Slow and Sudden Deaths: Reflecting on the Chualar Tragedy of 1963 and the Persisting Traumas of the Bracero Program

In 1963, a horrific bus-train accident in California’s Salinas Valley took the lives of dozens of bracero guest workers and dramatically accelerated the U.S. Congress’ termination of the Bracero Program. This article, using sources including oral histories, court cases, and civil rights activist papers, argues that the program’s demise was—like the destruction of farmworkers’ bodies—a long, slow process on paper and in practice. Remnants of the Bracero Program are still manifest in the U.S. agricultural labor system, while the historical traumas of farmworker invisibility, mistreatment, and death persist in the current era.