Bracero. Tres Reporteros y dos Fotografos, Tras la Verdad en el Caso de los Trabajadores Indocumentados en Estados Unidos [wrapper title]

Mexico City, 1979. Very good.. 208pp., plus sixteen full-page photographic plates. Original pictorial wrappers. Minor edge wear and dust-soiling, corners worn, some creasing to spine. Occasional pencil underlinings and bracketing to text. A mass-market paperback publication focused on Mexico's migrant work force known as braceros. According to a translation of the subtitle, the exposé was compiled by "three reporters and two photographers" studying the issue of "the case of undocumented workers in the United States." The names of these five investigators appear on the title page, along with the cover artist, and portrait photographs of each appear on the back cover. The work itself is mainly comprised of alternating chapters written by the three reporters while stationed in various Mexican and American border towns -- Jorge Adalberto Luna Millan in Tijuana, Chula Vista, California, and Bay View, Texas; Luis Enrique Martinez Bernal in Sonoita, Sonora, San Isidro, California, and Phoenix and Rancho Goldmar, Arizona; and Victor Hugo Islas in Juarez and El Paso. The authors detail the background of bracero labor, poor treatment and unsavory working conditions for the laborers, legal challenges and roadblocks, the dangers of travel back and forth over the border, encounters with bounty hunters, and much more. The photographic plates feature portraits of migrant workers, a few shots of braceros crossing the border, Border Patrol arrests, scenes from the border detention center in El Paso (discussed at length by Victor Hugo Islas in his reports), and more. OCLC reports just four institutional copies of this illuminating study of Mexican migrant workers, at the Huntington, UC-Santa Barbara, Williams College, and UTSA. (Inventory #: 5366)