Iván Evair Saldaña
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, November 17, 2025, p. 11
The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) accepted for processing the request of the Binational Front of former braceros and other organizations, in which they request a hearing with the ministers and the intervention of the court to address their historic demand to the Mexican State: the return of the amounts deducted from their salary between 1942 and 1964 by the Peasant Savings Fund.
The request of the former migrant workers, registered as file 2175/2023-VIAJ, was sent by the Court to the General Secretariat of the Presidency and the General Directorate of Social Participation for analysis and institutional management before the federal government, since this type of procedure does not empower the court to resolve the substance of the matter.
The case has as its background the so-called Bracero Program, formalized on July 23, 1942, when the then president, Manuel Ávila Camacho, signed an international agreement with the United States that allowed thousands of Mexicans to work legally in that country and cover the labor shortage in the agricultural and railway sectors during World War II.
For more than two decades, mandatory discounts of 10 percent of workers’ salaries were applied to integrate the Peasant Savings Fund, but those resources were never returned to them.
“For the reasons indicated above, we carefully and respectfully request a working hearing with our organization, with the purpose of specifying concepts and terms that will help resolve in the best way the historical debt in favor of the former braceros from the period 1942-1967,” the workers stated, according to electronic lists of the Court on October 12.
The former braceros’ lawsuit has already been reviewed by courts, but only to order the federal government to issue a clear response.
A referee determined that the authority answered ambiguously and that the workers have the right to demand the return of 10 percent of their withheld salary.
Meanwhile, in 2018, the Supreme Court protected them only so that the Ministry of the Interior could attend to their request; However, according to the promoters, the government still does not offer a founded response.
