Mexican Labor
The following is from a series I am writing on the history of farm labor in California based on the book Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California, by Carey McWilliams
Around WWI, as Chinese, Japanese, and other “undesirable” immigrant groups were being
expelled from California, and many men from California were fighting overseas, large growers looked to Mexican workers “to relieve the labor situation.” Mexican immigrants would remain the dominant low paid labor force for the remainder of the twentieth century, and they remain so today.
Around WWI, as Chinese, Japanese, and other “undesirable” immigrant groups were being
expelled from California, and many men from California were fighting overseas, large growers looked to Mexican workers “to relieve the labor situation.” Mexican immigrants would remain the dominant low paid labor force for the remainder of the twentieth century, and they remain so today.
By 1920, at least 50 percent of the migratory labor in
California was Mexican. In 1926, growers
sent lobbyist S. Parker Frisselle to congress “to get us Mexicans and keep them
out of our schools and our of our social programs.” Between 1920 and 1930, at least 150,000
Mexicans worked in the fields of California.
Mexican laborers, like the Chinese and Japanese before them,
were ideal for growers because they were low-paid and easily deportable, should
workers organize for higher wages or better conditions. Carey McWilliams explains, “The general
attitude of the growers towards the Mexicans is summarized in a remark made by
a ranch foreman to a Mexican: ‘When we want you, we’ll call you; when we
don’t—git.’”
When the Great Depression hit in 1929, white Americans began
to clamor for the agricultural jobs worked largely by Mexicans. Just as Chinese laborers were deported enmasse following the Great Depression of 1893, Mexican laborers were deported en
masse during the Depression of the 1930s.
McWilliams writes, “Beginning in February, 1931, thousands of Mexicans,
many of whom were citizens of the United States, were herded together by the
United States and shipped back to Mexico.”
This phenomenon was not limited to California. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans were
illegally deported at this time. This
historical reality is described in heartbreaking detail in the book Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s by scholars Francisco E. Balderrama
and Raymond Rodriguez.
Mexican laborers in Southern California often lived in work
camps, or “villages” which were segregated from the dominant Anglo
community. The definitive scholarly work
on this subject is Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Workers Villages in a
Southern California County 1900-1950 by Gilbert Gonzalez. This book describes the Mexican citrus villages of Orange County, which are the roots of current unofficial
white/latino segregation in cities like Fullerton and Anaheim.
McWilliams states, “Although the charge is vociferously
denied, Mexican and Negro are segregated in the rural schools. Arthur Gleason interviewed the principal of
one rural school in 1924. ‘Mexican
children,’ she said, ‘will not be admitted to this school. The reason is public sentiment. The trustees will never put those children in
here. This school is a white school.’”
It is a significant, though not widely taught, fact that the
first public school de-segregation case in the United States was not Brown vs.
Board of Education, but Mendez vs. Westminster, which declared racial
segregation in Orange County schools to be unconstitutional. Up until 1946, however, it was considered
okay.
Stay tuned for more on Mexican farm labor in California!
