By Juliana Torres
It wasn't the hard work he'd have to endure as a laborer that scared Genaro Cortes as he considered his decision to travel to the States. At 24, he was most worried about the possibility of being drafted. A mason by trade, Cortes remembered the rumors that swirled about how the notion of recruitment for labor work was simply a guise to actually "draft people and send them to the Pacific to fight."
The Other Soldiers
Little-remembered treaty sent 300,000 sons of Mexico to the United States during WWII; their weapons were their labor-hardy bodies
By Violeta Dominguez
The battlefield wasn’t the only place where Mexicans lent their services during World War II.
In spite of the fact that few remember, the North American home front counted on the help of nearly 300,000 servicemen known as “soldiers of the furrows and the railroad,” as well as, simply, laborers, or, in Spanish, braceros.
The Other Soldiers
Little-remembered treaty sent 300,000 sons of Mexico to the United States during WWII; their weapons were their labor-hardy bodies
By Violeta Dominguez
The battlefield wasn’t the only place where Mexicans lent their services during World War II.
In spite of the fact that few remember, the North American home front counted on the help of nearly 300,000 servicemen known as “soldiers of the furrows and the railroad,” as well as, simply, laborers, or, in Spanish, braceros.