The California Lowriders: A Merging of Chicano Civil Rights and Culture
Cruising originally began in downtown San José until police diverted riders into the unincorporated Eastside, particularly near the intersection of Story and King Roads. According to Jesus Flores, a car club historian, low-riding crowds grew on the Eastside. Similarly, in Los Angeles low-riders had been pushed off of Whittier Boulevard by new restrictions. Many ethnic Mexican Angelenos faced similar obstacles to those in Santa Clara County. Lowriders cruised up to Eastside San José in numbers that resulted in the creation of “No Cruising” zones. Low riding culture went underground until the City of San José lifted the City’s low-riding restriction in 2022. According to Smithsonian curator Steve Velasquez, during the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, car clubs took on a politically empowered perspective, inviting family involvement and undertaking community events such as fundraising for the United Farm Workers labor union and hosting health initiatives. The car-culture aspect of low-riding was 10 percent, while the social aspect was 90 percent. Mexican veterans had utilized mechanical skills learned in the military to modify older models and lowered the rears of the cars with weights in order to stylishly cruise the roads. So it was no surprise when San José introduced the use of hydraulics in the low-riding scene. In 1977, San José State University students Larry Gonzalez, Sonny Madrid, and David Nunez pooled their money and published the first Low Rider Magazine in a small store front on Willow Street in San José. Just as the Chicano Movement utilized mythical Aztec artistic designs reminiscent of Diego Rivera murals, so did low-rider car artists. Velasquez noted that car artistic expression became a tool of resistance, calling the cars “mobile canvases.” As noted in Smithsonian Magazine, low-riding became “the nexus between art and activism.
East Side Revelations - Lowriding | San José Public Library
The Vibrant History of Lowrider Car Culture in L.A. | Travel | Smithsonian Magazine
Cruising for Community: Youth Culture and Politics in Los Angeles, 1910-1970.
The California Chicano Cultural Movement: The Chicano Music and Literary Movements
The Chicano Music Movement San José-based Flor del Pueblo was one of the most influential musical ensembles of the Chicana/o Movement, and inspired activism for social justice with local roots and an international perspective. Formed in the 1970s, they performed with various South Bay Teatro Chicano groups — including El Teatro Campesino — and were on stage at the Chicano Moratorium on August 29, 1970, when police violence broke up a peaceful demonstration. Their 1977 album, Música de Nuestra América, incorporated Latin American protest music influences on Chicana/o Movement musical style. Chicano Literary Movement The Chicano community was rediscovering the power of literature to communicate philosophies and experiences and inspire change. The poem “I am Joaquin,” written in 1967 by Chicano Nationalist leader Corky Gonzalez, was significant as an anthem for the Chicano Civil Rights Movement and was soon adapted into a short film directed by Luís Váldez. The poem reflects on the complicated relationship of Chicanos to America, with a heritage that incorporates Spanish, Aztec, American Indian, and European American sources. While fighting for integrated schools and equal access to education, the Chicano Civil Rights Movement strongly supported bilingual education, which was illegal in many states at the time. A long history of colonization had created a rich oral tradition of storytelling, plays, and narrative songs called corridos. Indigenous oral traditions provided a way to express discontent with racial discrimination and envision an alternative future. A powerful voice among Chicana writers is poet and publisher Lorna Dee Cervantes. Born in San Francisco and raised in downtown San José, she started writing poetry as a teenager and was determined that her words would be accessible to readers like herself. In 1976, Cervantes founded MANGO Publications, the first to publish many famous Chicano writers, including Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and Alberto Rios. Numerous Chicano newspapers, activist organization newsletters, and scholarly and arts publications arose during this period. These included papers such as El Manchete, Bronce and La Palabra, and Que Tal, a student newspaper. While some were short lived, they documented the concerns of diverse ethnic Mexican communities and interpreted the goals of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement for their audiences. The Chicano Press Association, established in 1969, had twenty two members at its height, mostly in California. Quinto Sol of Berkeley, the first fully independent publishing house, was founded in 1967 at UC Berkeley by Octavio I. Romano. They published the interdisciplinary El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican-American Thought, the first national academic and literary journal ever published in the United States.
Chicano Literature: The Theme Of Cultural Resistance
Chicano Poetry - Research Guides at Washington University in St. Louis
The California Chicano Cultural Movement: The Chicano Arts and Mural Movements
Chicano Arts Movement Oakland would emerge as the birthplace of Chicano art groups during the Chicano movement. In 1969 the Mexican American Liberation Art Front (MALAF), a Chicano artists’ collective in the Fruitvale District of Oakland, was one of the first Chicano art collectives in the United States. Founded by Chicano artists Malaquias Montoya, Manuel Hernandez, Rene Yanez, and art professor Esteban Villa, it was one of the main poster producers for various protest events and movements in the 1960s and soon created a circle of artists and activists interested in political and cultural work. In I970 the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) was founded as the Rebel Chicano Arts Front at Sacramento State. This was an artist’s collective run by Jose Montoya, Esteban Villa, and Richard Favela to support the arts in the Chicano community and to educate young people in arts, history, and culture. Their mission also included promoting political awareness, and support for César Chávez and the United Farm Workers. In 1972, the RCAF created the Centro De Artistas Chicanos, a hub for community programs including La Nueva Raza Bookstore and Galeria Posada, RCAF Danzantes, RCAF Graphics and Design Center, and the Barrio Art Program for children. Many of the artists involved were educators, writers, poets, and musicians who contributed Chicano civil rights activism and to the promotion of Chicano art history, literature, and culture. As artists and activists, the silkscreen posters they created were highly political, expressing community concerns and viewed as instruments of social change. The Chicano Mural Movement The Chicano Mural Movement began in the 1960s when murals appeared extensively in the Southwest as part of the national Chicano Movement. While famous Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera had created monumental public art, Chicano muralists used their work to increase the visibility of the Mexican American experience and to advance the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. Murals were painted on buildings, schools, churches, and other public areas in Mexican American barrios, or neighborhoods. Murals continued in their traditional role as a visual narrative, while recording significant social and political events. Traditional cultural icons and symbols were infused with new meaning when they depicted contemporary struggles. In the 1960s and 1970s, many artists were Vietnam veterans and their murals incorporated images of war and loss, along with Mexican revolutionary figures, the struggles of immigrants, and social justice issues relevant to Mexican and Latino-Americans. Although women artists were still in the minority as muralists, the Mujeres Muralistas (MM) in San Francisco was an all-women art collective founded in the 1970s by Patricia Rodriguez, Graciela Carillo, Consuela Mendez, and Irene Perez. Their intention was to celebrate the culture and contributions of Mexican American and Latina women and to recognize the talent of Latina artists. Their images celebrated Latina women artists and historical figures as well as everyday women in the community in their various roles as wives, mothers, and workers. Some in the Mexican community questioned their ability to handle the physically strenuous work, while others questioned their focus on the lives of women and images of beauty. Public acceptance of their art influenced a shift from the stark images of war and loss typically produced by male muralists to a broader range of themes and color palettes. The Women’s Movement had often overlooked the perspectives of non-Anglo American women, and The Mujeres Muralistas’ art recognized Latina women’s experiences as integral to representations of Mexican American culture and socio-political issues.
¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now | Smithsonian American Art Museum
Chicano/a Art, Movimiento y Más en Austen, Tejas 1960s to 1980s - Mexic-Arte Museum
A Public Voice: Fifteen Years of Chicano Posters
Galería de la Raza: Royal Chicano Air Force
Royal Chicano Air Force Posters | Harvard Library
Royal Chicano Air Force – Art and Activism | Season 28 | Episode 4 | PBS
College Hour- The Royal Chicano Air Force: A Legacy of Art and Civil Rights
Do You Know the Way to San Jose's Chicano Murals? | KQED
"Mission History: Muralistas in Action 1975," 1:10 min.
Preserving Latina Women’s History in San Francisco’s Community Murals
Decades-Old Chicano Mural Erased in San Jose's East Side
The California Chicano Cultural Movement: Chicano Theater Movement
Luis Valdez | Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
Luis Valdez: The Father of Chicano American Theatre and Film
Luis Valdez: 1940—: Playwright, Director, Writer, Actor, Teacher
El Teatro Campesino El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworkers’ Theater), one of the most influential elements of the Chicano Arts Movement, has its roots in San José. San José State College students Luís Váldez and Roberto Rubalcava joined the Marxist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and traveled to Cuba in 1964 as part of a PLP delegation. Váldez joined the anti-establishment radical theater group the San Francisco Mime Troupe upon graduation. He was introduced to guerilla theater and Italian Commedia dell'arte, forms which would influence the development of the Chicano Teatro and the one act play “acto.” In 1965, Váldez joined César Chávez and the United Farmworkers Union in drafting the El Plan de Delano, which proclaimed the principle of a movement for social justice. Váldez brought together farm workers and students to form El Teatro Campesino in 1965 and toured union halls, the fields, and migrant camps. This idea of performing events of the day back to the workers was similar to the Living Newspaper of the WPA during the 1930s. El Teatro aimed to educate and inform the farm workers and the general public with social and political commentary intertwined with humor. Their performances took the form of a one act play — “acto” — incorporating myth and history to document farm workers’ lives and aspirations. The “actos” dramatized political and social concerns, while “mitos” (myths) explored myths, legends, and spirituality. Originally based on the experiences of farm workers, their subject matter soon expanded to include other aspects of Chicano culture, history, and social issues. El Teatro set up headquarters in San Juan Bautista, located in San Benito County, just south of Santa Clara County. A few years later, in 1974, Teatro de La Gente was created in the Bay Area as a theater of the people, involving people with no theater background, whether cannery workers, immigrants, or refugees. As one of the few Chicano Theater groups in the Bay Area, Teatro de la Gente performed for political rallies, social rallies, fundraisers, cultural events, and programs at other colleges. Performing in the farm labor camps, they marched with the people, playing music and singing along, then performed on stage. Working with people with little or no theater background but a lot of life experience, they conducted workshops and classes for the community. Teatro de La Gente toured throughout the southwest, performing works that related to the daily experiences of Chicanos. El Teatro strengthened the spirit of people struggling to deal with complex social and economic issues and reinforced the connection with cultural expressions for others. The Teatro Festival, organized in 1973 by Teatro de la Gente, brought Chicano theater groups together from all over the United States, Mexico, and other parts of Latin America. The music that came out of the Farmworkers Movement chronicled the struggle of the farm worker in song and verse. El Teatro also incorporated indigenous music from Mexico and popular music from Latin America. The 1970s soon saw an explosion of Chicano theater on college campuses and in communities throughout the United States, with several annual Chicano theater festivals organized by El Teatro Campesino. El Teatro Nacional de Aztlán (The National Theater of Aztlán) was created by the Teatro Campesino and other Chicano Teatro groups in 1971. El Teatro Urbano was started in 1968 in South El Monte by Rene and Rosemary Rodriguez. Inspired by Teatro Campesino and named by Luís Váldez, this led to the creation of a regional network of Teatro groups in Southern California. El Centro Cultural de la Gente El Centro Cultural de la Gente (Peoples' Cultural Center) was created in 1973 in San José, California. El Centro was a collaboration between El Teatro de la Gente and other San José artists, actors, writers, poets, and visual artists. Teatro and non-Teatro musicians were also developing contemporary Chicano-Latino music. There was an explosion of cultural works produced during that time, including posters, drawings, paintings, musical arrangements, and compositions. Artists of all types shared gallery and theater space and were encouraged to collaborate. The Centro became the center for a multitude of San José Chicano artists presenting everything from visual arts exhibits to city-wide cultural events, and were influential in the development of San José City Arts and Events Programs.
The National Chicano Cultural Movement of the 1960s and 1970s
During the 1960s and 1970s, artists and activists who identified as Chicanos developed a new cultural identity apart from Mexican nationals and the previous generation of Mexican Americans. The mix of cultural influences that were considered inferior to White Americans was a central concept for the Chicano Movement. These beliefs reflected the forging of a unique identity, one that crossed borders and cultures. The 1960s were marked by cultural nationalist struggles in the Third World and an international student movement. The US also reflected this generational change with the emergence of multiple social and political movements, including domestic Black Power, hippie counterculture, and massive mobilization against the war in Vietnam. The national flowering of the Chicano Arts Movement in the US found expression in a variety of mediums, including Theater, Painting/Murals, Music, and Literature. Artists composed slogans of solidarity and envisioned art and culture as crucial aspects of social transformation. Chicano arts would reinforce a positive identity and fortify the community. The Chicano Civil Rights Movement reaffirmed a centuries-long struggle for human and cultural rights
“The History of Mexican Americans in California” (include Chicano Cultural Movement)
Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (Mexican Americans)
Local Community Advocacy: Brown Berets and Black Berets in San José
In 1967, David Sanchez dissolved Young Citizens for Community Action to form the Brown Berets (BB), a self-defense group based in East Los Angeles. The BB was known as a militant youth group that protested educational neglect and police brutality, and had strong links to the community and to East LA high school. Together, BB members and students began a series of pickets in front of sheriffs’ offices and police stations. San José’s Brown Berets were organized in the same year and based on the East LA group and Oakland’s Black Panther Party. The Panthers were a Marxist–Leninist and black power political group founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966. San José’s Brown Berets described their mission as protecting the Chicano community from police brutality, promoting equal employment, housing, education, and voting rights, as well as protecting the right to bear arms, and as advocates for bilingual education. They often provided security for protest marches and community events, buffering these groups from potential police harassment. Other organizations took up a black beret and called themselves the Black Berets, in honor of Che Guevara. Their perspective was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and internationalist. They created and assisted in many community programs such as food distribution, community patrols, and other activities. While most active in other areas of the Southwest, the Black Berets in San José also made alliances with other groups, and provided security for the Roosevelt Junior High School walkout in 1967.
"To Protect and To Serve: Effects of the Relationship Between the Brown" by Paul Flores
Brown Berets Hail 'La Raza' and Scorn the Establishment June 16, 1969
FACEism: Footage shows clash between police, East LA protesters who changed the Chicano movement
Carlos Montes oral history interview conducted by David P. Cline in Alhambra, California, 2016 June 27 | Library of Congress
Expanding Community Advocacy in Santa Clara County With CIC, CAP, CPL And UPA
The Mexican American Community Services Agency, Inc. (MACSA) was organized in 1964 by Santa Clara County ethnic Mexican activists to identify ways to respond to the discrimination, racism, poverty, police brutality, educational inequity, and inadequate access to public services that existed in Silicon Valley. Their methods emphasized self-help, coalition building, and neighborhood organizing based on the model established by the Community Services Organization (CSO) of the 1950s. Young people were of particular concern to MACSA because many students were afraid to complain to their parents about the harassment and discriminatory treatment they experienced in schools. Compounding the problem were prevailing attitudes held by many ethnic Mexican parents who saw teachers as authority figures who were not to be questioned. MACSA, however, was broadly successful in focusing its efforts on youth, families, and senior outreach with targeted educational cultural activities and programs. In addition, MACSA developed nutrition programs as well as employment and training programs at youth centers, schools, libraries, and community sites.
