Chapter Eighteen

Striving for Self-Determination

Social and fraternal organizations have always played an important role in the Mexican-American community. This is perhaps one reason why Mexican Americans have been able to organize more effectively than other minority groups in their fight against discrimination. But the importance of organization is far greater than the banding together of people to overcome discriminatory practices against them. It is one of the very bases of the Mexican American's search for self-determination.

The organizations created by Chicanos served a variety of purposes, as did the organizations created by European immigrants who came to America. They helped perpetuate and reinforce the customs, language and traditions of their members' forefathers. They also helped cushion the jolt of cultural shock which immigrants often experience when they leave their homeland and settle in another country. These organizations also performed a limited service by helping newcomers in time of need. The Mexican American in the Southwest-whether he was a newly arrived immigrant from Mexico or a long4erm resident who had become a U.S. citizen following the Treaty of Guadlupe Hidalgo-established and joined organizations intended to help him cope with the new society and the hardships which he encountered within it.

Generally speaking, the organizations of Mexican Americans can be placed in one of five categories, though at times the functions and purposes of some organizations overlapped. The categories can be broadly described as fraternal, labor, religious, service and political organizations. The last of these did not become prominent until after World War II.
Two organizations have been particularly active and successful in the academic world: the National Association of Chicano Studies (NACS) and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). Each group holds a very worthwhile annual meeting. times of need, and to give social and psychological support in crisis situations. For instance, the mutual aid societies provided very limited insurance as well as death benefits for members and thus assured families that the deceased would receive a proper burial.
These organizations were supported by membership dues. Each member was required to contribute a small amount of money or whatever he could afford to the treasury of the mutual aid society. Since cash income was generally low in many of the rural areas, the resources of many mutualistas were seldom able to provide long-term assistance for any members.
In spite of hardships and handicaps, the mutualistas were a financial resource that would help a family with immediate needs before, during or after a birth, a wedding or a death. In most cases the mutualistas were concerned with the total family, but memberships were usually restricted to the breadwinner or to males over a specified age.

Perhaps even more important, the mutual societies offered families social and psychological support in times of crisis. In addition, they served to bring all of the members of a community together for funerals, feast days, weddings, or baptisms. This helped to maintain the allegiance of the individual to his group as well as to his culture. To further assure the loyalty of each member, persons seeking membership were required to swear allegiance to the society. For the most part, these societies did not encourage assimilation. This was the case in the border towns as well as in some northern cities such as Chicago, Illinois and East Chicago, Indiana, where the mutualistas sought to maintain close cultural ties with Mexico.

The foundation and growth of many mutual aid societies such as La Alianza Hispano Americana (1894); La Camara de Comercio Mexicana (1918); La Sociedad Progresista Mexicana y Recreativa (1918); La Sociedad Mutualista Mexicana (1918); La Sociedad Union Cultural Mexicana (1924), and countless others was spontaneous, their establishment usually undertaken in response to certain local issues (Grebler, 1966: pp.542-43). Thus, the mutual aid societies were almost always local or regional in character, whether in rural or urban areas. For the most part, the mutualistas concerned themselves with either social or labor issues, rather than political issues.

As we have said, many of the early mutualistas made strong efforts to imbue their members with an intense nationalism toward Mexico and discouraged assimilation into the large society. These efforts continued to be successful in those communities and barrios that remained isolated from the Anglo society. However, the story was different in those few areas where Mexican Americans began to experience some social and economic success. In such cases, strong identification with Mexico soon declined, with the end result that Mexican-American organizations began to concern themselves with the status of their membership in the United States. This was especially true of the smaller number of middle-class Mexican Americans who, as with most socially mobile immigrant groups, felt that they had to demonstrate their "Americanness" to others.

The earliest expression of this kind of spirit among the Mexican Americans occurred in San Antonio, Texas, in 1921, with the formation of the order of the Sons of America. According to its constitution, the central purpose of the Sons was that the members "use their influence in all fields of social, economic, and political action in order to realize the greatest enjoyment possible of all the rights and privileges and prerogatives ex-tended by the American Constitution" (Weeks, 1929: p.260).

The Sons of America appealed to similar elements of the Mexican-American community in the southern part of Texas so much that on August 24, 1927, the Mexican Americans of the Rio Grande Valley held a convention in Harlingen, Texas, in the hope of forming a new organization based upon a union with the Sons. Following the refusal of the Sons of America to partake in such a union, the valley group formed a League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in 1928.

