INTRODUCTION

This article exposes the first results of an ongoing investigation. Its existence and relevance derive from a series of previous studies since 2008 about the movement of ex- braceros ( ^{Schaffhauser, 2012 -2015} ) in different parts of Mexico (both rural and urban areas of the states of Michoacán, Zacatecas and Mexico City). The inquiries I have made are part of direct observations of protests, marches and assemblies of braceros. In the same way, they are part of my own “appearance ” in the parliamentary committee for the subject of braceros, as well as in the precincts of the Congress of the Union and in the Palace of San Lazaro in Mexico City (May 2012). I also interviewed bracero leaders and public bracero,² among others. This research focuses on studying and analyzing what happened to Mexican migrant workers after finishing the Bracero Program (officially) in 1964; that is, what institutional luck they had and how their social rights are respected by the corresponding authorities. The above questions are specifically related to the constitution of a peasant savings fund established during the first years of the program (1943-1947). This fund was fed by the contributions of the braceros, discounting 10% of their salaries for that purpose. In the first instance, the American bank Wells Fargo was in charge of its administration and management, then the National Bank of Rural Credit made the payment to its beneficiaries (braceros or rights holders).

During the Bracero Program (1942-1964), this operation was carried out little by little and only for a few, leaving the vast majority of these migrant workers in social vulnerability. In the eyes of the ex-braceros, this process is associated with a gigantic fraud that continues to affect many of them and in which the Mexican State and its institutions have incurred. In the opinion of the lay sociologist, this process corresponds to a problem under study that I detail below and intend to address under the agnotology approach; this is the social and cultural production of ignorance. Indeed, I start from the premise that a fraud or a scam is always nourished by the ignorance of a certain crowd.

Thus, the Social Support Fund for Former Mexican Migrant Workers –the so-called braceros– implemented in Mexico and the United States³ between 2005 and 2012,⁴ is characterized as the devious result of a struggle undertaken by families of ex-braceros, organized in civil associations since the 90s of the last century. On the other hand, it is also a political attempt to correct the undesired effects of the Bracero Program (1942-1964). Its initial political objective was the public organization of Mexican labor migration to meet the needs of North American agriculture and communication infrastructure.⁵ These drawbacks derive from the constitution of the aforementioned Peasant Savings Fund. The payment of the money corresponding to that fund has thus far been delayed and inefficient, defrauding hundreds of ex-braceros who currently live in Mexican rural areas, often precariously. It is estimated that there were 4,646,199 contracts signed during the bracero agreements. This sum corresponds to 3,233,755 railroad and agricultural workers since several thousand of them had two or even more contracts throughout the program ( ^{Schaffhauser, 2012, p.211-212} ).

The protest movement that provokes the partial non-fulfillment of the social rights embodied in the Bracero Program is unprecedented in Mexico. It is a broad social mobilization (virtually all the states of the federation have been involved in it and has even been extended to several entities of the American Union) that mainly groups seniors and their families. It should be noted that this movement has some relevance for gender studies. This is due to the fact that a substantial number of nonconformists actually correspond to their widows since, according to the Braceroproa organization, 14 braceros die every day.

From the above, it is estimated that of those 3,000,000 or more beneficiaries mentioned above, only about 750,000 veterans of the Bracero Program survive today.

Moreover, between 2005 and 2012, it is estimated that 217,656 ex-braceros (see maps 1 and 2 on cartography of social supports in Mexico-United States and in Michoacán at the end of the article) received the social support corresponding to the bracero assistance program through Trust 2106 (and then paid 10230), in the administrations of Presidents Fox and Calderón. This amount corresponds to one third of the number of braceros still alive, and only 7% of the braceros who participated in the program. This movement is also sociologically significant because it opposes rural Mexico to urban Mexico; that is, from deep Mexico to the Mexico of the centers of economic and political decisions. Its social and political impact at the national level is an invitation to reflect, in general, on the situation of older adults in Mexico, as well as the role of the Mexican migrant in the production of national wealth (through remittances and payments for savings funds). Since this problem is binational, it is also an incentive to reflect on the relations between Mexico and the United States in a migratory perspective.