Community Improvement Center (CIC) & Community Alert Patrol (CAP) The creation of the organization Community Alert Patrol (CAP) is a good example of the transition from small community groups focused on single issues to the establishment of formal organizations capable of addressing more complex long-term issues. In 1963 the Community Improvement Center (CIC) began as a self-help program. Sofia Mendoza started working with the CIC in 1963 and was a founding member of Community Alert Patrol (CAP). She remembered, “We just had it. We had reached our limit. The police had guns, mace and billy clubs. They were always ready to attack us. It seemed as if nobody could stop what the police were doing” (Roots of Social Justice Organizing in Silicon Valley). CAP was created to deal with complaints of police harassment and brutality, similar to the Black Panthers in Oakland. Close to a thousand local residents were trained to observe and record police interactions with the public, the most active participants being San José State University students involved in organizing for ethnic studies classes. Community Progress League (CPL) The CIC evolved into the Community Progress League (CPL) by 1965, with Sofia Mendoza leading the campaign to work with parents at Theodore Roosevelt Junior High in the ethnic Mexican Mayfair neighborhood. As discussed in section 6.4, several ethnic Mexican children told their parents that other students and even some teachers had used racial epithets against them. These children had been reluctant to talk and Mendoza encouraged other parents to become involved. Eventually several teachers and the principal were replaced. Despite the new staff, ethnic Mexican parents and some teachers felt other changes were needed in the curriculum and support system for their children. They organized a student blowout/walkout in 1967 at Roosevelt Junior High, which was an inspiration for the LA “Blowouts” (walkouts) and the Chicano Moratorium March the following year. United People Arriba (UPA – United People Upward) The success of the walkout encouraged the group to create United People Arriba (Upward) (UPA) in 1967, which broadened the scope of membership and concerns to include multiple groups and issues. Mendoza and co-organizer Fred Hirsch lead the group. Mendoza recalled, “We wanted an organization that was not limited to one ethnic group, that would organize our entire community, so we called ourselves United People Arriba—United People Upward. We liked the term ‘United People’ because it got the idea across that people from different ethnic backgrounds were coming together in San Jose to work for social change—Blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and whites working together in one organization” (Roots of Social Justice Organizing in Silicon Valley). One hundred thirty people attended their first meeting, many of whom had been involved with the school walkout. They developed a committee system to deal with multiple issues: improving local health services, challenging discriminatory education, expanding welfare rights, monitoring policing tactics, and increasing employment and better housing.
Roots of Social Justice Organizing in Silicon Valley | Reimagine!
The Chicana Civil Rights Activist Who Helped Transform San José Housing - KQED Pop
East Side Revelations - Sofia Mendoza | San José Public Library
East San José Celebrates the Life of Sofia Mendoza
Sofia Mendoza Women Leaders of San José, CA The 1960's & 1970's Part 1/3 4/24/2010
Fred Hirsch: Doing the Work That Needed To Be Done | Convergence
Guide to the Fred Hirsch Ephemera Collection
San José Local Groups Fight Discrimination in College Education
After WWII and during the 1950s, ethnic Mexican civil rights organizations focused on providing scholarships, reducing high school dropout rates, and promoting college recruitment to help Mexican Americans professionalize, with the aim that educated workers would then give back to their communities. Returning veterans attended college on the GI Bill, and some applied their degrees to education and social services. During the 1960s and 1970s, Mexican American students pursued a new direction, calling themselves “Chicanos” and creating new ethnic Mexican civil rights organizations emphasizing cultural nationalism. Most ethnic Mexicans chose to attend the more affordable community colleges before transferring into four year colleges or universities. San José City College (SJCC) served as such a launching ground. In 1965, Los Amigos, a student organization at San José City College, was founded primarily by young returning veterans to improve educational programs and to keep students in school, working with middle and high school students. Los Amigos programs also dealt with at-risk youth in Juvenile Hall. In 1966, the GI Bill was expanded to include Vietnam War veterans, and many of these older students attended community colleges. At San José City College, students organized tutoring programs and cultural activities and advocated for better educational opportunities. When these students moved on to four-year colleges and universities, they continued their activism. In the 1950s, San José State University (SJSU) was considered a conservative university in its views on race and class. This changed rapidly when ethnic Mexican students of color transferred from the more affordable San José City College to SJSU in the 1960s. The transfer students brought a host of student-led initiatives and activism with them, enabling and leading student demonstrations, walkouts, and picketing. These activities led to the establishment of a counseling center and services for Chicano students prior to the creation of the Equal Opportunity Program (EOP) at SJSU. In 1966, SJSU student Armando Valdez organized Student Initiative (SI), the first Chicano student organization at San José State. SI was dedicated to developing Mexican American student leadership and working with the campus Equal Opportunity Program (EOP). SI began working with local community groups and recruiting high school students to attend recruitment and orientation events at SJSU. Networking with other Chicano student groups statewide, SI transformed into the Mexican American Student Confederation (MASC), advocating for changes in the SJSU curriculum and textbooks, and for the creation of a Mexican American studies program at SJSU. Bilingual education was also a major focus, with Ernesto Galarza serving as a non-faculty advocate. In 1968 SI organized the Chicano Commencement walkout, protesting the low Chicano student enrollment and low numbers of Chicano faculty. This walkout was the first protest by Mexican American students on a college campus in California. In 1968, equity in education was still a major priority for the ethnic Mexican community, and many different student organizations had been started in high schools and colleges to support these students. Often, parents and teachers were deeply involved in these groups. The Mexican American Student Confederation (MASC) at SJSU created summer cultural programs to teach junior high school students Mexican visual art, music, dances, and cooking. They created the Mexican American Culture Center, which was established in 1999 at Mexican Heritage Plaza. MASC transformed into the Students for the Advancement of Mexican Americans (SAMA). This same year, a student strike at San Francisco State College was organized by the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), demanding the creation of a Department of Raza Studies under the School of Ethnic Studies as well as open admission to all students of color. This event, which had led to violent confrontations between students and police, prompted Mexican Americans and other third world student activists to form a rainbow coalition in which many San José State University (SJSU) and Santa Clara University Chicano students participated. These protests led to the establishment of the Chicano Studies Program at SJSU, the oldest Graduate Program in Chicana/o Studies in the country, and catalyzed a push for a separate Chicano Commencement. Among the groups pressing for change at SJSU were the Chicano Vietnam War veterans who were activated by the anti-Vietnam War Movement and returning to school on the GI Bill. Students like Victor Garza, now Dean at Evergreen Valley College, and Ramon Martinez, retired teacher, principal, and administrator in San José Unified School District, reached out to local high schools to encourage students to attend college, and to come to SJSU. In the 1960s, Chicano student activists organized on college campuses throughout Santa Clara County, California, and across the nation. SJSU students Luís Váldez, a scholarship recipient in math and physics, and Roberto Rubalcava j oined the Marxist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and traveled to Cuba in 1964 as part of a PLP delegation. While many of their contemporaries embraced the more conservative political approach of accommodation and assimilation in American society held by the previous generation, Váldez and Rubalcava took a more radicalized approach to politics. Together they produced the first Mexican American radical manifesto, “Venceremos!: Mexican American Statement on Travel to Cuba,” diverging from older Mexican American middle class civil rights organizations’ assimilationist policies. Váldez changed his major to Theater and joined the anti-establishment radical theater group the San Francisco Mime Troupe upon graduation, where he would continue his critique of assimilation tactics. In 1965, Váldez participated in César Chávez’s farm worker organizing efforts in Delano, and wrote the Plan de Delano, which promoted the principle of organizing for social justice. That same year, Váldez founded the Teatro Campesino, recruiting its members from among Chicano student activists in northern California. Dr. Carlos Muñoz, founding chair of the first Chicano Studies Department in the nation in 1968 at the California State University at Los Angeles and founding chair of the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies (NACCS), credits Luís Váldez and the cultural work of the Teatro Campesino for many of the concepts of Chicano identity and the emergence of the Generación Chicana.
50th Chicano Reunion San Jose State: Original '68 Walkout Students, In Memorium Part 3/3 11/4/2023
SJSU to Host Revisiting the 1968 Chicano Commencement Symposium Oct. 11
SJSU forum focuses on 50th anniversary of Chicano activists' walkout
1960s-Era Chicano Student Activists Celebrate Historic SJSU Graduation Protest - CBS San Francisco
San Jose recalls Chicano protest | SJSU News
San José State University Chicano Oral History Collection
SJSU Chicano Student History 1970s: Ramon J. Martinez Ph.D. SJSU '71, San Jose, CA 3/1/2005
The Chicano Student Movement By Arturo Villarreal
San José Local Groups Fight Discrimination in K-12 Education
For Mexicans, the path from public school to college was fraught with many obstacles. Before WWII, most ethnic Mexicans attended public school only up to the 8th grade. After WWII, ethnic Mexican students attended public high school, and some even enrolled in college. Public education for immigrant groups typically emphasized Americanization, prioritizing English skills and useful trades. Although segregated schools were no longer legal in California after the 1947 Mendez v. Westminster case, schools in Mexican neighborhoods were often older facilities with fewer resources, and few had Spanish-speaking teachers. Ethnic Mexican high school students were not tracked to college. Frances Palacios, who attended San José public schools, described a meeting with her high school counselor: “I told him what I wanted to take. When I did, he told me I didn't have the brains for it and would probably fall through, and to continue taking typing and filing. So, I did. I didn't take any college prep courses, because he felt I was incapable” (Frances Palacios, Chicano Oral History College, Special Collections, SJSU Library). Palacios eventually earned a BA and an MA in order to become a high school counselor who would help ethnic Mexican students go to college. Local ethnic Mexican parents became increasingly concerned about the poor quality of education that their children received. At Roosevelt Junior High School in San José, parents found that the police assigned to the school harassed ethnic Mexican students, and these children received discriminatory treatment from both teachers and other students. The parents pressured the school district and succeeded in replacing 36 teachers, a principal, and a vice principal. Despite the new faculty, the parents were still fighting structural inequality in the school system. Similar to other ethnic Mexican high school students throughout the U.S. in the 1960s, and in particular in 1967 Los Angeles (the first such action in California), students at Roosevelt Junior High School organized a “Blow Out” (or walkout) to resolve the educational inequalities. The Chicano Movement established an empowering political and cultural identity that was both Mexican and American. Chicano students of all ages in Santa Clara County might be involved concurrently in local community organizations like United People Arriba (UPA – United People Upward) and the Brown Berets (BB), and in student-led groups like the Student Initiative (SI), the Mexican American Student Confederation (MASC), Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), and the United Mexican American Students (UMAS). Meeting with other Chicano student groups and other students of color, they found common ground with young activists throughout California and across the nation. A chapter of MAYO was started at San José High School with the help of organizer Lino Lopez in 1968. At that time Lopez worked with Mexican American youth and local schools in Santa Clara County to create bilingual programs. MAYO, founded in 1967 in San Antonio, Texas, stressed Chicano cultural nationalism and direct political confrontation, using mass demonstrations involving both university students and teenagers to accomplish its goals.
Mexican-American School Walkout Focused on Problem June 26, 1970
VOCES | MAYO | Season 2016 | Episode 1 | PBS
5th Annual Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) Conference (San Francisco, CA) | California Revealed
(1962) Mexican-American Youth Organization (MAYO) Speech #chicana #chicano #mexicanamerican #latina
The Chicano Rights Movement | Season 2018 | Episode 1 | PBS
Jack Brito Part 4/8: San José Schools & Roosevelt Jr. High Protests 8/15/2014
San José's Proud Legacy of Struggle for Chicano Rights : Indybay
Cherries to (Silicon) Chips: Local Urbanization, Redevelopment and Displacement Contributed to Local Chicano Advocacy
In 1960, ethnic Mexicans made up 20% of the population of the City of San José. The largest concentration of ethnic Mexicans in Santa Clara County resided in the unincorporated area of San Jose’s developing Eastside. Downtown San José, adjacent to the historic downtown Mexican colonia, became the hub of a vibrant regional business and entertainment district that drew Spanish-speaking clients residing in the Eastside colonia, worker neighborhoods in surrounding towns, and smaller unincorporated communities of Santa Clara County. Between 1960 and 1970 the population of Santa Clara County grew by 66%, with Spanish-surnamed residents growing from 12% to 18%. As the most-populated municipality in the County, housing the largest number of ethnic Mexicans, San José continued to serve as the center for social, cultural, and political activity for ethnic Mexicans in the South Bay. Unlike other urban areas, where “white flight” resulted in a declining urban core, the ethnic Mexican population settled in these areas, starting businesses and raising families. Annexation of the Eastside into the City of San José did not immediately bring needed improvements in streets, water or sewage systems. This was because San José had long relied on municipal bonds for civic improvements rather than raising taxes, which gave the growing city only sporadic access to funds. San José had grown exponentially, from 17 square miles in 1920 to 120 in 1970, sprawling toward nearby towns such as Cupertino and Sunnyvale. Annexation of adjacent communities soon converted orchards, farms, and canning and packing operations to technology/industrial parks and housing tracts. These growing communities now prioritized access to public services and infrastructure improvements. The 1958 the “Master Plan of the City of San José” fell in line with the goals of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s anti-poverty programs of the 1960s. The federal Model Cities Program identified the central business district as crucial to the City’s growth and economy and one of its chief objectives for the City’s central core included an urban renewal program. The aim of the Model Cities Plan for urban renewal was to prevent existing blight from spreading, rehabilitate areas that could be restored, and to clear and rebuild those that were not “worth” saving (worth being a subjective term). The Redevelopment Agency’s first major urban renewal project in San José during 1967 was Park Center Plaza. Thirteen blocks encompassing nearly all of the west-of-Market neighborhood next to the center of downtown would eventually displace 466 mostly ethnic Mexican residents and 136 businesses. In 1968, San José applied for additional monies through the Model Cities Program. In 1970 four assembly districts that received federal Model Cities Program funding were in the predominantly ethnic Mexican neighborhoods of Mayfair, Tropicana, Olinder, and Gardner. Existing worker housing near fruit processing plants and canneries downtown and in the Eastside were identified to be cleared as part of the Plan. These ethnic Mexican neighborhoods also stood in the way of freeway expansion for Highways 280 and 680. The resulting demolition of blocks of existing residences and small businesses caused the displacement of local residents and the further fragmentation of older ethnic Mexican neighborhoods. Local residents questioned the definition of “blighted” and whether one of the criteria were the higher numbers of people who spoke little or no English. Homes and businesses in this area were often sold for less than fair market value, so options for purchasing other property were extremely limited. In response, the younger generation of Chicano organizers expected more action from their local government now that ethnic Mexicans also served on municipal councils and commissions. They were skeptical of large federal programs such as the Model Cities Programs and lobbied and mobilized in the streets to address issues such as discrimination in housing, institutional racism, police brutality, healthcare access, and labor rights. New organizations like the Brown Berets, United People Arriba (UPA), and the Community Alert Patrol (CAP) reflected efforts by these younger Chicano groups to focus directly on these issues on a local level. Despite legal challenges to the Model Cities Program, redevelopment plans were generally supported by city residents who believed that they were necessary in order to create a stable local economy and safer neighborhoods.
