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This book is a political history of the Bracero Program, the bilateral initiative that allowed Mexican men to work in the United States as seasonal contract farmworkers from 1942 to 1964. It shows how the weakness of federal and state administrations, the strength of conservative Catholic opposition organizations in central Mexico, the flawed implementation of the revolutionary agrarian reform, and the lobbying efforts of rural labor unions, profoundly influenced the program's administrations and individual decisions to migrate as braceros.
Alberto García is a historian of twentieth-century Mexico who specializes in Mexico-US migration, rural politics, and state development. He is an assistant professor of history at San José State University. He received his Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Berkeley, and his undergraduate degree in history at the University of California, Davis.