of dollars a night. Contractors found work, finally building
Abolita's home on top of it that animal she had
owned for years. Mexicans working in the US since stacks
of cash back to the rancho for food on the table,
to build homes, churches, and paved roads. Mexico was in
(15:59):
no hurry to shut that pipeline down. Men who would
go back to the ranchos with stories about the land
of jobs and opportunities, stories that would inspire many more
Mexicans to go to the US because it was a
goal rush and in north. And one of them was
(16:21):
a nineteen year old kid from Carbone, Jalisco. My dad,
that's what you mean. I mean, my mom hostels the
sas from one of yeah, my dad's neighbors and even
cousins would come back to my dad's rancho with nice
(16:42):
cars and cash to spend. My dad was seeing how
quickly families around his neighborhood were changing when money was
sent back from the US. They would dress better, eat better.
(17:04):
And for my dad, who many times only had it
to eat, these changes were beyond his wildest dreams. So
he left for the US when he was just nineteen
years old, hoping to send money back to his family
in Mexico. At the beginning of this podcast, I told
(17:36):
myself that I was not going to ask my dad
to tell me the story of why he came, and
I was even more sure that I wasn't gonna do
it after talking to my mom. I was scared, actually,
no more like selfish. I did not want to hear
his story because I knew how painful it would be
for me to hear my dad reflect on such a
(17:56):
vulnerable moment in his life. But I found the courage
to ask him a question I never dared to ask.
He then yes, um, uh, who are you? We'll see
you the aske renuons, as the answus say, or something
(18:18):
the only don't know we are. You can hear how
difficult it was from me asking my dad I growing
up he had dreams of his own, And when he
answered that he dreamed of going to school and getting
an education, you can hear my heart break the sim
(18:56):
the netflce. Okay, let me fast, take you know your
My dad was seeing how his Rancho was changing and
he wanted that too for his family. Houses were being built,
people were wearing shoes, and he wanted that too. He
(19:18):
was the oldest and the responsibility weighed heavy on him.
Coming to the US. Seemed to be working for everyone
else around him. Why couldn't he have a piece of
it too. As soon as my dad arrived, he began
building my abilite those a home. With the money he
was sending back. His entire family went from living in
(19:39):
a shack, everyone sleeping on the floor, to having a
house of their own with walls and doors. And my
dad did that for his family. Many young Mexican men
did just that. But it wasn't just men who came
(19:59):
to the US looking for work on the farms. My
mom tells me that she was pregnant and working in
Washington picking apples. That's Wendy Salasar born in a farmtown
in Washington State, where both her undocumented parents worked the
apple harvest. They worked together, so my dad would help
her out and say, you picked the ones at the
bottom so you don't have to climb up the ladder
(20:22):
and be stretching. So I believe at the time she
was pretty far along in her pregnancy, probably about five
months or more when she was doing this. I can't
even imagine having to pick apples well pregnant. But most
of these people migrated in a circular pattern. They came
(20:43):
to the chambard then went back home. That's what my
dad did, but he didn't work on the farms. He
just kind of hung out and visited his family and
sometimes would work in a warehouse in southeast Los Angeles. Yeah,
more were less, but our wow him. My dad says
(21:13):
he made chairs for theaters stadiums all while undocumented, and
after two weeks of working he would go back home
to Sinaloa. Since crossing the border was so easy, he
didn't even think twice about going back and forth, and
since some of the employers looking for cheap labor here
in the US were even asking for legal status, he
knew he could just keep working until there was no
(21:34):
more work, and then something else happened thousands of miles away.
That would change everything. The fall of Saigon. Out of
(21:54):
the shadows will be right back now, back to the show.
According to article on the Intercept, the idea of weaponizing
(22:15):
the border quote reaches back to at least the nineteen seventies,
to the presidency of Jimmy Carter, when the US began
to turn its attention away from Vietnam toward its southern border.
Within this last decade, the problem of undocumented aliens or
illegal aliens or undocumented workers has become increasingly severe. Yep,
(22:39):
Jimmy Carter, the Democrat liberal saint, requested and got approval
for about five million dollars to build defense along the
US southern border. And my dad said, it was simple economics.