“Urban Impact on Agriculture in Santa Clara County, California”
Valley of Heart's Delight: Orchards to Hard Drives in the San Jose Mercury News
"Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" Ethnic Mexicans, Urbanism, Culture, and Politics in Emerging Silicon Valley
Urban renewal and the built environment: the demolition of a San Jose neighborhood | ScholarWorks
Review of the San Jose, California, Model Cities Program | U.S. GAO
URBAN RENEWAL AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: THE DEMOLITION OF A SAN JOSE NEIGHBORHOOD
Decline of the Canneries and Impact on Local Ethnic Mexican Population Led to Local Chicano Advocacy
With the rise of Silicon Valley in the 1960s, Valley canneries were in decline due to the postwar transition from an agricultural to a technological/industrial economy. Technology was a booming field which attracted both local residents and new immigrants to the Valley, also contributing to a housing shortage. Agricultural employment declined as farmers sold entire orchards for real estate and industrial development. Consequently, many local canneries closed during this period. Though Mexican workers found local employment in urban construction and suburban domestic work, they were not as successful on the assembly lines of Silicon Valley’s emerging tech industry. In 1967, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act required that jobs not be gendered into “male” or “female” work. Title VII afforded more opportunities for women to work in warehousing and shipping, occupations traditionally reserved for men. Although cannery women’s benefits were lower than men’s,, in the 1970s and 1980s cannery work offered women stability, enabling many women to become homeowners and create worker neighborhoods, according to sociologist Patricia Zavella. Historian Glenna Matthews notes that this changed when the Teamsters took cannery representation away from the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In the 1970s and 1980s César Chávez’s new organization, the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA), created a legal project called “The Cannery Workers Committee” (CWC) to protest Teamster discriminatory treatment. Using the Civil Rights Act Title VII, the CWC won a number of cases that enabled ethnic Mexican cannery women to move from seasonal line work to higher paying, permanent warehouse-related cannery jobs. By 1976, most cannery jobs were unionized, providing ethnic Mexican women with wage, medical, holiday and retirement benefits. Technology workers were not as fortunate, holding jobs that were not unionized, providing none of the benefits. By 1987, there were only eight canneries left in the Santa Clara County, and by 1999 Del Monte had closed Plant #3, the world’s largest cannery operation. The demise of the canneries took access to well-paid union jobs with their opportunities for advancement away from ethnic Mexican workers.
The decline of Santa Clara County's fruit and vegetable canning industry (1967-1987)
Women's Work and Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley on JSTOR
One of Silicon Valley’s last canneries closes its doors – East Bay Times
Local Chapters of National Advocacy Groups: United Farm Workers (UFW)
Farm workers had been specifically excluded from the protection of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 because Southern Congressmen did not want to enable labor organizing among Southern Black agricultural and domestic workers. American farm workers were not guaranteed the right to organize and had no guaranteed minimum wage. Without federal protection, state laws that applied to farm workers were largely ignored. In Santa Clara County, as in many parts of California, the majority of agricultural laborers were people of color living at the poverty level, often Spanish speaking with limited English skills, whose children might also be employed. Agricultural work was seasonal, so migrant laborers followed the harvests from one region to another, making them a difficult group to organize. Another major obstacle was the Bracero Program, Public Law 78, started during WWII as a temporary agreement between the United States and Mexico to recruit workers to relieve a labor shortage. The program continued until 1973 with the encouragement of local growers. Legally, no bracero could replace a domestic worker, though this provision was rarely enforced. Bracero workers could be used as strikebreakers and could be paid less, which depressed farm workers’ wages in general. In the decades immediately prior to the creation of the United Farm Workers Association (UFWA), two organizations had tried to organize farm workers in California. The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee had been formed in 1959 by the AFL-CIO based on the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), which Dolores Huerta helped to found in 1960 while continuing to work with the CSO in Stockton. AWOC was largely composed of Filipinos, Chicanos, Anglos. and Black workers, and led by experienced Filipino field organizer Larry Itliong. The National Farm Workers of America (NFWA) had been started by former Community Service Organization (CSO) organizers César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and Gilbert Padilla in 1962. Beginning as an organizer in San José in 1952, Chávez, who had grown up as a farm worker, had risen through the ranks to become national director of the CSO. Although the CSO worked with local communities to identify and resolve urban problems, it was not interested in organizing farm workers, so Chávez, Huerta, and Padilla left in 1962 to found the NFWA. At the end of the summer in 1965, farm workers with the AWOC demanded $1.25 per hour to pick the grape crop. When growers refused, on September 8, workers at nine farms went on strike. Growers then brought in strikebreakers, and the AWOC asked the NFWA to join the strike. On September 16, the NFWA voted unanimously to strike, and asked the public not to buy grapes without a union label. NFWA and AWOC merged to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO (UFWOC) and the grape boycott became one of their first joint efforts. Born in Delano, Luís Váldez had returned to help the farm worker movement in 1965 after graduating from SJSU. That year, he created El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworkers Theater). The following year, Váldez, Dolores Huerta, and César Chávez drafted the El Plan de Delano, which framed the farm labor movement as a nonviolent revolution for social justice. UFWOC, as Chávez had envisioned, had become both a union and a civil rights movement. In 1975, renamed the United Farm Workers (UFW), they won the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, a landmark agreement recognizing the right of farm workers in California to organize. In the face of continued opposition from the government and agribusiness, farm workers and Chicano student activists organized one of the largest labor rights campaigns in U.S. Farm Labor history, which was a significant milestone for the Chicano Movement. The Civil Rights Movement had, in more than two centuries of struggle, increased public awareness of the effects of racism against people of color, such as lower standards of living and discrimination in housing, employment, schools, voting, and everyday life. While the Civil Rights Movement had focused on the treatment of Blacks in America, the struggle for farm labor rights in California showed that this was also a struggle for civil rights. Because of César Chávez’s connection to Santa Clara County during the 1950s through his residency and his work with the Community Service Organization, Chávez maintained close ties during his UFW years. He often worked with Guadalupe Church, the CSO, and his sister Rita Chávez Medina during his UFW campaigns.
1962: United Farm Workers Union - A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States
The Farm Worker Movement | PBS LearningMedia
Cesar Chavez: American Civil Rights Activist - Fast Facts | History
American History Tellers | United Farm Workers: Birth of a Movement | Podcast
American History Tellers | United Farm Workers: The Fall | Podcast
Local Chapters of National Chicano Advocacy Groups: The San José Chapter of La Confederación de La Raza Unida
La Confederación de La Raza Unida [Confederation of the United Latino People] (CRU), founded in 1969, was a coalition of 67 nationwide Chicano organizations that succeeded in pressing government officials on redevelopment and gentrification issues during the 1970s. The establishment of CRU was a direct result of a violent confrontation between police and protestors at the Fiesta de Las Rosas (FDLR) celebration in San José on June 1, 1969. The FDLR was a floral parade during the late 1920s that celebrated the city and county’s mythical Spanish heritage with floats and people in costume. The event had not been held since 1933 due to the Great Depression, and the idea was revived in 1966 as an event that would help revitalize a declining downtown San José. While some members of the ethnic Mexican community supported the event, others asked them to boycott the event, explaining that it ignored the fact that many ethnic Mexican neighborhoods still lacked adequate housing or public services. An estimated 75,000 people attended the event, including 100 protestors, representing some 35 San Francisco Bay Area Chicano organizations. Police charged the protestors as they assembled to join the parade, claiming that the protestors attacked, forcing the police to use riot tactics. As portrayed in the media, the confrontation reinforced stereotypes of ethnic Mexicans as criminals and trouble makers. After their encounter with the police, the protestors gathered at Guadalupe Church on the Eastside to discuss the event and decided that a coalition group was needed to deal with the interrelated issues they faced. Within a year the CRU had opened an office in downtown San José, representing a majority of organizations in Santa Clara County working with the Spanish-speaking community. By 1971 the CRU represented over 200,000 ethnic Mexicans in Santa Clara County, with members from various political, civic, religious, and educational backgrounds.
Confederacion de la Raza Unida v. City of Morgan Hill, 324 F. Supp. 895 | Casetext Search + Citator
Confederacion De La Raza Unida v. Brown, 345 F. Supp. 909 (N.D. Cal. 1972)
La Raza Historical Society of Santa Clara Valley - Ernestina Garcia. Do you know the name? You should if you live in the greater San Jose, California region. She was one of the pioneers who built the Chicano Movement for civil rights and equal justice here. Attached is an article we received from her daughter, Doreen Garcia Nevel. A reprint from the East Side Sun, it appeared in El Excentrico Magazine
“Hearings Before the Subcommittee To Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws” Part 22, 1971, Statement of Jack Ibarra, President of Confederation de La Raza Unida, San Jose, California:
National Chicano Advocacy Groups: The Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) and the La Raza Unida Party (LRUP), 1970s
La Raza Unida Party (LRUP) created the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) in Crystal City, Texas, as part of Plan de Aztlán. MAYO had been started by five students at St. Mary's University in Austin, Texas in 1967 (see Section 6.12 on Advocacy in K-12 schools for the MAYO chapter in Santa Clara County). Inspired by the Black Civil Rights Movement and by leaders Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, LRUP was a Mexican American third party movement that supported candidates for elective office in Texas, California, and eventually in other areas of the Southwest and Midwest. Ernesto Galarza, then teaching in Santa Clara County, was elected Chairman of the La Raza Unida Party Conference at an organizational meeting in 1967. La Raza Unida began as a loose confederation of Latino/Mexican American civic, social, and cultural groups whose representatives were in El Paso to attend hearings of the U.S. Cabinet Committee on Mexican American Affairs. By their second conference in San Antonio in January 1968, chapters were being organized throughout the United States. While LRUP achieved some local success in elective offices in Texas, its greatest accomplishment was to inspire greater participation in the electoral process and advocate for the interests of the Latino community.
The historical legacy of the Raza Unida Party | The California-Mexico Studies Center, Inc.
Raza Unida Party Chapters 1970-1974 - Mapping American Social Movements
UNITED WE WIN: The Rise and Fall of La Raza Unida. By Ignacio M. This book addresses the background situations and conditions in
National Chicano Advocacy Groups: MALDEF, SCLR and SVREP
Mexican American Legal Defence and Education Fund (MALDEF) The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) was established in 1968 to battle voter suppression tactics, using the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as a model. In 1970, MALDEF successfully challenged a Texas legislative initiative that had created “mega districts,” which the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional for inhibiting minority voter participation. This ruling led to the Voting Rights Act of 1975. Southwest Council of La Raza (SCLR) The Southwest Council of La Raza (SCLR) was founded in 1968 in Phoenix, Arizona, by Herman Gallegos, Dr. Julian Samora, and Dr. Ernesto Galarza with the goal of reducing poverty and discrimination, and to improve life opportunities for Latino Americans. Their initial efforts were focused on the Southwestern states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado. In 1972 they opened a national headquarters in Washington, D.C. with a new name, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), which reflected their expansion into communities across the United States. These actions supported advocacy, developed resources, and helped strengthen Hispanic community-based organizations. Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP) One of the most successful advocacy groups was founded in 1974 by William C. Velásquez. The goal of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP) was to mobilize and empower the Latino community by facilitating voter registration drives and initiating legal challenges. By 1988 a total of 75 lawsuits had been filed to help undo gerrymandering and eliminate language barriers and other voter suppression practices.
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund | Civil Rights, Education & Advocacy | Britannica
Southwest Council of La Raza (SWCLR), 1968 | New Mexico Archives Online
1974: Southwest Voter Registration Education Project - A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States
Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP) | Library of Congress
Chicano Anti-War Movement Action: The Chicano Moratorium
The Chicano Moratorium march was held in Los Angeles on August 29, 1970, with more than 20,000 Mexican Americans of all ages marching through East Los Angeles to protest the Vietnam War and the effects of the disproportionate draft and heavy casualties among Mexican American youth. The National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican American groups to oppose the Vietnam War. At the height of the war, around 10 percent of U.S. residents were Latino/Mexican American but they made up about 20 percent off all U.S. troops killed in Vietnam. With fewer Latinos/Mexican Americans eligible for draft deferments due to their lower rate of college enrollment, opposition to the draft grew. The Moratorium march is widely considered one of the largest and most significant political demonstrations in Mexican American history. On that day, as protesters gathered for a rally at Laguna Park, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies used the pretext of a theft nearby to brutally break up the gathering, resulting in three deaths. Among the dead was Ruben Salazar, a Los Angeles Times columnist who was hit in the head by a tear gas canister launched by police while he was seated in a bar after the march. The violence demonstrated by police at the march increased distrust and hostility of the community toward law enforcement and increased support for The Chicano Movement.
1970: National Chicano Moratorium - A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States
Thousands of Mexican American antiwar activists march in Chicano Moratorium | August 29, 1970 | HISTORY
Chicano Moratorium: A Question of Freedom (1971)
UCLA Film & Television Archive helps keep full picture of L.A.’s Chicano history alive
“50 Years Later: The Political and Social Impacts of the 1970 Chicano Moratorium”
The Ideology and Goals of The Chicano Civil Rights Movement, 1968-1969
Chicano cultural nationalism was clearly expressed in the 1968 El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, written by the Denver, Colorado based Crusade for Justice, an ethnic Mexican civil rights and educational organization founded by Corky Gonzalez. Gonzalez was the author of the 1967 poem I am Joaquin, which expressed a critique of racism that requires assimilation and the denial of one’s roots. It states: …that social, economic, cultural, and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle then must be for the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, our culture, and our political life The Plan promoted cultural nationalism, pride in Mexican culture, and the creation of independent Chicano political and economic institutions, with community control of schools, advocating for self-defense, and supporting militant protest. The following year, El Plan de Santa Barbara, A Chicano Plan for Higher Education was written by the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education, a group of students at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The 155-page document was created as a blueprint for the development of Chicana/o Studies programs in colleges and universities in the United States. It would also become the foundation for the Chicano student group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA). In 1969, students from twelve universities met at a conference in Santa Barbara, calling for the unification of all student and youth organizations into one organization to be called the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA). This included the United Mexican American Students (UMAS), the Mexican American Student Conference (MASC), and the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO). These groups represented student chapters from middle schools through the university level. Both El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán and El Plan de Santa Barbara were later criticized for excluding women and the LGBT community, reflecting the biases of that time. For this reason, the goals of the Plan for achieving inclusivity are viewed as a work in progress, continually modified by generations of Chicanx scholars.
The History and Goals of the Chicano Movement
Plan De Aztlan: Early Chicano Activism | Departures | KCET
"El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán," Alurista, 1969. Chicano History.
El plan espiritual de Aztlán · ICAA Documents Project
The Chicano Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s
During the 1930s and 1940s the African American and Mexican American Civil Rights Movements had worked closely together on legal strategies. Several decades later the African American Civil Rights Movements fight for equality in the South during the 1950s and 1960s inspired the Chicano Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. While The Chicano Civil Rights Movement worked on many societal injustices, it focused on key issues of land ownership, rural and urban workers' rights, artistic expression, and educational and political equality. The Chicano Movement sought to combat institutional racism, promote cultural autonomy, and work to guarantee equal labor and political rights. This movement would spark a national conversation about the political and social autonomy of Mexican American/Latino groups everywhere in the United States. The term Hispanic was popularized in the 1970s as a bureaucratic convenience to categorize all Spanish-speaking people in the United States. This term ignores the fact that there are many different cultural groups within the “Hispanic” label, each with their own history and experiences. Though the impact of the Chicano Movement was felt across the country, each region could have a different focus because of historical and cultural variations. In the Southwest, particularly in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado, the majority of Spanish-speaking communities identified with a Spanish colonial past, rather than a Mexican immigrant history. California, even with its origins as a Spanish and Mexican territory, was relatively isolated from the center of Mexican culture and government due to its geographically inaccessible deserts and mountains. During the California Gold Rush, the small population of Spanish New World colonists and their descendants were overwhelmed by immigrants from every nation, along with the Americans who soon dominated the state’s power structure and economy. It was not until after the Mexican Revolution, World War II’s Bracero Program, and the post-War period that California saw large numbers of newly documented and undocumented immigrants residing in the state. As a result, the Chicano Movement in California, established by the children and grandchildren of these pre-1960s Mexican immigrants, forged a new identity and increased their political influence by the use of the new, more confrontational tactics of the 1960s and 1970s. In the Santa Clara Valley, the original group of Spanish-speaking settlers has been continually renewed and enlarged over the last 150 years by immigrants from Mexico and Latin America and migrants from throughout the Southwest. The largest group of Spanish-speaking immigrants has historically come from Mexico.
