By RICH CONNELL and ROBERT J. LOPEZ, Times Staff Writers

                   Moving to heal a generations-old wound, Mexican government officials will announce
              Monday an investigation into the alleged disappearance of millions of dollars deducted from
              the earnings of laborers who came north to work U.S. fields and railroads after the onset of
              World War II.
                   The probe could be the best and last hope for thousands of the surviving migrants to find
              out what happened to money that was supposed to have been set aside for them when they
              returned home. Now in their 70s and 80s, many are destitute and complain that they never
              received the funds.
                   Their demands have gained momentum in the last few years but have generated little
              government interest. Now, in a sign of the changes occurring since the defeat of the deeply
              rooted Institutional Revolutionary Party, a point man for President Vicente Fox said the new
              administration strongly endorses the probe.
                   "We need to find out exactly what [is] or is not owed," said Juan Hernandez, director of the president's office on Mexicans living
              abroad.
                   Fox, who toppled the world's longest-ruling political party in elections last summer, has declared a new era of government
              openness. He also has made the economic and social well-being of Mexican nationals in the U.S. a priority for his administration.
                   "This is a new government with a completely new attitude," Hernandez said in Los Angeles last week. He said Fox's interest in
              Mexicans abroad extends to the workers who helped with the war effort under the so-called bracero program.
                   "It's a good thing that the government is doing this. . . . If it wasn't for that, we might not have a chance," said 77-year-old Luis
              Magaña of Stockton, who picked crops from Idaho to California soon after the United States was drawn into the war.
                   The investigation comes amid a wave of organizing among the braceros and support by the Fox administration and U.S.
              legislators for a new guest worker program.
                   In addition, attorneys in the U.S. are preparing to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of former braceros on both sides of the
              border. The suit is expected to name both governments and two Mexican banks.
                   The Mexican inquiry will be conducted by a special multi-party commission of the Mexican Congress as well as federal
              prosecutors. Their goal will be to track the money, which was held by two Mexican banks that have since merged into other financial
              institutions.

                   Record-Keeping Lapses May Slow Investigation
                   Any investigation of the savings fund will be complicated by the passage of time and the possibility that records no longer exist.
              One of the Mexican banks has said it does not know what became of the workers' savings.
                   Many of the braceros no longer have pay stubs or other documents proving what they earned. Some workers did collect their
              savings, but it is unclear how many.
                   A lawmaker who pushed for the effort said the government must provide answers to the workers. "We owe it to them," said
              Michoacan Rep. Sergio Acosta of the left-of-center Democratic Revolution Party.
                   Researchers who have studied the braceros say that addressing the program's unfinished business has a historical significance
              beyond settling old debts.
                   The migrant workers were lauded by U.S. government and business leaders as indispensable to the war effort.
                   "Some described them as a godsend," said Erasmo Gamboa, a history professor at the University of Washington. "But 50 years
              later, it's as if they contributed nothing."
                   The bracero program was approved by both countries shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nearly 300,000 Mexicans
              came to help pick crops and maintain railways as American workers went off to war.
                   From 1942 to 1949, 10% of each worker's paycheck was to be deducted and forwarded through the U.S. government to
              savings accounts in Mexico. Estimates of the current value of money collected and allegedly owed vary widely. With interest, some
              activists and scholars estimate, hundreds of millions of dollars could be due the braceros.
                   What is clear is that at least $32 million had been taken from the braceros' wages by 1946, according to U.S. government
              records from the time.
                   The money was both an incentive to return to Mexico and an effort to help the workers improve their lives when they got home.
                   "Innocent, hard-working people came here when it was in the interests of both countries [for them] to do so," said Matt Piers, an
              attorney with Gessler Hughes & Socol, the Chicago firm leading the prospective class-action suit. "These folks were totally proper in
              their entry and their labor. And they got ripped off."
                   Even if the funds can't be found, lawyers hope to build a case proving that the governments and banks are still liable.
                   Much of the controversy has focused on Mexico. But under the international accord, the U.S. government was responsible for
              ensuring that workers received proper benefits. Federal agencies were officially the "employer" of the braceros, a requirement sought
              by Mexican officials to help protect the workers' rights.
                   Public records reviewed by The Times show that problems soon developed on both sides of the border with oversight of the
              contracts and the savings program.
                   In Arizona, the U.S. wartime agency responsible for policing the program was ignoring requirements that representatives of the
              Mexican government be on hand when workers signed contracts, according to a 1944 memo by the federal Fair Employment
              Practices Committee. The officials were supposed to advise workers, many of them illiterate, on their rights, including the savings
              fund.
                   In Michigan, braceros were not being given pay slips to keep track of how much they were owed, according to a 1945
              Department of Agriculture memo.
                   Eighty-year-old Daniel Carillo said he wasn't told about the savings program when he signed up. "Nobody explained it to me,"
              said Carillo, who arrived in 1942 to help maintain New York railroad tracks and went on to pick crops from Arkansas to California.
                   He learned of the savings program a year later when a middleman offered to go to Mexico and get the money for a fee. Carillo,
              now living in Stockton, said he declined the offer and never went to claim his money.
                   He insists that the money is still his. "They took it from our paychecks," he said. "They owe all of us."
                   Part of the oversight problems stemmed from the limited number of Mexican government officials in the U.S. to monitor contracts
              and work sites. "It is impossible for these officials to meet the demands for their services," concluded a 1945 analysis by the Pan
              American Union, now the Organization of American States.

                   Employers Were to Deduct the Funds
                   Scholars who have examined the issue say it is not clear that all of the workers' money made it to Mexico. Under the agreement,
              employers were to deduct the funds and forward them to the U.S. government, along with records showing how much each worker
              was owed.
                   The money was then to be credited to Mexico's Central Bank and sent to two other financial institutions.
                   But Mexican banking officials complained that the U.S. was lagging behind in forwarding the documentation needed to promptly
              disburse the savings to workers, according to Mexican news accounts from the period.
                   There were numerous accusations of fraud south of the border.
                   "There have been many cases where the men have been cheated of their savings on their return to Mexico," the Pan American
              Union report said.
                   One of those who tried to collect was former bracero Magaña. He says he made inquiries to officials in the Mexican capital in the
              mid-1940s but was told they had no information. So he returned to the fields of California.
                   "I could have used the money," he said.

              Copyright 2000