U.S. EXPLOITATION IN MEXICO depended· upon the creation of a reserve army of labor. From the California Gold Rush of the 1840s to World War Il, from the bracero labor-contracting system of the 1950s to the establishment of Mexico's Border lndustrializatiori Program in 1965, life in the U.S.-Mexico border area has been jolted by the absorption and- expulsion of labor as dictated by the needs of the U.S. economy. We will highlight those historical changes, spurred by the expansion of U.S. imperialism (monopolistic capitalism). which have created along the bor9er rapidly growing centers of unemployed men and women, living at the beck and caill of the cpmpanies. · EARLV IMMIGRANTS The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which in 1848ended the war between the United States and Mexico, left. the toilers. on one side of the bor,der, the capital and best land on the other. This mistake migration undertook to correct (5). ·Long •before the Mexican-American War, which resulted in Mexico's surrender of over hait her terriitory, the process of U.S. capitalist expansion into Mexico - especially Texas - had already begun, as traders, entrepreneurs and waves of North American colonists moved into the Mexican territories. ln fact, as one writer noted, by the time of the conflict in 1848, the economic border - the front l1inesof contact between two predominant modes of .production [capitalist and semi•-feudal] had been lowered close to what the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo would declare as the official internation boundary line (6). By 1850 the stage was nearly set for rapid capitalist development which was to take place in the western areas of the United States. The war had provided the U.S. with the land and raw materiials; the courts of the new state apparatus quickly secured 5. Ernesto Galarza, Merchants of Labor, The Mexican Bracero Story, p. 13. McNally & Loftln, Santa Barbara, 1964. 6. Raul Fernandez, The United States-Mexico Border: lnterpretive Essays in History and Political Economy, introduction, p. 10. Manuscript to be published by Notre Dame Press. 83
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