How the Chicano Movement Championed Mexican-American Identity and Fought for Change | HISTORY
“Mexican Immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area: A Summary of Current Knowledge, 1982”
From Servants To Engineers: Mexican Immigration And Labor Markets In The San Francisco Bay Area
Background on the Chicano Movement | Facing History & Ourselves
El Movimiento: The Chicano Movement and Hispanic Identity in the United States – Pieces of History
The Chicano Movement: A Short Overview · South Texas Stories · Bell Library Exhibits
WOMEN IN THE CHICANO MOVEMENT: Grassroots Activism in San José
The Rise of Chicano Politics in the 1960s and 1970s
U.S policy long encouraged immigrant assimilation, with new citizens expected to acquire English as their language and culture in order to become “American.” In the United States, the term “Mexican” is a large category that encompasses American-born people of Mexican descent, immigrants from Mexico who have become naturalized citizens and Mexican nationals who reside in the United States but are not American citizens. While some immigrants chose not to become citizens, reasoning that it might not make a difference in how they were treated, some ethnic Mexican organizations supported naturalization. The first Mexican American organizations, during the pre-1960s period, advocated for citizenship and assimilation. During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of Mexican Americans questioned whether assimilation was possible or even desirable because of prevalent racism in the United States. Equity in education remained a major issue, an obstacle to better jobs and a better life. A new generation of ethnic Mexican college students uncovered their history and critically analyzed what they had been taught in public schools. At the same time, with the rise and successes of César Chávez, a sense of ethnic consciousness and unity grew around the farm labor movement. The Black Civil Rights Movement had also inspired many ethnic Mexicans to consider whether more direct strategies, moving from the courts to the streets, would be more effective in obtaining their legal rights under the U.S. Constitution. Although ethnic Mexicans suffered the same types of economic, social, and political discrimination that African Americans and other people of color endured, there are important differences. American policies on immigration and citizenship affected all Mexicans. American-born Mexicans who had been deported during the Depression were suspected of taking jobs that could be offered to citizens. Ethnic Mexican families made up of both citizens and undocumented immigrants faced the possibility of losing one or both parents to deportation. Mexican immigrants tended to live in neighborhoods with other native language speakers in order to survive with their limited English. Since bilingualism was not generally viewed as an asset, speaking Spanish could be an obstacle. Some Chicanos viewed themselves as a colonized people, based on their belief that the United States government had failed to live up to the promise of full citizenship under the 1848 treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which had ended the war between the United States and Mexico. Mexican Americans were not accepted as fully American, but neither were they truly Mexican. Their closest identity was with Aztlán, the legendary original homeland in the Aztec migration stories, identified as the area of the Southwest conquered during the Mexican American War. In this case, the terms Chicano and Chicana began to be viewed as a positive identity to express self-determination and political solidarity.
Pre-1960 National Mexican American Advocacy Groups Continue in the 1960s and 1970s
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) The first nationally recognized ethnic Mexican advocacy group in the United States, LULAC incorporated naturalization and voter registration as key elements in their organizing. Established in 1929, LULAC leadership advocated for community rights and an end to discrimination suffered by Latin American citizens in the United States. LULAC is the oldest Hispanic civil rights organization in the U.S., with a large middle-class membership and focus on the rights of citizens, and is considered more conservative in their tactical approach. In the 1960s LULAC supported national and local candidates and mobilized Mexican American voters and candidates for political office. Community Service Organization (CSO) Founded in 1947 as a national organization to protect the civil rights of Mexican Americans and encourage political and civic engagement, the CSO was formed primarily by community organizers. Although it was a national organization, individual chapters played a critical role in developing local and state policies that impacted the labor and voting rights of Mexican Americans. The local San José CSO chapter (according to La Raza Historical Society of Santa Clara Valley) worked from 1955 to 1961 “to change statewide labor laws to enable Non-citizen Old Age Pensions in California.'' After César Chávez, Gilbert Padilla, and Dolores Huerta left the CSO in 1961 to form the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA), Lino Covarrubias and other San José leaders helped workers actually receive these benefits. During the 1960s and 1970s, three voting rights bills would prove critical to LULAC and CSO activities. The Voting Rights Acts of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting practices adopted after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. The Voting Rights Act Amendment of 1970 lowered the voting age in national elections to 18. This encouraged young people to engage in political activity. All of these bills would foster the creation of more politically focused advocacy groups. Finally, the Voting Rights Act of 1975 provided assistance for “language minority” citizens, offering bilingual ballots and voting instructions, and assistance for blind, disabled, or illiterate voters. American GI Forum The American GI Forum (AGIF) had been established after WWII by returning ethnic Mexican veterans who faced discrimination when attempting to join established groups, such the Veterans of Foreign Wars, with largely white membership. AGIF became strong advocates for Mexican American/Latino veterans with the slogan "Education is our freedom, and freedom should be everybody's business." In contrast to other Mexican American/Latino groups created prior to WWII, such as LULAC, the GI Forum took political positions in opposition to the American political establishment. The AGIF leadership campaigned against the Bracero program, supported legal challenges to school segregation, and marched in solidarity with Chicano protesters. Between 1969 and 1979, the AGIF led a national boycott against the Adolph Coors Company, challenging the corporation's discriminatory employment practices. AGIF also sponsored Mexican cultural events and commemorations such as Cinco de Mayo and 16 de Septiembre in San José, the largest such events in California. The San José Chapter of the AGIF was established June 6, 1949, by ethnic Mexican veterans of WWII. In the 1950s, veterans from the Korean Conflict joined the chapter. According to the Santa Clara County La Raza Historical Society, this chapter focused on bringing in community members to serve as counselors at the Santa Clara County William James Boys Juvenile Detention Ranch. By the 1960s, the San José Chapter and the newly formed Santa Clara Chapter (1961), with the associated Ladies Auxiliaries of the AGIF, joined together to sponsor community activities such as parades, fiestas, dances, queen competitions, and fashion shows, to raise scholarship money for ethnic Mexican students. In addition they held an annual Black and White Ball fundraiser at the Cabana Hyatt House in Palo Alto, raising millions of dollars for their cause.
The League of United Latin-American Citizens: A Texas-Mexican Civic Organization
“The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics”
Dr. Hector Garcia and The American GI Forum
“Con Safos: A Chicano’s Journey Through Life in California”
Richard Martinez East Valley AGI Forum San Jose, CA 4/30/2022
Life After the CSO: Some of the Founding Leaders of the San José Chapter
Alicia Hernandez, who did not like being in the spotlight that can accompany a leadership role, moved to San Francisco to continue nursing. Leonard Ramierez became a probation officer and helped to open the James Ranch Juvenile facility in Morgan Hill (William F. James Boys Ranch). He became chair of the United Way of Santa Clara County, a founder of the Hispanic Development Corporation, and a member of the GI Forum. After leaving the CSO in the early 1960s, Fred Ross helped organize residents of Guadalupe, Arizona, primarily Mexican Americans and Yaqui Indians, to gain basic services such as paved roads and stop signs. He then taught organizing skills to students at Syracuse University working on a campaign, supported by federal “War on Poverty'' funds, to organize African American residents living in dilapidated public housing. The idea of paying organizers with government funds to stir up people to challenge government policies proved controversial, and the funding was eventually halted. Returning to California in 1966, Ross became the organizing director of the United Farm Workers Association. He assisted the UFW in a campaign over who would represent workers at DiGiorgio, a major grower in the San Joaquin Valley. He would spend the late 1960s and 70s assisting Chávez and the UFW with various elections and boycotts, training thousands of UFW volunteers in his organizing methods. Well into the 1980s, he trained a number of groups working on a broad range of issues, from U.S. intervention in Central America to nuclear disarmament. One of his favorite axioms described the role of the organizer: “A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.” Recruited by Saul Alinsky to become a full-time organizer, Herman Gallegos decided to pursue his career in social work and received his Masters in Social Work (MSW) from U.C. Berkeley, becoming an advocate for Chicano youth and active in the local CSO. After graduation, Gallegos worked as a district director with the San Bernardino County Council of Community Services, a social planning demonstration project supported by the Rosenberg Foundation. In 1965, Gallegos, Dr. Ernesto Galarza, and Dr. Julian Samora were recruited by the Ford Foundation to serve as national affairs consultants. The group explored potential philanthropic support, making recommendations and identifying solutions to address the growing needs of Latino communities. Gallegos went on to become executive director of the National Council of La Raza in 1968, co-founder of Hispanics in Philanthropy, and a U.S. public delegate to the 49th General Assembly of the United Nations. César Chávez left the CSO because of its emphasis on urban social justice issues. In 1962 he and Dolores Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers of America). Chávez believed it was important that the new union succeed through nonviolent tactics (boycotts, pickets, and strikes). Although Chávez’s methods as an organizer and labor leader were sometimes controversial, the movement he led brought farmworkers dignity and self-respect, as well as better wages and working conditions. In California, he pushed through what remains today the most pro-labor law in the country, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, granting farm workers the right to organize and petition for union elections. As stated in the César Chávez Special Resource Study, issued by the National Park Service in 2012: “César Chávez is recognized for his achievements as the charismatic leader of the farm labor movement and the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), the first permanent agricultural labor union in the history of the United States. The most important Latino leader in the U.S. during the twentieth century, Chávez emerged as a civil rights leader among Latinos during the 1950s. Moreover, Chávez and the UFW sought to inspire all men and women to respect the dignity of labor, the importance of community, and the power of peaceful protest.“ The legacy of these organizers from an earlier time can be seen in the work of a generation of activists and community organizers who joined the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and '70s, transforming their lives and inspiring the activism that continues through today.
In San José, CSO organizers held house meetings where they identified community concerns, which became the focus of their campaigns, and recruited potential members and volunteers. Formal meetings were then held at the Mayfair School to create an official organization. The main issues of concern to Eastside residents included improving essential services, paving streets, installing streetlights, dealing with police brutality, and addressing economic inequality. Due to the anti-communist fervor of the early 1950s, it was important to involve religious leaders like Fr. McDonnell to assure the authorities that CSO members were not Communists or political agitators, so the opportunity to hold regular meetings at the Chapel was welcomed. Articles in El Excentrico introduced more people to the organization and emphasized its roots in the local community. Juan Marcoida, CSO member and chapter president, hosted a radio program, CSO INFORME, for ten years on KLOK and KSJO radio stations, with businesses donating to cover airtime costs. CSO services were provided free of charge, and, with so many people in need of help, fundraising was continuous–donated Christmas trees and tamales were sold, musicians played for free at dances, and members held raffles and ran a secondhand store. Prior to World War II, only a small percentage of Mexican immigrants had filed naturalization papers since citizenship did not appear to improve their working or living conditions. CSO members learned that some problems required legislative remedies to develop better public policy, which made citizenship, and thus citizenship classes, more important. The CSO became part of a civil-rights coalition, including the NAACP, the Urban League, the Jewish Community Relations Committee, the Japanese American Citizens League, and other organizations that met regularly to frame the strategy for public policy involvement in California. By increasing their political power through citizenship classes and voter registration, these groups fought discrimination in education, housing, and employment on local and state levels. In the 1950s, the CSO San José Chapter lobbied to end citizenship requirements for Social Security benefits and promoted voter registration drives with the assistance of the G.I. Forum and worked with the NAACP to challenge discrimination of Mexicans against African Americans.
The Background, Recruitment and Rise of César Chávez to the CSO
César Chávez was born in 1927, the second of six children in an extended family of devout Catholics, and grew up on his grandparents’ family farm near Yuma, Arizona. In 1939, during the Depression, the farm was auctioned and sold to cover back taxes. César’s father had been diagnosed with a lung disease requiring a move to a cooler climate, and the family joined the growing number of American migrant workers in California. Unlike sister Rita, who quit school at 12 years of age to work in the fields full time, Césario (César) carried family expectations as the eldest boy and was allowed to attend school while working in the fields weekends and holidays. Eventually, he and his family worked across California from Brawley to Oxnard, Atascadero, Gonzales, King City, Salinas, McFarland, Delano, Wasco, Selma, Kingsburg, and Mendota. The essential injustice and underlying racism the family experienced during those years made a strong impression on César. Despite the numerous interruptions to his education, he graduated from the eighth grade in June 1942 and became a full-time farm laborer until he joined the Navy in 1945. A Navy veteran by 1947, Chávez returned to working with the family as an agricultural laborer. He joined the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), picking cotton in Corcoran, near Delano. Cesar and his brother Richard both worked briefly in the lumber yards of Crescent City. However, the distance was too far from the rest of the family in San José, so by the 1950s, their sister Rita encouraged César and Richard to relocate their families to San José. Richard became a successful union carpenter, and César continued working in the fields and local lumber yards when, at 25 years of age, he met Fred Ross, Sr., in 1952. When Ross had begun to look for local organizers for the CSO, Alicia Hernández offered to introduce him to her friend Helen Chávez and her husband César, who had become active in social justice work through his association with Father McDonnell, pastor of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel. Through Fr. McDonnell, Chávez had learned the principles of nonviolent resistance and been introduced to Catholic teachings that emphasized social justice and challenged economic and social inequalities. With Father Mac, Chávez had visited labor camps and farmworkers living beyond the Eastside. Fred Ross encouraged Chávez to become a full-time paid organizer for the Community Services Organization (CSO), and he soon began setting up chapters in the Bay Area and other towns across the state. Named executive director of the national CSO in 1959, Chávez moved to Los Angeles to work in the organization's main office. Though the CSO had become a successful advocate for communities of color, Chávez had not given up the idea of working with farmworkers and felt that the CSO was more focused on the problems of urban communities. In 1962 he left the CSO and moved to Delano, California, with his wife, their eight children, brother Richard Chávez, and Dolores Huerta, another CSO colleague from Stockton, in order to establish a union for farm laborers, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA)
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment
Padilla, Ruiz Introduce Legislation to Create the César E. Chávez and the Farmworker Movement National Park
César E. Chávez National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)
The Founding Members of the CSO San José Chapter, Excluding Cesar Chavez
The following are some of the founding members of the CSO San José Chapter: Herman Gallegos became the first president of the San José Chapter as well as president of the national CSO in 1960. Gallegos grew up in a poor coal-mining family who lived in a mud hut built by his father near the mines in Ludlow, Colorado, where he observed the infamous “Ludlow Massacre” of striking workers. After the massacre, the family moved to San Francisco. Gallegos first attended San Francisco State University, where two of his professors, Dr. John Beecher and Dr. Herbert Bisno, refused to sign a loyalty oath required under the Levering Act affirming that the signer was an American and not a Communist or risk being fired. When a state police officer came into the classroom and handed Dr. Beecher a letter requiring him to leave, Gallegos and two Jewish students walked out of class and went to the administration office demanding the professor be reinstated. Because the protesting students did not have a permit, the police broke up the protest, and Gallegos decided to transfer to the Social Work Program at San José State College. When he joined the CSO, he was attending college, living on the Eastside, and working as a gas station attendant. At that time he and Hernández were the only two members of the organization with a college education. In 1960 Gallegos became national CSO president, with César Chávez serving as executive director. Alicia Hernández, a public health nurse who worked with families on the Eastside, became a founding member after attending Fred Ross’ first talk at San José State College (with Herman Gallegos, Juan Marcoida, and Leonard Ramierez). She became the first temporary chair or interim president of the CSO San José chapter. A friend of Chávez’ wife Helen, Hernández arranged the first meeting between Ross and César Chávez, who was 25 years old. Hernández and Chávez walked door to door in the Eastside registering voters. Juan Marcoida, another student who heard Ross’s initial talk at San José State, was an engineer who worked by day and went to college at night. He became a founding member of the CSO San José Chapter while working at the General Electric Plant, where he’d been employed since its opening in 1947. A resident of Sal Sí Puedes in the Eastside, Marcoida served two terms as president of the CSO San José Chapter. He also hosted a radio program called CSO INFORME that aired for ten years on KLOK and KSJO radio stations, highlighting jobs, legal issues, police brutality, domestic abuse, immigration, deportation, scams, and voter registration assistance. He was named “1956 Man of the Year” in El Excentrico magazine. Rita Chávez Medina, the eldest of the Chávez siblings, had quit school at age 12 to help support the family after they lost their farm. She continued to work in the fields, transitioning into cannery work when she married and her family moved to San José. There she became active in local efforts to obtain a Catholic church to serve the Mexican community in the Eastside, enlisting the help of her brothers César and Richard, a union carpenter. She had already demonstrated her organizing skills in the church campaign when César asked her to work on the CSO voter registration drive, and he increasingly delegated local organizing tasks to her. Rita rose to become CSO San José Chapter President. Leonard Ramirez, who also heard Ross’ speech, and his wife Erma became founding members of the CSO San José Chapter, fighting for paved streets and street lighting as well as promoting voter registration. Ramirez led the CSO drive to abolish citizenship requirements to receive Social Security benefits for old age. The law was revised in 1960 taking out Social Securities citizenship requirement. Ramirez was born in Watts, California, in 1926. After high school, he joined the army during WWII. Through the help of the GI Bill, he graduated from San José State College in 1953, one of only five Mexican students attending the university.
