Interview no. 1569

Ms. Rios recalls her childhood and what it was like growing up on a farm near Ysleta, Texas, where her father was the foreman; she recalls that prior to the Bracero Program, there were a number of undocumented workers on the farm; they were often caught by immigration services and returned to México; sometime later, roughly in 1948, braceros were hired to work on the farm; they were contracted through Rio Vista, a processing center in Socorro, Texas; she recalls how the braceros were chosen and transported to the farm; in addition, she remembers what their living conditions were like, their specific jobs and wages, the kinds of food and clothes they bought, and how she and her family often helped them; during the 1950s, she worked in Oregon and Washington for about nine years because the pay there was much better than it was in El Paso, Texas; there were also braceros working in Washington at that time; sometimes German POWs would pick cotton as well