CNN —
Some of Sebastian Corral’s memories have faded. But the 91-year-old remembers arriving in the United States in 1953 like it was yesterday.
How workers like him were forced to be stripped naked and sprayed with pesticides.
How their hands were examined to ensure they were qualified for the hard labor that awaited them.
How unwelcome he and many others felt, even though they were invited to cross the border and join the U.S. government.
“You felt humiliated. You were coming to work and elevating yourself, but you felt like you were nothing,” Corral said recently via Zoom from her home in Vado, New Mexico. told CNN in an interview.
This month, memories of Corral’s first moments in America came rushing back to her when she visited the place where she took her first steps more than 70 years ago in a completely different way.
Now, officials have unveiled a plaque designating the former Rio Vista Bracero Reception Center in Socorro, Texas, as a National Historic Landmark. And Corral attended as the guest of honor.
Corral and the millions of others who crossed the border like him between 1942 and 1964 were participants in the Mexican Farm Worker Program, a term derived from the Spanish word for weapon. They were known as braceros, which refers to the grueling labor they would perform upon their arrival.
The U.S.-Mexico partnership has allowed more than 4 million guest workers to legally cross the border to work in 30 participating states across the United States, primarily in agriculture. The program was intended to protect workers from discrimination. However, the reality was much harsher for many braceros.
USCIS History Office and Library/Department of Homeland Security
This 1956 photo from Hidalgo, Texas, shows a masked worker spraying braceros with DDT while others wait in line.
Years after the show ended, one of its former directors described it as “legalized slavery” in an interview with the Dallas Morning News.
“They were so afraid of leaving their homes and not being able to send money to their families that they felt like they were in a bind,” said Lee G. Williams, a former Labor Department official.
According to Yolanda Chavez Leyva, an associate professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, the Bracero program is an important chapter in American history that has been overlooked for a long time.
Many people do not know how much of an impact this program has had on immigrants in the United States, and that there are many families who can trace their roots in the United States to this program.
“It’s becoming more and more obvious, but it’s still not being taught very much. History textbooks might have a passage about it,” Leyva says.
You felt humiliated. Despite coming to work and elevating myself, I felt like nobody.
Sebastian Corral, a 91-year-old former bracero, talks about his experiences in Rio Vista.
Even among families of former braceros, that history can sometimes be hidden, she says.
“What they told me was that it was so painful that they didn’t want to tell their families what they were going through, and they didn’t want their children and grandchildren to know what they had gone through,” Leyva said. says. They spent years collecting hundreds of oral histories from former participants in the program.
Blanca McCreary, one of Corral’s 14 grandchildren, said she first learned about Corral’s experiences as a bracero while studying World War II in a college class.
“I asked him, ‘Do you know about this program?’ From there he told me everything,” McCreary says. “And every time I hear him talk about it, I have the same feeling. It makes me angry. I say, ‘How could they treat my grandfather like this? How is it possible that they treated them like animals, as my grandfather says? they are humans. ”
USCIS History Office and Library/Department of Homeland Security
A patrolman checks the documents of a farmer in the 1950s. Although the bracero program provided a legal path for guest workers, crackdowns on illegal immigration were also common during this era.
Leyva said Corral and his story immediately came to mind as officials were planning an event in Rio Vista and looking for braceros to invite.
Leyva said he is one of the last known surviving braceros living in the area. Many people have died in recent years, especially during the pandemic, she said.
Why Rio Vista is so important and why it’s rare
The program’s key hub in Rio Vista is approximately a 30-minute drive from El Paso, Texas. It consists of more than 20 buildings, including historic adobe barracks and wooden structures. And this is the only surviving location of his five locations where braceros were processed.
More than 80,000 braceros pass through Rio Vista each year and are subjected to “horrible food, humiliating medical and psychological tests, and fumigation,” according to a description on the National Trust for Historic Preservation website.
USCIS History Office and Library/Department of Homeland Security
Ambitious braceros line up for medical examinations by the U.S. Public Health Service in South Texas in the 1950s. Their hats, bags and other belongings are piled nearby.
Corral said the rancher was detained at the scene for several days before arriving and becoming infected.
