Bracero Miguel
| 🌾 | |
| Era | The Sixties |
|---|---|
| Age | 30-45 |
| Home | Bakersfield, CA |
| Demographic | Mexican-American, agricultural worker |
| Lean | labour_left |
| Race | hispanic |
A Mexican-American farmworker in California's Central Valley in his thirties, among the poorest of the labour left. He is the least enfranchised Hispanic voter in the cast and the one the farm workers' movement is about to organise.
Who they stand for
The bracero programme brought Mexican contract labour to American fields from 1942 until Congress let it lapse at the end of 1964, and it held down wages for the Mexican-American families who lived in the Valley year round. Those families were citizens under the law, but few of them voted. California's English literacy test, migration between crops, and pressure from growers kept them off the voting rolls, and no farm worker was covered by the National Labor Relations Act.
This began to change during the decade, through organising among farmworkers themselves. César Chávez and Dolores Huerta founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. The Delano grape strike began in September 1965. The march to Sacramento followed in 1966, and the grape boycott made the United Farm Workers a national cause by 1968. When this bloc voted, it voted Democratic. The Viva Kennedy clubs of 1960 and Edward Roybal's election to Congress in 1962 were its first national successes, and Robert Kennedy's visit to Delano in 1966 connected it closely to the Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party.
Playing to them
He responds to a president who pays attention to the fields. This includes ending the contract labour system that undercuts his wages, bringing farmworkers under federal labour law, extending the minimum wage to agriculture, and a statement or visit for the Delano strikers. Housing, his children's schooling, and a Border Patrol that troubles growers as much as workers also matter to him. The farmworker movement is his clearest sign of sincerity, so a president who supports César Chávez and the grape boycott is trusted by him on other issues too. He does not forgive a president who takes the growers' side, who treats every Mexican face as a deportation case, or who ignores the Valley, the default, so he expects little from Washington.
His political weight is in the Southwest, so a president needing Arizona and New Mexico has more reason to court him than one needing Ohio. Winning him costs Texas Oil Jack and Ranch Hand Clyde, who see farm labour law as interference on their land, and it irritates Goldwater Barry Jr. Union Hall Frank and Appalachian Earl approve of the same measures, and Catholic Mary recognises her own values in the causes he supports.
Where they live
The five states where Bracero Miguel makes up the largest share of the electorate in the sixties:
- PR
- New Mexico
- Arizona
- California
- Texas