The Bracero program & Mexican farm workers in the U.S. (part 2 of 2)

The bracero program was continued in one form or another long past the end of World War II.  It ended in 1964 due to fears that the Mexican workers were taking jobs from native born citizens of the United States.  In addition, a serious car accident involving a bus loaded with braceros in which many were killed helped convince the Mexican government that the program needed to be ended.

At the outset of the bracero program, Texas (a major user of Mexicans as farm laborers) was unwilling to join it.  This was because its farmers wanted to pay lower wages and be less careful about the conditions under which the workers lived.  The workers entered the state illegally, and thus were particularly vulnerable.  The farmers insultingly called them “wet backs,” since many of them had to swim the Rio Grande in order to enter Texas, and employed them by the thousands.

The Rio Grande Valley.  Map courtesy of University of Texas at Austin.

In 1946, however, the government of Mexico withdrew all its workers from Texas due to serious abuses and at that point, the state entered the bracero program.

There are many sites on the internet which talk about the bracero program and farm laborers from Mexico.  The Smithsonian recently organized an exhibition about it, which can be found on-line and which I like very much.  The exhibition includes some great posters with especially fine photographs, plus text in both English and Spanish.  You can find the posters at: http://www.sites.si.edu/bracero/Bracero%20Posters.pdf, and learn more about the traveling exhibit at http://www.sites.si.edu/bracero/.  

Another one of the wonderful Smithsonian posters (with photo: Leonard Nadal).

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We are in the process of creating a documentary, Strong Roots, Bright Flowers:  Arts of Mexican Immigrants and Chicanos, which talks about the bracero and other farm labor programs as they are related to the creation of música norteña/TexMex music.  You can see a trailer from it on YouTube - go to this LINK; or sign up for our monthly newsletter here LINK where we can keep you up to date.

Cotton, hot sun, and "gitanos" in southern Spain - (part 1 of 2)

The mid-afternoon sun was high in the sky, and she guessed that the temperature was well above 45° (our 100°).  Her straw hat at least protected her face, but she longed to lie in the shade next to a cool stream.

She could hear her oldest brother in the row next to hers, as he sang.  He was a lot farther up his row.  He worked fast.

She wore work gloves because otherwise, the cotton bowls scratched her hands, but the gloves made her pick the cotton more slowly and made her hands sweat.  Her parents, in the two rows on the other side, and the other adults didn't use gloves because they needed to get the harvest in.  If they didn´t, they'd lose their job.

Half the field away, there was another group of 12 working on their rows.  With the two groups working from sun up to sun down,  the cotton should all be harvested in 3-4 days.  If nothing went wrong.

Last year, she's put her hands in a bees´ nest and even though she ran fast, she got a lot of stings.  That really slowed things down.  She had to stop work for the next few days and her mother took off the first afternoon, to tend to her.

She didn't understand why no one in the other group ever sang.  In her group, all of them family, there was always someone singing...singing to  help pass the time and forget about the aching backs and sore hands while they worked;  the young men from the men's and boy's cortijo (sleeping shed) singing at night to their girlfriends in her cortijo;  the old women and men getting together outside at night after work, singing the old songs just for the sheer pleasure of listening them.

When she asked her mom why no one in the other group sang, all her mother would say is that "We are gitanos (Spanish Gypsies).  They are not."

She wished the field were smaller, but she knew that when they finished with this cotton, the neighboring estate owner would want them to work there.  And after all the cotton was gone, it would be nearly time for the olives.  Then the grapes.  The adults started in mid-spring, pruning the grapes.  The fava beans came next, and everyone worked on those.  Then, the garbanzos, cotton, olives, and the grape harvest.   The grape harvest was the big one, the really important one.  Without the grapes, they might not have enough to make it through the year.

A field of fava beans in Andalucia, southern Spain.

She knew that because her mom and dad told her when she complained about how hard it was to spend months and months harvesting crops.  They told her she needed to get used to it, because when she was 14 or 15, if she wasn´t already married and probably even if she was, she would have to work harder, like the other adults.

In the winter, when there was no work in the fields, they lived in town.  Her dad told her the town was called Jerez de la Frontera, and that it was part of a big country called Spain.  He told her that there were other countries in the world, but they didn´t matter because they were far away.

Her two oldest uncles didn´t live in town, though.  They lived in little shacks made of tin out by the river.  She liked to go visit them sometimes but was glad she didn´t live in a shack.  In her family´s rooms, when it rained, the water didn´t leak in and in the winter, the cold air didn´t come in around the cracks.

