El “caso ex bracero” en México: un movimiento social amparado en el despojo y fortalecido por la memoria

Abstract

The social ‘ex braceros’ (migrant workers) movement began in Mexico in 1998, and is made up by elders who worked as temporary migrants in the united States through the ‘Bracero’ Program (1942-1964). They mobilize in order to achieve the restitution of the ten percent (Savings Fund) that was deducted from their salaries, and which was never reimbursed. Due to the difficulty for defining or classifying this movement within the regular typologies, the main objective of this article is supporting and demonstrating why the ‘dispossession’ concept is suitable to define it. This concept is reclaimed because of two reasons. Firstly, based on different documentary sources, it shows how the naivety of the migrants contributed to accomplish the dispossession, as well as the omission, the breach of contract and the irregularities of the federal government by not reimbursing the savings in full. Therefore, it was a dispossession through poaching and deceiving. Secondly, because after the protests began, the arbitrariness feeling within the group of workers consolidated, from memory and from the construction of a sociopolitical and ideological discourse referring to the dispossession.