In 1917 Mexico signed into law the new constitution, and the United States entered the First World War. The author of El primer programa bracero y el gobierno de México, 1917–1918 seeks to explain how both events shaped relations between these bordering nations, especially regarding issues of labor migration.
Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso organizes his study around four central arguments. First, as the U.S. war effort drew millions of workers away from fields and factories and created new demands for foods and other supplies for the troops abroad, U.S. employers faced labor shortages, aggressively recruited workers from Mexico, and successfully campaigned for more open migration policies. Second, the northern “pull” of demand for labor and recruitment efforts, more so than “push” factors from Mexico, resulted in significant migration (both authorized and clandestine) of Mexican working-class families seeking jobs in a variety of U.S. private and public enterprises, such as railroads,...
