James Baumgartner: The exhibit is in multiple parts. The first is called “Bittersweet Harvest” and focuses on the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that ran from 1942 to 1964. Deborah Krieger is the exhibit and program coordinator at the Museum of Work and Culture.
Deborah Krieger: In cooperation with the Mexican government and in order to fill labor shortages during World War II, the United States government had Mexican workers come to the States and work on short term contracts, largely in agriculture but in other areas, as well.
Baumgartner: In the 22 years of the program, an estimated 2 million Mexican men participated.
Krieger: So in January of 1944, sixty workers came from Mexico to East Greenwich, and they worked on the New Haven railroad.
Marta Martinez: I was totally blown away when I realized that there were Braceros here because my father was part of the Bracero program.
Baumgartner: That’s Marta Martinez, the executive director of Rhode Island Latino Arts. She’s been conducting an oral history of Latino communities in the region.
Martinez: I grew up in the Southwest, in Texas. And I didn’t actually know he was part of it. He never spoke about it. He didn’t have very good memories of being in that program.
Baumgartner: The exhibit features posters created by the Smithsonian Institute. One reads, “For the Braceros, work was often grueling and housing substandard. Workers were sometimes housed in converted barns and makeshift tents with limited water, heat and sanitary facilities.” Why come to America and work in these conditions?
Martinez: It was an opportunity to work. You know, it’s not like today where they’re looking for a future for their children. They knew it was temporary, it was very clear. They just wanted to come to the United States, make some money. Most of them who were here always sent money back home.
Baumgartner: The workers came from all over Mexico and went to Mexico City, sometimes standing in line for days. After paperwork and health checks, they were brought into the U.S. Most Braceros were agricultural workers in California and the Southwest, a climate similar to much of Mexico. It was a little different for the men who came to work on the railroad in Rhode Island.
Martinez: And when they left Mexico, it was late November, early December. It was not hot summer weather, but by the time they arrived in Rhode Island, not only was it January 4th, but when they stepped out of the train, they stepped into two feet of snow. And so that was the first introduction to their new home for the next year to the Mexicans who were still wearing light clothing. And they were wrapped in blankets, but they were nowhere [near], you know, the kind of warmth that they needed, and some had open-toed shoes.
Baumgartner: A companion piece to the Bracero exhibit is about the revitalization of the textile industry in the Blackstone Valley by workers from Colombia. In the 1960s, as the mill workers in Central Falls were getting older, the mills had a hard time finding younger people to work the textile machines.
Martinez: There was one gentleman who was living in Barranquilla, whose father owned a textile mill, Lyon Factory. And his father wrote to him and said, you know, by the end of the year, I think we’re going to have to close. So, Jay Giuttari, who was living there, was aware that there were, you know, Barranquilla was the heart of the textile industry in Colombia. And he was very smart, in that he knew that if he went out and offered work to people that he personally knew, and also saw the kind of work that they did that they would take it. So he physically brought three men to Central Falls. And it was the same thing. They arrived, it was winter. It wasn’t quite the same experience as the Mexicans, but it was cold. And I talked to some of the men who arrived. They were given coats, but they said they’d never felt that kind of cold before. But they adapted and they pretty much said, you know, we were in America, we were grateful. Jay told us to take a day off to catch our breath, because it had been a long journey. And they said, No, we don’t want to. We want to go to work. And so they did, they went to work. And they pretty much walked into the room. And one of them said he recognized the machinery, he knew exactly what to do. He sat right down and started working. And so I tell people that the Colombian community saved the textile business in the Blackstone Valley.
Baumgartner: There’s a coffee cart in the middle of the exhibit. It’s large enough for someone to stand inside of, you can imagine them serving coffee to customers. The bottom is lined with tin roof material and the top is covered in coffee cans, each painted differently. Marta Martinez has taken the cart with her when she collects oral histories. She encourages young people to interview an older person in their lives.
Martinez: Then you’re connecting and you’re learning about each other and this elder that happens to be living in your house that you just had no idea that had a special story. And then we give them a coffee can and they kind of create their own art piece. You know, when you sit and want to catch up with a friend, it’s at a coffee shop, or it’s at the kitchen table. It’s always over coffee. There’s something about the smell of coffee that just brings out conversation and memories.
Baumgartner: So we have the Bracero program in the 1940s, Lyon Mills in the 1960s and the last section brings us to the present day. Again, here’s Deborah Krieger, program director at the Museum of Work and Culture.
Krieger: So the last part of this exhibition is just a snapshot of how the stories of immigration settlement and labor have culminated in Woonsocket’s Latino communities, sort of where this community has come from and the kinds of businesses that they’re operating today.
Baumgartner: In its permanent exhibits, The Museum of Work and Culture primarily tells the story of the French Canadians who came to the area in the late 19th and early 20th century. There’s a recreation of a Quebecois farmhouse, a 1920s Catholic school room, and a textile mill floor. The exhibits are presented in both English and French. The exhibit on the Braceros in East Greenwich and Latino communities in the Blackstone Valley is presented in English and Spanish.
Valerie Gonzalez is a Woonsocket city councilor as well as co-pastor of Vida Church. She helped put part of the exhibit together.
Valerie Gonzalez: I’m really excited that now you see a little bit of the broadening between, you know, Central Falls and Woonsocket. And I think, for me, when it comes to this exhibit, whether it is the Central Falls portion of it or even the mills in Woonsocket, is the fact that a lot of these stories are very similar to the stories of the French Canadians when they first arrived. On September 3rd, I’m going to be the first person ever to do the tour of the full museum in Spanish. I feel like I’m almost marrying these two cultures that went through very similar experiences. If we don’t have exhibits like this, people forget what the beginning is. So they forget the common grounds.
Baumgartner: The exhibit is on now through Sept. 24 at the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket. For The Public’s Radio, I’m James Baumgartner.
