Nicolas Saldana Sandoval covered his eyes with one hand and sobbed gently. The 70-year-old man with the bushy brows and thinning hair took a sip of water and quickly regained his composure, but a big tear clung to the skin beneath his left eye -- a bittersweet bubble of memory that had welled up from nearly 50 years in the past.
Saldana and his wife, Refugio, were the first of los viejos to arrive in downtown Los Angeles on Friday morning with a personal yet historic tale to tell. He was a bracero, and like the World War II veterans whose places in the fields the first of these Mexican guest workers were hired to take, starting in 1942, their numbers are dwindling. Saldana entered the program in the late 1950s, toward the end of the 22-year run that brought an estimated 1 million to 2 million Mexican laborers north to work American fields and food-processing plants -- first as substitutes for farm boys who were off carrying M1 carbines or manning battle stations, and later to assure growers of a steady supply of cheap but fully legal labor.
The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History is determined to secure the braceros' stories before they go -- for scholars, for a traveling museum exhibition that's planned several years down the road, and for the sake of the children and grandchildren in the United States and Mexico, who often have gotten the story piecemeal, if at all. Last July, the Bracero History Project began an ongoing cross-country, cross-border effort to record the voices of the men who worked in the program, of the family members they left behind for hitches that could last up to 18 months, and of Americans who interacted with them along the way.
"Most [bracero] studies are on policy. Our goal is to give it a little more dimension, to focus on the social and cultural aspect, how it affected the families, the towns in Mexico, their children and their communities," said L. Stephen Velasquez, an associate curator at the Smithsonian who was overseeing the project's testament-taking swing through Southern California -- over the weekend in Los Angeles, and Friday to May 26 in Coachella, Blythe, Heber and San Bernardino. (For information: [202] 633-3905)
The bracero past may be prelude if President Bush is able to push through a plan to curb illegal immigration by creating a new guest-worker program. Congress will consider proposals as it attempts to pass a new immigration bill this month. Velasquez said that the National Museum of American History is not trying to influence the debate over immigration, which has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets. Instead, the Smithsonian is gathering stories for the long haul, so that whatever policies are adopted now, those wanting to draw parallels and conclusions will at least have a solid narrative of what it meant to work as a bracero -- and to have one's future and family life shaped by the experience.
It's a largely grass-roots effort. Even though led by a huge federal institution, the Bracero History Project is moving forward mainly on the volunteer labor of graduate students across the country, among them the dozen or so from USC who, in one of those only-in-L.A. moments, gathered in Little Tokyo with clipboards and tape machines, preparing to record Mexican stories.
The initial impetus for the project, Velasquez said, was the Smithsonian's 1998 purchase of 1,700 never-published photographs from the widow of Leonard Nadel, a California photographer who spent two weeks in 1956 documenting the bracero experience. Nadel began at recruiting stations in Mexico and followed the workers across the border, taking black-and-white pictures of them at work, in their barracks and in the amusements their free time allowed. Ana Rosas, who is about to complete her doctorate at USC, sought out the photo archive several years ago. Velasquez said her study of the everyday lives of braceros and their families -- she hopes to turn her dissertation into a comprehensive book on the subject -- helped steer the theme of the research project and planned exhibition.
The project so far has proceeded on a shoestring -- a $48,000 grant from the Smithsonian Latino Center is funding the first year of research. The study has gained speed and momentum by teaming with a parallel oral history project on the braceros that was launched in 2002 at the University of Texas at El Paso.
More than 300 individuals' recollections had been recorded going into the weekend in L.A., and researchers also have begun to collect photographs, tools and clothing they'll need to flesh out the planned museum exhibition.
