Erasmo Gamboa, professor of history and Latin American studies at the University of Washington, will speak on “Mexican Railroad Soldiers: A Forgotten Story of World War II” Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 7 p.m., in Nicholson Library at Linfield College.
Gamboa, an expert on the Mexican laborers’ guest worker program to the Pacific Northwest, is the author of “Mexican Labor and World War II: Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 1942-1947.” He also edited “Nosotros: The Hispanic People of Oregon” and contributed an article to this collection. His book on laborers is still considered the seminal study of the history and impact of the Bracero Program in the Pacific Northwest, and Gamboa is the leading scholar nationally on this subject.
In addition to his published works, Gamboa has been a consultant and narrator for public television and radio programs on agricultural workers in California, Oregon and Washington and on student movements. For his work in advancing social justice, he was recognized by Gov. John Kitzhaber as one of “Oregon’s Civil Rights Trailblazers” in 1999 and has received accolades for his public service work.
His current research project for a book on Mexicans in the railroad industry highlights the history of this group beyond agricultural work in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. He examines labor issues, questions of cultural integration, U.S.-Mexico relations, construction of nationalist ideologies and gender dynamics.
The lecture is free and open to the public and funded through a grant awarded by Linfield’s Diversity Committee. It is also sponsored by the Departments of Modern Languages, History, and Sociology and Anthropology, and the Spanish Club and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA). For more information, contact Sonia Ticas, associate professor of Spanish, 503-883-2367, or sticas@linfield.edu.