Even though in her family´s rooms, they had to bring water up from the well in the courtyard to have something to drink and for her mom to wash up.  In the summer, one corner of the courtyard smelled really bad because that was where the outhouse was.  She didn´t much like going to the outhouse in the summer, it was so stinky, but you had to get used to it.

[We'll conclude this with part 2, which we'll publish on Nov. 1, 2014.]
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We are working on a documentary about flamenco and its connection to the gitano community.  Go HERE to see the web site and a trailer, and HERE to sign up for our newsletter so you can keep up with the progress on our work.

The Bracero program & Mexican farm workers in the U.S. (part 1 of 2)

It’s fall, time for good fruit, good vegetables…and time for people to harvest them – thousands of people.  It’s also a good time to think back on the bracero program, along with other “programs” that brought farm laborers into the United States from Mexico.  Of course, not all farm laborers in the United States have come from Mexico, but in the past 50 years, the great majority did. 

Back to the bracero program:  it was originally intended to be Mexico’s way of contributing to the World War II effort.  The United States experienced a major labor shortage due to the war, and negotiated a treaty with Mexico to supply that labor.  The workers were to be temporary, and would not be allowed to apply for permanent residency or citizenship.  They also were to be confined primarily to farm labor.  This was the original bracero program.  

Poster from the Smithsonian's exhibition about braceros.

The program provided farmers in the United States (especially owners of very large farms) with labor, allowing for continued large-scale production of food.   In addition, it gave Mexicans, who at that time were passing through an economic downturn and anxious for jobs, what was theoretically to be decent work under decent conditions for decent pay.

While some owners of these large farms indeed provided what they were supposed to, others provided the workers with poor conditions, or failed to pay them all they were owed, or engaged in other abuses.  In addition, as they first entered the United States, the workers were subject to practices such as being sprayed with DDT at the border.  (At that time, the full extent of the harm of DDT was not known.)

Center portion of another of the Smithsonian posters.

The work was very hard, in many cases made especially difficult because they were required to use something known as the “short-handled hoe,” a tool which required the laborer to bend over all day while working in the fields.  Long-handled hoes existed which would not have required this, but the farm owners considered these to be bad for the plants.  (Apparently, the plants were more important than the workers, many of whom experienced severe back problems because of using the short-handled hoe.)

NOTE:  photos in the posters are by Leonard Nadal.

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We are working on a documentary, Strong Roots, Bright Flowers:  Arts of Mexican Immigrants and Chicanos, which will tell more about farm laborers from Mexico.  To keep up with our work, sign up for our newsletter at this LINK.

 

Shortz Film Festival

I have traveled to Berlin to attend a festival screening one of my documentaries.  I have traveled to Athens to attend a screening of one of my videos.  I have traveled to various cities in Spain and this spring, will travel to France for the same reason.

But I have never travelled in the United States, outside of the Bay Area, to any film festival where my work was showing.  That's why I decided to go to the Shortz Film Festival to enjoy the festival and attend the screening of my short, The Blacksmith., which is a tone poem...no story line, just images and the like in praise of a traditional art form.

Filmmaker (made Tough Case), Jasmine (festival organizing team), and me.

                                                 

That, plus I really liked the organizers' enthusiasm and the way the festival was presented.  And I liked the logo - a pair of bright yellow boxer shorts with red polka dots.  Very cool.

Finally, the festival was outside of the Bay Area but not too far away:  Chico, California.  Very do-able.

I'm glad I went.  Some of the shorts were very, very good.  I especially liked four:  one filmed in China ("Cold Spring" by Shiyan Feng), an animation done by a young Swiss filmmaker ("La Fille aux Feuilles" of Marina Rosset), one from Chico, itself ("The Mugging" - can't remember the filmmaker's name) and a German one ("Call her Lotte" of Annekathrin Wetzel).

In addition, the parties were nice, there were interesting people there, the festival itself was in a nice venue (the El Rey Theater), and Chico is a nice place...with a huge, beautiful park near the center of town.

The El Rey Theater.

Mercury mines at Almadén - how we´ll use them (part 3 of 3)

We're hoping to use the mercury mines at Almadén in our documentary-in-progress, Flamenco:  la tierra está viva (Flamenco:  the Land Is Still Fertile).  Because it seemed to use that the mines are a good representative of the centuries of discrimination and mistreatment of gitanos in Spain, we wanted to film a scene there.

Oh, why not.  Me, getting ready to go down into the mine.

Our original idea was to have singer and co-director Antonio de la Malena sing some flamenco tientos from a CD called Persecución, part of which refers to the mines.  The album is sung by el Lebrijano with verses written by Felix Grande.  On listening to the CD, however, I don´t much like the verses...not poetic enough for my taste.

