Interviewer(s): Juan Manuel Galván

Project: University of Houston

Daniel Galván was born in 1937 in rural central Mexico, losing his mother at the age of five. He grew up in a distant village of the Mountain Range of Guanajuato, where he did not complete even one year of elementary education In 1952, at the age of 15 he was too young to enroll in the Bracero Program, so he crossed over as an undocumented farm worker. He joined the Bracero program later in the decade and spent the winters in Mexico, where two of his younger children died of preventable illness due to poverty and isolation into which he and his family lived. He continued to work in United States illegally, experiencing persecution and abuse, but also taking pride in his efforts to support his family. Finally, Daniel was granted legal residence and later United States citizenship, which enabled him to bring his family to Houston in the mid 1990s.