Tales from the field hit the road

As the Mexican-immigrant workers called braceros age, a touring exhibit tells their stories

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SAN JOSE, Calif.—During World War II, facing a national labor shortage, the U.S. government turned to Mexico. It recruited about two million Mexican laborers to work on farms on in 29 U.S. states, helping to plant crops and pick cotton. The workers were known as braceros, a term derived from the Spanish word for "arm." Many of the braceros settled in the U.S., marrying and raising families. Now in their 70s and 80s, they are gradually dying off—advocates estimate that more than half of all braceros have passed away—and few Americans know their stories.

To ensure that those memories remain alive, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and a consortium of universities embarked five years ago on a project to record the oral histories of braceros, conducting interviews with surviving members of the program around the country. Nearly 1,000 interviews have been digitally recorded and uploaded onto a website, www.braceroarchive.org. An exhibit called "Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964," based on the interviews and featuring documents, photographs and artifacts from that period, is now touring the U.S. It will open at the Museo Alameda in San Antonio later this month.