LULAC's constitution reflects the integrationist tendencies in its stipulation that English would be the official language of the organization. In addition to working toward assimilation, LULAC also attempted to call attention to the contributions which Mexicans had made to the United States in the social, economic, and cultural realms. For the most part, members of LULAC were middle-class Mexican Americans who held a strong identification with the United States and its culture. LULAC established the Four Hundred Clubs, which sought to teach English to Mexican-American youngsters by having them learn a basic vocabulary of 400 words in English before entering formal schooling. The English language was important to LULAC for "the enjoyment of our rights and privileges" (Weeks, 1929: p. 265).

It is important to point out that LULAC also strove to end discrimination against Mexican Americans and "to maintain a sincere and respectful reverence for our social origins of which we are proud" (ibid.). In essence, LULAC represented the first general attempt by Mexican Americans to organize for the purpose of giving voice to their aspirations and needs as citizens of the United States. It was both a fraternal and a service organization, yet differed significantly from the mutualista societies.

The mutualista societies and the assimilation-oriented groups failed to elicit any type of response, either negative or positive, from the dominant society, primarily because they posed no threat to the society. However, the myth of the docile Mexican began to explode in the wake of his organizing efforts in the labor field.

Early Labor Organizations

Mexican-American efforts to organize labor began in the late nineteenth century. Such efforts usually grew out of an attempt to join together for self-protection (McWilliams, 1949: p. 190). One of the earliest events of this type on record involved several hundred cowboys, including a handful of Mexican vaqueros, who went on strike in 1883 against a large number of cattle companies. One of the signatures that appeared on the strike declaration was that of Juan Gomez, a Mexican American. The striking vaqueros won their demands for better wages.
The Chicano had long provided the labor for the development of the Southwest. He had helped build the railroads in the Southwest and had maintained them throughout the nation. His labor cleared the land and planted and harvested the crops in the developing agricultural industry. His skills and labor were essential for the growing mining industry. He was the original cowboy of the nation. He also herded sheep, cut timber, and worked in lumber yards and sawmills. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Chicano fought for equal wages and better working conditions. He was by no means passive, and in many instances his efforts led to violence.

By the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Southwest had witnessed considerable organizing activity among labor, most successfully in the mining industry (Acuña, 1972: p.95). The 1880s saw the rise of the Caballeros of Labor, a group of men who concentrated on fighting Anglo land-grabbing schemes. In the mid-1890s the Western Federation of Miners was established. Chicanos made up an important segment of the mining population in the Southwest and they provided the union's leadership (Meier and Rivera, 1972: p. 170). Significantly, that leadership usually emanated from the mutualistas, which for some time continued to provide many of the organizers and leaders in the turbulent labor history of the Southwest (Acuña, 1972: p.96).

In the first decade of the twentieth century union activity among Mexican Americans increased. The move to organize coincided with the rise of large commercial farm and mining operations in the Southwest which created a pressing demand for cheap Mexican labor.
In response to overt discrimination and to rampant exploitation practiced by their employers, the Mexican laborers began organizing themselves in order to secure some means of protection. As in the case of the mutual aid societies, many of these labor organizations were created for the purpose of dealing with a specific and often isolated labor issue. Once that issue or conflict in agriculture or industry was resolved, the organization ceased to exist. Of course, the demise of such unions. was quite often helped along by the violent and repressive measures taken by the employers and their vigilante groups.

SPMDTU

As stated earlier, many of the organizations formed by Mexican Americans had their roots in the mutualistas. A significant example was the Sociedad Protecci6n Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos (SPMDTU), founded on November 26, 1900, in Antonito, Colorado. The express purpose of the SPMDTU was to combat discrimination against the Mexican American Jose López, 1958: p.11). Like the mutualistas, the SPMDTU provided aid and support for the individual as well as guidance and advice through which it hoped to encourage the progress and prosperity of its membership. All members of the Mexican-American community over eighteen years old could join. The SPMDTU established lodges in the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah (ibid., p.28).

Organizing Mine Workers

The Mexican Revolution of 1910 not only brought an increased supply of cheap labor to the United States; it also brought activists and social reformers who had been forced to flee Mexico because of their opposition to Porfirio Diaz. One of the most notable was Ricardo Flores Magón, who had relentlessly attacked Diaz and his regime through his newspaper entitled Regeneración.

