In Popular Culture
- Woody Guthrie's poem Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), set to music by Martin Hoffman, commemorates the deaths of 28 braceros being repatriated to Mexico in January 1948. The song has been recorded by dozens of folk artists.
- Protest singer Phil Ochs's song "Bracero" focuses on the exploitation of the Mexican workers in the program.
- A minor character in the 1948 Mexican film Nosotros los pobres wants to become a bracero.
- The 1949 film Border Incident looks at the issue.
- Famed satirist Tom Lehrer wrote a song about Senator George Murphy in response to an infamous racist gaffe referring to Mexican labor which included the line: "After all, even in Egypt, the Pharaohs/Had to import, Hebrew Braceros".
Read more about this topic: Bracero Program
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
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“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
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