(23:00):
The economy was bad and soldiers were coming home anticipating jobs,
while at the same time, more and more people were
fleeing a recession in Mexico. So President Carter and the
I n S started cracking down. Suddenly the cheap labor
that both Mexico and the US benefited from that basically
made it okay for our parents to come back and
(23:20):
forth to make a quick buck and live a better life.
Became the problem. Suddenly, our parents became the people that
nobody wanted. Now picture this. It's a cold and foggy
night in south San Diego. Waiting in the fog are
hundreds of Mexican migrants. They're being chased by Mexican police
(23:44):
from the south and hunted by border patrol in the north.
The coyotes strategy is to throw rocks at the border patrol,
creating a diversion so the migrants could cross, But on
this night, it's a setup. As the coyotes looked for
the right moment to cast their stones, out of the
thin fog come three ram chargers rushing at them. Panicky
(24:11):
fearing for their lives, the migrants turned and start running
back south. But there's another surprise waiting for them. Police
officers from Tijuana there to arrest them. All. Suddenly surrounded,
the migrants are forced back north to the border, this
time against their will, leading them right into the border patrol.
(24:33):
The migrants are apprehended, charged, convicted, and incarcerated before being
sent back to Mexico. This story, told by author and
Rakiminian in her book Undocumented Lives, captures a sentiment of
those in power in both the US and Mexico by
(24:56):
the late seventies and early eighties, migrant workers were people
without a place. In their presence, their mere existence could
be denied by those in power in both nations. These
people were cornered and caught hiding in the fog between
two countries that didn't want them. Their entrapment was part
of a larger trend happening that may sound familiar. People
(25:20):
without a home, without community, unwanted by the nation they
came from. In the place they we're going, they belonged nowhere.
Nidia key, Nidia, Yeah, living in the shadows. So from
(25:41):
that unhappy picture, we come back to the Mexican Brady
Bunch photo at the top of the show. That was
one of the last times my dad crossed as an
undocumented Peter Brady into the US, just by driving here
in the early part of the seventies before the crackdown.
Then in December of nineteen seventy nine, on a rainy night,
(26:03):
my father put on some rain boots, some levies and
crossed the hills under helicopter searchlights, being chased by border
patrol agents and crossed into a much different version of
the America. He used to come visit for weeks at
a time. My dad and millions of others planted roots
(26:23):
here in the US, just as much of the country
had decided people like him or the problem plaguing the nation.
At the end of a socially and economically turbulent decade,
and in the unlikely hero of our story gets elected President.
(26:45):
President mcgans courageous and talented leader. He's making admirable progress
in the difficult task of moving El Salvador toward democracy.
I let my preoccupation with the hostages intrude into areas
where it didn't belong. She used eighty names, thirty addresses,
fifteen telephone numbers to collect food stamp social security for
(27:08):
The key to our anti drug strategy is to call
instead for the national crusade against drugs. And we could
have a very hostile and strange neighbor on our border.
Rather than making them for talking about putting up offense,
Why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems.
Make it possible for them to come here legally with
the work per myth, and then while they're working and
(27:30):
earning here, they pay taxes here like the migrants and
the fog our parents were trapped between two forces, the
businesses who were exploiting them for their cheap labor, in
a growing conservative movement that wanted a crackdown at the border.
Something needed to be done. What's come in next time
(27:59):
on Out of the Shows the story of a six
foot giant, the grandson of an immigrant and author of Urka,
the bill that ended up changing the course of this generation.
So we had to do something. Character third inuit of
doing Nothing. Out of the Shadows is written by Caesar Hernandez.
(28:20):
It's also written, edited, hosted, an executive produced by Patti
Rodriguez and Eric Galindo. It's produced by Bets Cardanas, Karen
Lopez and Gabby Watts. It's sound design, mixed and mastered
by Jesse nice Longer. Our studio engineer is Clay Hillenburg.
