The 'Braceros', America's Mexican Guest Workers
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2018
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
During the last years of World War Two, the American government began hiring poor Mexicans to come to work legally on US farms. The scheme was known as the 'Bracero' programme and lasted until 1964. Mike Lanchin presents archive recordings of some of those involved in the programme, using material collected by the University of Texas at El Paso.
Photo: A group of Mexican Braceros picking strawberries in a field in the Salinas Valley, California in June 1963 (Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hello and welcome to the History Podcast on the BBC World Service with Witness. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm Mike Lanchin. Today we're going back to the 1940s and 1950s when |
| 0:46.1 | hundreds of thousands of Mexicans were contracted to work legally in America. It |
| 0:52.2 | was part of a US government scheme known as the Bracero |
| 0:55.6 | program which began during World War II. I've been listening to archive |
| 1:00.8 | recordings of some of those involved. |
| 1:04.0 | I heard they were hiring people to come and work. |
| 1:09.0 | I heard they were hiring people to come and work in the US, |
| 1:12.0 | so I got excited to come and work in the US so I got excited to come. |
| 1:17.0 | We never had a day off. |
| 1:19.3 | Sometimes we worked through seven days from morning to late in the afternoon. |
| 1:25.0 | Money, I sent what I could I could. |
| 1:30.0 | I could. I never stopped sending money. |
| 1:32.0 | I always sent something so that my... I could |
| 1:35.0 | survive. These are just two of the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, |
| 1:40.0 | mostly poor, many illiterate, almost all peasants who went to work legally in the United States during |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.