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In the twentieth century, international labour migration has assumed increasing importance in the western hemisphere. In North America, the largest and most dramatic labour migration has been between Mexico and the United States. As the receiving country, the United States has tried on one occasion to regularize the flow of Mexican labour by formal arrangements with the sending nation. The Bracero programme 1942-64 legally provided for Mexican workers to serve in US factories and fields. A concerned US government now reportedly favours another formalized influx of Mexican labour through a 'guest worker' programme. Any consideration of such an arrangement calls to public attention the experiences of the Bracero era. To judge the efficacy of a new programme requires an historical understanding of the previous one, and the Bracero programme must be reconsidered in light of what is now known about the labour sending region in Mexico and the linkages between that region and Mexico's overall strategy of national development. This article seeks to provide a new historical context in which to evaluate a phenomenon that has persisted, with but few interruptions, since the 1880s, a phenomenon that promises in the 1980s to become again a major issue in the international dialogue between the United States and Mexico.The northward migration of people from Central Mexico has been a constant element in Mexican history since at least the arrival of the Spanish in 1518.