A Solas (Alone): Adolescence and Gender across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1942–47

“Growing Up  . . . Moving On . . . Alone: Adolescence, Gender Identity, and Sexual Containment across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1947-1964”

On August 4, 1942, the Mexican and U.S. governments simplistically reduced the reopening of the US-Mexico border into the straightforward importation and repatriation of temporary Mexican immigrant male contract laborers under the Bracero Program. Mexican President Manuel Avila Camacho proposed rehabilitating allegedly racially inferior Mexican men through temporary contract labor in the United States. Confident that after earning U.S. wages and learning U.S. methods and skills, Mexican men would return prepared to invest and labor in Mexico and move the nation forward on the path toward technological modernity, Avila Camacho overlooked this Program’s exigencies.

This vision of progress did not automatically modernize, but disrupted Mexican families, most especially the lives of an estimated 6.3 million Mexican adolescent girls left behind throughout the Mexican countryside. Avila Camacho underestimated this Program’s impact on Mexican families dependent on bracero father figures and breadwinners. With very few options, these young adolescent girls between 12 and 17 years of age migrated on their own in search of their immigrant parents and employment opportunities. These young adolescent girls worked hard to belong and survive in both countries.