El otro lado

Deborah Cohen shatters the American Gothic myth of the hardworking family farmer and his devoted wife struggling toward the American dream who are undermined by cheap labor from south of the Rio Grande. Cohen’s Braceros is a transnational history that exemplifies the best historical practices in a growing field. In this timely work, Cohen illustrates how a group of perceived marginalized workers, braceros, interacted with state and non-state actors, on both sides of the border, who had diverse, and at time competing, sets on interests. This is a history of modernization but also of race, class, gender, diplomacy, profit, and duplicity. Based on an array of documentation including oral interviews, Braceros is an important work that fits well into any classroom due to an engaging writing style and the ever-present issues that Cohen tackles. In Mexico, braceros have been presented as country bumpkins or ne-do wells that had to go to the other side of the border to seek out opportunity. In elite Mexican circles, braceros remain embarrassing historical figures. Yet, Cohen demonstrates that the men who entered the program may have desperately needed to work, but they also embodied critical political, social, and cultural desires of the time. In the United States, the demand for agricultural workers was crucial. In contrast, the braceros served as agents of modernity. By going north, the Mexican government proposed that they would bring back new ideas regarding work and consumerism, and in turn, lift up their families and communities. For the growers in the United States, few of whom were family farmers, they sought a cheap and docile workforce. Cohen illustrates how growers humiliated the men by checking their bodies and teeth like chattel. The men thought of themselves as hard-workers but also as agents of change. For the growers, they viewed Mexicans as predisposed to stoop labor to work alongside Filipinos, Japanese, and Chinese workers, and they were not to work heavy equipment such as combines and tractors.

Alliance · Elite · Modernization theory · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Wife · Gender Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law