A stunning new mural in Chualar captures the beautiful, painful legacy of bracero farmworkers.

Just after 4:20pm on Sept. 17, 1963, a makeshift farmworker bus, heading east along a farm road a mile south of Chualar, came to a stop about 15 feet from a rail crossing. The bus carried 58 men, including the driver, all returning home after a day working in celery fields. Of those 58, 53 were braceros – contract workers from Mexico under the federal Bracero Program, which started in 1942.

The driver and foreman of the crew, Francisco Gonzales Espinoza, who reportedly had tunnel vision, did not see the Southern Pacific freight train barreling north toward the crossing as he began to drive slowly over the tracks.

By the time he heard the train’s whistle, there was no time – the train struck the back half of the makeshift bus at about 65 mph, whipping it around 190 degrees off the track. Espinoza, the driver, was the only one unscathed.

Bodies were strewn everywhere – 23 men were pronounced dead at the scene and nine later died from their injuries.

A reported 9,000 people attended the Sept. 25 funeral for the 32 men – 31 braceros and one undocumented immigrant from Mexico – at the Palma High School gymnasium.

The morning after the crash, Ernesto Galarza, a labor organizer in San Jose, got a call from the Salinas Central Labor Council and was told, “Turn on your radio. There’s been a farm labor bus collision in Chualar. Better come and look. This town is full of dead Mexicans.”

Galarza, who had advanced degrees from Stanford and Columbia, was subsequently appointed by the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor to investigate the crash. His findings, which he delivered in a report to Congress in April 1964, shed light on the unsafe practices in the industry – for one, the bus was a converted flatbed produce truck with a canopy put on top; it had never been inspected. The report helped, over time, lead to safer transportation for workers, and the state tightened up its inspections. Congress, meanwhile, let the Bracero Program expire in 1964.

At the crash site today, there’s a wooden cross reading “32 Braceros” that local activist Juan Martinez, who died in 2022, placed there about 15 years ago. In 2024, a more durable cross made of steel was put next to it.

When County Supervisor Luis Alejo was in the State Legislature in 2013, he worked with Martinez to put up the Bracero Memorial Highway signs along a 15-mile section of Highway 101 between Chualar and Soledad. But that didn’t seem like enough: About a year-and-a-half ago, Alejo approached Jacquie Atchison, executive director of the Arts Council for Monterey County, about creating a mural in Chualar to memorialize the crash, and the braceros.

The idea took off from there, and last summer, a call was put out for artists to submit proposed mural designs. The winning image was created by Seaside artist Hanif Panni. In the middle, a bracero, eyes closed, has his head tilted skyward, and an explosion comes out of his head, a mix of flames and vegetables. On the left side is the bus and a roadside cross reading “32 Braceros,” and on the right, braceros work in a field using a short-handled hoe, aka “the devil’s arm,” a tool the state Supreme Court outlawed on April 17, 1975.

At 4:30pm on Friday, April 18, a day after the 50th anniversary of that historic ruling, Alejo, Supervisor Chris Lopez and Arts4MC are hosting an unveiling of Panni’s work, the “Bracero Legacy Mural,” which Panni recently completed after spending much of the last month painting it on the wall of Chualar Market along Jackson Street. Alejo is thrilled with how it came out. “Hanif is just a tremendous artist,” he says.

Around 20 organizations will be in attendance, Alejo says, as well as bracero groups, lowriders, dancers from Chualar Elementary and free tacos from a taco truck. It’s a celebration, and recognition, of the sacrifices and contributions the bracero workers made to the local community.

“For me,” Alejo says, “it’s an example of where history intersects with beautiful art.”

THE BRACERO LEGACY MURAL unveiling celebration starts at 4:30pm Friday, April 18 at Chualar Market, 24335 Grant St., Chualar.