Karen Garcia That's Me is our announcer. Out of the
(28:44):
Shadows is the production of Seeing Me, Other Productions and
School of Humans in partnership with My Heart's Michael Tura
podcast Network. The podcast is also executive produced by Giselle Banzes,
Virginian Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Chad Crowley. Our marketing and
our team is led by Jasmine Mahia, original music by
(29:06):
a Arenas, and if you loved his cover of Los
Caminos La Vida, this podcast theme song, you can listen
to it on all music platforms. Historical audio for Out
of the Shadows comes from the Reagan Presidential Library and
the National Archives. Special thanks to Ian Vargas, Alex and Ali,
(29:29):
Caitlin Becker, gob Chabran, Daisy Church, Angel Lopez Glendo, Julianna Gamiz,
Ryan Gordon, Brian Matheson, Claudia Marty Corina, Oscar Ramidez, John Rodriguez,
Juan Rodriguez, Joshua Sandoval, Eric Sclar, Tony Sorrentino, and Megan Tan.
(29:57):
For more podcasts, visit the I Heart Radio app or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi listeners, just a quick heads up out of the
shadows tell stories of people fleeing and living in sometimes
violent environments. I have an old family photo that reminds
me of the Brady Bunch because it's a blended family
standing outside an idyllic looking suburban home in nineteen seventy four.
(00:25):
It's mostly a bunch of young, happy faces, and a
lot of them are dressing their dopes seventies attire. There's
Mattia Domingo sitting on the ground wearing what appears to
be one of those long sleeve button down work shirts.
Standing over him as wearing a smart, ruffled blazer. Mala
Manuela while she's dressed like she grew up in the fifties,
(00:48):
because she did. And then there's my Tia Madi with
their feathered hair, and next to her dressed like a Mexican.
Asked Peter Brady is my father with his leave eyes
button up open and undone from like the stomach up
to his full beard and afro. I've seen this family
(01:09):
photo a lot because it's one of my favorites of
my dad. He looks so fresh and young, and it's
from his days before he had a family, when he
spent life traveling back and forth between the US and Mexico.
But I never really thought about something. My dad isn't
documented in this photo, which means he was traveling back
(01:29):
and forth without a green card or passport like whatever,
Like it was no big deal. And the thing is
he wasn't alone. It's hard to believe these days, but
there was a time when the border was more fluid,
when people like my dad would come to America, work
for a few weeks, and go back home to Mexico,
(01:52):
before millions of people like him began to plant roots here,
before they had to choose between staying home and Mexico
or having to create a new life in a new country,
before the border became so dangerous to cross. So what
changed after nineteen seventy four, when this Mexican Brady Bunch
pick was snapped that led to my father and countless
(02:14):
others finally deciding to cross the US for good, well
for starters. In nineteen seventy five, this thing called the
Vietnam War ended. I'm Patti Rodriguez and I'm Eric Glendo,
and this is out of the shadows. Children of eighty
six immigrants and their children have long lived in the
(02:35):
shadows of America. Their destinies aren't just shaped by where
they come from, but by their particular place in history.
In six the lives of millions of immigrants and their
children were changed by one lucky stroke of a pen
by an unlikely ally, President Ronald Reagan. This podcast will
examine the ripple effects the bill had on first generation
(02:56):
kids of immigrants, who are navigating intergenerational mobility and transforming
the cultural landscape. This is an untold story of luck, timing, triumph, opportunity, survival,
and of course hope. One thing we don't really think about.
(03:37):
One thing that gets lost in the arguments today about
immigration is that the border wasn't always this political argument
slash dangerous barrier. You know. The truth is that many
of our parents came and went to the US in
the sixties and seventies. Yeah, it's wild. I talked to
my dad Manuel about this, and he said he would
cross back and forth. Yeah, my dad says he would
(04:14):
just drive across the border. Sometimes the border agents would
ask for documentation, which my dad didn't have, so he'd
be forced to go back. But most of the time
the agents just waved him through and that's hard to
believe now, but it was also common prior to there
were really relatively few limits on immigration from south of
(04:37):
the border. That's Charles Kalpasaki, author of Immigration reform The
Corpse That Will Not Die. His book details the amnesty Bill,
but also the circumstances that led to the migration patterns
we saw at the time. There was a circular migration pattern,
mainly in agriculture, but in other seasonal industries to right
think construction, like where more people would go home for
(04:59):
the holidays and they would stay home over the winter.
