« Arriving in Aguascalienties | Main | Starting the Second Week of School »
August 7, 2005
Braceros in the Plaza
Looking out at the plaza this morning from our balcony we noticed about 100 men and some women gathered below. All looked elderly and nearly all wore cowboy hats. After getting ready we headed down and Em was taking a few pictures of the plaza when she struck up a conversation with one of the men. It turns out that they were former Braceros, those that had worked in the infamous workers program in parts of the U.S. during the 1950s and afterwards. They were gathered in the plaza for a meeting with some government officials. The meeting had to do with wages that were withheld for them for retirement years ago by their U.S. employers yet they had never seen. The head representative of the group made his way over to talk to us as at first some of the men thought we were the ones there to negotiate. According to him the U.S. had sent the money to the Mexican government but they still had never seen a dime of it. The government officials had still not arrived.
We talked for about 20 minutes and took some pictures, then headed off to breakfast at a restaurant we had spotted the night before. It was a great breakfast and Em took some excellent photos of the place. We had our first taste of Mexican coffee, which to date we had not yet discovered.
Next we were off to the Posada Museum. Passing the plaza I could see that the representatives from the government had arrived and all the men were crowded around them. We walked for about 10 minutes, eventually finding the museum at the other end of town. It was truly amazing. Below each of Posada’s prints were his original metal lithographs. The precision and mind it took to create these works of art was something to observe. If you´re interested, take a look at some of our pictures which will do his work much more justice than I can in words.
After the museum, we headed back to the hotel as we had to check out at 1:00 and catch our bus at 2:00. On the way we had some time to talk with a few more of the Braceros, who were still negotiating with the government officials (4 or 5 women who looked to be taking their names). The men were very disgruntled. Again, there would be no money for them today. They had planned a meeting for the 15th to continue the negotiations and one man told me that if something wasn’t resolved then they might take the congressional building by force.
It was a sad sight seeing these men in their 70’s and 80’s who still had the mentality of the young strong men they once were, yet you could tell were not being taken very seriously by the women from the government who were taking down their information. One man told me that a month ago the riot police had come with shields and horses to drive them out of the plaza. I’m going to see if I can find an article on it. It seems insane though as some of these old men can only walk at a snail’s pace.
We continued talking about Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers, current proposals in the U.S. to reestablish a Bracero type program, and working conditions they faced in the United States. It was an interesting conversation and yet another topic for an upcoming essay.
We got back to Guanajuato just fine and after checking email in town we headed up for dinner. After telling everyone about our trip, we talked to the girls and Alejandro about how they were starting classes at the University tomorrow. Haydeé had still not decided which university she was going to attend while Claudia told us about the internship she had just completed with a mining company. After that it was off to bed.
Posted by Peter Mork at August 7, 2005 11:54 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.economicswithaface.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/214/[What is Peter Mork's first name?]
(Please add the answer to the question to the end of the link in order to trackback this entry.)
Comments
Email Comments Here