Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 22:34:31 -0400
From: bobhunt@erols.com
Subject: [lpaz-repost] (fwd) Mexican Laborers in U.S. During World War II Sue for Back Pay
To: mg4u@oasis.net ("MG"), lpaz-repost@yahoogroups.com, jhornberger@jacobghornberger.com ("Jacob G. Hornberger"), steve@trinwords.com (Steve Trinward)
issue for anyone who knows any hispanics?
should we at least be aware?
bh
On Sat, 28 Apr 2001 18:30:20 -0400, "Alexandra H. Mulkern"
<amulkern@Radix.Net> wrote:
>April 29, 2001
>
>Mexican Laborers in U.S. During World War II Sue for Back Pay
>
>By PAM BELLUCK
>
>Thousands of Mexicans brought to the United States as laborers during
>World War II say they have never received money that was deducted from
>their paychecks for them, and now many are seeking hundreds of millions
>of dollars in reparations.
>
>A class-action lawsuit filed last month in California against the
>governments of the United States and Mexico follows a strategy similar
>to the one used successfully by Holocaust survivors against Swiss banks
>and German companies. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of as many as
>300,000 of the Mexican laborers or their heirs.
>
>The laborers, known as braceros, began coming to the United States in
>1942 to be railroad workers or farmhands. From 1942 until possibly as
>late as 1949, under agreements between the United States and Mexico, 10
>percent of the braceros' wages were deducted and held in savings
>accounts. The money was to be transmitted from American banks to
>Mexican bnks and given to the braceros when they returned home.
>
>Experts on the braceros said it appeared that many of the laborers did
>not receive their savings. Some braceros said they were never told they
>were entitled to the money, some said they were told there were no
>accounts in their names and some said they were promised money but never
>received it.
>
>According to United States government records at the time, at least $32
>million was withheld from their wages. It was not clear how much money
>was returned to the laborers and estimates have varied considerably. A
>1946 Mexican government report suggested that all but $6 million had
>been paid back. But some advocates and academics estimated the amount
>of money owed now, including interest, could be $500 million or more.
>
>"I don't even know for a fact that anybody got their money back," said
>Manuel Garcia y Griego, a professor of political science at the
>University of Texas at Arlington. "Assuming some people did, there were
>certainly a lot of people ho did not get their money back. If you add
>interest, we're easily talking about hundreds of millions of dollars."
>
>The issue of money owed to the braceros, some of whom live in the United
>States now, is being raised as the United States and Mexico are
>considering creating a new guest- worker program, the first of its kind
>since the bracero program ended altogether in 1964 amid complaints about
>poor working conditions. Many of the proposals being discussed include
>greater protections for workers, and are championed by Vicente Fox,
>Mexico's new president. It is against this backdrop that the Mexican
>government has set up a commission to investigate the braceros'
>accusations.
>
>"We want to do an exhaustive study," said Juan Hernandez, the director
>of the Mexican president's Office on Mexicans Living Abroad. He said
>the Fox administration would help the commission, made up of Mexican
>legislators and federal prosecutors. "These are good people, and we
>want to not close our eyes to them as may have been done in the past by
>both governments."
>
>No such inquiry has been announced by the United States. Charles
>Miller, a spokesman for the civil division of the Justice Department,
>said he could not comment on the claims in the lawsuit because the
>department had just been served with the papers.
>
>Another defendant in the lawsuit is Wells Fargo Bank, based in San
>Francisco, where some deductions were deposited before being transferred
>to Mexico. A Wells Fargo spokesman, Larry Haeg, said the only documents
>the bank had been able to find were from 1944 and 1945 and indicated
>only that Wells Fargo was one of the depositories.
>
>"We have no information that this matter wasn't handled satisfactorily
>in the normal course of business," Mr.
>Haeg said.
>
>A Mexican bank named in the suit, the National Bank of Rural Credit, has
>said it could not find any records on the deposits and asked braceros to
>submit copies of their contracts and other documentation.
>Advocates for the braceros hav urged against that, saying they mistrust
>the bank. A bank spokesman, Victor Manuel Villareal, declined to
>comment.