Source: Diario Oficial de la Federación 2005-2012, 2015. Elaborated by Leticia Díaz and Marco A. Hernández / El Colegio de Michoacán. February 2017, Research project "The pains and gains of migration: studies of ex-bracero movements": Project leader, Philippe Shaffhauser Mizzi

Map 1. CARTOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL SUPPORTS FOR EX-BRACEROS IN MEXICO-USA FROM 2005 TO 2015  

Fuente: Diario Oficial de la Federación 2005 - 2012, 2015. Elaboración: Leticia Díaz y Marco A. Hernández / COLMICH. Enero del 2017, Proyecto de investigación Dolores y dólares de la migración: estudios de movimientos de los Braceros a cargo del Dr. Philippe Shaffhauser Mizzi.

Map 2. CARTOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL SUPPORTS FOR EX-BRACEROS BY MUNICIPALITY IN MICHOACAN FROM 2005 TO 2015  

In other words, the study of the bracero movement consists of several sociological edges. Its themes are social movement, social rights, legally organized labor migration,⁶ return migrations, public migration policies, emotional experiences of migration ( ^{Honneth, 2011} ), old age, rural areas, migration, etc. Now, my theoretical-methodological experience mainly based on the interactionist and pragmatism paradigm ( ^{Dewey, 2003} ) has allowed me to articulate, in a heuristic way, the reflection on the study of the bracero movement with its public and political dimension; that is, through the complex game of interactions raised from the beginning of the mobilization of ex-braceros. They also lead to the implementation of a social support program aimed at them, through the creation in 2005 of a trust (2106 and subsequently 10230) under the control of Segob (see maps 1 and 2 on cartography of social supports in Mexico-United States and in Michoacán at the end of the article). The conduct of this program has suffered a series of political maneuvers by the authorities to postpone or stop the course of its execution.⁷

The correlation of forces between the movement of the braceros and the political power highlights a dimension little attended and studied by researchers. In addition, it has to do with the ignorance that public authorities produce to conceal or distort aspects of its relationship with the unhappy public. It may even suggest that ignorance, also known as agnotology from the pioneering works of the historian Robert Proctor (2008), is a method for “contemporary governance ”. It consists in the deliberate production of ignorance that is infused and spread to a given audience, often taking advantage of its vulnerability. The above is the object of study of the agnotology that I present below.

WHAT IS AGNOTOLOGY?

The theoretical-methodological axis of this research rests on an interactionist perspective inherited from early pragmatism ( ^{Mead, 1964} ; ^{Joas, 1999} ). It consists in saying that ignorance is always the product of a social interaction. Ignorance is contagious; it is shared and transmitted. After all, it is an interaction. According to another pragmatic principle that rejects general concepts, ignorance is not an object of study or an a priori form, but is a relation and consequently a social construction since ignorance is always located and relative to a world or a means. Its differentiation with knowledge does not correspond to a clear conceptual frontier but rather a porous one. The ignorance-knowledge axis is not an opposition, but an articulation. It has an eminently moral dimension constituted by the relation between truth and falsehood ( ^{Bouveresse, 2007, P.11-37} ); that is, between the value of the first and the power of the second.

The problem of this investigation begins with a simple question “Why we do not know what we do not know?” In the case of ex-braceros, the question is “For a long time, why the ex-braceros did not know what they did not know about their social rights?” Thus, I think it is fundamental to make a parenthesis that allows the reader to understand the edges that the cultural production of ignorance, or agnotology, contains.

Like our colleagues in the natural and exact sciences, social scientists usually carry out our research with an epistemological base, regardless of our background and traditions. We often quote Thomas Kuhn to clarify from what paradigms we build study programs and their research routes. To guide our empirical explorations or to build a theoretical base that nurtures the meaning of our research, we quote Emre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, David Bloor or philosophers of atypical traditions such as Michel Foucault, Ludwig Wittgenstein or Charles S. Peirce.

We do all this for the sake of Knowledge production. We are all (or many) and each one is an epistemologist; that is, we believe convincingly in the relationship between science and knowledge. In addition, from Jürgen Habermas and his founding book Science and technology as “ideology ” (1986), in sociology, many believe in the production of knowledge as an organized construct around an interest that tends to generate an emancipatory value to the subject through such knowledge. Under this assumption, it means that the better we know the social and cultural world in which we live, the more the possibility of transform it into a more habitable and hospitable world for all increases.