Flores Magón came to the United States in 1904, hoping to continue his work without the threat of imprisonment. However, he found little peace. He was constantly harassed by American officials, who for the most part supported Diaz, and in time he realized that the struggle he had been waging for the Mexican could not be confined to Mexico. Organization of the Mexican worker was needed in the United States as well. In response to this need, Flores Magón founded the Uni6n Liberal Humanidad, a labor union that was to bring violence and death to some of its members during the Cananea mine strike of 1906.

Mexican and Anglo authorities ruthlessly suppressed the strike at Cananea, Mexico. Flores Magón and his followers fled in order to avoid incarceration and to keep the union movement alive. The governments of the United States and Mexico worked together in an all-out effort to capture him. After serving eighteen months in prison beginning in 1909, and three years beginning in 1911 for his organizational activities, Flores Magón was once again arrested in 1918. He was charged with violating United States neutrality laws and sentenced to twenty years in prison. In 1922, after President Obreg6n had arranged for his return to Mexico, Flores Magón was found dead in his cell. His friends charged that he had been murdered, but the authorities resisted all efforts to investigate and prove that claim (Cockcroft, 1969: p. 124).
Ricardo Flores Magón was among the first to recognize and attempt to change the conditions under which Mexican-American laborers worked. But the problem facing Mexican-American laborers was far greater than merely poor working conditions. It concerned the differential wage paid to them and to Anglos for the same work. For example, in the mines at Clifton and Morenci, Arizona, Mexican workers received $2.39 for a seven-and-a-half hour shift while their American counterparts were paid $2.89 for the same shift and the same work (Kiuger, 1970: p.23).

In September 1915, Mexican and Anglo mine workers at Clifton and Morenci went out on strike. The issues in this strike, which lasted nineteen weeks, involved the lower Mexican pay scale, the tyrannical conduct of foremen who sold jobs to Mexicans, and the low salaries paid during prosperous periods (ibid., p. 25). At one point, the strikers invited the Western Federation of Miners to Clifton-Morenci, a somewhat ironic move, since this organization had been a leading advocate of the so-called "80 Percent Law." This law stated that 80 percent of all workers employed by companies in Arizona must be Americans; only 20 percent could be aliens-a stipulation which would have deprived most of the Mexican workers of their jobs. The law was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in December 1915, but it seems strange that an organization which had been a staunch supporter of this law should be invited to assist striking Mexican miners. The Western Federation of Miners proposed to organize the miners of Clifton and Morenci (ibid., p.26).

The strike itself was not marred by the bloodshed and property destruction that characterized many other strikes of the era. This was largely due to the efforts of the Mexican organizers and the actions of Governor G.W.P. Hunt and Sheriff James G. Cash, who prevented the importation of strikebreakers by calling the National Guard. After four and a half months the strike came to an end when the company agreed to guarantee equal wage rates for Anglo and Mexican workers.

Strikes were called again in the Clifton-Morenci mining region in 1917 and 1918, with quite different results. Both strikes were broken by vigilante action and the wholesale deportation of hundreds of Mexicans. In fact, the so-called "Bisbee Deportations" occurred during the 1917 strike. In all the mines 1,876 strikers were arrested and shipped to Columbus, New Mexico. Columbus officials refused to take charge of the prisoners and the Mexican-American strikers were taken out to the desert where they were released and left to make their own way back home. In an investigation of this incident some months later, Felix Frankfurter reported for the federal government that "too often there is a glaring inconsistency between our democratic purposes in this war abroad and the autocratic conduct of some at home" (McWilliams, 1949: p. 197).

The labor movement gained momentum in the second decade of this century. Strikes spread from the mines of Arizona to Los Angeles, California, where street railway workers went on strike for better wages and to oppose job discrimination. The Mexican Americans received support from the metal trades, leather and brewery industries. However, this support soon ended when the building of the strongly anti-union Los Angeles Times was dynamited. Twenty-one employees were killed; although no proof was presented that the strikers were involved, many supporters of the Mexican Americans dropped out. Soon after, the strike failed.

