Portal:Hispanic and Latino Americans/Featured article/6

Contemporary view of bridge along Chualar River Road

On September 17, 1963, a freight train collided with a bus carrying 58 migrant farmworkers on a railroad crossing outside Chualar in the Salinas Valley, California, killing 32 people and injuring 25. It was the worst fatal vehicle accident in United States history, according to the National Safety Council.

The accident has long been a rallying point for immigration rights and Chicano farmworker activists. All but two of the victims were Mexican or Mexican-American, and most were Mexican guest workers participating in the bracero program, which had been in place since 1942 and had been drawing mounting criticism from labor activists and civil rights workers who contended that it exploited Mexican laborers and deprived Americans of jobs. The accident supported the views of critics that Bracero workers were treated shabbily, helping to spur the demise of the program in 1964. (more...)