Research Guides: Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942-1964: Exhibit and Program

THE EXHIBIT

Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964, a moving new bilingual exhibition organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) and circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), examines the experiences of bracero workers and their families, providing rich insight into Mexican American history and historical background to today’s debates on guest worker programs. Consisting of 15 freestanding, illustrated banners, the exhibition combines recent scholarship, powerful photographs from the Smithsonian’s collection, and audio excerpts from oral histories contributed by former contract workers.

The exhibit will be on display from September 2 - November 12, 2017 on the first floor of Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte near the New Books Reading Area, Research Help Desk, and Guest Computers.

Getting to Atkins Library:

Parking (Cone Visitor Deck) and Map of Atkins Library

THE PROGRAM

All exhibit programs are free and open to the public!

The following program was created in collaboration between faculty and instructors in the UNC Charlotte College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and librarians at Atkins Library. Funding for the program is supported by Atkins Library, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Chancellor's Diversity Challenge Fund.

Opening Talk and Reception
September 14 at 5:30 p.m.
Location: Halton Reading Room, Atkins Library, UNC Charlotte

Featuring guest speaker, Mireya Loza, Smithsonian curator, and author of Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom. This talk will begin at 6:15 p.m.

Campus and local community organizations will be featured at the event from 5:30-6:15 during the reception.

Biography of Mireya Loza
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Mireya Loza is a curator at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), Smithsonian Institution. She received her doctorate in American Studies at Brown University. Her areas of research include Latino History, Social Movements, and Labor History. Her book, Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual and Political Freedom (UNC Press), examines the Bracero Program and how guest workers negotiated the intricacies of indigeneity, intimacy, and transnational organizing. Her book recently won the 2017 Theodore Saloutos Book Prize given by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and she was named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. Dr. Loza worked with the NMAH on the Bracero History Project, which produced the Bracero History Archive and the traveling exhibition Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942-1964. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, the Mexico-North Research Network, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Talk Abstract
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This talk interrogates the private lives of migrant men who participated in the Bracero Program (1942–1964), a binational agreement between the United States and Mexico that allowed hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers to enter this country on temporary work permits. While this program and the issue of temporary workers has long been politicized on both sides of the border, Dr. Loza argues that the prevailing romanticized image of braceros as a family-oriented, productive, legal workforce has obscured the real, diverse experiences of the workers themselves. Focusing on underexplored aspects of workers’ lives--such as their transnational union-organizing efforts, the sexual economies of both hetero and queer workers, and the ethno-racial boundaries among Mexican indigenous braceros—this research reveals how these men defied perceived political, sexual, and racial norms.

Personal Digital Archiving Workshop
October 4 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
Location: Atkins 125, Atkins Library, UNC Charlotte

Your friends at Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives have scheduled a special workshop on digital archiving -- open to everyone but especially geared toward the social justice community. Our goal is to offer you a few basic strategies for personally saving your important photos, videos, documents, messages, social media posts, blogs, websites, etc. from accidental (or malicious!) loss.

We invite you to come and take the opportunity to meet with others to talk about what you want to preserve and why it's important to do so -- for your own sake, and for the historical record. A team of archivists and a legal expert will be on hand to give you some basic information you can take with you.

Author Talk
October 12
Location: UNC Charlotte

Cristina Enríquez, author of the selected text for the 2017 UNC Charlotte Common Reading experience, The Book of Unknown Americans, will be visiting the UNC Charlotte campus.

This visit is organized by the Common Reading selection committee.

Film Screening: The Guestworker
October 16, 2-3 p.m.
Location: Visualization Lab (2nd Floor), Atkins Library, UNC Charlotte

When President Bush and some members of Congress proposed guest worker programs as part of new immigration reform legislation, it was as though nothing like this had existed before. Yet since 1986, thousands of Mexican men have legally entered the United States to work here, because of the little known H-2A guestworker program, put in effect during the Reagan years. Filmed on both sides of the border, the documentary chronicles the life of such farm-workers while looking at the issues surrounding the program. The film focuses on a 66-year-old Mexican farmer, Candelario Moreno Gonzales, who works on the tobacco, cucumber and pepper fields of the Western Farms in North Carolina.

