Louis Gradias grew up in the small town of Gadsden, Texas. Although he was never a bracero, his father was a foreman for a company that employed them. He often brought Gradias and his siblings to the farm he supervised. As such, Gradias was familiar with both the conditions in which the braceros lived and worked and the braceros themselves. He’s in an unusual position to comment on the conditions in which they lived, without having personally experienced them. Gradias mentions how he and his siblings would nap in the barracks, eat the leftovers from their lunch, and drink from the same water barrel and cup as the braceros. His testimony provides a unique perspective on the bracero program.
LG: My father being in LA and at that time he was already working on the LA sewer system. And my mother went to visit an aunt on her side of the family and they met by coincidence. And that’s how it all started; well then, then they got married in 1938 and uh… but my mom was here and my dad was there and they just said okay, we’re gonna go to Gadsden and live, and that’s the start of my family, my immediately family here. There’s five in the family, and I was the middle child. It was tough growing up in those days, but you know what? Gadsden, for anybody who was in that era, Gadsden was a beautiful town, a friendly village, but we – none of us knew whether we were poor or rich. There was no distinguishing that… It was kind of weird that we… we just all got along, and money I don’t think, I don’t think that – at least not in our minds – we had no idea that money had a bearing on how you were and who you were, you know? And so it was kind of great growing up in this town, but… you know, I… As a young kind, when the bracero program came into existence in the late 40s, my dad, after the 2nd World War, came home from the war and he got a job with a company… It was [unintelligible] company, and he was a foreman, a general foreman, and they brought in the bracero program and so that kind of, part of life was interesting because, as kids, we would go with my dad to work in the summertime, they had the melons, and the cotton picking and what have you… And we got to meet these folks that were braceros then, young men, and it was very, very interesting… Today, I have very good, close friends, who are those people, you know? Those kids. Those young men that came here. And now I know their kids, and their grandkids, and their great-grandkids, and that’s marvelous. But its very, very interesting how all of this came together in a [unintelligble] all this time, from the 1800s, and I think the real turning point for me was in the 50s, early 50s, when we went out into the fields with people who were the migrant workers and the water, cool water, drinking water, was kept in a big trashcan, galvanized trashcan, with a spicket on the end and a cup set that was homemade out of a Kern’s juice jar, can, and it had a wire handle, and everybody drank out of the same can and the same big bucket of water. Nobody cared or looked at whether – what color you were, or… We weren’t worried about ‘oh god, you’re going to catch something,’ that was not even thought of and today? Today it’s a crazy world, ’cause you worry about drinking out of somebody’s cup and, well, we didn’t experience that, we didn’t have that to worry about. And here I am, 69, I never caught anything. I’m still kicking… that’s kind of marvelous how – it’s kind of crazy, really, today’s world compared to what we grew up through. So, therefore, you’ve got to hand it to those braceros… you know, I have to be very honest with you in talking about the bracero program. I got to see those gentlemen, they were all great people and some of them stayed here after the bracero program was ended, some immigrated, the majority of them did, and they raised families. Now, that’s not to say that the program was a great program. I think that they were underpaid, but we lived amongst them, I guess you could say. On payday, we would go to the labor camps when my dad had to pay the individuals, and we had no problem, and no second thoughts about laying in their beds, waiting for my dad to get through with the payroll, and we fell asleep in their beds. It was no big deal, you know, it was barracks. And that was kind of a marvelous thing, we used to even – we’d look and see what they ate for lunch and if didn’t eat it all, we’d eat some of it, you know? And so… but I used to tell – when I got on the school board, in the 70s, I used to tell my colleagues on the school board that by not having the bracero program we were opening up a can of worms. And this may sound kind of nut-kosher to some people, but it’s just how I tell – how I feel. If they’d have kept the bracero program, we wouldn’t have this tremendous need for workers and this tremendous influx of people from all over the world, not just Mexico, I’m talking all over the world. And it was a good program – I think they just needed to find a way to pay them better, give them better areas to live their life and what have you, but those were people who came here, worked, and then took the money home, which was good for Mexico. But, that is what I feel about the bracero program.
“A 2011 Oral History Interview with a Man Who Grew up on a Farm in Arizona Recounting How Hard the Braceros Worked in the Fields.,” Digital Public Library of America, accessed May 4, 2020, https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/mexican-labor-and-world-war-ii-the-bracero-program/sources/74.