However, the exact and natural sciences, as well as the social sciences and humanities, are socially instituted activities. This implies its participation in the affairs of society, its administrative closeness with the State and the political power of those who, for example, depend economically on public research centers (CPI for its initials in Spanish); it also includes universities in Mexico, despite the autonomy that some have. The margin of maneuver and free-will of the first is always a reason for struggle and negotiation with the administration of research in the social sciences. This restriction tends to guide the type of knowledge that we produce, the topics that we are going to investigate or not, as well as the methods to do it in one way or another. In addition, the participation of the public research centers in the National Development Plan to meet the political agenda of the current government, places research in an instrumental function defined by the agenda and some institutions, in accordance with a political vision of what national priorities are or should be.

Furthermore, the academic environment creates a game –what Pierre Bourdieu calls a social field– with rules that are not always explicit and whose illusio ( ^{Cosey, 2005} ) keeps its participants convinced that the game is worth it. In the end, this conceals power relations (correlations of strength and meaning) that define the type of game to be played, such as shortage of goods, symbolic violence, competition between participants, hierarchy outside the criticism, Matthew effect, etc. There are the ingredients that produce the ignorance of the academic environment about its practices and values, as well as the distorted relationship between both.

Now, there is a blind spot within our epistemological reflection. It consists in knowing what happens when science and the social sciences co-participate in the production of social ignorance. Either by omission or by abundance of information both end up confusing the user of this type of knowledge. In general, ignorance corresponds to a knowledge gap. Because we are often professors and teachers, researchers believe that it is possible to fill this gap based on learning and through the transmission of knowledge; that is, courses, workshops, seminars, distance or face-to-face counseling. Ignorance and knowledge are in this sense a matter of communicating vessels. In a manner of speaking, the student studies with an empty brain and fill it as his university education progresses. However, what happens when there is too much information or when it is diverse, varied and poses a problem of selection criteria and discrimination for its full use?

There are issues identified by North American historians that correspond to this confusion and come from the existing links (or due to the collusion of interests) between some scientists. These are a minority of subjects whose trajectory has been carried out mainly outside the academic precincts and large industrial consortiums. The publication of reports by these scientists is part of what ^{Robert Proctor (2008)} calls the cultural production of ignorance and what Eric Conway and Naomi Oreskes call “the doubt factory” (2010). Taking advantage of the statute of specialist or official expert, his works consist of confusing the citizen. This allows discrediting other “serious” reports, relativizing knowledge. In this way, it manages to cancel or delay political decisions on public problems that require prompt and energetic decisions. In this case, the most important thing is not the information gap, but its increase. This causes contradictions, doubts and perplexity among the public since they do not know how to properly handle the corresponding information. It is a kind of new sophism.

The big tobacco industry, the asbestos industry, the mining companies that use chemicals such as mercury –so that their products continue to be consumed–, have made us believe that it is more important to know if science can fully verify its dangerousness and not know if they are harmful or harmless to health. This is where the “merchants of doubt” come into action ( ^{Conway and Oreskes, 2010} ). The notion of danger becomes a relative piece of information. It loses its real dimension of being an interpretation problem with all its nuances. If we add to the above the issue of the environment and the distortions that this topic has caused in recent years, we have a vein that has explored personalities such as ^{Robert Proctor (2008)} , ^{Naomi Oreskes or Erik Conway (2010)} . Their studies are related to public scandals that highlight the responsibility of politicians, the right to information and transparency for public health issues. In addition, they seek to restore the moral role of science to deny scientific impostures. Here ends the parenthesis.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

The analysis focuses on how political power, public institutions and the implementation of public policies on migration are also creators of ignorance or agnotology. They deceive the public that they intend to assist. The role of science, and in this case of the social sciences, must also be considered because it produces inductions that disorient the beneficiaries of these public actions. In the case of the ex-braceros, this dimension is particularly visible historically through the so-called Bracero Program and sociologically through the implementation of the social support program for ex-braceros.

It is not insignificant to say that the bracero issue has been attended mainly by North American historians ( ^{Craig, 1971} ; ^{Calavita, 1992} ) and to a lesser extent Mexican ( ^{Durand, 2007} ; ^{Vézina, 2016} ), focused on the study of the “Bracero Program” and its different edges and backgrounds ( ^{Alanís, 1999} ). This is to the detriment of sociology of the bracero problem that deals with the struggle and the current condition of these former migrant workers. This orientation also shows the interest in social sciences and humanities to study a specific research topic.