Trailer: The Guestworker

Talk with Isael Mejia from the Latin American Coalition (La Coalición)
October 23 at 5:30 p.m.
Location: Halton Reading Room, Atkins Library, UNC Charlotte

Isael Mejia is the Economic Mobility Center Manager for the Latin American Coalition (La Coalición) and a UNC Charlotte alumnus. Isael is a proponent of Social Justice and was introduced to the concept of social advocacy through his participation in LASO (Latin American Student Organization) and The Feminist Union at UNC Charlotte. Isael is a first-generation American and college graduate who came to the United States as an undocumented youth. He is involved in Labor rights education and advocacy and is focused on establishing the first Day laborer (jornalero) center in Charlotte. Isael oversees workforce development, labor rights education, and the Day labor center efforts and recently helped organize the first Woman specific business program put on by the LAC. Isael first started as an intern at the Latin American Coalition in 2010 where he co-taught ESL for adults.

Mejia will discuss the current conditions of immigrant and migrant laborers in the Charlotte area and some of the ways in which the Latin American Coalition supports and advocates for these laborers and other members of the Latin American community. Opportunities for how students, faculty, staff, and community members can get involved in supporting these efforts will be discussed.

La Coalición is a community of Latin Americans, immigrants and allies that promotes full and equal participation of all people in the civic, economic, and cultural life of North Carolina through education, celebration and advocacy.

This talk is co-sponsored by University Career Services at UNC Charlotte.

Biography of Isael Mejia
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Isael Mejia is the Economic Mobility Center Manager for the Latin American Coalition (La Coalición) and a UNC Charlotte alum. Prior to joining the Latin American Coalition, Isael worked in Washington, D.C., at the American Institute for Cancer Research as Manager of the Donor Services department. After leaving Washington, Isael worked in Brooklyn as Manager of a Patisserie Start-Up and, together with his Partner, Sarah, founded a Mexican street food pop-up stand, Chula.

Isael is a proponent of Social Justice and was introduced to the concept of social advocacy through his participation in LASO (Latin American Student Organization) and The Feminist Union at UNCC. Isael is a first-generation American and college graduate who came to the United States as an undocumented youth. He is involved in Labor rights education and advocacy and is focused on establishing the first Day laborer (jornalero) center in Charlotte. Isael oversees workforce development, labor rights education, and the Day labor center efforts and recently helped organize the first Woman specific business program put on by the LAC. Isael first started as an intern at the Latin American Coalition in 2010 where he co-taught ESL for adults.

Closing Talk and Reception
November 1 at 5:30 p.m.
Location: Halton Reading Room, Atkins Library, UNC Charlotte

Featuring guest speaker, Thomas A. Arcury, Program Director of the Translational Science Institute, Director of the Center for Worker Health and Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

Dr. Arcury co-edited Latino Farmworkers in the Eastern United States: Health, Safety and Justice (Springer) and has published articles in the Journal of Applied Gerontology, Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, Health Education and Behavior, Journal of Agromedicine, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, and more.

Campus and local community organizations will be featured at the event from 5:30-6:15 during the reception.

Biography of Thomas A. Arcury
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Thomas A. Arcury, PhD, is Professor of Family and Community Medicine, and Director of the Center for Worker Health at Wake Forest School of Medicine. He received his doctoral degree in anthropology from the University of Kentucky in 1983, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1996. Arcury is a medical anthropologist and public health scientist with a research program dedicated to improving health in rural and minority communities. Since 1996, a major component of his research has focused on occupational and environmental health and justice for the families of immigrant workers, with the support of grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and United States Environmental Protection Agency, as well as state agencies. His research has examined pesticide exposure, green tobacco sickness, skin disease, housing conditions, child labor, mental health, reproductive health, and food security among migrant and seasonal farmworkers. He has also conducted research on the occupational health of immigrant poultry processing workers and immigrant construction workers. These projects have been undertaken within the framework of community-based participatory research. In addition to empirical studies, Arcury has developed and implemented educational programs for immigrant workers and health care providers to prevent exposures and improve treatment. He has also worked with advocacy groups to use the results of this research to change occupational and environmental health policy.

Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942-1964

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