From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century by John Weber (review)

Policy makers and academics concerned with labor subcontracting, contingent workforces, guest-worker programs, human rights, labor rights, and national boundaries would be well served by consulting John Weber's book From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century. For scholars of Mexican American history, there will be much that is familiar, as Weber addresses the making of an agricultural workforce, debates over immigration restriction, the deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and the evolution of the bracero program. However, by using a wealth of archival sources and focusing closely on South Texas, Weber forces the reader to view well-known topics in a new light.

Weber argues that the racist labor regime that emerged in South Texas in the early twentieth century—a regime that depended on a mobile, vulnerable, and politically disenfranchised contingent of Mexican and Mexican American laborers—should not be viewed as a backward response to the growth of labor-intensive agriculture. Instead, Weber argues that "South Texas growers devised a thoroughly modern set of practices that relied on forced mobility, enforced immobility, and an activist state not present in early times" (p. 8).

Weber dates the creation of these very modern labor practices to the early twentieth century, with the emergence of two migrant streams. The first included landless and dispossessed Mexicans who sought to escape the ravages of the Porfirio Díaz regime and revolution; the other was made up of midwestern and southern farmers and developers who eyed new opportunities in Texas. Rather than recreate the labor regimes that they had left behind, these farmers looked to create a new, racially segregated, politically disenfranchised, and mobile labor force that could make few appeals to either the Mexican or the U.S. state. After describing the origins of the South Texas labor regime, Weber discusses the 1920s, a period when national immigration restriction debates and deportation, as well as agricultural and industrial recruiters from other states, threatened this regime. He also highlights the Great Depression and New Deal, a time when Mexicans and Mexican Americans engaged in labor organizing in an effort to upend the racist labor regime at the same time as facing the prospect of increased deportations and repatriation. Finally, Weber traces the history of the bracero program, noting Texas's influence on the program.

While Weber is attentive to the historical specifics of each period, he stresses the theme of continuity. In each period, Texas growers used racist ideals, political control, and economic might to maintain access to the largest pool of workers possible. In the early twentieth century this strategy involved upending the paternalistic politics of the traditional ranching elite. In the 1920s, it required battling calls for immigration restriction and limiting the reach of agriculturalists and industrialists of other states who also sought to use Mexican labor. During the Great Depression and New Deal, growers faced new challenges including labor organizing, deportation, and repatriation. However, they were able to turn these challenges into advantages by propagating an image of the Mexicans as illegal, criminal, and un-American, thereby justifying political disenfranchisement and economic deprivation. Finally, over the various iterations of the bracero program, Texas growers exerted significant pressure, helping nationalize South Texas labor relations and placing the region at the center, rather than the periphery, of labor relations nationally.

Although Weber argues convincingly that South Texas labor relations set a model that would be followed nationally, his very abbreviated discussion of the post-bracero era leaves the reader wishing for an expanded discussion of the late twentieth century. How did the ending of the bracero program affect agricultural labor relations in Texas and elsewhere? Weber's suggestion to reframe our discussion of vulnerable and exploited agricultural, service sector, and industrial workers from...