It is necessary to clarify that I am starting from a series of abductions (in the sense proposed by ^{Charles S. Peirce, 1988} ) that constitute a halo of mystery around the bracero program and problem. They are points of ignorance where scientists do not know how to respond correctly. There are five and cause some perplexity for their approach in the form of simple questions.

Nowadays, nobody can answer these questions since each one constitutes a field of exploration for research. However, this ignorance or lack of knowledge about these issues does not prevent some authorities –and researchers– from agreeing to say that the program ended in 1964, for example. In this way, they refer to the fact that the parliamentary activity of the Congress of the American Union did not extend the Bracero Program any longer. In addition, they overlook the fact that the United States Department of Labor continued to register employment contracts for Mexican workers until 1967.

This biased interpretation is not insignificant because today it has an effect on the attention to ex-braceros by the Mexican authorities. This is because they dismiss all those braceros who worked between 1965 and 1967; that is, 36,636 employment contracts are excluded from the social support of the corresponding labor rights. For the authorities, these workers were not braceros ( ^{Schaffhauser, 2015, p.3} ). We see how the first two enigmas are logically interrelated.

There is also confusion between the number of workers and the number of employment contracts, since the former were able to repeat work events under this legal concept. It means that today different figures circulate about the number of braceros, which are actually estimates about the actual number of workers involved in said program. All this leads to a kind of quantitative cacophony that corroborates the maxim of the British Prime Minister of Queen Victoria, Sir Disraelí. He claimed that statistics are the art of lying with a display of precision. Therefore, the small table above refers precisely to employment contracts in the United States and not the number of braceros who participated in the program.

The above is a small sample of the inaccuracies that surround the bracero file. In short, we do not know how many braceros have really been and we also do not know precisely when the Bracero Program ended. Was it in 1964 or 1967? ( ^{Center for Finance Studies, 2008, p.4} ). The confusions generated by the production of data and knowledge about the Bracero Program constitute a branch of agnotology since the production of scientific knowledge (sociology and history, mainly) is overlapped with its political (government and authorities in charge) and social use (associations and public braceros). The first is a continuous process of efforts to build and have reliable information, while the second corresponds to a fixed and strict conception of information. This becomes a long- lived or eternal truth instead of being, according to the epistemology of Karl Popper, a fact not falsified at the moment.

In other words, although the social sciences and humanities are capable of producing a well-founded knowledge, it also seems evident that the use of this knowledge, outside the academic sphere and without taking necessary epistemological precautions, may tend to be distorted and finally integrate a rhetorical jargon that favors or attends short-term political interests that are far from the scientific spirit embodied in the protocols that guide research in social sciences and humanities. In summary, the process of ignorance by omission consists, deliberately or not (subjectivity here does not matter so much, but what is important is the result and the consequence of the omission), in presenting information as if it were complete and its content perfectly limited. In this sense, we can consider that the omission works as a social and political bias in the interactions between publics and institutions.

During my investigation of the process that led to the ex-braceros movement, a question arose. This became a loose end that I could not explain theoretically nor document empirically. Why did a period of silence follow about 30 years after the end of the Bracero Program (officially in 1964)? And why, after so long, did they raise their voices, expose the failure of the authorities and demand the money corresponding to the savings fund? I had no tangible elements to explain this process and the sudden change that led to the expression of the bracero discontent. This question became a search.

CONCEPTUAL APPROACH

We will start from a conceptual distinction between ignorance or agnotology by omission and agnotology by confusion. The first is socially and politically more traditional than the second. It has been an engine of governance in the past, since the ignorance of the public was conceived through the non-communication of important information for them. It is similar to a censorship process. The second corresponds to modern times where communication is not only massive, but also global, which complicates the previous method of censorship. Therefore, modern agnotology relies on excessive information and difficulty for the subject to process it, to compare it, to verify the source and to evaluate the methodology with which that information was produced. It confuses the public, which never knows if the arguments come from reliable data. In addition, it is necessary to mention that the implementation of public policies to attend, regulate or fight against the migratory phenomenon (this is, from its origins and causes, its actuality, its multiple forms or the wide effects it produces in the culture) often resides in a dualism that consists of generalizing an intervention of the State, extending a public will and paradoxically building its limits, through the concept of national borders.

