Bracero Railroaders: The Forgotten World War II Story of Mexican Workers in The U.S. West

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BRACERO
RAILROADERS
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BRACERO
RAILROADERS
T H E F O RG OT T E N WO R L D WA R I I S TO RY O F
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MEXICAN WORKERS IN THE U.S. WEST
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Erasmo Gamboa
University of Washington Press
Seattle London
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2016 by the University of Washington Press

Printed and bound in the United States of America
Design: Dustin Kilgore
Typeset in Cassia, designed by Dietrich Hofrichter
201918171654321
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording,
or any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
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University of Washington Press

www.washington.edu/uwpress
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gamboa, Erasmo, author.
Title: Bracero railroaders : the forgotten World War II story of Mexican
workers in the U.S. West / Erasmo Gamboa.
Other titles: Forgotten World War II story of Mexican workers in the U.S. West
Description: 1st edition. | Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2016] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016007087 | ISBN 9780295998329 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Foreign workers, MexicanUnited StatesHistory20th
century. | RailroadsUnited StatesEmployeesHistory20th century.
| World War, 19391945ManpowerUnited States. | World War,
19391945War workUnited States. | RailroadsUnited States
History20th century. | United StatesEmigration and immigration
Government policyHistory20th century. | MexicoEmigration and
immigrationGovernment policyHistory20th century. | World War,
19391945Participation, Mexican American. | World War, 19391945
Economic aspectsUnited States. | RailroadsWest (U.S.)History20th
century.
Classification: LCC HD8039.R12 U634 2016 | DDC 331.6/2687207809044
dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016007087
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For Adriana Cristina,

Andrea Elena, and Carole
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
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List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction3
1. Labor and the Railroad Industry before World War II 10
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2. The Great Depression, Deportations, and Recovery 26
3. We Will Need the Mexicans Back39
4. Railroad Track Workers Needed;

Where Are the Domestic Laborers? 51
5. Bracero Railroaders, Soldiers of Democracy 61
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6. Contractual Promises to Keep76

7. The Perils of Being a Bracero105
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8. The Deception Further Exposed125
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9. Split Families: Repercussions at Home and Away 147

10. Victory and Going Home159
11. Forgotten Railroad Soldiers182
Epilogue 198
Notes201
Bibliography225
Index231
Illustrations follow page 94
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Preface and Acknowledgments
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hen the final story of the American railroads has been written,
a chapter of interest and significance will record the substantial
part that Mexicans played in helping to maintain thousands of
miles of war-burdened tracks at a time when, without this labor, these tracks
would surely have been seriously weakened, with unquestionably adverse
effect upon the war effort. It was a fortunate day back in May 1943 when the
state departments of the two countries, in conjunction with the War Manpower Commission and immigration officers, negotiated agreements permitting the entry of six thousand Mexican citizens into the United States
for unskilled labor on the railroads, a number that was increased to twenty
thousand in June of that year, to forty thousand in March 1944, to fifty thousand the following July, and, early March 1945, to a new ceiling of seventyfive thousand.1
Acknowledgments
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Several early influences inspired this book on the World War II bracero railroad workers. I grew up in rural Washington State, where trains and railroad
tracks intersected with everyones daily lives. My father, Gumecindo Gamboa, shared his memories with me about working on the railroad during
the 1920s. The railroad had taken him and his friends far away from Edinburg, Texas, to Ohio and West Virginia. The omnipresent trains of my youth,
coupled with my fathers railroad history, led to a personal interest in learning more about Mexican track laborers. As a hisflorian, I had written about
bracero agricultural workers in the Pacific Northwest during World War II.
I realized that I had overlooked the important experiences of the wartime
bracero railroad workers. This omission motivated me to write the forgotten
story of more than one hundred thousand Mexican braceros employed in
the U.S., maintaining the all-important network of railroad tracks during
World War II.
Later, in 2000, I worked on a lawsuit to recover decades-old unpaid wage
deductions owed to the wartime generation of agricultural and railroad bra-
ix
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Preface and Acknowledgments
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ceros. My association with the lawsuit provided an opportunity to gather