Organizing Agricultural Workers

Labor unrest quickly spread from mining to agriculture, where improvements in the workers' situation were desperately needed. Efforts to unionize Mexican and Mexican-American agricultural workers occurred repeatedly during the 1920s and 1930s (Meier and Rivera, 1972: p.184).

Agricultural workers were among the lost difficult to organize, for "the workers were dispersed, they were on the move, and above all, agriculture ruled the southwest" (Acuña, 1972: p.154). Yet this where organization was most necessary. 'he migrant worker was ruthlessly exploited by the growers, forced to live in substandard housing, and paid meager ages. In addition to this, the Mexican-American worker had to compete with the large waves of Mexican illegals, whose entry was encouraged by agribusiness. Yet as was the case with the Mexican-Americans who worked in the mines, organization had to come mainly from their own ranks because the Mexican Americans were considered foreigners and therefore not entitled to the protection the United States gave Anglo workers (ibid., p.154).

In 1903, a strike by sugar beet workers in Ventura, California-mainly Mexicans and Japanese-began two months of violence between growers and strikers. The settlement favored the strikers, who won the right to negotiate directly with the grower rather than with the Western agriculture Contracting Company, labor contractor (Meier and Rivera, 1972: p.170-71).

The Wheatland Riot

A period of inactivity followed the Ventura strike. But ten years later, in August 1913, Mexican-American agricultural workers called a strike against the Durst Ranch, in Wheatland, California. The owners of the ranch had provided filthy, inadequate housing for the laborers (ibid., p. 172). And the main issues in the strike were substandard housing and own wages.

The Industrial Workers of the World sent two organizers, Herman Suhr and Blackie Ford, to Wheatland to lead the laborers in their protest. During one of many subsequent tense confrontations between strikers and police officials, called in by growers, a deputy sheriff fired a warning shot into the air. His goal was to break up the protesters. But a wholesale riot ensued, leaving four strikers dead. The National Guard was called in and 100 migrant workers were arrested. This action effectively ended the strike and Suhr and Ford later received life sentences for their part in the riot (ibid.).

The Wheatland Riot became a milestone in the history of agricultural conflict. First of all, it attracted national attention, which helped to reveal the ugly facts about the condition of farm labor in California. Secondly, it led to the creation of the California Commission on Immigration and Housing which substantiated and articulated the plight of the agricultural worker. (However, even though this commission made recommendations that led to state regulation of California's farm labor camps, only negligible improvements occurred.) And, finally, two important documents bearing on the subject of farm labor were published. One, Carleton H. Parker's The Casual Laborer (1920), was the first serious study of migratory labor. The second document was "The Seasonal Labor Problem in Agriculture" published in volume 5 of the Report of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations (McWilliams, 1939: p.154).

The Wheatland Riot was only one of many agricultural strikes that occurred in California. It appears that Mexican leaders in that state made a great effort to organize the farm workers, while union activity elsewhere in the Southwest was largely restricted to non-agricultural laborers. In fact, "Unionism played a less important role in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas; and its activities, usually led by Anglos, were often directed against Mexicans as a source of cheap, strike-breaking labor" (Meier and Rivera, 1972: p. 182).

The establishment of labor unions among Mexican Americans in California met with somewhat greater success during the 1920s and the results were more encouraging. For example, in 1928 a strike was called by the cantaloupe workers in the Imperial Valley. This strike was important because it represented another attempt at a major work stop-page by Mexican workers in California (Wollenberg, 1969: p. 45).

MMAS

During the Imperial Valley strike, a new union-La Uni6n de Trabajadores del Valle Imperial-was formed on the foundations of two mutual aid societies, La Sociedad Mutualista Benito Juarez El Centro (1919) and La Sociedad Mutualista Hidalgo El Brawley (1921). From these two mutualistas would come the leadership of the Uni6n de Trabajadores (ibid., p.50). By April, this union had changed its name to the Mexican Mutual Aid Society (MMAS) of the Imperial Valley and was given further organizational support by the Mexican Counsel at Calexico.

One of the chief demands of the MMAS was that they, rather than the contratista (labor broker), be recognized as the spokesmen for the worker. This demand had long been a goal of farm laborers, mainly because the contratista was the one who most exploited the laborer (Meier and Rivera, 1972: p. 175). Other MMAS demands were a minimum wage of seventy-five cents an hour and requirements that picking sacks and crates, iced drinking water, and better housing be provided. The growers were reluctant to meet all the demands because they feared an agreement would be mistaken for weakness. They, therefore, offered a compromise proposal which the melon pickers quickly refused. The subsequent strike was marred by the actions of vigilante groups and the importation of strikebreakers.

