Garcia, Alberto

Assistant Professor, Department of History

Education

Ph.D., History, University of California, Berkeley

M.A., History, University of California, Berkeley

M.A., Latin American Studies, Stanford University

A.B., History, University of California, Davis

Bio

Alberto García is a historian of Latin America who specializes in twentieth-century Mexico. He grew up in the Sacramento Valley and completed his undergraduate work in history at the University of California, Davis. Professor García received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined San José State University's History Department as an assistant professor in fall 2018. Prior to that, Professor García was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Historical Studies.

Professor García's current research was inspired by his background as the youngest child of Mexican immigrant parents. His project focuses on the Bracero Program, a bilateral initiative that allowed Mexican men to work in the United States as seasonal contract farmworkers (braceros) between 1942 and 1964. Professor García examines the political factors that influenced how Mexican federal, state, and municipal officials recruited and selected braceros, as well as what motivated rural workers from the states of Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, and Zacatecas to want to migrate as braceros. An article based on this research, "Regulating Bracero Migration: How National, Regional, and Local Political Considerations Shaped the Bracero Program," was published in the August 2021 issue of The Hispanic American Historical Review. Professor García's book based on this research, tentatively titled Abandonging Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Central Mexico, under contract with the University of California Press.