much archival information and to develop a deep awareness and empathy for braceros wide-range of harsh experiences. I collected rich and detailed first-person narratives from former bracero and Mexican American
railroaders. Workers reflections were also found in historical documents
or shared by their spouses and descendants. To be sure, I would not be as
informed had I not worked on this lawsuit. I owe a great debt of thanks to
Enrique Martnez for his confidence in asking me to work on the lawsuit
and help bring redress to this generation of Mexican workers.
Numerous other people have made equally important contributions to
this book. I am particularly indebted to Andrea E. Gamboa, who shares my
passion for social history. She became an active and encouraging participant in the research by helping to uncover records of the bracero railroad
workers in archival collections in Mxico and the United States. Felipe M.
Mndez carefully read and edited early drafts of the manuscript, offered
helpful feedback, and asked questions that greatly enhanced the story. Ana
Davenport and Ellen Palms offered valuable help preparing the manuscript.
The pursuit of knowledge about the railroad braceros took me in many
directions and brought me in contact with people whom I would never have
met otherwise. Vicky Sierra, Eulalio Partida, Mike Rivera, and Fernando
Barba Gonzlez are among the many women and men who graciously
welcomed me into their homes and responded to my inquiries about their
experiences. Now elderly, much time has passed since working on the railroads; recalling some of their experiences brought back unpleasant memories. Still, they shared my desire to tell their stories, and I am very appreciative. Of course, the braceros and their families whom I never met (but
whose names and voices of distress appear in the archival records) are just
as indispensable to the book.
I wish to acknowledge Ranjit D. Arab, at the University of Washington
Press, for his enthusiasm and stress-free way of facilitating publication of
the book. I am grateful for his exuberant commitment to the project. I am
also indebted to Deborah Barker at the Franklin County, Kansas, Historical Society; and Cara J. Randall at the California State Railroad Museum for
assisting with the illustrations. The indispensable support and encouragement of all these and other unnamed persons made this a most rewarding
endeavor.
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Abbreviations
Association of American Railroads
AFL
American Federation of Labor
ATSF
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad
BMWE
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees
BN
Burlington Northern Railroad
CBQ
Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad
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AAR
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CMSTP&P Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul, and Pacific Railroad

Chicago and North Western Railway Company
CTM
Confederacin de Trabajadores de Mxico

(Confederation of Mexican Workers, CMW)
FEPC
Fair Employment Practices Commission
GN
Great Northern Railroad
LULAC
League of United Latin American Citizens
MCPR
Milwaukee, Chicago, and Pacific Railroad
OPA
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Northern Pacific Railroad

Office of Price Management
Pacific Fruit Express
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NP
CNW
Railroad Retirement Board
SP
Southern Pacific Railroad
UP
Union Pacific Railroad
USES
U.S. Employment Service
WARE
Western Association of Railroad Executives
WMC
War Manpower Commission
WP
Western Pacific
RRB
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BRACERO
RAILROADERS
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Introduction
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everal interconnected interests and questions led to the writing of