In spite of the fact that their strike was broken, the efforts of the MMAS increased unionization efforts in the Imperial Valley. Furthermore, the strike resulted in the formulation of the harvest contract form. This form, though largely an unforeseen result of the melon strike, proved to be a significant victory for MMAS. Drawn up by the California Department of Industrial Relations, the harvest contract form recommended the abolition of deeply entrenched abusive practices on the part of the growers and made the growers rather than the labor contractors responsible for wages. It also eliminated the common practice of withholding 25 percent of the workers' wages until the end of the season. A bonus replaced the withholding amount as an incentive to workers to stay until the completion of the harvest.
The form was not mandatory but gained widespread use. In the summer of 1972, in Marshall County, Indiana, the "bonus" system was still in use-more than forty years after the Imperial Valley melon strike. The "bonus," however, was actually part of the wage. The growers used it as "incentive" for workers to remain until the end of the harvest. The workers generally interpreted it as a form of "coercion," since they were told that if they left before the harvest was over they would not be paid the "bonus." In many instances, under pressure, growers did pay the "bonus" for workers who left early, thus recognizing it as part of the wage.
In November 1927, the Federation of American Societies in Los Angeles brought about the organization of a number of local unions. This new federation was named the Confederaci6n de Uniones Obreras Mexicanas (CUOM), and was modeled after the chief Mexican labor union, the Confederaci6n Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM).

CUOM was the first really stable organization of Mexican workers and the first that included both rural and urban workers in its rank and file membership. It resembled La Liga Protectiva Mexicana, which had been formed in 1921, in Kansas City, in that the primary purpose of CUOM was to protect the Mexican-American laborer against unfair deportation practices. However, CUOM went one step further. It sought to protect Mexican-American labor by asking that the federal government further restrict immigration from Mexico. It also extended its efforts to get the Mexican government to restrict the flow of Mexican immigrant labor to the United States. CUOM was well aware of the fact that as long as corporate growers had an almost unlimited pool of cheap labor from Mexico, the chances for successful union activity would remain slim.

For various reasons, CUOM, after a very promising start, declined in membership from three thousand workers representing twenty locals, to only two hundred workers and only ten locals. Yet its efforts to organize Mexican-American laborers in order to improve their economic welfare remain important in the history of labor organizing because it served as a training ground for future leaders of more successful labor organizations.

Mexican Labor and the Great Depression

The Great Depression had a tremendous effect on agricultural labor-in fact on all phases of American life. For a number of years, particularly during the CUOM harsh decade of the 1930s, Americans fought hunger, deprivation, and unemployment in the land of plenty. The desperate need to survive, and perhaps a desire to search for a new start, turned many Anglo-Americans into migrant agricultural workers. Among those hardest hit were small farmers from the Midwest and South. The general economic depression was compounded by forces of nature that turned their fertile farms into a useless dust bowl. Bankrupt and destitute, these men joined the swelling stream of migratory workers, just as the Mexican Americans had been forced to do at an earlier date (1850-1920), when they were deprived of their lands in the years after the Mexican-American War. This situation only increased agricultural unrest as competition for jobs intensified. The scarcity of jobs made it easier for ruthless growers to further exploit the agricultural worker. As a result, workers now had to fight even harder against low wages, substandard housing, poor sanitation facilities and increased exploitation by the contratista.

The Great Depression placed a strain on the American people and made them less tolerant of actual or perceived aliens and foreigners. Old memories of the efforts of militant Mexicans to organize unions between 1900 and 1930 were revived. Cheap labor was no longer a blessing, not even to the large corporate farmer who had continually supported the large importation of workers from Mexico. By the early 1930s, the Mexican was viewed in a different light. He was seen as an albatross who represented one more burden on growing welfare rolls. As a result Mexican-American citizens, Mexican legal residents, and Mexican illegals all emerged as scapegoats of the Depression. As had occurred in previous times of national stress and economic depression, American nationalists sought to renew capitalist prosperity by deporting and repatriating the foreign elements. Over four hundred thousand Mexican immigrants and "undesirable" aliens were thus returned to Mexico.

