California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Then its North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine
Woody Guthrie, from ‘Pastures of Plenty’
Come labor for your mother, your father and your brother
For your sister and your lover, bracero
Come pick the fruit of yellow, break the flower from the berry
Purple grapes will fill your belly, bracero
Oh, Welcome to California
Where the friendly farmer will take care of you
Phil Ochs from ‘Bracero’
The shortage of workers to pick pole beans in Independence, apples in Hood River, and hops in Mission Bottom near Salem provided the impetus, in Oregon, to participate in what was to become the Bracero program. Started by the Federal government in 1942, the idea was to bring able bodied workers from Mexico to help harvest food which was sorely needed by not only the people in this country, but the allies whose countries were torn by the war. Bracero can be loosely translated as ‘unskilled worker’, though it has been loosely translated as other things as well. When announcements asking for a few hundred workers were released in Mexico City in 1942, some 50,000 showed up. Eventually workers from Mexico were harvesting crops from Florida to California, and in Idaho, Washington and many other places. During the war and after these workers provided a significant workforce that played a vital role in keeping agriculture moving in the United States.
After the war many of these men brought their families back to the places they had worked as Braceros and began what was to be the migrant worker economy that lasted well into the seventies. Around Stayton, Independence, Woodburn and many other places there were farms set up to house workers. The housing was decrepit, sub-standard and pathetic by any standards. Long row bunkhouse style clapboard buildings often with dirt floors. Poor or no plumbing, and no or little sanitation, people were expected to be working from dawn to dusk anyway, picking crops at microscopic pay, so housing conditions were deemed irrelevant. All the members of the family worked, from grandparents to toddlers, and it was necessary, to make ends meet and be able to travel on to the next place, the next crop.
I spent some time at Green Villa farm near Independence in the early sixties, and it was a community, lots of kids, and lots of dirt, the shack bunkhouses were painted white, but that barely hid the inadequacy of the housing.
Some of these people broke out of the chain, and overcoming prejudice (there were signs saying, ‘no dogs or mexicans allowed’ in businesses in Oregon and Idaho) got their children in school and managed to acquire permanent work. The advent of the United Farm Workers Union led by Cesar Chavez in California helped to bring about changes in work and life conditions for farm workers.
The grape boycott was the most visible tool used in the fight, and it gathered a momentum unforeseen by even its creators.
In the late sixties Oregon was a pioneer in improving conditions in housing, providing schooling and healthcare to the migrant laborers. These improvements led to the demise of the large farm labor camps.
In the early seventies Collegio Cesar Chavez was opened in Mt. Angel providing education and grounding for Latinos in the Willamette valley. Taking the former grounds of Mt. Angel College, CCC was the first four year accredited college in the country oriented and managed by Latinos. Although the college closed its doors in 1983, it pointed the way to cultural and societal community for a large segment of the population.
The large latino communities in Woodburn, Stayton and other places in Oregon have their roots in the Bracero program, migrant worker immigration, and the United Farm Workers.
In this time of clamoring for the military on the borders, of hostility to immigrants, we should take a moment to think of the roots of the problem, its origins in government programs and the needs of our economy. The spiraling out of control of illegal immigration is as much the direct result of American need as it is in Mexico’s dependence on receiving the fruits of that need.