this book. My roots are in a small farming community in eastern
Washingtons Yakima Valley. Framed by two ranges of low hills, this
area of the Pacific Northwest is nothing short of a farmers paradise. With
sufficient irrigation, agricultural production is limited only by the relatively
short six-month growing season. Even so, the valley supplies the nation and
global markets with an abundance of fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural products. Since the early twentieth century, industrial agriculture, the
mainspring of life in the valley, has relied on a plentiful supply of laborers to
work the land. Over time, commercial agriculture has extracted the human
energy of generations of Native American, Asian and Asian American, and
white as well as Mexican and Mexican American laborers.
A cost-effective and efficient railroad system to transport the valleys extraordinary volume of farm produce to market has been just as essential to
the areas economy. This industry, too, required an ample supply of workers,
at least until the 1960s, when many of the railroad depots and loading platforms began to close in the face of competition from the trucking industry.
Thereafter, the railroad required fewer and fewer workers, and today, the
distinctive and once-constant sound of moving freight and passenger trains
along the floor of the Yakima Valley has faded. The trains have given way to
convoys of long-haul diesel trucks that now carry most of the freight to and
from the area. There is little question that the railroad is still key to the valleys economy, but the golden age of trains is clearly in the past.
There is another, more personal, side to my interest in the intersection
of agriculture and the railroads. Like so many others before him, my father
worked the soil of Yakima farms until old age impaired his physical ability.
Over the course of many conversations after he ceased agricultural labor, I
gradually began to learn more about his life experiences. Born in Mxico at
the turn of the twentieth century, he immigrated to the United States at the
age of sixteen. He spent much of his life as a seasonal farmworker in Yakima,
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Introduction
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but before that he had been a track worker with the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, one of the nations oldest railroads. In the 1920s, in the company
of other Mexican track workers, my father repaired rail lines and flagged
trains in Ohio and farther east into Maryland and West Virginia, close to the
nations capital. His generation delineated the beginning of what became a
sustained passage of railroad labor from Mxico to the United States.
Some years ago, at a signing event for my book Mexican Labor and World
War II: Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 19421947, a woman approached to
say that although she appreciated this book on the regions history of Mexican agricultural labor, I had omitted a key component of wartime bracero
labor. Her husband had been a bracero during World War II, but not as a
farmworker. The U.S. government had contracted him to work on the nations railroads. My book, she told me, said nothing about the braceros who
came from Mxico to help keep the war trains moving. She was correct: I had
overlooked the Mexican railroad workers of that period. Not a criticism, but
pointing me to another facet of the bracero program.
I set out to correct this oversight and write the history of Mexican railroad workers like those of my fathers generation and, more to the point,
like this womans husband. In the process, I learned that the agricultural
and railroad industries of the West were inextricably linked. At different
times they were closely interdependent on each other to develop and thrive.
Farmers relied on trains to transport produce and bring supplies, and the
railroads needed farm produce to load their cars. Just as important, beginning in the early 1900s, both industries grew increasingly reliant on, and
developed an identical interest in, an endless supply of Mexican laborers
to take on the most physically demanding and lowest-paid tasks. Beginning
with the Immigration Act of 1924, and except for the 1930s, when the Great
Depression hit the railroads hard, Mexican immigrants gradually replaced
other ethnic and racial communities of railroad workers to become the preferred choice of labor on most western tracks.
The advent of World War II brought an unprecedented and robust fullemployment economy, until railroads and farms with low-wage jobs found
themselves unable to compete with other industries for workers. In response, the U.S. government turned to Mxico to ensure that the economys
privately owned railroad and agricultural sectors had sufficient supplies of
labor. For the duration of the war, U.S. and Mexican federal officials managed the movement of transnational agricultural and railroad workers under the terms of a binational administrative agreement.1 This book centers
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Introduction
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on the history of Mexican railroad workers who participated in that wartime labor compact between Mxico and the United States. Although the
labor agreement, officially called the Temporary Migration of Mexican Nonagricultural Workers, is generally understood as an expedient transborder
transfer of human social capital in times of a national emergency, it represents much more. That is, by World War II the racial inferiority of Mexicans
had been firmly established among railroad companies and the general
public. The wartime labor agreement simply built on existing fixed racially
constructed labor practices to transport braceros to perform low-paid, dangerous railroad jobs. In the face of serious wartime worker shortages in lowwage occupations, it is not difficult to understand why Mexican contract
workers were necessary to U.S. farm production. However, the importation
of industrial railroad labor raises other issues.
Dating back to the early 1900s, railroad employees, including track workers, successfully organized trade unions to safeguard their jobs from competition particularly among immigrant labor. So how did the railroad industry
manage to win approval from the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE) to import low-wage Mexican workers during World War II?
What do the experiences of these temporary, nonunion contracted laborers
reveal about the work culture of the railroads, the braceros themselves, and
U.S.Mxico relations? In addition, if the blueprint for the World War II bracero railroad program developed well before 1941, how does the experience of
my fathers generation with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad help frame our
understanding of the generation of Mexican industrial workers who came
north to keep the trains running and help the nation win the Great War?
As a result of extensively researching this topic, I have learned to appreciate the enormous human and technological energy expended to generate
and transport record levels of farm, forest, and factory production during
World War II. Because the wartime generation of Mexican railroaders entered the United States at a most critical period, where do the experiences of
these men fit in the historical record of the global war? Where does Mxico
itself fit into this discussion? Relations between Mxico and the U.S. were
gravely strained in the years leading to World War II. Clearly, Mxico was
also conscious of the racism experienced by U.S. residents of Mexican descent, yet the government agreed to permit more than three hundred thousand of its citizens to enter the U.S. as contract workers during the war years.
What did Mxico expect to gain, and were these goals realized? This book
attempts to answer these questions and generate other important inquiries.
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Introduction
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Finally, and purely for intellectual reasons, this book draws particular attention to Pacific Northwest social and labor history. From the viewpoint of
Mexican American and Chicano history, the Pacific Northwest remains one
of the least studied regions of the United States.
Just how and under what circumstances thousands of Mexicans immigrated to the U.S., and subsequently to the Pacific Northwest, is only now
beginning to be understood. In most cases, the recurrent interpretation of
Mexican American migration to and settlement in the Pacific Northwest begins with the postwar arrival of migratory farmworkers of Mexican descent.
This interpretation is so ubiquitous that the term Mexican has nearly become synonymous with migrant worker.
Despite mass worker immigration in the twentieth century from
Mxico and transregional migration to the Pacific Northwest, the history
of industrial workers to the region is largely absent. This failure to visualize the historical importance of nonfarm Mexican labor in facilitating the
development and sustaining the growth of the Pacific Northwest (and the
larger American West) economy has worked to obscure and marginalize
Mexican Americans. This may have been the precise concern raised by the
woman at my book signing years ago. Although it has taken several years
to address her criticism, this volume is a partial response. In the first chapters of the book I examine the development of the railroad industry and
