The Co-Constitution of the Bracero Program and Caribbean Guestworker Programs as Social Reform Efforts

This paper will explore the government-sponsored Bracero Program and the Caribbean guestworker programs of World War II, addressing these government-sponsored programs as the unexplored consequence of Japanese American incarceration and the New Deal. Focusing on the comparative labor reform efforts of social justice activists Ernesto Galarza, Eric Williams, and others, this paper will address how intellectual and activist debates over the bracero program and Caribbean contract labor programs extended and legitimated state power into the present era. Just as Mexican American labor advocate and civil rights activist Dr. Ernesto Galarza embraced the World War II moment to propose a joint organization and agreement to benevolently manage the movement of labor migrants between Mexico on the United States, many officials of the Puerto Rican Popular Democratic Party (PPD) similarly pursued the idea of a farm labor migration pro- gram in Puerto Rico in 1948, arguing for governed labor mobility as a way to economically reform the countryside and uplift Puerto Ricans workers, so as to eventually free the island from the yoke of colonialism. In revealing these efforts toward agrarian reform, anti-colonialism, and migrant worker “freedom,” this paper will also unearth contract workers' emerging visions of social justice that challenged this reproduction of state power and freedom across multiple places.