The most famous instance of this circular migration pattern is
probably the Settle program, and that started because of the draft.
Our present program were eight hundred thousand additional men of
this coming year and somewhat left the land men each
year thereafter. The Settle Program started during World War Two
(05:23):
as America's men, it's labor force was sent off to
fight the war, while women and even children worked the factories.
The farm jobs were abundant and labor was scarce. Again
the urgently and again the Labor Department's contributions helped to
(05:44):
set records of uninterrupted war production unequaled in the history
of this or any other nation. And at that very
same time, Mexico was suffering from high unemployment in the U.
S needed workers to grow in harve star food, so
Mexico in the US reaching agreement that would make it
(06:04):
easier for people to cross the border for work. America
stayed fed during the war, and all these people who
didn't have jobs in Mexico found jobs here. All of
the Wall America wars in Europe, Korean Vietnam, in almost
two decades of unrelenting war, American farmers employed more than
four point five million Mexican men. But I settled men
(06:28):
who were here legally and exploited for their cheap labor
with promises of a better life for their families back
in Mexico. And all up until recently, I've come to
learn that one of those men was my grandfather. The
names in the temple, yeah, I even knew. In Ninetta,
(07:00):
Miguel took a fourteen hour bus ride from Jalisco to
the contracting station in Impalmisa. Officials would sign up a
thousand to two thousand braceros a day and load them
up in busses to the States. The Brato program mostly
targeted men with families, men like my grandfather with wives
(07:22):
and children, because there was a higher chance. At one
all the money earned by the braseros will be sent
back to Mexico, benefiting the Mexican economy. And two, they themselves,
so brasettos will returned back home to their families after
their contracts expired, preventing overstates, which is exactly what the
(07:43):
US wanted. Command Premier sent a bed I think, will
(08:11):
leave my grandma and his daughter, my thea three months
at a time to come to California, and every penny
he'd make work in the fields was sent back home. Yeah.
(08:37):
When I asked him how much he'd get paid, he laughed,
not at my question, but at his own recognition of
the many ways this country took advantage of them. On
a good week, after working fifteen hour days, seven days
a week under the scorching sun, me Papa Miguel would
(08:59):
make sixty dollars a week. Sixty dollars a week. The
promises made to these Mexican men guaranteed wages, cleaning, free housing,
affordable meals. We're just that promises. Instead, they were treated
(09:19):
like criminals, my grandfather recalled. So they were constantly harassed
by the police. If the rats did not have their documents,
the men would be immediately deported, no questions asked, Yes, yeah,
(09:40):
that is what that is. Were also isolated from the world.
When they were not working, they only had a each other.
They had no social life outside of these camps. My
(10:03):
first job was taking boys and barriers. That's Dr Rica
figaroa a retired university professor who grew up in Modesto, California.
During the sixties, the peak of the Bara setto program
and I saw firsthand where the farm workers lived. I
also lived there for the summer, so I had a
(10:24):
pretty direct and intimate knowledge of what was going on.
Dr Figaro says the barracks where the farmers lived house
dozens of workers on hard bunks in tight quarters, kind
of like the ones the soldiers were using off in Vietnam,
and maybe just like the men in Southeast Asia. The
Bara settles were worried about string too far from the barracks.
(10:48):
Since Dr Figro was a natural born citizen, he became
their conduit to the little luxuries. I was a beer
runner on Saturday nights because workers were not They didn't
want to go off because of papers or because of guards,
or because of whatever. You heard that right, These farms
had guards supposedly to protect the workers. They carried them
(11:11):
sixteen and they were there at the ranch every day
when there was harvesting going on. So the BT program
was not exactly ideal, but it was sold as a
better alternative to living in abject poverty in Mexico, promising
Mexican men jobs that they would never find back home.
