Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, August 4, 1942, is the start of the Bracero Program, a guest worker program that allowed Mexican nationals to take temporary agricultural work in the United States. Bracero is a name for an agricultural worker.

The program would run until 1964 with millions of Mexican workers coming to this country

as a result, mostly in the southwest and west. This is a program that is at the heart of

a lot of economic and cultural ties between the US and Mexico, something that I guess we're

hearing about a little less these days, but it's certainly something that's been a factor in our modern

politics so I'm joined to discuss it as always by

Nikola hammer of Colombia hello Nicky hey jody and I will say right off the

about this was suggested to us by Scott Beck listener so thanks to you we always

like doing ones that are brought to our attention by listeners and I will say you know I

actually knew about this program but through a fairly roundabout way which is I knew about it through a song by

Woody Guthrie called Deporti one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite artists

but it's about a plane crash in 1948 that killed 32 people most of whom were

migrant workers heading back to Mexico after doing a stint on

farms in the United States and the thrust of the song.

Nick, do you know this song?

I actually don't know this song, so'm actually excited to talk about it and very moving

but you know and the thrust of it is that when a story like this gets reported when you hear

when this crash was reported it was basically reduced to you know 28 deportees died in a plane

crash and I know that this is a specific incident and we will talk about the

basics of the program but you know that the Woody Guthrie song makes me think about the human dimension of a program like this and how the people who are part of it exist in the shadows, the workers have often been nameless and exploited, and somewhat between countries and between regulations.

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