Bracero short-handled hoe
Collection area: Borderlands
Collection dates: approximately 1950s
A short-handled hoe used by migrant farmworker Manuel Reyes in the 1950s in Yuma, Arizona and Salinas and other San Joaquin Valley areas in California. From 1942-1964, millions of Mexican workers worked in the Bracero Program, a guest worker program that permitted Mexican workers to work in legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts, primarily to address the agricultural labor shortage. The primary tool used by the agricultural laborers was the short-handled hoe which required workers to stoop to tend crops causing significant back pain and injury. In 1975 the California Supreme Court ruled that the short-handled hoe was an unsafe hand tool and was banned in California after the California Rural Legal Assistance and labor organizers led a legal battle against its use. This object was displayed as part of the Special Collections exhibition, Sanctuary: Who Belongs Here? The Search for Homeland on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1848 to Today.
Manuel Reyes was a migrant farmworker in the 1950s in Yuma, Arizona and Salinas and other San Joaquin Valley areas in California.
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