Labor Rights Are Civil Rights

Zaragosa Vargas is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of "Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933".

• Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: We Are the Salt of the Earth: Conditions among Mexican Workers in the Early Great Depression Years 16 The "Big Swing": The Peregrinations and Tribulations of Tejano Cotton Harvesters 18 "In the Land of Bondage": Colorado's Mexican Sugar Beet Workers 27 Summer in the Country: California's Mexican Farm Workers 34 The Great Depression Hits the Mexicans of Texas and the Western States 39 Work, Leave, or Starve: Limiting Relief to Mexicans 43 "Send Them Back to Where They Came From": The Repatriation Campaign Unfolds 46 Causes and Consequences of Mexican Repatriation and Deportation 55 CHAPTER TWO: Gaining Strength through the Union: Mexican Labor Upheavals in the Era of the NRA 62 Revolt in the Cotton Fields: Tejano Pickers Strike the El Paso Cotton District 67 Radical Labor Unrest in the Colorado Beet Fields 70 In Unity There Is Strength: Strikes by Tejana Domestic, Cigar, and Garment Workers 76 Learning the Lessons of Rank-and-File Trade Unionism: The Los Angeles Garment Workers' Strike 83 For the Union: Los Angeles Furniture Workers Organize 89 "Are You A Bolshey?": The 1933 Gallup, New Mexico, Coal Strike 90 The Red Menace: The National Miners Union Enters Gallup 94 Guns, Bayonets, and Clubs: Martial Law Descends on Gallup 97 Revolutionary Unionism at Work 99 Class against Class: The Gallup Coal Strike Escalates 103 APyrrhic Victory: The Gallup Coal Strike Ends 105 The Big Payback: The Crusade against Foreigners and Subversives 108 CHAPTER THREE: "Do You See the Light?": Mexican American Workers and CIO Organizing 114 The Labor Offensive in South Texas and Cross-Border Organizing 117 A Power to Be Reckoned With: Emma Tenayuca, La Pasionaria 123 "She's Nothing but a Damned Communist": Emma Tenayuca's Work in the Unemployed Councils and the Workers' Alliance of America 126 "The CIO Doesn't Exist Here": The 1938 Pecan Shellers' Strike 134 Educating the Party: Emma Tenayuca Pens "The Mexican Question in the Southwest" 143 "Pushing Back the Red Tide": The Downfall of Emma Tenayuca 146 Left Behind: UCAPAWA and Colorado's Mexican Sugar Beet Workers 148 Shifting Gears: UCAPAWA Organizes Cannery and Food Processing Workers in California 150 Collective Action: Mexican American CIO Unionists Organize Los Angeles 154 CHAPTER FOUR: Advocates of Racial Democracy: Mexican American Workers Fight for Labor and Civil Rights in the Early World War II Years 158 Inclusive Unionism: The Case of Mine-Mill and Mexican American Miners and Smelter Workers 162 "A Society without Classes": Mine-Mill and CTM Undertake an Organizing Drive in El Paso 164 Texas Showdown: The CIO on Trial in El Paso 168 The Push by Mexican American CIO Unionists for Labor and Civil Rights Continues 170 Getting a Foot in the Door: Mexican American CIO Unionists Enter Los Angeles War Defense Industries 175 Allies of Labor: The Popular Front of the Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples 179 Suppressing Fascism: Mexican Americans Battle the Sinarquistas 188 Labor, the Left, and Sleepy Lagoon 192 Mexican American Unionists Press On to End Discrimination 198 CHAPTER FIVE: The Lie of "America's Greatest Generation": Mexican Americans Fight against Prejudice, Intolerance, and Hatred during World War II 203 Eternal Victims of Race Hatred: The Predicament of Tejanos 206 "Working Overtime on the Riveting Machine": Mexican American Women War Workers 212 Fleeing Poverty: The Case of the Spanish-Speaking of New Mexico 214 Remaining Separate and Unequal: Colorado's Mexican Americans 217 "Stolid and Stunned, Brother to the Ox": The Mexican Copper Miners of Arizona 220 "Dirty, Noisy, and Lawless": The Further Segregation of Mexican Americans in Wartime Los Angeles 224 "It's the American Way": The Racial Assault against Mexicans in Los Angeles 227 Getting the Union Involved against Discrimination in Los Angeles 232 Focusing Government Efforts on Racial Inequality 235 The Beginnings of the Mexican Contract Labor Program 238 No Freedom from Fear: The Federal Government, Race Relations, and Mexican Americans 243 "They Just Don't Get It": Fighting Racism within Labor's Ranks 246 CHAPTER SIX: Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: The Emergence of the Mexican American Civil Rights Struggle 252 Expressions of the Mexican American Union Movement and Its Repression 254 Mexican Americans Fight for an FEPC Bill 258 "Nothing --We Shot a Mexican": Mexican Americans Fight Racism 260 Last Hired, First Fired: Mexican American Job Loss after the War 265 The Right-Wing Backlash against the Mexican American Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights 270 Achieving Mexican American Civil Rights through the Ballot Box 273 Mexican American Workers Confront Braceros and the Wetback Tide 277 CONCLUSION 281 Notes 291 Index 361

"Important books are provocative--they teach us new things, open new conversations, and point the way to new research. Labor Rights Are Civil Rights does all of this."--Roberto R. Trevino, Reviews in American History "Vargas does much to chronicle the role of Mexican American workers in the turbulent decades of the 1930s and 1940s and to document their important role in the labor struggles and political controversies of those years."--Robert H. Zieger, Labor History "Vargas has produced a synthesis of Mexican American labor history worthy of the attention of every labor, Chicano, and civil rights historian."--Matt Garcia, Western Historical Quarterly "Vargas's analysis is at once informative and illuminating."--Clete Daniel, Business History Review