The Formation of the San José Chapter of the CSO
In 1951 San José State College sociology professor and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) member Claude Settles brought Fred Ross, Sr., to campus to give a lecture. Herman Gallegos, a student, and Leonard Ramirez and public health nurse Alicia Hernández, two community members, attended that lecture and encouraged Ross to organize a new CSO chapter in the barrio known as “Sal Sí Puedes“ (meaning “Get Out if You Can,” a name that can be traced back to a Mexican land grant) in the Mayfair district of East San José. Assigned to a project in Kansas City, Ross reached out to his contacts in Santa Clara to provide local assistance and support. One of these was Quaker philanthropist and AFSC member Josephine Duveneck of Los Altos Hills. Duveneck initially provided housing for Fred Ross, Sr., a place to hold meetings, and financial support. In 1952 Ross was assigned by Saul Alinsky to work in San José, and shortly upon arrival, he sought out Father McDonnell to help identify potential organizers, such as Guadalupe-parish member César Chávez. Ross’s community organizing techniques were based on door-to-door canvassing and house meetings. Volunteers such as Rita Chávez Medina (César’s sister), Herman Gallegos, and César Chávez went door-to-door in the Eastside’s crowded neighborhoods, over unpaved streets, registering voters and talking to residents about how to form a CSO Chapter. The community was ready, and the formational meeting took place at Mayfair Elementary School in 1952. Meetings were later moved to the Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel, where the CSO established its first offices, local campaigns were planned and organized, and volunteers were trained.
According to historian Gabriel Thompson, Fred Ross, Sr., was born to an affluent and politically conservative family from Los Angeles. He attended the University of Southern California, where he was exposed to politically liberal ideas. Ross wanted to be a teacher, but after his graduation in 1936, due to the Depression, he took a three-year term as a relief worker. He then became manager of the federally-funded Farm Security Administration (FSA) Arvin Migratory Camp for Dust Bowl migrants located near Bakersfield. He replaced the previous corrupt manager and tried to regain the workers’ confidence by forming a workers’ council and supporting a cotton strike. During his time at Arvin Camp, he met folk singer Woody Guthrie and listened to his songs of political protest. During WWII Ross worked for the War Relocation Authority in Cleveland, finding jobs and housing for Japanese Americans not placed in internment camps. After WWII, he returned to Los Angeles to work for the American Council on Race Relations, organizing “multi-racial unity leagues.” He led voter registration drives to force out racist local politicians and desegregate schools. His work contributed to the successful 1948 California State Supreme Court decision in Mendez v. Westminster. Ross also worked for Saul Alinsky’s Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). In 1947 he was hired to promote Latino political power in Los Angeles. That same year, in Boyle Heights, a Los Angeles neighborhood with a large Mexican population, Ross formed the first chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), which was established to protect the civil rights of Mexican Americans and foster political and civic engagement. Fred Ross approached social worker Edward Roybal and Antonio Rios, a union organizer with the United Steelworkers of America, with the idea of forming a community-based organization. In the IAF model, an outside organizer works with local leaders to create a democratic organization where people can identify their concerns and address them through direct action. Edward Roybal became the first president and main spokesman of the CSO’s LA Chapter. Building on the earlier work of mutualistas, church groups, and community associations, the CSO stressed voter registration and held citizenship classes to promote political involvement. They also addressed ongoing problems such as poor community services and discrimination in housing, education, and employment. After WWII, Mexican American and African American civil rights groups occasionally worked together, though they sometimes differed in their aims and goals. For example, education was an important issue for both groups, but bilingual education was extremely important to Mexican Americans, while busing was a higher priority for African Americans. Fair housing and employment legislation were key issues for both, but Mexicans prioritized pensions for resident non-citizens, who were often not eligible for social services. CSO members learned the importance of becoming activists in their own communities. By 1963, the CSO had 34 chapters across the Southwest, registering 500,000 new voters and helping over 50,000 Mexican immigrants obtain citizenship in California. In 1949, utilizing the community organizing skills of Fred Ross, Sr., and CSO volunteers, Edward Roybal was elected to the Los Angeles City Council. The first Mexican to win a seat since 1881, Roybal was later elected to Congress, serving from 1963 to 1993.
The Community Service Organization (CSO)
Guide to Community Service Organization History Project Records
Meet the Long-Forgotten Organizer Who Inspired Cesar Chavez to Become an Activist | The Nation
Father Donald McDonnell was a member of a group of Catholic priests, the “Spanish Mission Band,” who worked with Mexican farmworker communities. Initially Fr. McDonald served at St. Joseph Church in the Mountain View colonia (1947-1951), encouraging the formation of Club Estrella as well as a community credit union. In 1952 he moved to Eastside San José and introduced parishioners to non-violent community organizing strategies, urging them to address racial discrimination through action. Known as “Father Mac,” he was familiar with Ernesto Galarza’s writings and agricultural union organizing, and instructed parishioners on labor law, focusing on abuses of the Bracero Program. The Eastside had no Catholic church to serve the growing Mexican population, and Father Mac helped parishioners to establish the Guadalupe Chapel. In 1953, the Catholic Church purchased an old church building, disassembled it, and moved it to the Mayfair district. It was reconstructed by parish volunteers, including siblings César and Richard Chávez and their sister Rita Chávez Medina. The building housed the growing Our Lady of Guadalupe congregation until it was replaced in 1968. The chapel also served as the first headquarters of the San José chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), which trained community organizers and conducted campaigns for social justice and labor rights. Because of this history, Fr. McDonnell Hall, originally the Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel, is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places (2016) and became a National Historic Landmark in 2017.
San José Building With Chávez Ties Named National Historic Landmark | KQED
WWII brought a new awareness of racial issues as the military began to integrate under Executive Orders in 1941 and 1948, though full integration would not come until 1960 for some branches. Anglo American GIs shared bunkrooms, meals, and social time with their Mexican counterparts and understood that they had to rely on one another in combat. Although Mexican Americans did not face the same level of segregation in the military as African Americans and lighter skinned Mexicans were sometimes classified as white, they understood that racial prejudice still remained. As Mexican veterans returned home, they continued the fight for the “Double V for Victory”–victory against racism abroad and at home. When Mexican American veterans were banned from participating in local veterans’ groups and denied services at veterans’ hospitals or military cemeteries, in 1948 they formed the American G.I. Forum, which welcomed all veterans of color. The GI Forum was founded in Texas by Dr. Hector P. García to fight discrimination against Mexican Americans in employment, education, and access to veterans’ benefits. The organization gained national attention when it took up the Felix Longoria case in 1949. Longoria, an ethnic Mexican veteran from Texas killed in the Philippines, was refused burial in his hometown, Three Rivers, Texas. The GI Forum appealed to then-Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had seen discrimination first hand in Texas after teaching in a segregated school for Mexican Americans. In the Longoria case, Johnson intervened, arranging for him to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors at no cost to his family. The San José chapter of the Forum was formed in 1949, focusing on youth issues and offering scholarships. In 1960, the Forum collaborated with other groups, such as the Community Service Organization (CSO), on voter registration campaigns and advocating for ethnic, minority and disenfranchised communities.
American G.I. Forum · South Texas Stories · Bell Library Exhibits
South Texas Public Broadcasting | Justice for My People: The Dr. Hector P. Garcia Story | PBS
School segregation was a major issue for Mexicans in California and Texas. Groups of parents filed numerous lawsuits to push local governments to integrate local schools. These struggles united parent groups and LULAC (The League of United Latin American Citizens), and together they fought landmark cases such as Del Rio ISD v. Salvatierra in Texas (1930) and Roberto Alvarez v. the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District, often referred to as “The Lemon Grove Incident,” in San Diego, California (1931). LULAC, the first national Mexican American Civil Rights organization, was established in 1929 by American citizens of Mexican descent in Corpus Christi, Texas. Until WWII, LULAC undertook several school desegregation court cases in Texas and California using the argument that Mexicans were white. Accordingly, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) gave American citizenship to Mexicans living in the U.S. territory at the end of the Mexican American War while the U.S.Constitution had stipulated that only white males were eligible for U.S. citizenship. This legal argument was not successful. After WWII, LULAC worked with the Mexican consulate and the NAACP to strategize for Mendez v. Westminster (1947). This California Supreme Court case repealed all segregation in California schools, arguing that the 14th Amendment provided for “equal protection” under the law, and influenced the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas. In 1954, lawyers from the American G.I. Forum and LULAC argued in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Hernandez v. Texas that the Mexican American defendant was denied “equal protection” under the 14th Amendment. The court granted that Mexican Americans were “a class apart,” not easily fitting into a legal structure that only recognized blacks and whites. Direct action on segregation, including strikes, walkouts, and boycotts, would come much later.
Jan. 5, 1931: Lemon Grove Incident - Zinn Education Project
Background - Mendez v. Westminster Re-Enactment | United States Courts
April 14, 1947: Mendez v. Westminster Court Ruling - Zinn Education Project
Mendez v. Westminster School District | National Archives
American Latino Theme Study: Education (U.S. National Park Service)
Ernesto Galarza NFLU and The Bracero Program
Through his research, Galarza came to understand that one of the major obstacles to unionizing Mexican farmworkers was the 1942 Mexican Farm Labor Program Agreement, better known as the Bracero Program. He left the Pan-American Union outraged by their acceptance of U.S. corporations’ exploitation of Mexican labor. In 1947 he became the director of research and education in California for the AFL-CIO’s National Farm Labor Union (NFLU) previously known as the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which included black and white tenant farmers and agricultural laborers who organized for better wages, working conditions, and favorable legislation for small-scale farmworkers. In 1948 Galarza became vice president of the NFLU and was deeply involved in over a dozen unsuccessful strikes between 1947-1954, including tomato pickers in Tracy, cantaloupe pickers in Imperial County, and at the DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation. Outside of California, he organized sugar cane workers and strawberry pickers in Louisiana. In 1952 NFLU became the National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU), and Galarza became its secretary from 1954-1963. Strikes were impossible to win because braceros would replace strikers as strikebreakers, and Galarza left labor organizing determined to use his writing skills as a weapon to help end the Bracero Program. Galarza had visited bracero camps and saw firsthand how employers used braceros to break strikes and avoid union organizing. Bracero labor also depressed wages for American workers. Galarza exposed abuses within the Bracero Program in his best-known work, Merchants of Labor (1964), which helped to end the program and laid the groundwork for César Chávez to begin the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA) in 1965. Galarza became a labor organizer because he believed that to achieve civil rights, Mexican Americans and labor unions needed to work together to address workplace and community problems. Between 1963-1964, Galarza served as advisor to the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor. In 1979, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature for his writing on braceros.
Dr. Ernesto Galarza was born in 1905 in the village of Jalcocotán near Tepic, Nayarit, México. In 1911, he came to the U.S. with his mother and uncles to escape the Mexican Revolution. After losing his mother and uncle to influenza, Galarza lived in the Sacramento barrio working as a farm laborer. His surviving uncle made it possible for him to continue his education. At age eight, he knew more English than the adults in the labor camp and became a spokesman for them, highlighting their poor living conditions. Galarza understood that education was essential and to finance his schooling, took jobs as a messenger, clerk, court interpreter, and field and cannery worker. He would later chronicle his childhood in the autobiographical novel Barrio Boy, published in 1971. Encouraged by his teachers, Galarza entered Occidental College in Los Angeles on a scholarship in 1923. After completing his B.A., he obtained an M.A. in history from Stanford University and then in 1944 a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University. While at Columbia, Galarza worked for the Pan-American Union (1936-1947), serving as chief of the Division of Labor and Social Information. Although he left this job to become a labor organizer, Galarza was viewed as an intellectual and scholar whose weapons were words. Recognized as a poet, author, and educator in his later life, he taught at every level from elementary school to university and was a lifelong advocate for bilingual education.
