Harvest of Loneliness: The Bracero Program
58 minute Historical Documentary
Airing on KPBS, Monday, September 5, 10 pm
Co-directors: Gilbert Gonzalez and Vivian Price
http://harvestofloneliness.com/

   Arizona’s controversial new immigration law has reignited heated debates on how best to address the country’s growing number of undocumented immigrants. In looking to future policies and programs, says Gilbert Gonzalez, Chicano/Latino studies professor, it’s important to reexamine the past. In a new documentary, “The Harvest of Loneliness: The Bracero Program,” Gonzalez and Vivian Price, an alumna of University of California, Irvine’s (UCI) political science doctoral program, explore the historical accounts of migrant Mexican farm workers brought into the U.S. from 1942-1964 under the temporary contract worker program known as the Bracero Program.

   A guest worker program is a central component of currently proposed comprehensive immigration reform. This timely documentary outlines the lessons learned from the Bracero Program, the US Federal Government’s most extensive guest worker program in operation from 1942 to 1964.

   The Bracero Program was sold to the public as an ideal solution to Mexico’s economic woes and the United States’ otherwise unfilled need for temporary farm labor. Harvest of Loneliness includes former braceros describing their harsh and dangerous working conditions, miserable living conditions, low pay, and stolen wages. The women and children left behind speak of villages emptied of men and the loneliness and insecurity they experienced in having to fend for themselves. Interviewees tell that nothing changed in the Mexican countryside while the U.S. rose to become a world agricultural powerhouse.

   Co-directors Gonzalez and Price make it clear that the Bracero Program was “an example of a guest worker program that was implemented solely to ensure accessible, cheap, controlled and disposable labor with little regard for the negative impact it had on Mexican families involved. As we explore new guest worker propositions in current immigration policy discussions, program intent must be scrutinized in order to ensure the best interests of all involved parties are taken into account, and lessons learned from the Bracero Program are a good place to start.”