Built in 1915, this facility has been used for a variety of purposes over the years. Prior to his role in the bracero program, the area known as Rio Vista Farm was a poor farm and orphanage. After the bracero program, it became a law enforcement training area, housed several city halls and community centers, and was even used as a set for the 2000 film “Traffic.”
Sehila Mota Casper, executive director of Latinos in Heritage Conservation, said she was surprised when she first discovered the site while working for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
“Traditionally, our sites have been demolished. They have been ignored. They have been expelled and obliterated,” Mota Casper told reporters earlier this month. “It was incredible to find out this building still existed.”
Provided by: Kip Malone/National Trust for Historic Preservation
Socorro city officials plan to open the country’s first Bracero History Museum on the Rio Vista site in 2027, with construction on the project expected to begin later this year. In the meantime, visitors can tour the grounds online or stop by in person with a visitor pass from the city.
Mota Casper, Leyva and Socorro city officials have lobbied for years to have the Rio Vista site designated as a landmark. Now that that’s complete, they’re currently working on turning it into the nation’s first Bracero History Museum.
Construction work is expected to begin later this year, with the museum expected to open in 2027.
In Socorro, a small town outside El Paso, officials consider the recent landmark designation a major milestone.
Traditionally, our sites have been demolished. they have been ignored. They were banished and erased. I couldn’t believe that this building still existed.
Sehira Mota Casper, Cultural Heritage Conservation Latino Executive Director
“What we have here is like Ellis Island or the Alamo. It’s very important to be good stewards to make sure we protect it and preserve it for others to appreciate.” wise,” said City Director Victor Leta. Recreation and historic preservation are important, he told reporters.
The city also plans to open its first library at the site, and is raising funds for the project on its website.
Corral said he hopes more Americans will come to Rio Vista and learn about Bracero’s legacy once the museum opens.
“I want people to know that it wasn’t easy for us to live here,” he says.
But Corral said he and many others felt they had no other choice. In an oral history interview at the University of Texas at El Paso last year, Corral said farm workers living in Delicias, Mexico, earned just 4 pesos a day. In the US, you would earn eight times that amount.
So Corral began his first three-month contract picking cotton on a farm in New Mexico, returned to Mexico regularly to visit family, and never looked back. Corral remained a bracero for 11 years until the program ended, after which he remained in the United States and did his best to continue his work.
Provided by: Corral family
Corral and his wife Maria were married in Mexico in 1956. Three weeks later, he returned to the United States to resume his job as a bracero.
Today, he speaks with pride of the long journey that began in Rio Vista.
“I came as a bracero. After being a bracero, I was in the country illegally for several years. After being in the country illegally, I became a permanent resident. Now I’m a citizen.”
In some ways, Rio Vista was different than Corral remembered when he returned this month. The buildings were much more dilapidated, more like “pure ruins,” Corral said. But it wasn’t the buildings that caught Corral’s attention most: It was how different it felt for him to be there.
“I wasn’t the same person I was before,” he says.
Much has changed since his early days when he was a young man waiting for ranchers to arrive in Rio Vista on business.
He picked cotton, drove a tractor, and harvested beets and cucumbers as a bracero. He lived in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Texas while in the program. Once, an El Paso restaurant refused to serve him food because he was Mexican. He has been an illegal immigrant for decades. He was washing dishes and preparing meals at a restaurant in Los Angeles. He worked on a dairy farm in California. He became a legal resident after President Reagan signed a law granting amnesty to him and millions of others. He finally brought his wife and children to the United States after years of separation. He had saved enough money to buy land for his entire family to build a house nearby. He had 14 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.
And nearly 70 years after he first arrived in the United States, he finally became a U.S. citizen just two years ago, after decades of knowing he was an American.
All of this was on Corral’s mind when he revisited Rio Vista on May 11. And among the mixed emotions that hit him, he felt anger at one point, but also satisfaction.
Some of the buildings around him were in ruins awaiting renovation. But Corral stood in the Rio Vista courtyard with generations of her family.
And he saw something else, the life he had built.
Provided by: Fujiko Yamamoto
Four generations of the Corral family pose for portraits at the Rio Vista venue on a recent visit. Looking back on his experience at Bracero, Corral says he is proud to have worked hard and been able to support his family. “Something good came out of something bad,” he says.