National Hispanic Heritage Month Profiles: Ernesto Galarza | AFL-CIO
Ernesto Galarza The Burning Light: Action and Organizing in the Mexican Community in California
Ernesto Galarza: “Man of Fire” by Dick Meister
Mexican Cannery Worker Unionization, 1917-1960
The first Santa Clara County cannery strikes took place in 1917 with the AFL’s Toilers of the World. According to historian Glenna Matthews, the Toilers signed a two-year contract that only benefitted male workers. Not until the 1930s did women cannery workers find a union voice. Initially, cannery and field/orchard work were seen as components of the larger agriculture industry and excluded from government-sponsored protections afforded to industrial workers under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) or The Wagner Act. By the 1930s, as more mechanization was introduced, cannery and packinghouse labor gained protections offered to industrial workers. According to historian Glenna Matthews, canners strengthened their efforts to fight unionization during the 1930s with the formation of the Canners’ League. The 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act stipulated that competing companies within an industry should cooperate, which the fractured growers resisted. During the Great Depression, Santa Clara County canners faced a harsh economic future. Profit margins were dropping, executives took pay cuts, and small canners went out of business. According to historian Glenna Matthews, during that decade CalPak reduced production by one third. Processors tried to reduce expenses by lowering workers’ pay. With the first dramatic decrease in wages, in 1931 cannery workers fought back with their first strike under the Cannery Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU). Dorothy Ray Healey and Elizabeth Nicholas were among the organizers, with Dorothy taking the lead with cannery workers. A few months prior to this strike, Italian and Spanish cannery workers formed the American Labor Union and revealed the harsh conditions cannery workers faced. In 1931 the CAWIU set up picket lines at several canneries. Workers were arrested, and in July 2,000 workers held a rally in St. James Park, demanding that police release jailed picketers and triggering the worst riot in San José history. In response Richmond-Chase cannery set up machine guns at its gate, and CalPak threatened to ship its fruit to distant canneries. The strike was lost, and the CAWIU shifted its focus to unionizing agricultural workers. The 1931 cannery strike developed future cannery union leaders who joined the struggle for worker representation led by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL was seen as a “company union,” not taking the grievances of cannery workers seriously, particularly those of Mexican women. At the end of the 1930s, the AFL battled the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) for cannery worker representation and won the struggle. By the end of the 1930s, all San José canneries were unionized and remained so until the last one, Del Monte Plant #3, closed in the 1990s, with union representation shifting back and forth. In 1945 the AFL relinquished its control of Santa Clara County cannery workers to the Teamsters, who neglected the rights of non-white cannery workers. Union representation returned to the AFL, which merged with the more left-wing CIO in 1955. By the 1950s many Mexican cannery workers had gained unemployment insurance, a livable wage, and benefits for the first time. In 1967 under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, jobs could no longer be classified as “male” or “female,” so women could enter the more lucrative warehouse jobs previously controlled by men. Through the unions, Mexicans were able to earn the salaries needed to settle permanently in the colonias and become homeowners.
The Fruit Workers of the Santa Clara Valley: Alternative Paths to Union Organization During the 1930s
A Promise Fulfilled Mexican Cannery Workers in Southern California
Mexican Farm Worker Unionization, 1930-1960
During the Great Depression, ethnic Mexicans viewed labor organizing campaigns as part of the promise of equality and civil rights. During this time, Santa Clara County saw some of the most significant agricultural strikes in the U.S., many involving Mexican workers. Before WWII, most Mexicans worked on farms in the fruit and nut orchards or tomato and pea field/row crops. The Depression of the 1930s saw a deterioration in working conditions and a dramatic decrease in pay for orchard and field workers, who were paid by piece work rather than hourly wages. Historian Glenna Matthews claims that weekly pay dropped from $16.33 in 1929 to $8.04 in 1933. Growers stopped working cooperatively in the fruit exchange and began selling their crops individually, competing with each other and lowering wages even further. During the New Deal, between 1933 to 1937, the federal government supported farmers by buying their crops, thus propping up prices. In 1931 the new Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) set up its state headquarters in San José at 81 Post Street, charging monthly dues of twenty-five cents for the employed and five cents for the unemployed. Dorothy Ray Healey, Elizabeth Nicholas, Pat Chambers, and Caroline Decker were among the CAWIU organizers working in the county. The CAWIU undertook thirty-seven agricultural strikes in California. Historian Glenna Matthews contends that Santa Clara County, as in the rest of the nation, saw more strikes and violence in 1933 than ever before, with three agricultural strikes and one brutal non-agricultural-related lynching. In April of 1933, 2,000-3,000 pea pickers, composed of Mexicans and Dust Bowl migrants working near the Milpitas/De Coto County line, struck for higher wages and lost. In June 1,000 cherry pickers, mostly Spanish workers from the Mountain View area, struck for higher wages. That same year, the cherry picker strike was considered the most violent of the three strikes in Santa Clara County. Workers were successful and won a 50-percent raise, from twenty cents to thirty cents an hour. According to the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee Report (1936-1941), the cherry pickers were successful because the Spanish workers were homeowners and had invested in their communities, unlike the migrant Mexican and Dust Bowl pea pickers. In August 1933 pear pickers staged a strike, CAWIU’s most successful strike in the County, largely due to organizer Caroline Decker, who gained the support of the Palo Alto Democratic Club. In turn the Democratic Club, state and federal government officials, and the California Bureau of Labor Statistics backed the union’s right to picket, opposing the growers who had obtained an injunction against picketing workers. The Bracero Program made it difficult to organize farmworkers throughout the Southwest, as well as Santa Clara County, because braceros were used as strikebreakers until the program ended in 1964. Ernesto Galarza organized agricultural strikes (though not in Santa Clara County) using the National Farm Labor Union during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1937, workers in thirteen dried fruit companies decided to unionize. They organized the Field Practice Group and initially contracted with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), considered a “company union” less concerned with non-white members, who represented 98% of the dried fruit workers of Santa Clara County. Unlike cannery workers, in 1941 dried fruit workers left the AFL and voted for representation from the more left-wing CIO, which promoted for the largely Mexican workforce higher wages, retirement benefits, and a hiring hall instead of a shape up.
Recreation at Parks, Churches, Beaches, Mountains and Beyond
Local parks were popular sites for large family gatherings and youth activities. During the post-WWII period, there were few parks or recreation centers in Mexican neighborhoods. Families might host small groups at home but had to travel to parks like Alum Rock to host larger groups. With the lack of neighborhood parks, the Catholic church often filled the gap by providing a place for recreational activities and community events. Catholic churches became important public spaces, with social halls used for family or community events, art programs, English classes, and neighborhood meetings. Leaders in these Catholic churches often moved on into positions of influence in labor movements and political organizations. While the majority of ethnic Mexicans in Santa Clara County identified as Catholics, there were also Mexican Baptists, as well as Presbyterians, Methodists, and various evangelical denominations. While Mexican cultural traditions were acknowledged, many churches sponsored youth baseball and basketball teams in order to engage immigrant families in American culture and recreation. Neighborhood schools also offered organized sports. During the post-war years, automobiles became more affordable, and families began to travel longer distances to the beach and Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, to camp or hike in the redwoods or Mt. Hamilton, tour San Francisco, or even vacation in México.
American Latino Theme Study: Sports (U.S. National Park Service)
With non-agricultural jobs increasingly becoming available to ethnic Mexicans after WWII, more Mexican American youth began to attend high school and college. In the 1950s, a proliferation of social clubs, like Club Cuauhtémoc, provided a place for young ethnic Mexican urban professionals to gather. Some social clubs functioned similarly to town clubs, like The Del Rio Club, bringing together people from the same town or region. Some social clubs focused on public service, holding fundraisers for charitable causes or organizing around community issues such as voter registration and Latino candidates. Social clubs sponsored dances, such as the traditional formal Black and White Ball, organized outings such as picnics, or group activities, including bowling teams. In the 1950s and later, lowriders in San José were mostly Latino, converting older cars for cruising, car shows, and design competition at events, adorning their cars with Mexican American imagery and vibrant colors. As small groups organized into regional clubs, lowriding became a multigenerational cultural activity, with the embellished car club jacket created to identify the local group. These “jacket clubs” were popular in San José, though local police banned them from 1986 to 2022 on the basis of preventing gang violence and related crime. The intersection of Story and King in the Eastside is now recognized as the meeting ground for generations of Lowriders and San José as a center of Lowrider culture. As the Mexican American community became more established, new organizations were formed, such as the Mexican American Chamber of Commerce and the Mexican Masonic Lodge. The number of social clubs, ethnic organizations and fraternal associations increased among the post-WWII growing Mexican middle class and young professionals, who announced their activities regularly in the bilingual, regional entertainment magazine El Excentrico (FKA El Eccentríco). Church groups, clubs, and organizations were also involved in charitable activities and community projects. Social clubs, sporting events, baseball and basketball clubs, and car clubs promoted ethnic consciousness, built solidarity, and sharpened organizing and leadership skills. They offered young Mexican Americans opportunities to compete on an equal basis outside the immigrant community. Such cultural activities generated networks, created bonds of solidarity, and provided a strong foundation for the Mexican civil rights movement to emerge within a flourishing community of musicians, artists, sportsmen, and club members.
After a Decades-Long Ban, San José's Lowriders Are Ready to Cruise Again - Atlas Obscura
Few people have heard about what became known as the first Rock ‘n’ Roll Riot at The Palomar Ballroom on the night of July 7, 1956. Opened in 1947, the Palomar was the first integrated ballroom in San José, where big bands, vocalists, and jazz artists from across the country, México, Latin America, and the Caribbean performed in front of an integrated audience. In 1956, Rock 'n' Roll was still new, and the big attraction that night was the now legendary Fats Domino, who arrived very late to a large crowd inside the ballroom and hundreds waiting outside. By the time the band started, some patrons were already drunk and unruly. During the intermission, beer bottles were thrown; then a brawl began as lights were smashed, chairs and tables destroyed, and many were injured. Nearly a dozen people were arrested. Accounts of the brawl appeared in every major newspaper in the country, and the San Francisco Chronicle termed the affair a “Rock ‘n’ Roll Riot,” linking the music with the breakdown of public order. One week later the San José City Council considered a resolution to ban rock and roll at city-owned venues, eventually establishing a new ordinance requiring all drinks at concerts to be dispensed in paper cups. Just as the zoot suit had been used to criminalize youth of color in the 1940s, Rock ‘n’ Roll music was used to vilify another generation of ethnic young people.
Ain't That a Shame : Thirty Years Ago, America Experienced Its First Rock 'n' Roll Riot. - Los Angeles Times
The Zoot Suit Riots in 1943 were a series of violent clashes in Los Angeles between U.S. servicemen, off-duty police officers, and civilians who confronted young Latinos and other minorities. The riots took their name from the baggy zoot suits that accentuated their movements worn by many young men in the 1930s in dance halls in the East. The zoot suit became a popular trend among young men in African American, Mexican American, and other minority communities in California. Anglo Americans knew very little about the Mexican American community, who were generally portrayed by local police and newspapers as problematic lawbreakers, drunks, or criminals. Young Mexican Americans were portrayed as pachucos (juvenile delinquents) or gang members who posed a danger to society. Conflicts between police and Mexican youths spread from L.A. to the Bay Area during the summer of 1943. In San José police carried out a similar harassment of Mexicans in the name of “keeping the peace.” In one instance, “intent on starting their own ‘zoot suit’ war,” a group of sailors hunted down Mexican youths as they spilled out of the downtown dance halls and ballrooms on Market Street in the late hours of the night. Local Judge William James stated, that "we certainly don’t want to see anything happen here like it is in Los Angeles,” handing down probation if the arrestee would join the military. Large groups of assembled Mexican young men were often considered suspect. One night, two San José police officers tried to arrest two Mexicans having a fist fight in St. James Park. The two escaped but were caught in front of a dance hall where a group of Mexican cannery workers and zoot suiters were just leaving. The group attacked others, who followed the officers and the youths back to the police station. When the youths fell and appeared injured, a large group of military and local police arrived to disperse the crowd. At a local Santa Cruz beach, Marines drove visiting Mexicans away. Five Mexican young men were held in the San José Jail “because of their large size.” In 1944, 25 zoot suitors were arrested for “frequenting streets and public places in the late night,” and three of what the San José police considered “bad boys” were deported to México. That same year, Gilroy police arrested thirty Mexican youth “for violating curfew laws.” Toward the end of the War, another clash occurred between zoot suiters and sailors in St. James Park, the same location as the lynching of Tiburcio Vásquez in the late 1800s, ending with the arrest of the Mexican youths and release of the sailors.
Zoot Suit Riots Begin in Los Angeles - HISTORY
Watch Zoot Suit Riots | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
1942: People v. Zamora (sic) 1943: Zoot Suit Riots - A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States
Remembering the Zoot Suit Riots - California Historical Society
Mexican Dancehalls, Lounges and Ballrooms
Public dance halls in the U.S. first appeared in urban areas around 1845, often as dance halls associated with the working classes, selling liquor or operating as saloons. In polite society, public dances were charity events, club or lodge dances, and held at dance palaces or pavilions associated with amusement parks. Providing a new social setting where people could make new acquaintances and socialize with those of diverse backgrounds, while observing the latest trends and fashions, ballroom dancing altered social patterns between the sexes, different social classes, and different racial and ethnic groups at the turn of the 20th century. With the growth of popular music and dancing came new neighborhood dance halls or private clubs. Public dance halls and pavilions, often offering dancing lessons, did not appear in local city directories until 1927. From 1927 to 1945, four main ballrooms were located in downtown San José: The Balconades on Santa Clara Street, The Rainbow Ballroom on San Antonio Street, The Majestic on Third Street, and The Palomar Gardens on Notre Dame Street. These offered music by varied racial/ethnic bands in front of an integrated audience, although a majority came from the same racial/ethnic group as the band playing. In 1946, two other local venues were added: The Italia Hall, operated by Prospero G. López, and The Townsend Hall, owned by Frank and Angelo Boitano. These informal settings often catered to the non-Anglo working class and ethnic communities who could not afford, and often were not welcome, in the major ballrooms. In the late 1950s, John Zamora, a local Mexican businessman who had grown up as a farmworker and then went on to college, opened several restaurants with lounges where his musician brother Bobby Zamora and his band performed. Music producers, such as Frank Davila, understood that the availability of both radios and record players to a wider audience helped to popularize new artists and sell records. While lounges and nightclubs offered an audience of 300-500 each night, large ballrooms might attract 3000-5000 potential record buyers. These large venues were ideal for aspiring performers and big-name attractions with new albums. During the 1930s, large public dances and concerts were held at The San José Municipal Auditorium, offering traditional Mexican and “Spanish-American” music. According to public historian Suzanne Guerra, who did an historical context on the last surviving ballroom from the Big Band Era, The Palomar, constructed in 1946, was the only venue where an integrated audience could attend social dances and musical concerts in an elegant setting. San José provided numerous performing venues. Although not as large a market as Los Angeles, the proximity to the Bay Area and the many small venues in Santa Clara County enabled musicians to supplement jobs in the canneries with weekend performances at dance halls and clubs. This was the experience of Francis Pacheco Wells, vocalist for Dan's Combo, performing on the weekends at Maria'a Cocktail Lounge (728 N. 13th St. San José). Family celebrations and community fundraising events were often held at ballrooms and public halls. Musical parties like the multigenerational tardeada reinforced family and community ties, with both traditional musical styles and contemporary music, food and entertainment for largely Spanish-speaking audiences. In this way, the mix of musical styles in San José was continually renewed with each wave of immigrants and their distinct musical traditions.
