The BUAP houses a sample that deeply reviews the migratory phenomenon

Puebla, Pue., Posts in a row, men wait to be called at the Office of Hiring of the Citadel, in Mexico City. With a small lump or his hat barely hidden under his arm, they look towards the camera that portrayed them. The first stares at the photographer who captures one of the common scenes of the Bracero program, which led Mexican migrants to work legally in the United States during and after World War II.

The image, called Interiors of the citadel, the hiring, Captured in 1945, it is one of the 76 photographs, in addition to nine journal covers, eight serigraphs and a video belonging to the National Museum of the Mexican Railways (MNFM), which are part of the exhibition The braceros seen by the May brothers, That from yesterday until September 28 it is exhibited in the first courtyard of the Carolino building, headquarters of the Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP).

This exhibition project, described the Office of the Office of the BUAP Dissemination and Culture Vice -Rectory, Luis Antonio Lucio Venegas, is a deep review of the migratory phenomenon and labor relations between Mexico and the United States during a crucial period of the twentieth century.

At the inauguration of the exhibition, he pointed out that the Bracero program was in force from 1942 to 1964, and with it they were legally hired thousands of Mexican workers for replace the absence of the Americans who moved to Europe to participate in World War II.

The particularity of the exhibition lies in the eyes of those who documented these events, the May brothers: Francisco, Faustino, Julio, Cándido and Pablo, photographers of Spanish origin who arrived in Mexico as refugees of the Spanish Civil War, who since their status as migrants, built a unique visual perspective marked by their commitment to social causesdefined Venegas.

He added that The braceros seen by the May brothers constitutes one relevant and necessary dialogue About migration. This coincided with researcher John Mraz, for whom the phenomenon portrayed by May is current and complex.

The researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities of the BUAP, Alfonso Vélez Pliego, said: My interest in doing the book and the exhibition arose from the notion of immigrants photographing migrants, but the truth is that the braceros did not emigrate, rather they were temporary workers, which does not mean that they had no impact, although, obviously, many did not return to Mexico.

The important thing, said Mraz, has been to carry this armed exhibition in 2015 in the MNFM for almost twenty spaces in Mexico and the United States, so it has been seen by some 140 thousand people, to give a message: Mexicans have always been in the United States.

He added that there is no doubt that the May brothers felt identified with Mexican workers, who, although they were not Migrants in the technical term of the word were people willing to risk, to move, not to stay in the same situation.

Mraz, author of exhibition and editorial projects such as The restless look, testimony of a war y Nacho López: Have something to say, said that characteristic too typifies The photographic work of the May brothers, The most prolific photoperiodist group in the history of Latin America with about 5 million negatives.

In this regard, Maribel Souza, daughter of Julio Souza Fernández, name of Pila de Julio Mayo, said that, although located at other times, the exhibition arrives in the Better time to raise awareness of what people suffer in the United States under the current policy of President Donald Trump, who treats them criminals.

Interviewed separately, she recalled that her father said that he had also been a migrant, since her roots were in Spain, but her life was in Mexico, And that is what the braceros felt, because being in the United States, they did not forget Mexico, and they always kept it in mind.

In the exhibition The braceros seen by the May brothers, Mounted in the University Center of Culture and Knowledge in the Carolino de la BUAP building (4 South 104, Historic Center of Puebla), images appear that document the bureaucratic process and the exams to which the candidates for applicants were subject to mockery in the hiring centers located in Mexico City; In addition, they testify to the acute pain of farewell at the Buenavista railway terminal, some aspects of his life on the border, the return to Mexico and the fight they held to recover the savings fund that was discounted to them from their salaries.