In other words, on the one hand the public will directs its efforts and on the other the effects produced by it dissipate.¹⁴ It also means that any public policy creates, or rather updates an identity and an alterity. It also establishes a moral boundary between both through a series of requirements between beneficiaries and those that are not. This implies that any public policy requires compliance with the requirements to be part of its universe of action.

Thus, public policies build solidarity with their beneficiaries, a kind of dialogue and interactions between them and the authorities, but they also mean discrimination and exile for everyone else. In this sense, the implementation of the Social Support Fund for ex- braceros has led to a separation on two sides, those “chosen” by public institutions and those who do not meet the requirements demanded by the administration. In the end, these served as an identity filter; that is, an institutional representation of those who are ex- braceros and those who are not from the bureaucratic point of view.

Contrary to the innocence that defines the word solidarity as an expression of benevolence and altruism, solidarity as a public problem and as public policy often presents two faces. One accepts and another rejects the applicants. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that all public policies build mechanisms of solidarity and exclusion. It also reinvents, each time its mission is fulfilled, a community of beneficiaries and the national community itself. From the administrative point of view, consider that there are authentic braceros and other apocryphal is a sample of agnotology that characterizes the relations between public bracero and State, since the conflict began. It is a unilateral relationship, because there is no, in contrast to the above, a State and institutions that are legitimate or illegitimate. However, the bracero public wants that, through their movement, the institutions act as such; that is, as responsible public services committed to any citizen.

FINAL COMMENTS

This research creates an opportunity for the study of the bracero movement. Its novelty lies in the agnotological turn that is infused into its problematic. What is the role of ignorance (of the public and public servants) in the design and implementation of social programs derived from public policies? The above means that although the investigation requires new explorations and inquiries to expand the accumulated data, it also implies to keep in mind that this empirical collection needs to be analyzed in another way. In this sense, agnotology is just a perspective to problematize, on other epistemological bases, the articulation between the Bracero Program and the social movement in general. In addition, it places the interest for this type of study in a critical, citizen, democratic, and, in the words of ^{Habermas (1986)} , emancipatory horizon.

What is the relationship between social rights and ignorance, and what this relationship tells us about the type of citizenship that exists and that we want to have in Mexico or elsewhere? Therefore, this research holds a moral implication that consists in problematizing ignorance as an opposite element, an obstacle, in the relationship between the State, its institutions and the publics of society. The right to know, to be informed about their rights and how to exercise them is a citizen imperative in which sociologists must contribute through our investigations. Then, we advocate increasing the level of emancipation, reflection and autonomy of the different public citizens. The ex-braceros belong to one of these publics. They are in a situation of vulnerability because they are older adults, live in the countryside and share the problems that affect life in rural areas. They are also former migrants, that is, a floating category that lacks social and political status (the right to be a migrant).

Now, the main problem that the agnotological perspective could pose is to generate a kind of suspicion and to attribute to agents responsibilities in situations of abuse of weakness, even if they did not act with malice or profit, but by complete ignorance. I argue that it is necessary to delimit this responsibility and distinguish between those who use ignorance in their favor and those who act out of ignorance and multiply it. Here is the difference that separates intentionality from lack of preparation. In the first case, it means that those who take advantage of the ignorance of others have control over the information and can distinguish between the true and the false and act accordingly. This type of person exists both in the state apparatus and outside of it. They often rub shoulders with members of the bracero public.

In the second case, perhaps the most common, ignorance is a “good” that is shared and transmitted to others. Ignorance is the product of social interactions, because confusion is relational. Besides I do not know, I also share my ignorance to others. Also, I do not have elements to compensate this situation since due to my ignorance I do not feel the need to doubt. That is the figure of the public official immersed in his routine that rhymes with bureaucratic boredom. The syndrome of this type of ignorance is the lack of curiosity and interest in doing things well; that is, trying to serve the public well ( ^{Sennett, 2009} ).

This type of structural ignorance leads to confusion and poor coordination between services, and it also has to do with new methods to carry out administrative tasks. The poor performance of bureaucratic personnel does not have much to do with their lack of preparation, but with the multiplicity of structural reforms applied to the State and its institutions, whose officials can hardly assimilate the orientation and meaning. Ignorance is related to poor administrative compliance and demotivation for what constitutes their work identity. Thus, it would be worth exploring the relationship between the neoliberalization of practices in State institutions (where the guidelines consist in the effectiveness, the separation of activities, the lack of own initiative and the atomization of the public servant) and the production of ignorance, either by omission or confusion.