Such repressive actions, however, did not deter the Mexican American in his efforts to organize (Acuña, 1972: p.159). In fact, these efforts became more intense in the face of repression, and by 1930 the myth of the docility of the Mexican laborer had been thoroughly exploded (Mc-Williams, 1949: p. 193). Increased labor unrest has been attributed to two sources-the Mexican-American workers themselves and the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), one of the most active radical labor groups in the West and one which showed a great deal of interest in organizing the Mexican-American workers (Meier and Rivera, 1972: p. 176). The number of strikes increased and the strikers became more unrelenting in their demands.

The El Monte Strike

The berry strike at El Monte in the San Gabriel Valley began in June 1933 and was the largest strike that had taken place in California up to that time. The strike was sparked by the wage rate, which had dropped as low as nine cents an hour by May 1933. It began with several thousand Mexican-American workers walking off the strawberry fields. The impact was tremendous. "It was this strike," writes Carey McWilliams, "which first aroused acute apprehensions on the part of the growers that the Mexicans might not be as docile as they had imagined" (McWilliams, 1949: p. 191).

The El Monte strike was organized by the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (C&AWIU). This union would prove to be the predominant force an California labor in 1933 through its involvement in thirty-seven recorded strikes, twenty-four for which it provided leadership (Ronald López, 1970: p. 102). The Mexican Consul, Mejandro Martinez, constituted a second prominent force Luring the strike by offering aid and ad-ice to the workers. Such aid was not un-usual. The government of Mexico supported Mexican-American unions in the 930s and its representatives in American communities frequently helped organize such unions (Acuña, 1972: p. 167). The aid form these and other sources was monetary as well as psychological. The El Monte strikers received contributions from Mexico amounting to about four thousand dollars. They also received help from CROM (the Mexican labor union) and from former Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles and ViceTonsul Ricardo Hill (ibid., p. 106).

The growers attempted to break the El Monte strike and their effort inevitably ed to violence. Yet in spite of intimidation, vigilante action, and the awesome ask of picketing along a 100-mile front, he strike continued. As its effects spread, he Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce became concerned and pressed the growers for a compromise settlement.
On June 26, 1933, the growers agreed to the demands of the strikers and offered them between twenty cents and twenty-five cents an hour for a ten-hour lay (Acuña, 1972: p. 162). The mediators were stunned when the strikers refused to accept this offer. The reason for the rejection was quite simple. The strikers were aware that the Chamber of Commerce was anxious for a settlement, fearing that the restrictionists would exploit the strike to limit immigration. The strikers were also aware of growing fear among those pushing for mediation that the strike might spread. Thus, the strikers believed that the situation favored them and decided to press for more demands.

Settlement of the strike came on July 6, 1933. The settlement called for a wage of $1.50 for a nine-hour day, or twenty cents an hour where the employment was not steady (Ronald López, 1970: p. 109). Some viewed the strike as unsuccessful. After all, the wage increase had been negligible and settlement had come at the end of the berry season, so that the workers would not enjoy immediate benefit from increased wages. However, organizers enjoyed a taste of success and were encouraged by the settlement.

First and most important, the union had been recognized as a result of the strike. Secondly, the strike had resolved a power struggle within the union which had developed between local Mexican-American leaders and outside representatives of the radical C&AWIU. This struggle was finally resolved when Mexican-American workers were persuaded by Alejandro Martinez, the Mexican consul, to abandon the Communist-inspired C&AWIU and form their own union. The resulting Confederación de Uniones Campesinos y Obreros Mexicanos (CUCOM) would prove to be the most successful of the Mexican-American unions. According to Ronald López, "the El Monte Union was probably a direct descendant of the Confederación de Uniones Obreras Mexicanas (CUOM)," that had been formed in 1928 (Ronald López, 1970: p.105). In fact, much of the experienced leadership that organized El Monte strikers came from the ranks of CUOM (ibid.). Another outcome of the El Monte strike was that many of the strikers became politicized and carried the Huelga idea with them to other parts of California. This helps to account for the rash of strikes by agricultural workers that hit California in 1933, placing that state at the front of the Chicano Huelga activity.