(11:32):
That change when the Brassetto program ended in ninet Bras
settles now found themselves without a job, so a quarter
millions stay in northern Mexico ready to go back to work.
Many even sent letters to government officials pleading to reinstate
the program. My current situation is critical. Economic hardship is
(11:53):
the biggest enemy in my home. I am contacting you
for help. I'm not requesting money. Rather, I am attentively
begging you for a job within the federal government. Out
of the shadows. Will be right back now, back to
(12:21):
the show. Historically, the Mexican government actually discouraged people from
migrating to the US because they didn't want to lose
their labor force. But in the seventies, Mexico had a
surplus of workers and a growing population, and instead of
addressing the issues, they started to fudge the numbers. See,
(12:45):
the way unemployment works is there's a pull of people
looking for jobs and not enough of them to go around.
So what does the Mexican government do, in all its
celestial wisdom. They basically clear the path for all these
people to leave to the US, which means that the
amount of Mexicans looking for work goes down, So unemployment
technically goes down to Mexico. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Joe
(13:08):
put it point blank, saying, quote, the United States will
continue to be, to a greater or lesser extent, the
safety valve for our surplus labor force. So while the
Mexican government never really encouraged workers to cross the U.
S Border illegally, it definitely turned a blind eye towards it.
(13:29):
Like instead of shouting, hey, don't leave, they quietly whispered, oh,
come on, no, don't leave. But if you do, make
sure you wire us to cash Western Union. Please. And
the US, despite the BRAT program ending in four, still
benefited from the cheap labor that came from undocumented men
(13:52):
and women. It too, turn a blind eye towards unauthorized entries,
all wall spewing propaganda that it llegals we're taking jobs
away from Americans. The US was all like, hey, don't come,
we're taking our jobs. But if you do come, we
have jobs for you. I mean, I'm joking, because this
(14:14):
was actually a very serious and potentially dangerous move by
both governments, fueled by politics and fear. With both countries
benefiting from this unauthorized circular migration, it was more fluid
for migrants to go back and forth across the border.
Mexico Secretary of Foreign Affairs even requested that Mexicans not
(14:35):
be returned to Mexico. They told their consulates to stop
the official process of helping folks who wanted to go
back home to Mexico. Author Anna Raquel Minion tells some
of those stories in her book Undocumented Lives Could as
a Mexican migrant in Los Angeles who dedicated his life
(14:55):
to helping Mexican communities recalled that consoles did absolutely nothing
if somebody came to the consulate and wished to return
to his homeland, for instance, they gave him nothing surplus
to the Mexican government and illegal in the US these
migrant workers no longer had a home. Those who came
(15:16):
to the States out of necessity to survive were shipped
out of luck. The circular pattern jammed workers from overpopulated
Central Mexican regions left their homes, many never to return.
Migrating north became a lucrative trade in Mexico. Everyone was
(15:36):
making money every step of the way. Coultas would raken
thousands of dollars a night. Contractors found work, finally building
Abolita's home on top of it that animal she had
owned for years. Mexicans working in the US since stacks
of cash back to the rancho for food on the table,
to build homes, churches, and paved roads. Mexico was in
(15:59):
no hurry to shut that pipeline down. Men who would
go back to the ranchos with stories about the land
of jobs and opportunities, stories that would inspire many more
Mexicans to go to the US because it was a
goal rush and in north. And one of them was
(16:21):
a nineteen year old kid from Carbone, Jalisco. My dad,
that's what you mean. I mean, my mom hostels the
sas from one of yeah, my dad's neighbors and even
cousins would come back to my dad's rancho with nice
(16:42):
cars and cash to spend. My dad was seeing how
quickly families around his neighborhood were changing when money was
sent back from the US. They would dress better, eat better.