Hispanic Americans: Cultural Traditions and the People, 1930s-1960s — Calisphere
Arts in Context | Tardeadas | Season 3 | Episode 1 | PBS
San José Sabor: Local Mexican Musicians, Singers, Bands and Radio Stations in San José, WWII to 1960
San José gave rise to several nationally recognized musicians and singers, such as the Montoya Sisters from the Eastside. From the 1940s through the 1960s, Agustin De La Grande was an important performer who, through his Academia de Musica, mentored many aspiring local musicians and young people in his marching band and orchestra. Agustin taught his daughter Trinidad De La Grande Martínez as well. She learned to play several instruments and filled in positions in her father’s band when needed. Some of De La Grande’s students went on to form their own groups, like the Bernie Fuentes Band, the house band at the Palomar. Low pay for performances forced many musicians to work during the day, many in the canneries, and perform in the evenings after work. This was the experience of musician Coronado Barrientes, drummer Rudy Coronado, and singer Francis Pacheco Wells. By the 1950s, young Mexican Americans, like their peers, were attracted to the new musical styles of rhythm and blues and rock-n-roll. During this time, radio was becoming the prime source of Spanish-language entertainment and information for the expanding Mexican colonias. Many ethnic Mexicans could not afford to buy records or attend concerts, but they loved listening to music in public spaces that had jukeboxes or on the radio. Several local radio stations developed Spanish programs, some of which were broadcast by Jesus Reyes Valenzuela, born in Shafter, Texas, and the first Spanish language broadcaster to operate in Santa Clara County. In the late 1940, his "Hora Artistica" was aired on KSJO Monday through Saturday. Mornings and afternoons featured the beloved singers of Mexican rancheros--Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Luis Pérez Meza, Luis Aguilar, and Lola Beltran. Radio Station KAZA in Gilroy started in the 1950s or 1960s. It was Portuguese owned and had 80% Spanish language programming, 7% Portuguese language programming and the remainder was English programming. In the 1960s, radio stations began to feature live remote broadcasts from community events featuring local singers and musicians.
The Influence of Mexican Music on San José, WWII to 1960
In 1942, the U.S. government instituted the Emergency Farm Labor Program, known as The Bracero Program, bringing in a new group of immigrants from the border regions along with a new style of music called Norteño or Tejano. The musical traditions of the Tejanos of South Texas and Norteños of Northern Mexico have been influenced not only by the mother country, México, but also by their Anglo American, African American, and immigrant neighbors like the Czechs, Bohemians, and Moravians as well as the Germans and Italians. From these influences came the polkas and accordion music that are so closely associated with this style. Many of these Mexican immigrants were from rural areas, and more familiar with the Mexican orquesta tipica, or string band, and regional music from their homelands, such as the conjunto. The conjunto mixed the folksy storytelling corrido, the dance form huapangos, and the traditional ranchera with European instruments such as the accordion. In the borderlands of the American Southwest, the orquesta Tejana was patterned after the big bands of this period and appealed to an acculturated Mexican American audience. A fusion of these styles with mariachi and rock-n-roll in the late 1950s would result in a new style referred to as Tejano or Tex-Mex. Mexican corridos, a popular music genre of the late 1920s to the mid 1940s, provided a way for ethnic Mexicans to document their immigration, migration, work and day-to-day living experiences. Frontera music curator Juan Antonio Cuellar notes that corridos were a form of oral history documentation adapted to music. News headlines became corridos stories. Cuellar describes corridos as “the newspapers of the Mexican working class”. During the 1920s, Latin American music and performers became popular among elites of all continents, who often preferred simplified romantic ballads and Latinized American pop music. Both this “society rumba” and Afro-Cuban influenced Latin American music such as mambos, were popular with local Latino audiences for the next several decades. Out of the big band era arising in the mid 1930s through the 1940s, Mexican musicians added a Mexican twist and created Pachuco Boogie. The largest events in San José were often held at the Municipal Auditorium, with performers such as Tito Puente, Desi Arnaz, and Lalo Guerrero playing for dances. Other ballrooms included The Balconades and The Palomar/Starlight ballrooms. During the war years, big bands–such as Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, Xavier Cugat, Jimmy Dorsey, and Artie Shaw–all featured Latin songs. In the early 1950s, American bands playing the Latin rumba, including nightclub performers such as Xavier Cugat, Desi Arnaz, and Carmen Miranda, were often featured in movies and television.
Corridos de la Frontera, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Mexican Musicians in California and the United States, 1910-50
Corridos Sin Fronteras: A New World Ballad Tradition
Mexican Entertainment in Downtown San José, WWII-1960
Downtown San José was the regional social hub for Mexican residents. On weekends, locals were joined by farm workers from nearby rural regions of the San Joaquin Valley to eat at a Mexican restaurant, watch a Spanish-language movie, meet friends for a drink, or go dancing. On Market Street a strip of restaurants and stores catered to a Mexican clientele. After WWII, the Liberty Theater, the Victory, the Lyric, and the José offered first-run movies from México and staged personal appearances from singers and performers. Local ballrooms (see ballroom section) also enlivened the downtown social scene. The proximity of nightclubs, many Mexican restaurants and shops that encouraged their patronage, was a major draw to those who had only limited services in their small communities or the work camps scattered throughout the region. After WWII El Eccentrico, the local Spanish-language entertainment magazine, established in 1948 (running until 1980), carried ads for shops, grocers, restaurants, and real estate and insurance agents catering to a Mexican clientele. Alongside the ads were announcements of clubs, concerts, and community events.
The Bronze Screen: 100 Years of the Latino Image in Hollywood Cinema on Vimeo
Mexican Businesses in Downtown San José, WWII to 1960
Historically, American settlement was concentrated east of the old Pueblo, with new businesses on 1st, 2nd and 3rd Streets. The ethnic Mexican residents of Santa Clara County considered Market Street the line between the American area and the Mexican Downtown Colonia. Restrictive housing policies had created segregated neighborhoods, and it was commonly understood that public accommodations were racially restricted until the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Stores, restaurants, bars, and shops that served Mexican customers were located on Market Street or the portions of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Streets south of Santa Clara Street. On weekends, Mexican workers from across the County congregated to do their weekly shopping, see a movie, or get a haircut. By 1960, Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals comprised one-fourth of Santa Clara County’s population and were a major factor in the regional economy. Urban redevelopment and freeway construction would displace a large number of residents of the Downtown Colonia, contributing to the closure of many Mexican businesses in the area.
San José's Downtown Historic District (U.S. National Park Service)
Do You Know the Way to San José?" Ethnic Mexicans, Urbanism, Culture, and Politics in Emerging Silicon Valley
The 1930s Deportation/Repatriation Campaign in San José
In Santa Clara County, Mexicans did not endure the same threats from the Klu Klux Klan that their compatriots in Southern California experienced in the 1920s. However, with the 1924 Immigration Act, pressure was put on the U.S. federal government to establish the first Mexican border patrol. In Southern California, the Mexican Deportation Campaigns from 1929-1934 further limited immigration. Santa Clara County, however, did not conduct extensive deportation campaigns, although Anglo trade unions tried to do so during the Great Depression. Instead, the Mexican consulate promoted the idea of repatriation to México to help those Mexican nationals who were suffering from the economic fallout from the Depression. As non-citizens, this population was ineligible for state or federal aid. During the 1930s, according to History Unfolded, 400,000-1 million of the nearly two million Mexicans living in the U.S., including American citizens, were either deported or repatriated to México. In San José, one third of the 4,000 Mexican residents chose to return to México in the Mexican government sponsored repatriation campaign.
Invisible Borders: Repatriation and Colonization of Mexican Migrant Workers Along the California Borderlands During the 1930s
The Deportation-Repatriation Campaign Against La Raza
“Repatriation” of Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals continues
Mexican Communities in the Great Depression | Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
INS Records for 1930s Mexican Repatriations | USCIS
Mexican Mutualistas, Home Clubs and La Comisión Honorifica in Santa Clara County
In Santa Clara County, immigrants formed associations with others from their original home in México or other regions of the Southwest. In San José, historian Stephen Pitti describes the rise of “town clubs” as the fraternal twin of the Mexican American mutualistas, or mutual aid societies. One important difference was that both men and women joined the town clubs while mutualistas were for men only. In the late 1920s, town clubs and mutualistas both helped with life insurance and funeral expenses for those without funds, fostering “a sense of local identity” while maintaining cultural and nationalist connections to México. Town clubs linked transplanted Mexican residents from similar hometowns that were now living in Santa Clara County. These community organizations assisted families, developed community and promoted cultural events. They held social activities in local parks and residences to raise money to aid members and celebrate cultural ties, such as Fiestas Patrias. Most importantly, they advised newcomers in their native language on local laws, customs, and practices to help them integrate into American society. While Americanization programs were designed to replace immigrants’ native tongue and cultural traditions, town clubs and mutualistas aided immigrants in their transition to the new country. Mutualistas and town clubs strengthened links to the Mexican consulate and to México as well. Using these connections, the consulate encouraged repatriation to México for San José immigrants struggling in the U.S. during the Great Depression. The Mexican consulate in San Francisco worked with the mutualistas to promote Mexican national celebrations of the Fiestas Patrias and to aid Mexican citizens. During the Great Depression, the town clubs grew because it was impossible to afford annual visits to México as had been common in the 1920s. The California deportation campaign against ethnic Mexicans between 1929-1934 reinforced Northern California Mexicans’ reliance on their town clubs. Prior to WWII and after, non-citizens were usually ineligible for social services. Mutualistas played an important role in redressing these inequities, advocating for their members with police and immigration authorities and granting small loans, as well as sponsoring local sporting events and cultural celebrations. The Mexican Consulate established the Comisión Honorifica Mexicana, an organization to promote cultural connections and aid Mexican citizens in the United States. The Comisión admitted all men of Mexican descent, regardless of citizenship.
Mutual Aid Societies in the Hispanic Southwest: Alternative Sources of Community Empowerment
“Mexican Americans and the Legacy of the Mutualista Movement”
“CHAPTER ONE” in “In Defense of La Raza: The Los Angeles Mexican Consulate and the Mexican Community, 1929 to 1936” on University of Arizona Press
Mythologizing the Past While Discriminating in the Present
Ironically, in the 1920s and 1930s, at a time when Mexicans were being pushed to the economic and geographic periphery of San José, Anglo city boosters promoted a parade, Fiesta de las Rosas, celebrating the region’s so-called Spanish (European) or “civilized” history. The event started as The Rose Carnival in 1896 and became the Fiesta de las Rosas in 1926 and lasted until 1933. In this instance, as historian Stephen Pitti notes, Anglo citizens connected their shared European white heritage with an imaginary Spanish-European California, an explicitly non-Mexican past. A few of the region’s remaining Californios were considered worthy of celebration, such as Santa Clara’s Encarnación Pinedo. Historian/journalist Carey McWilliams observed that the Anglo population considered these particular Californios to be the living embodiment of the “Spanish fantasy heritage.” During the 1910s and 1920s, fiesta parades took place throughout California and were wildly popular, particularly in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara; some continue on today. Celebrations and theatrical performances using the themes of California’s mythical past were held throughout California in plays like “The Mission,'' by John S. McGroarty. Santa Clara County hosted its first performance of “The Mission'' in 1915 at Santa Clara University. As PItti states, concerns over racial miscegenation and inter-racial romance were followed by two Fiesta plays that celebrated European White (Spanish or English) conquest over Mestizos and Indians, “La Rosa del Rancho, a Love Story of Early San José” (1927) and “The Madonna of Monterey” (1930). Anglos and ethnic whites played all the Spanish roles. For the audience, these celebrations affirmed the dominance of white European culture over the darker skinned Mexican “peons,” who were securely marginalized.
Fiesta de las Rosas Collection — Calisphere
Similar to Southern California, ethnic Mexicans were subjected to social, residential and educational segregation throughout Santa Clara County. According to a 1950 SJSU student study and a 1978 study done by the Garden City Women’s Club, ethnic Mexicans, African Americans and Asians experienced de facto segregation in policies regarding public pools, bowling alleys, and ballrooms and dancehalls. Santa Clara County followed California’s segregationist housing policies, which also aligned with school segregation patterns. According to California law, segregated schools were built if a community had more than ten students of Native American, Chinese, Japanese or Mongolian ancestry and if these minority students’ parents petitioned a district to build one. If the community had less than ten non-white students, these students would only be allowed to attend the community school if white parents approved. If not, then these non-white students could not attend school. Students of Mexican ancestry were not included in California’s school segregation laws until their numbers increased by 1910 due to the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) pushing people out of México and the need for agricultural labor pulled Mexicans to the U.S. Since many ethnic Mexican families migrated to new jobs every two to three months following the crops, their children’s school attendance could be sporadic. At that time, schools were divided between elementary (K-8) and high school (9-12). Since few employment opportunities existed outside of agriculture before WWII Mexican children were encouraged to work in order to supplement the family income or drop out of school after the 8th grade. After WWII, educational opportunities changed for ethnic Mexicans. Young people began attending high school and college, and skilled, higher paying jobs opened up to them. In post-war California, attitudes toward ethnic Mexicans slowly changed. Ethnic Mexican soldiers had become “brothers in arms” during the war as they fought in Anglo units, not segregated as African American soldiers had been. (See Civil Rights section for court cases and the ending of California school segregation.)
A Tale of Two Schools | Learning for Justice
South by Southwest: Mexican Americans and Segregated Schooling, 1900-1950
The area known as the Eastside San José was first settled by Puerto Ricans, who left low-paying Hawaiian canefield jobs during WWI for higher paid agricultural work in Santa Clara County. Prior to WWII, concerned that Mexicans might move into their neighborhoods, Santa Clara County civic leaders imposed racial/ethnic restrictive covenants and endorsed redlining policies towards Mexicans. This would concentrate the Mexican populations into the Downtown Colonia or the unincorporated Eastside. Mexican migrants and exiles from the Almaden Mine joined the Eastside Puerto Rican settlement in the early 1920s. These mineworkers wanted to be near other Spanish speakers as well as cannery and farm jobs. In 1931 the Mayfair Packing Company, for which the Mayfair District is named, was built on the Eastside and became one of eleven canneries and packing plants in San José. During WWII, ethnic whites left for higher paying munitions industry work and Mexican workers filled cannery jobs and settled there in large numbers. In 1955 the Mayfair District, nicknamed "Sal Sí Puedes" (Get Out If You Can-a name taken from an original Mexican landgrant), was home to 4,500 residents, of whom 3,000 were of Mexican descent. The segregated Eastside provided empty lots for group camping, mobile rail housing, or long-term housing in apartments, boarding houses, and rental units. Families would often pool their money to purchase an unimproved lot where they could build their own homes. In this way, worker neighborhoods were created with a variety of owner-built housing. For decades the segregated Eastside area remained unimproved with no paved streets or street lights.