San Joaquin Valley Strike

The San Joaquin Valley strike followed close on the heels of the El Monte strike. This time the walkout was staged by the cotton-pickers under the leadership of the C&AWIU. Again, the grievances concerned wages and exploitation on the part of the contratistas. While the labor bureau offered only sixty cents per hundred pounds of cotton, the organizers demanded a dollar per hundred pounds. When the growers responded by evicting strikers from camps and company property, the organizers intensified the efforts to achieve their demands.

From Corcoran the strike spread. It soon encompassed the entire southern part of the San Joaquin Valley and the ranks of the strikers swelled to 18,000. The growers, frightened by this mass demonstration on the part of the workers, once again resorted to violence and repressive measures to break the strike. The most notable incident occurred on October 12, 1933, when the Union Hall at Pixley was riddled by rifle fire. Two strikers were killed and several others wounded. The same day another striker was shot to death at Arvin, a town farther south. Little was done to stem the violence following the so-called "Pixley riots." Such negligence by law enforcement officials resulted in the wounding of 42 more strikers and the arrest of 113 by the time the strike ended (London and Anderson, 1970: p.2).

In an effort to restore some semblance of order to the San Joaquin Valley, Governor James Rolf mobilized the National Guard. He also appointed a fact-finding committee which recommended that the State Mediation Board be established to handle labor disputes. This board, headed by Archbishop Edward J. Hannah, worked out a compromise that gave the workers seventy-five cents per hundred pounds of cotton (Meier and Rivera, 1972: pp. 178-79).

Grower Resistance

The growers became increasingly upset over the organizing abilities and persistence of the Mexican Americans. By the end of 1933, California had experienced a series of thirty-seven agricultural strikes affecting practically all of the major crops in the state (Ronald López, 1970: p. 101). In an effort to stem the swelling tide of resistance, the growers gathered in November 1933 and formed the Associated Farmers of California under the auspices of the Agricultural Labor Sub-committee of the California Chamber of Commerce.

This organization opposed unions in general as communistic movements and devoted itself to combating unionism through education, persuasion, and a permanent lobby at Sacramento. By 1934, the Associated Farmers, well financed and supported by law enforcement agencies, turned to more overt means of suppressing labor union activity. According to Meier and Rivera, "the Associated Farmers contributed substantially to the demoralization and decline of Mexican-American labor in the 1930s; it was also responsible for much of the labor violence which occurred during this period" (Meier and Rivera, 1972: p. 179).

The record itself reflects the truth of the above statement. In January 1936, the Federation of Agricultural Workers' Union of America (FAWUA) came into existence. Behind this federation was DUCOM, since it provided the necessary leadership for this organization. In April [936, the FAWUA called a strike in the celery fields. The strike, led by Guillermo Velarde of CUCOM, was finally settled in August 1936 after a great deal of resistance on the part of the Japanese growers. The benefits to the strikers again were negligible.
In June 1936, the Orange County citrus groves were hit by a strike. There followed a great deal of repression, property destruction, bloodshed, and a mass arrest of 115 Mexican-American strikers )n the charge of trespassing on a public highway. By July the morale of the strikers had declined to such a low point that many of the workers returned to the groves with only a slight wage increase.

Other strikes met with even less success. A strike in September 1936 by the Vegetable Packers Association, an AFL affiliate, was crushed by the Associated Farmers. A similar fate befell the cannery workers in Stockton in April 1937. The strong-arm tactics of the Associated Farmers proved so successful that by 1936 and 1937 there were few strikes among field workers in California.

Spread of the Movement

Strikes and unionization drives were, of course, not confined solely to California during the Depression years. Similar events occurred wherever Mexicans were employed in agriculture. "Mexican field workers struck in Arizona; in Idaho and Washington; in Colorado; in Michigan; and in the lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas" (McWilliams, 1949: pp. 1994). In fact, Dr. Stuart Jamison has stated that "the most effective agricultural labor unions during 1935 and 1936 were those organized among Mexicans" (ibid. p. 193).

It should be pointed out here that Mexicans also continued to organize in the mines. For example, in 1934, Mexican coal miners went on strike against the Gallup American Company in New Mexico. The strike, which saw the arrest of one hundred miners, was led by Jestis Pallares, who founded the Liga Obrera de Habla Español. La Liga, whose influence spread throughout northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, claimed a membership of 8,000. It worked to protect the jobs of its members and to provide some guarantee for relief payments to members in case of injury. The efforts of the league were successful in that it forced the authorities to abandon criminal proceedings against those arrested during the strike and in that it won relief rights for the strikers. However, Pallares, who was considered an agitator, was arrested and deported. Deprived of its leader, La Liga soon declined.