(17:04):
And for my dad, who many times only had it
to eat, these changes were beyond his wildest dreams. So
he left for the US when he was just nineteen
years old, hoping to send money back to his family
in Mexico. At the beginning of this podcast, I told
(17:36):
myself that I was not going to ask my dad
to tell me the story of why he came, and
I was even more sure that I wasn't gonna do
it after talking to my mom. I was scared, actually,
no more like selfish. I did not want to hear
his story because I knew how painful it would be
for me to hear my dad reflect on such a
(17:56):
vulnerable moment in his life. But I found the courage
to ask him a question I never dared to ask.
He then yes, um, uh, who are you? We'll see
you the aske renuons, as the answus say, or something
(18:18):
the only don't know we are. You can hear how
difficult it was from me asking my dad I growing
up he had dreams of his own, And when he
answered that he dreamed of going to school and getting
an education, you can hear my heart break the sim
(18:56):
the netflce. Okay, let me fast, take you know your
My dad was seeing how his Rancho was changing and
he wanted that too for his family. Houses were being built,
people were wearing shoes, and he wanted that too. He
(19:18):
was the oldest and the responsibility weighed heavy on him.
Coming to the US. Seemed to be working for everyone
else around him. Why couldn't he have a piece of
it too. As soon as my dad arrived, he began
building my abilite those a home. With the money he
was sending back. His entire family went from living in
(19:39):
a shack, everyone sleeping on the floor, to having a
house of their own with walls and doors. And my
dad did that for his family. Many young Mexican men
did just that. But it wasn't just men who came
(19:59):
to the US looking for work on the farms. My
mom tells me that she was pregnant and working in
Washington picking apples. That's Wendy Salasar born in a farmtown
in Washington State, where both her undocumented parents worked the
apple harvest. They worked together, so my dad would help
her out and say, you picked the ones at the
bottom so you don't have to climb up the ladder
(20:22):
and be stretching. So I believe at the time she
was pretty far along in her pregnancy, probably about five
months or more when she was doing this. I can't
even imagine having to pick apples well pregnant. But most
of these people migrated in a circular pattern. They came
(20:43):
to the chambard then went back home. That's what my
dad did, but he didn't work on the farms. He
just kind of hung out and visited his family and
sometimes would work in a warehouse in southeast Los Angeles. Yeah,
more were less, but our wow him. My dad says
(21:13):
he made chairs for theaters stadiums all while undocumented, and
after two weeks of working he would go back home
to Sinaloa. Since crossing the border was so easy, he
didn't even think twice about going back and forth, and
since some of the employers looking for cheap labor here
in the US were even asking for legal status, he
knew he could just keep working until there was no
(21:34):
more work, and then something else happened thousands of miles away.
That would change everything. The fall of Saigon. Out of
(21:54):
the shadows will be right back now, back to the show.
According to article on the Intercept, the idea of weaponizing
(22:15):
the border quote reaches back to at least the nineteen seventies,
to the presidency of Jimmy Carter, when the US began
to turn its attention away from Vietnam toward its southern border.
Within this last decade, the problem of undocumented aliens or
illegal aliens or undocumented workers has become increasingly severe. Yep,
(22:39):
Jimmy Carter, the Democrat liberal saint, requested and got approval
for about five million dollars to build defense along the
US southern border. And my dad said, it was simple economics.
(23:00):
The economy was bad and soldiers were coming home anticipating jobs,
while at the same time, more and more people were
fleeing a recession in Mexico. So President Carter and the
I n S started cracking down. Suddenly the cheap labor
that both Mexico and the US benefited from that basically
made it okay for our parents to come back and
(23:20):
forth to make a quick buck and live a better life.
Became the problem. Suddenly, our parents became the people that
nobody wanted. Now picture this. It's a cold and foggy
night in south San Diego. Waiting in the fog are
hundreds of Mexican migrants. They're being chased by Mexican police
(23:44):
from the south and hunted by border patrol in the north.
The coyotes strategy is to throw rocks at the border patrol,
creating a diversion so the migrants could cross, But on
this night, it's a setup. As the coyotes looked for
the right moment to cast their stones, out of the
thin fog come three ram chargers rushing at them. Panicky
(24:11):
fearing for their lives, the migrants turned and start running
back south. But there's another surprise waiting for them. Police
officers from Tijuana there to arrest them. All. Suddenly surrounded,
the migrants are forced back north to the border, this
time against their will, leading them right into the border patrol.