The second level of the mine.  There are 32 levels, most of them flooded now.

The next idea was for Malena to write some verses of tientos, thinking of the mines and the gitano prisoners.  We´d film him inside the mines themselves, beside the tunnel called the galeria de los gitanos.  This would be reasonably complicated and expensive but if we got funding, well, why not?

But another problem has developed.  For several centuries, the mines were run by a German banking company as a means for the Spanish crown to pay  it back for some monstrous loans.  The best work on what conditions were like in the mines is a secret report written by an agent of the Spanish king in which he interviewed both prisoners and the mine´s manager and prison supervisors.

Until modern times, the mine shafts were lit with these oil lamps.

This secret report was written in 1593 by Mateo Alemán, a lawyer and man later to become a novelist who was a great influence on Cervantes.  Alemán, himself, served time in debtor´s prison and so was sympathetic to the prisoners and not to the German company managing the mines.

Luckily enough, I found a copy of his report in the library of the University of California at Berkeley.  I´ve now read the entire thing plus an introduction written by a relatively contemporary Spanish poet.

Without going into too much detail, this secret report is helpful but problematic.  In the first place, at the time it was written, gitanos sent to the mines were sent for actual crimes.  In later centuries, they were often sent simply for being gitanos.  It was against the law to be gitano.  That is more what we want to illustrate.

Looking down the shaft where the water was brought up from lower levels.

It is likely, however, that the conditions in the very late 16th century (1593) were not too different from the conditions in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, when gitanos were sent to Almadén simply for being gitanos.  This would mean we could still make use of the secret report.  But there is even another problem:  lots more gitanos were sent as prisoners to work (usually for life) on the Spanish galleons than were sent to the mines.

The galleons were sailing ships and as far as I know, there aren´t anyof those left.   On the other hand, the people in charge of the mines would be delighted to have us film there.  Bottom line is that we are now thinking of letting the narrator explain the galleon part, and still film Malena singing a tientos in the mines - funding permitting.

NOTE:  In addition to gitanos, there were many white and even some Arab and black prisoners in the mines, along with slaves AND free miners.  The worse thing about the mines, by the way, was the mercury poisoning.  This is not to say that the prisoners and slaves were treated well;  often, it was pretty brutal.  But the mercury poisong...well, no fun.

Water pump and bucket.

AND A FINAL NOTE:  The task that the prisoners and slaves were made to do that was hardest was pumping water out of the mine, which was done with a hand crank.  The most dangerous job was sweeping ashes out of the processing shed.

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Our next post will be related to our documentary, Strong Roots, Bright Flowers:  Arts of Mexican Immigrants and Chicanos.  Keep up with our progress on the flamenco documentary and our other work by going to this LINK.

Mexico´s indigenous civilizations - the Aztecs (part 3 of 3)

And now, a brief run-down of Aztec history: 


The Aztecs, also called the Mexica, were part of a larger group of peoples who spoke the Nahuatl language and inhabited central Mexico.  Up until 1225, the Aztecs seem to have been nomads but after that date, they settled and built cities including the city which has now become the capital of Mexico.

At first, the Aztecs were vassals of other neighboring city states but slowly, through alliances and wars, they came to rule over the others and by 1427 had created an empire.

A pyramid and temple built by the Aztecs.

Their last great ruler was Montezuma II, who in 1620 was captured by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and shortly afterwards, died.  (Cortés´ generals had previously killed off most of the Aztec nobles and generals, attacking them while they were unarmed and in the middle of a religious celebration.)

The Aztecs had two emperors after Montezuma II died, but both ruled for only a few weeks, one dying of smallpox and the other, living as a captive of Cortés after the latter conquered the empire in 1621.   Five years after this conquest, Cortés had him executed.

Smallpox, incidentally, killed probably one third of the Aztec population between the arrival of the Spaniards (who brought the desease to Mexico) and Cortés´s triumph.

The Aztec Empire at its height, shortly before it was conquered by Cortés.

The fall of the Aztec empire did not mean the end of the Aztecs, of course.  Several thousand live in the United States, especially in the state of California and other states that border Mexico.  In Mexico itself, an estimated 1.5 million people speak the Nahuatl language and around 1 million of them consider themselves Aztec.  They live mainly in the Mexico City and its surrounding countryside.

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In our documentary-in-progress, Strong Roots, Bright Flowers:  Arts of Mexican Immigrants and Chicanos, we interview an Aztec drummer and watch part of an Aztec ceremony to learn more about Aztec culture. Keep up to date on our progress by going HERE.