>
>Questions about braceros being owed money were raised as early as 1943
>in documents and newspaper articles, but for decades there has been
>little discussion of the issue, Dr. Garcia said. "I think it's like a
>lot of injuries that happened in the past, people forget about it or
>move on," he said.
>
>But in 1998, Ventura Gutierrez, a labor organizer in Southern
>California, was asked by his grandmother, a bracero's widow living in
>Mexico, to find out if she was eligible for Social Security benefits.
>Mr. Gutierrez inquiries led him to a document about the compulsory
>savings accounts.
>
>"Immediately a light went on in my head," said Mr. Gutierrez, who over
>the years had been asked by other braceros about money deducted from
>their paychecks. He spent the next two years meeting with braceros a
>term for those who worked with their brazos or arms organizing rallies
>in support of their cause and seeking lawyers to press their claims.
>
>Any investigation into the savings deductions will be hampered by the
>passage of time. Documentation might be hard to find. Some of the
>braceros are dead and most are elderly.
>
>Albino Reyna Gallegos, who lives in Mexico and says he is 100, cleaned
>debris from the rails as a bracero in Oregon and California. But he,
>like others, no longer has his identification card or other documents.
>
>But some still have paperwork, like Felipe Nava, 78, who lives in the
>Chicago suburb of LaGrange and who came in 1943 to lay railroad ties in
>Syracuse, N.Y., load ships in Weehawken, N.J., and fix train engines in
>Bourbon, Ind. Mr. Nava said he was not aware that money was deducted
>from his paycheck or that he was entitled to get it back when he
>returned to Mexico in 1946.
>
>"We came to help this country during the Second World War," Mr. Nava
>said at his home recently.
>"Without us, they would be in critical condition. This is wrong.
>Somewhere, somehow they should tell us we were supposed to have money."
>
>Advocates for the braceros said that many were unable to read their
>contracts to learn about the deductions or were intimidated by the
>process of claiming their money in Mexico.
>
>Another problem, said Jonathan Rothstein, a Chicago lawyer for the
>plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, was that "there was a delay in
>transmission of the funds" to Mexico City, where workers were to pick up
>their money. As a result, many braceros were compelled to return to
>their hometowns before receiving their payroll deductions. Others were
>given partial payments, Mr. Rothstein said, "and they would be told
>either to come back or to leave their address, but they never received
>the balance."
>
>Mr. Rothstein's lawsuit, and two other similar cases filed recently on
>behalf of braceros in California, follow the pattern of the Holocaust
>survivor cases that have so far netted about $6.2 billion in
>settlements. A handful of cases demanding reparations or World War II
>era policies have cropped up since, including a suit by Asian women
>accusing the Japanese government of forcing them to be sex slaves for
>Japanese soldiers and one by Chinese men accusing Japanese companies of
>using them as slaves.
>
>So far, documents unearthed do little to nail down how many braceros
>collected their money or who was responsible for money not disbursed.
>While the 1946 Mexican study, reported in The Los Angeles Times,
>suggests that much of the money was paid back, it also bolsters claims
>about problems with the reimbursement system, saying that American
>officials were slow to send payroll records to Mexican banks.
>
>The study also suggested the deductions ended in 1946, while other
>government documents suggested they continued until 1949.
>
>Mr. Rothstein said he discounted the Mexican government report.
>
>"It's classic," he said. "The Mexican government is being criticized
>for how a program is being run and it produces a document that says
>things are basically fine and complaining about how the program was run
>on the U.S. side."
>
>If the lawsuit is successful, the amount of money each bracero may be
>entitled to is relatively small, since their wages were typically less
>than $1 and hour.
>
>Mr. Nava, who earned 90 cents an hour, for example, is probably
>entitled to tens of thousands of dollars, including interest, while
>Leocadio De La Rosa, 90, who picked cherries, cucumbers and sugar beets
>for 60 cents an hour in 1945, would get less than that, Mr. Rothstein
>said.
>
>But to Mr. De La Rosa, who lives with his daughter in a low-income
>housing community in Soledad, Calif., that money would still make a
>difference, he said.
>
>"At my age," he said, "I just want a good life."
>
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