(24:33):
The migrants are apprehended, charged, convicted, and incarcerated before being
sent back to Mexico. This story, told by author and
Rakiminian in her book Undocumented Lives, captures a sentiment of
those in power in both the US and Mexico by
(24:56):
the late seventies and early eighties, migrant workers were people
without a place. In their presence, their mere existence could
be denied by those in power in both nations. These
people were cornered and caught hiding in the fog between
two countries that didn't want them. Their entrapment was part
of a larger trend happening that may sound familiar. People
(25:20):
without a home, without community, unwanted by the nation they
came from. In the place they we're going, they belonged nowhere.
Nidia key, Nidia, Yeah, living in the shadows. So from
(25:41):
that unhappy picture, we come back to the Mexican Brady
Bunch photo at the top of the show. That was
one of the last times my dad crossed as an
undocumented Peter Brady into the US, just by driving here
in the early part of the seventies before the crackdown.
Then in December of nineteen seventy nine, on a rainy night,
(26:03):
my father put on some rain boots, some levies and
crossed the hills under helicopter searchlights, being chased by border
patrol agents and crossed into a much different version of
the America. He used to come visit for weeks at
a time. My dad and millions of others planted roots
(26:23):
here in the US, just as much of the country
had decided people like him or the problem plaguing the nation.
At the end of a socially and economically turbulent decade,
and in the unlikely hero of our story gets elected President.
(26:45):
President mcgans courageous and talented leader. He's making admirable progress
in the difficult task of moving El Salvador toward democracy.
I let my preoccupation with the hostages intrude into areas
where it didn't belong. She used eighty names, thirty addresses,
fifteen telephone numbers to collect food stamp social security for
(27:08):
The key to our anti drug strategy is to call
instead for the national crusade against drugs. And we could
have a very hostile and strange neighbor on our border.
Rather than making them for talking about putting up offense,
Why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems.
Make it possible for them to come here legally with
the work per myth, and then while they're working and
(27:30):
earning here, they pay taxes here like the migrants and
the fog our parents were trapped between two forces, the
businesses who were exploiting them for their cheap labor, in
a growing conservative movement that wanted a crackdown at the border.
Something needed to be done. What's come in next time
(27:59):
on Out of the Shows the story of a six
foot giant, the grandson of an immigrant and author of Urka,
the bill that ended up changing the course of this generation.
So we had to do something. Character third inuit of
doing Nothing. Out of the Shadows is written by Caesar Hernandez.
(28:20):
It's also written, edited, hosted, an executive produced by Patti
Rodriguez and Eric Galindo. It's produced by Bets Cardanas, Karen
Lopez and Gabby Watts. It's sound design, mixed and mastered
by Jesse nice Longer. Our studio engineer is Clay Hillenburg.
Karen Garcia That's Me is our announcer. Out of the
(28:44):
Shadows is the production of Seeing Me, Other Productions and
School of Humans in partnership with My Heart's Michael Tura
podcast Network. The podcast is also executive produced by Giselle Banzes,
Virginian Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Chad Crowley. Our marketing and
our team is led by Jasmine Mahia, original music by
(29:06):
a Arenas, and if you loved his cover of Los
Caminos La Vida, this podcast theme song, you can listen
to it on all music platforms. Historical audio for Out
of the Shadows comes from the Reagan Presidential Library and
the National Archives. Special thanks to Ian Vargas, Alex and Ali,
(29:29):
Caitlin Becker, gob Chabran, Daisy Church, Angel Lopez Glendo, Julianna Gamiz,
Ryan Gordon, Brian Matheson, Claudia Marty Corina, Oscar Ramidez, John Rodriguez,
Juan Rodriguez, Joshua Sandoval, Eric Sclar, Tony Sorrentino, and Megan Tan.
(29:57):
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