the employment of Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest during the first
half of the twentieth century. This focus is instructive because it serves as
a useful contrast to other regions where the railroads also relied on a similar ethnic Mexican workforce. Moreover, the Pacific Northwest occupies
a particular space that is peripheral and distant from the Southwestthe
customary points of entry and observation for Mexican immigrant labor.
Until the unprecedented economic collapse of the 1930s hit the railroad
industry, a handful of companies had expanded to monopolize Americas
transportation capacity. These years of contraction serve to lay out some of
the immediate problems railroads faced when the nation entered war. The
industry faced having to retool equipment and rebuild infrastructure rapidly. But that was the least of the concerns. Restarting the flow of Mexican
labor that had been cut off by the Depression surfaced as well. Across the
railroad industry, the want of track workers threatened the railroads capacity to the point that the crisis drew the attention of government officials.
The governments emergency war plan to contract Mexican railroaders in
Mxico and transport them to the United States went into effect.
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Introduction
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The second half of the book covers the day-to-day administration and
the failures of the bracero railroad program as well as the experiences of
the men themselves. At times, straightforward problems, such as the recruitment of labor, are often the most difficult to sort out. As clear-cut as it
seemed, a coalition of railroad executives and government officials could
not simply enlist Mexican laborers for employment in the United States.
Labor shortages notwithstanding, any suggestion to authorize the federal
government to contract workers in Mxico also had to address highly sensitive immigration issues, the concerns of the BMWE, opposition from an
ingrained race-sensitive railroad work culture, as well as political opposition. I examine these and other issues from different perspectives in the
U.S. and Mxico. Consider, for example, how Mexican Americans and Mexicans greeted the news about the bracero program. As Ana Elizabeth Rosas
has written, many of the repatriates held vivid memories of the lingering
anti-Mexican sentiment that underscored the Depression-era deportation
of more than six hundred thousand.2 Now the United States was asking
Mxico to send its citizen workers back to the U.S.?
No sooner did the Mexican braceros arrive at the work sites when U.S.
officials, in their role as administrators and employers, began to lose sight of
the guarantees and rights that had been promised the laborers. Looking at
the harsh daily reality of these workers exposes the folly of obligating nonEnglish-speaking Mexican laborers to a contract in an alien social and work
environment. The conditions were outlined in individual work contracts,
but the braceros had no voice in the negotiations of the agreement. Building on Kitty Calavitas analysis of the function of the state in labor procurement, this book explores the contradictory role played by Mexican and U.S.
government agencies that determined the difficult experiences many men
endured working the railroads.3 Mexican officials were equally if not more
complicit in the hardships of the braceros; their pattern of general unresponsiveness to their own citizens cannot be exaggerated.
Despite the unintended results of the labor program, the overall experience of the Mexican railroaders offers some instructive lessons. The men,
regardless of their limitations, did not always despair; nor did they resign
themselves to the unfortunate circumstances that came at the hands of their
employers and the indifference of U.S. and Mexican governments. In the
United States, some braceros retaliated by walking away from their employers in protest; others were even more defiant and organized effective local
work strikes to seek relief. In this manner, they shattered the employers ex-
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Introduction
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pectation that fixing workers to a legal instrument would result in an acquiescent labor force. The Mexican women closely related to these braceros
were not passive either. Where other studies on bracero families state that
women did not bring up the continued deterioration of their quality and
standard of living, this book finds otherwise.4 In fact, wives, mothers, and
other relatives tried to intercede on behalf of the bracero men by appealing
directly to Mxicos president, Manuel vila Camacho. Of course, the departure of the workers also served to disrupt families and burden the women
with added responsibilities back in Mxico.
The allied victory in the fall of 1945 signaled the beginning of the final
stages of the bracero railroad program. By the following year, the government had officially repatriated most of the railroaders to Mxico. However,
some of the men deserted from their railroad employers and chose to remain in the United States, an unintended consequence of the program. In
other cases, no sooner did repatriated men arrive home than they began
preparing to return to the U.S. as free wage earners or by reenlisting in the
ongoing U.S.-Mxico bracero farmworker program. After the war, undocumented immigrant labor flows escalated tremendously alongside an increasing number of braceros contracted to work on U.S. farms. This immediate postWorld War II spike in immigration underscores a demographic
phenomenon started by the wartime bracero programs that continued
largely unaffected by numerous deterrence measures until the end of the
twentieth century.
Several other issues remained unresolved after the end of World War II.
One issue that continues to occupy the minds of many surviving braceros
and implicates both Mxico and the United States, is the return of all wages
that had been deducted from the bracero workers, both railroad and agricultural workers. From 1942 until 1947, employers withheld a percentage of all
wages earned for deposit in an obligatory savings plan account in Mxico.
Because the banks never paid many of the men, the deductions were a form
of wage theft. Decades have gone by and despite petitions, lawsuits, and political promises to pay back all of these earnings, the elderly workers and
their descendants, residing in both Mxico and the United States, are met
with a circle of denials and continue to wait for their earned income.
* * *
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Introduction
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The bracero railroad program and its counterpart in agriculture did not
originate entirely from the exigencies of World War II. Its roots lay in the
experiences of my father and the generations of thousands of other Mexican
laborers who emigrated from Mxico beginning in the early 1900s. Largely
unrestricted from migrating north during these years, they came to occupy
the vacancy left by other immigrant workers no longer permitted to immigrate by legal means to the United States or who were fortunate to move out
of low-wage railroad jobs. In the place of controlled Mexican immigration,
the bracero program acted to beckon countless emigrants, legal or not, north
to the United States. The government-sanctioned labor programs of World
War II served as the architect for generating vast postwar transnational Mexican immigration. In many ways the World War II bracero programs served
to engineer the racialized postwar transnational labor flows across the U.S.Mexican border. I agree with Natalia Molina, whose work demonstrates how
racial categories once constructed carry forward to function just as effectively in different spaces and time.5 The racial categorization of Mexican
labor in the decades before World War II was just as important a factor in
the harsh treatment of the men as was the empty promises of the workers
contracts.
Despite lessons learned from the World War II bracero railroad program, the idea of another state-managed bracero-like labor program (disguised as H2A visas for workers or using such euphemistic terms as guest
workers) prevails today among some employers and government officials.
By stepping back to the past, this book urges caution about implementing
such ideas. I tell the story of the World War II Mexican railroaders in the
U.S. by grounding their experience in history, in a straightforward manner,
from the bottom up. My intent is to give the Mexican men and women their
voice. They were, after all, no different from other ordinary individuals who
walked across the stage of history, except their voices are absent in most
World War II narratives. Throughout this book, in certain places, I left their
names and accounts as they themselves wrote them; the braceros limited
written-language skills discloses much about their lives. For the most part,
they were common men who answered the call to serve on the domestic
front of a foreign nation at war. While historians have told the story of World
War II from many perspectives, the history of the Mexican railroad braceros
remains largely obscured.6 With the publication of Bracero Railroaders, this
generation of men and women now find a place in the pages of history.
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MEXICAN WORKERS IN THE U.S. WEST

