In 2003, an elderly Isidoro Abrego Alvarado recalled his early life:“My dreams! I would go on a cart with four wheels, sitting on a board seat, driving two mules and I would dream...‘If only this cart were mine...’I went to the United States. When I returned, I bought the cart.” 1 The simple desires of a farmhand in 1940s Mexico had little chance of coming true in a country where farm labor paid only a few pesos a week. Thus when opportunity presented itself in the form of a program to recruit Mexican labor for US farms, Alvarado and many Mexicans took their chances. For both urban and rural men, the voyage to the United States offered possibilities to fulfill their dreams.

With the start of World War II, agricultural workers in the United States joined the fight, leaving the fields to become soldiers in European and Pacific theatres and places in between. The subsequent shortage of agricultural labor led to a wartime agreement between Mexico and the United States that permitted the temporary entry and employment of Mexican nationals in the United States. Following the format of a similar program during World War I, this agreement surpassed the expectations of both governments with its high enrollment. Its participants eventually became known as the braceros, a derivative of the Spanish word for