As the Depression deepened, unscrupulous employers took advantage of the desperate plight of the unemployed to exploit them further. This was the case in the pecan industry in Texas where the Depression insured an overabundance of cheap labor. By 1938, the situation had worsened and wages were reduced from six and seven cents per pound of shelled pecans, to the old scale of five and six cents per pound. Many of the shellers walked off their jobs in disgust and anger.

The pecan shellers' strike was also characterized by vigilante action and mass arrests. Police Chief Owen Kilday had little sympathy for the strikers and reverted to every repressive tactic he could think of to break their resistance. He even revived an obscure city ordinance that allowed the arrest of anyone carrying an advertising sign unless a permit had been issued by the city marshal (a post that no longer existed in 1938).

The strikers, lacking a formal union, organized their own under the leadership of the fiery Mrs. Emma Tenayuca Brooks, who at the time of the strike was only twenty years old. Under her guidance the strikers protested the harsh treatment of prisoners by the police chief They claimed that many of those arrested were crowded into jails where they suffered from unhealthy sanitary conditions. Their charges resulted in public hearings held by the Texas State Industrial Commission. According to its report, the commission found that the interference by police authorities under the leadership of Chief Kilday had been unjustified (Walker, 1965: p.53).

On October 24, 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act went into effect. This law required employers to pay their workers a minimum wage of twenty-five cents per hour. Prior to this, the striking pecan workers had been persuaded to return to work pending the decision of an arbitration board. The decision, rendered on April 13, 1938, favored the operators, though it did recognize Local 172 as the sole bargaining agent of the workers. However, all of this went for naught, for with a failure of the employers to overturn the minimum wage rate imposed by the Fair Labor Standards Act, many of the operators either closed their doors or mechanized their operations. In the end, the efforts of the union and the National Recovery Administration (NRA) had failed. In the case of the NRA this situation reflected the enforcement problems that had plagued it since its inception in 1933. As for the union, membership soon declined because of the widespread layoffs. By 1948, the union had dissolved.

The last of the important pre-World War II farm worker strikes took place in Ventura County, California in January 1941. The strike involved 1,500 lemon pickers, most of whom were Mexican Americans. During the strike, they organized the Agricultural and Citrus Workers' Union and affiliated themselves with the AFL. After four months the strike collapsed due to the importation of strikebreakers. Few of those involved in the strike returned to work since their jobs had been taken by dust-bowl refugees.

World War II brought an abrupt end to the labor organization among Mexican-American workers. The history of their organizational efforts had been marked by violence, harsh repression, racism, and militant protest. In addition to those obstacles created by the growers and operators against the efforts of the Mexican American to organize, there had been the added burden of attempting to organize the migrant worker, perhaps the most difficult to organize because of his mobility. Yet the Mexican Americans and the Mexicans had shown themselves to be militant, active, and determined during the strike-ridden years. They had destroyed the popular stereotype, prevalent among their employers, of the docile, submissive, inarticulate peon. They would continue to fight for equality despite the fact that World War II decimated the ranks of their leaders, many of whom were drafted. In the words of Dr. R.W. Rosskelly, their determination for equal status was bound to persist since they would not "willingly relegate themselves to the status of second-class citizens in a country where equal opportunity, regardless of race, is a symbol of freedom" (McWilliams, 1949: p. 194).
Common themes running through Mexican-American agricultural workers' efforts to unionize have been concern over:

1. Lack of federal and state legislation protecting farm workers' rights to collective bargaining on a level with other workers.

2. Repressive legislation aimed at agriculture labor, prohibiting strikes and denying minimum wages and benefits from Social Security and Workmen's Compensation.

3. The collusion of local and state law enforcement organizations (police, sheriffs, Texas Rangers) with the growers in efforts to suppress unionization and strike activities, and their non-enforcement of child labor laws and sanitation, transportation, and health codes.

4. The collusion of federal agencies and state employment agencies with the employers to provide an overly large cheap labor pool to serve as direct and unfair competition with farm workers. The Bracero program, the "green carders," and the use of illegal Mexican aliens are cases in point.

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