University of Washington Press

2016 by the University of Washington Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

University of Washington Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

For Adriana Cristina,

2. The Great Depression, Deportations, and Recovery 26

3. We Will Need the Mexicans Back39

4. Railroad Track Workers Needed;

6. Contractual Promises to Keep76

8. The Deception Further Exposed125

9. Split Families: Repercussions at Home and Away 147

Illustrations follow page 94

Preface and Acknowledgments

Preface and Acknowledgments

ceros. My association with the lawsuit provided an opportunity to gather

American Federation of Labor

Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad

Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees

Burlington Northern Railroad

Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad

CMSTP&P Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul, and Pacific Railroad

Confederacin de Trabajadores de Mxico

Fair Employment Practices Commission

Great Northern Railroad

League of United Latin American Citizens

Milwaukee, Chicago, and Pacific Railroad

Northern Pacific Railroad

Railroad Retirement Board

Southern Pacific Railroad

Union Pacific Railroad

U.S. Employment Service

Western Association of Railroad Executives

War Manpower Commission

everal interconnected interests and questions led to the writing of

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2. The Great Depression, Deportations, and Recovery 26

3. We Will Need the Mexicans Back39

6. Contractual Promises to Keep76

8. The Deception Further Exposed125

9. Split Families: Repercussions at Home and Away 147