bracero

[bruh-sair-oh, brah-, brah-se-raw]

noun

plural

braceros 

1. a Mexican laborer admitted legally into the U.S. for a short period to perform seasonal, usually agricultural, labor.

Word History and Origins

Origin of bracero¹

First recorded in 1915–20; from Spanish: “laborer,” literally, “one who swings his arms,” equivalent to brazo “arm” + -ero; brace, -ary

Example Sentences

His uncles had regaled him with tales of the easy money available for legal seasonal workers — known as braceros — which allowed them to buy land and livestock back home.

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Her father, a butcher by trade, emigrated and found work as a bracero picking crops in fields up and down the West Coast.

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Not long after, the U.S. implemented the bracero program in 1942 in which the U.S. allowed millions of Mexican citizens to work in the country to address labor shortages during World War II.

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The country was facing a dire farmworker shortage because the bracero program, which provided cheap legal labor from Mexico for decades, had ended the year before.

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These are not akin to the crude barracks used to house the Mexican guest workers known as braceros decades ago, nor are they the broken-down trailers associated with abuses of the H-2A program.

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