External Conflicts

Far more visible than conflicts arising from the relative inflexibility of the program was the opposition among liberal, labor, and religious groups to the exploitative conditions of farm work. For many of the groups allied with the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the bracero program (P.L. 78) and its abuse at the hands of agribusiness came to symbolize another side to poverty and discrimination in America (Jenkins and Perrow, 1977). As such, attacks on P.L. 78 increased in intensity at the federal level from 1959 onward as a coalition of forces sought to dismantle agribusiness' "ideal" labor system (Pfeffer, 1980:34). These attacks, coupled with renewed efforts on the part of local

worker organizations to demonstrate the adverse effects of bracero labor (Majka and Majka, 1982:158–160), began to eat away at the political fortress protecting the program. Finally, in 1964, the anti-bracero forces and Kennedy administration appointees forced the expiration of the last bracero agreement.

Why did the bracero program finally succumb to its opponents' blows? This question has attracted a great deal of attention from social scientists and journalists (Bach, 1978; Craig, 1971; Galarza, 1977; Hawley, 1966; Jenkins and Perrow, 1977; Majka and Majka, 1982; Pfeffer, 1980; and Scruggs, 1960, among others) and, while their accounts vary, most, like Jenkins and Perrow (1977), peg the changing mood in national politics as the principal explanation. According to Jenkins and Perrow, the combination of efforts to eradicate the vestiges of legal discrimination in the South and the mass media coverage of poverty and exploitation in the Southwest (e.g., through such vehicles as Edward R. Murrow's "Harvest of Shame" in 1960) made it possible for financial and organizational resources to be mobilized in opposition to the bracero program (1977:252–258). Majka and Majka (1982:160), arguing that national elites were not solely responsible for the demise of P.L. 78, point to the long-standing efforts of poorly staffed and underfunded farm worker unions to create a local infrastructure of opposition as equally important factors in the victory. While the Majkas' analysis offers a better picture of the combined local and national efforts, it is clear from the historical information that both levels of action were important in stripping away at least the surface layer of agriculture's ideology of exceptionalism.

Missing in the detailed analyses presented by Jenkins and Perrow and the Majkas', however, is a more general consideration of the factors that guided efforts to terminate the bracero program and that, I will argue, had a significant impact on the post-bracero labor system. Two factors are important here and both are linked to the ideology and the practice of citizenship. First, the civil rights movement, which provided both a backdrop and a vanguard to the anti-bracero campaign, formulated two broad objectives: (1) the formal,

legal guarantee of citizenship rights and entitlements to black Americans and other minorities; and (2) the extension of the practice of citizenship beyond the traditional boundaries of voting and legal equality to include new categories of claims against the collectivity (or national community) to ameliorate poverty and underemployment. These objectives called upon the state to mitigate the negative effects of the prejudicial attitudes and structural barriers which denied formal market freedom to blacks and other minorities and, where necessary, to extend collective resources to those who suffered from ideological and structural discrimination. The objectives were constructed with the language of communal equality—citizenship—and directed both to the state apparatus as a collection of visible institutions and to the society as a whole. They called upon "Americans" and America's "heritage of freedom and equality" to guarantee equal treatment to all citizens.

Demands for citizenship rights provided a powerful linkage to anti-bracero sentiments in all but one crucial respect. They made the bracero program and all other forms of alien labor inimical to the guarantees of citizenship. By positing a program by which the rights and entitlements associated with membership in the community were strengthened, the civil rights movement accentuated the significance of differences between members and nonmembers of the national community and, as I will later argue, helped increase the vulnerability (and, therefore the attractiveness to all employers) of those who were least members of the community: undocumented workers.

The second factor that needs to be considered is the role of organized labor, both with respect to the bracero program and, more importantly, with respect to citizenship. As the Majkas (1982:158–166) and Galarza (1964, 1971, 1977) describe in fascinating detail, organized labor on a national scale demonstrated a profound ambivalence with regard to the bracero program and its predecessors. The American Federation of Labor (AFL, and later the AFL-CIO) occasionally sponsored forays into the fields but provided only minimal financial support to domestic workers attempting to organize. The Teamsters and various AFL affiliates made progress in

some of the more stable and skilled occupations (e.g., in canneries, packing sheds, and trucking) but all but threw in the towel when it came to farm work. Even the Teamsters, who acquired the first major contract covering field labor in 1961, ventured forth only when it was financially productive and the employer in question offered a contract in exchange for a loan from the union's pension fund (Friedland and Thomas, 1974). When organized labor finally stepped into the fray, it did so as much out of pressure from its progressive elements—particularly its more militant union affiliates like the United Auto Workers and the Longshoremen's Union—and general sympathy for the civil rights movement as out of concern for farm workers.

Here again, the broader linkages to the ideology and practice of citizenship are important. For organized labor, the formal guarantees of market freedom—the freedom to enter into the wage contract—had been cemented through state intervention to facilitate unionization. Moreover, trade unions, as Marshall (1977:121–126) argued, had come to represent collective citizens in the economy, negotiating the terms and rewards of the labor contract within the broad mandates of a system of industrial justice/collective bargaining (Selznick, 1969). At the most general level, an affinity between organized labor and the civil rights movement grew out of a common interest in the political enforcement of citizenship guarantees in the face of an unequal distribution of economic resources. More specifically, protections from the discriminatory practices of employers reduced (though it by no means eliminated) the potential for blacks and other minorities to be treated as second-class citizens and to be used to undercut the position of organized labor. Moreover, the extension of political intervention in the economy (e.g., through a strengthened minimum wage) and the broadening of entitlements for those who are disemployed (e.g., aid to children, medical care for the elderly and poor) served both to buttress the position of unionized workers and to provide greater protection for workers dislocated as a result of business cycles. The net effect of organized labor's focus on citizenship, however, was a strengthening of the distinction

between citizens and noncitizens. Where blacks or other minorities suffered from discrimination by employers, American workers (black, white, and Hispanic) suffered at the hands of both agricultural employers and braceros, argued leaders of the AFL (Fuller, 1955; Majka and Majka, 1982:164). Braceros and other aliens, it was contended, should be replaced by Americans.

A significant paradox was created through the victory over the bracero program: gains for citizens had been won and the guarantees of citizenship extended, but the political and economic vulnerability of noncitizens was increased. Without a frontal assault by labor on the conditions and the structure of agricultural employment and a demonstration that sufficient supplies of citizen labor were available, the bracero pipeline would be closed but the indocumentado floodgate would be opened.