The Chualar Tragedy, Braceros, and the Chicano Movement Remembered
After a long day of work in the fields near the town of Chualar, California, fifty-seven braceros boarded a makeshift bus heading home. The day was 17 September 1963 and the ‘bus’ was a flatbed truck with a rickety canopy and two long, wooden benches inside. The back doors were locked as the bus made its way to Salinas.
Sometime after 4pm, the bus reached an unmarked railroad crossing. Seeing no danger in sight, the driver creeped ahead. Halfway onto the tracks, a piercing whistle tore through the air and the driver slammed on the gas to accelerate.
At that instant, a freight train, 71 wagons long and traveling at 65 miles per hour, tore through the right side of the bus. The compartment with the braceros instantly shattered. Bodies, cracking wood, twisted metal, knives and field tools flew through the air.
Only after the dust settled was the scope of the accident evident. Twenty-three braceros had died on impact. Some laid 300 feet from the impact. Three more men died en route to hospitals where, upon opening the ambulance doors, blood flowed like water. Two more died in surgery and three more a few days later.
The dead and the injured came from the states of Jalisco, Guanajuato, Sonora, Zacatecas, Puebla, and Michoacán in Mexico. Each hoped to earn enough to feed their families at home. Instead, the youngest dead was 19 and the oldest was 50.
The Chualar accident remains one of the worst episodes in California vehicle history and a defining event for the Bracero Program and the Chicano civil rights movement.
As Lori A. Flores proposed, the tragedy at Chualar demonstrated vividly the exploitation and vulnerability of braceros in the U.S. Desperate for cheap labor, an executive order created the Bracero program the same year another executive order called for the internment of individuals of Japanese ancestry.
Once the incident came under investigation, Salinas growers and officials attempted to control public opinion of the tragedy. To do so, they handled victim’s funerals, encumbered federal investigations, and attempted to silence survivors. In seeking justice, Mexican American political activists argued that Chualar was a symptom of the injustices of the Bracero Program which exploited Mexican laborers, displaced U.S. workers, and hindered the American labor movement.
The tragedy would become a rallying cause and turning point in California’s Chicano civil rights movement. Perhaps its greatest effect was to bring together activists from rural and urban California who had previously struggled to work together. The terrifying event encouraged collaboration and unity to denounce the abuse and mistreatment of the Mexican workforce.
In attempting to improve conditions for laborers and seeking to lift barriers to Mexican-American upward mobility, activists throughout California spoke, marched, lobbied, and protested against exploitation, equal treatment, and a place in American society. As Flores points out, Chualar triggered the first instance in which a unified Chicano movement emerged, only a few months after the creation of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in 1962, a predecessor of the United Farm Workers (UFW).
In a few days, the Chualar tragedy will commemorate its 58th anniversary. Many individuals who participated in the Bracero Program are now in the 80s and 90s. Many remember the period nostalgically, as a time of plentiful work. Yet, it was a period of vast injustices. The Chualar tragedy and the lives it took deserve to be remembered.
Notes: All credit is given to Lori A. Flores “A Town Full of Dead Mexicans: The Salinas Valley Bracero Tragedy of 1963, the End of the Bracero Program, and the Evolution of California’s Chicano Movement” published in Western Historical Quarterly in 2013.