East Side Dreams: The Untold Story of East San José | San Jose Public Library
Eastside Dreams: Highlighting the History of East San José
The San José Mexican Downtown Colonia Before and After WWII
As more seasonal Mexican immigrant workers arrived in the Valley, civic leaders worried that a year-round Mexican settlement would lower Anglo property values. Between 1920 and 1945, racially/ethnically restrictive covenants (land deed restrictions) and racial/ethnic redlining (lender refusal to offer loans in certain areas) on housing in cities and towns were enacted. These reinforced the segregation of Mexican colonias like San José’s old Pueblo neighborhood, located next to the less desirable industrial area filled with canneries, packing houses and railroads. As more seasonal Mexican immigrant workers arrived in the Valley, civic leaders worried that a In 1900, Mexican and ethnically white Portuguese, Spanish and Italians resided in the Downtown Colonia. When the number of Italians moving to the old Pueblo, between the 1880s to the 1920s, expanded beyond the housing capacity, they moved into the northern, western and southern adjacent neighborhood. The southern neighborhood became known as “Goosetown”. Throughout California, Mexican colonias were pejoratively called "Mexicantowns" or "Jimtowns" (thus racially equating Mexicans to southern African Americans, who were subjected to Jim Crow laws). Historian Suzanne Guerra notes, in the 1920s, the old Pueblo, referred to by Anglo Americans as “Mexicantown”, was hemmed in by urban development and adjacent orchards resulting in fewer places to live in San José. Historian Gregorio Mora-Torres observes that by WWII, the Italian residents of the Downtown Colonia and “Goosetown” moved to other neighborhoods throughout the city. WWII also enabled ethnic Mexicans to move up to higher paying, more stable jobs in the unionized canneries, so they bought the vacated Italian homes in the Downtown Colonia. During the 1940s, the Downtown Colonia expanded north to St. Augustine, south to San Carlos Street, and west beyond the Guadalupe River. By the late 1950s, it had reached all the way to Home/Virginia Streets. Mexicans also lived in the community north of Santa Clara Street and between Second Street and the Coyote River. This spurred the development of Mexican owned businesses downtown to serve Spanish speaking residents in the region.
During the Spanish colonial era, two land grants (Rancho Las Animas and Rancho San Ysidro) comprised what is now the region known as Gilroy. Additional land grants were issued during the Mexican era. The city of Gilroy was eventually named after a Scottish immigrant, John Cameron, who came to Monterey in 1814 and changed his name to Juan Bautista Gilroy after converting to Catholicism. He worked on Rancho San Ysidro, marrying the ranchero’s daughter Maria Clara Ortega, and became a naturalized Mexican citizen. Eventually he inherited a part of Rancho San Ysidro and raised cattle. During the American Period, Gilroy incorporated as a town (1868), and most of the Mexican rancho land passed into the hands of Anglo farmers and ranchers. In the late 1850s much of Rancho Los Animas (12,000 acres) was sold to Henry Miller, a famed cattleman in the Miller & Lux Company, which lobbied for the railroad to run through Gilroy in order to facilitate their cattle raising/butchering operations. The area boasted prune, cherry, and apricot orchards, with the producer exchange Sunsweet overseeing the drying of these crops for market. In the early 1960s, orchards were replaced by row crops of tomatoes, sugar beets, and garlic. Prior to WWII, Mexican immigrants migrated to work in the orchards and fields, living temporarily on the ranches where they worked. Some Mexicans, such as the García family who migrated from Texas, began moving into Gilroy during WWII. They initially bought a large apartment complex, the Guadalupe Apartments, on Eigelberry and 7th Street, and then opened the Post Office Market on 6th Street and Monterey Road, which they sold and then established García (card) Club in 1952 on Monterey Road between 6th and 7th Street facing the railroad. The Mexican businesses of the García family were unique. Gilroy was a small town, so there was not a separate Mexican business district, and Mexican residents did not attend separate schools or theaters. Instead Wednesday was “Mexican Night” at the Anglo-owned Strand Theater, with headliners such as Cantinflas appearing on occasion. It was not until WWII and later that Mexicans moved into higher paid, unionized cannery work. Though still seasonal, it was flexible enough to allow workers to move to other jobs when necessary. Employment at the Felice and Perrelli Cannery (1914-1997) enabled several generations of Mexican families to establish roots in town. The Gilroy Mexican Colonia appeared south of 7th Street, with some settling on the westside of Monterey Road and the majority living east of Monterey Road next to the canneries and railroad tracks.
Immigrants Play Big Part in Gilroy History
The Hispanic roots of Mountain View stretch back to the Mexican land grant of Rancho Pastoria de Las Borregas of 8,800 acres that included lands in current Sunnyvale and Mountain View, granted to Francisco Estrada and his wife Inez in 1842. When the Estradas died in 1845 they left their land to Inez’s father, Mariano Castro. Castro sold the eastern half of the rancho, what is now Sunnyvale, to Irishman Martin Murphy, Jr. Murphy had arrived in 1844 and planted Santa Clara County’s first orchard on his newly acquired land. Castro died in 1856, leaving the Mountain View portion to his son, Crisanto Castro. Like other Mexican Californios, the Castros fought in the American courts from 1852 to 1871 to validate their land grants but lost most of it to squatters and lawyers fees. The Castro family remained in Mountain View until 1958, when they sold their remaining 23.5 acres to the City of Mountain View. In the early 1900s Spanish immigrants arrived in Santa Clara County. Many who had worked in the orchards and canneries in the 1920s and 1930s moved to Mountain View, California, settling in the northern section of the city above the canneries, packinghouses and railroads. These included the Mountain View Fruit Packing Company, Clark Canning, and San José Fruit Preserving Company. Around 1920, the P.L. Sanguinetti Cannery in Mountain View was acquired by the Richmond-Chase Cannery, one of the largest in California. Sharing a common language, the Spanish community welcomed Mexican immigrants who arrived in Mountain View during and after WWII. This would eventually transform the Spanish neighborhood into the Mountain View Mexican Colonia. In such a small town, Mexicans did not form a separate commercial district but melded cultural traditions and a shared language. St. Joseph Catholic Church became the heart of the Colonia, and during the late 1940s to 1950 Father Donald McDonnell encouraged the Mexican community to address their financial, economic, and social needs by creating Club Estrella as well as a community credit union. Club Estrella hosted annual church and community events for the entire Spanish speaking community. Increasing urbanization and highway expansion during the 1950s and 1960s brought major thoroughfares through the heart of the district and decimated the established Mountain View Colonia. Father McDonnell was assigned to the Mexican mission in Eastside San José in 1951, and helped establish the San José de Guadalupe Church and became a mentor to César Chávez.
The Birth and Breaking of a Forgotten Community
Bittersweet: Memories of Old Mountain View
Mountain View Photographs & Oral Histories (Includes Mexican Worker Interview)
Mountain View Public Library History Page
At the height of the fruit season during WWII, canneries operated seven days a week with shifts as long as eleven or twelve hours per day. After World War II, demand for canned fruit rapidly declined, leaving owners holding large loans that had been taken out to expand productivity. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, orchards and fields were being replaced by business and research parks and housing developments, creating the emerging Silicon Valley. Changes occurred also when the Teamsters Union took cannery representation away from the AFL, and when Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1967) required that jobs could not be classified as “male” or “female” work. By 1976, because most cannery jobs were unionized, women were receiving wage, medical, holiday, and retirement benefits. Although their benefits were still lower than men’s, women found cannery work offered stability, allowing many to become homeowners. When fruit processing operations began to decline in the 1970s, the growth of manufacturing in the electronics industry and new housing tracts provided opportunities for displaced workers in construction, railroads, warehouse, and assembly work. Unfortunately, these new jobs were not comparable to the higher-wage union jobs in the canning industry. For many workers, the cannery closures meant the end of secure jobs with benefits and the long-term working relationships they had created. By 1987, only eight canneries existed in the valley, the era ended when, in 1999, Del Monte closed its largest cannery, Plant #3, the site of the 1893 San Jose Fruit Packing Company.
Cannery women were also faced with the double work day, often working full time or overtime at the cannery while still expected to care for the home and family. Still, most considered cannery work a better alternative than field or orchard jobs. Working seasonally enabled them to supplement the family income or serve as the breadwinner when husbands were unemployed, while maintaining their primary roles as wives and mothers. A major challenge for cannery women was finding appropriate and affordable childcare. During the 1940s and 1950s, CalPak operated a nursery at the Del Monte Plant #3, providing childcare during the day and second shift. However, as childcare was unavailable at most canneries, mothers left their children with family members or neighbors, while others paid for babysitters or bartered for care with co-workers. Husbands and wives who worked at the same plant might arrange complicated shift schedules. Working mothers believed that, in easing their husbands’ responsibility as providers, they could ask for more assistance with housework. However, men often found it difficult to participate in many of these domestic chores, so cooking and childcare were often handled by older children. Women cannery workers knew that their paychecks enabled them to provide more assistance to their children, send their kids to college, allow their husbands to attend trade school, start their own business, or have a higher standard of living, and they wanted a say in how household money would be spent. Women made time to do the necessary household chores by extending their day, staying up late or waking early.
Before the 1930s, workdays for women cannery workers could be up to 18 hours, or 96 hours a week. Historian Glenna Matthews notes that in 1913 the Industrial Welfare Commission was formed to protect laboring women and children but excluded workers in “perishable materials” such as cannery workers. A high percentage of women working in canneries at that time were immigrants who spoke limited English, so receiving adequate training was difficult, and safety instructions were printed only in English. Assembly-line labor was repetitive, and women stood at their stations for hours working with their hands in acidic fruit. Many women reported severe damage to their hands and fingers from operating swiftly-running machinery. Many reported severe damage to their hands, not from traumatic injuries but from nicks and cuts received while cutting fruit by hand. As cans rattled along conveyors in buildings that were sometimes the size of four football fields, noise was also a constant problem. Industrial chemicals were hard on the skin and a hazard to eyes and lungs. At the peak of the season, workers might put in ten hours a day, six days a week, leaving them exhausted and dehydrated at the end of their shift. Women continued to bring health and safety concerns to management and their unions. During and after WWII, some larger canneries, such as Del Monte, created an infirmary with a nurse near the processing line. While conditions generally improved over time, anthropologist Patricia Zavella, in her book Women’s Work and Chicano Families, noted that in 1978, canneries were still considered one of the most dangerous industries, second only to lumber manufacturing according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
By the 1950s, many operations formerly done by hand were now at least partially performed by machines. Fruit arriving at the cannery, such as peaches, was dumped onto “shakers”; then onto the conveyor belt for cleaning, washing, pitting, and halving by machine; and finally sorted into grades by hand. A few women supervisors oversaw this female-dominated task. On the floor, workers stood at their stations sorting fruit as it came down the conveyor. Cans on conveyors filed by the seam-inspectors, and women “checkers” sealed the cans before they were loaded into cookers. Women concentrated on doing their jobs quickly in order to meet required quotas. Processing areas were noisy, with the constant clamor of machinery and cans running along conveyor belts. Chemicals such as lye and chlorine were used to wash and clean the fruit. Some women who worked in steaming and canning spinach complained of their nails falling off due to prolonged submersion into the spinach vats. Fruit and vegetable processing required a great deal of handwork to sort, weigh, and fill cans with sometimes steaming hot produce. Once canned, some women looked for dented cans before they were boxed up. The work was demanding and exhausting, constantly proceeding at a pace set by the conveyor belt. When the women got home, their bodies smelled like the fruit or vegetable in which they worked all day, particularly tomatoes. It was difficult to get adequate rest. Many women cannery workers complained about hearing the clanking of the machines even in their sleep. By the 1940s, shifts usually lasted eight hours but could be longer during peak harvest periods, when some canneries operated on a 24-hour schedule. Companies facing labor shortages encouraged regular employees to work overtime, and despite the demands of the job, many welcomed​​ the opportunity to earn extra money.
Many women found jobs in the canneries through other family members who worked at the same plant. Since little job training was provided, family members could offer advice on the use of equipment as well as how to work with supervisors. Lunching together, sharing babysitting, or traveling to work with family members strengthened kinship networks, and new friendships developed with people they may not have met outside the cannery. Unlike the men who worked in shipping, warehousing, or as equipment operators, before 1970, women did not view cannery jobs as a permanent occupation because there were few opportunities for training and advancement. Women workers, no matter their background, shared mutual concerns about wages, working conditions, and poor supervisors. There was no time to socialize while on the assembly line or during brief breaks, and the noise made it hard to converse. In the 1930s, shared concerns over workplace safety and low wages led some Mexican women to become involved in union organizing efforts, including strikes, and to rely on social networks for support. “Women’s cannery work culture” made the daily routine easier because women shared their experiences, helping each other adjust to the challenges of the workplace.
Ethnic and Immigrant Division in Cannery Work
Not until the 1940s were Mexican women born in the United States, fluent in English, finally able to advance to office work or supervisorial jobs. Prior to that time, line supervisors were typically Italian or Portuguese, while crews were overwhelmingly Mexican. Supervisors held a degree of authority and could dismiss workers at will. Forewomen circulated the shop floor, enforcing rules, instructing workers, and pushing for faster, more accurate work. Most importantly, forewomen had complete discretion in assigning workers. While ethnic white women might do the same jobs as Mexican women, they were often segregated by their supervisors, who sometimes helped members of their own group secure better jobs. Combined with the language barrier, Mexican women found little basis for solidarity with these co-workers and sometimes perceived comments from supervisors as racially biased. In addition, although they all might speak Spanish, relations between American-born Mexicans and Mexican immigrants could sometimes be strained.
In the canneries up until the 1970s with the implementation of the 1960s Civil Rights legislation, men held year-round jobs in shipping and warehouses, with women assigned to “semi-skilled” seasonal assembly-line hand labor–peeling, cutting, and slicing–standing at work stations all day except for lunch and breaks. Most women were assigned to processing operations or “women’s department.” The monotony and boredom of assembly-line work was a strain, unlike men’s jobs, which allowed for more independence. Cook-room, labeling, stacking, and boxing machines were generally operated by men, who also managed the storage and shipping warehouses. Under the assumption that they were better suited for physical labor and were supporting families, men were assigned to the higher-paying work of supervising, heavy lifting, and equipment operation and maintenance. Full-time jobs provided higher wages and opportunities for advancement, along with a degree of autonomy. Due to these gendered job categories, women also suffered from limited opportunities for advancement. Not until the 1970s, after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, would they move into higher-paying, year-round jobs traditionally reserved for men.
Fruit and vegetable harvests are seasonal and must be processed immediately to ensure peak quality. Large canneries with access to produce from other regions might shift from one product to another, operating year-round. During harvest season, canneries operated around the clock, with three shifts of workers per day. While some workers returned annually, new employees were hired seasonally through “shape-ups,” an informal selection process in which workers gathered in front of the office hoping to be hired at the cannery. Due to the large number of canneries and packing houses in the county, workers usually had several opportunities to find work nearby. During labor shortages, canneries in Santa Clara County advertised in Bay Area newspapers to ensure at least a minimum number of applicants. Having a connection in the cannery workforce–friends or family–often resulted in a hiring preference, and these ties were also helpful on the job as experienced workers provided support and instruction to newcomers. Because employment was seasonal, workers maximized income while jobs were available, working daily and often overtime. This might mean hiding a pregnancy (because pregnant women were not hired), working when sick, or staying on the job even after an injury. Workers wanted to make sure that they would be asked to return for the next season.
Mexicans Move to Cannery Work During and After WWII
WWII was a profitable period for growers, packers, canners, and workers as destruction of farmland in Europe and the mobilization of the military worldwide generated a huge demand for canned goods. Over half of Santa Clara County canning production was allocated for the war effort. Meanwhile, canneries in San José suffered labor shortages because of the absence of men to the military and the shift of ethnic white women to higher-paying, year-round “Rosie the Riveter” manufacturing jobs, such as at Hendy Iron Works. In response, Mexican women and braceros filled cannery jobs. During peak periods, canneries operated non-stop, and many provided transportation during the night shift or allowed women to work until 6:00 a.m., when public buses began to operate. From 1948 to the 1970s, among cannery women workers, Mexicans comprised the largest ethnic group, with Mexican women working on the line under the supervision of older Italian and Portuguese women, while Mexican men worked in the higher-paying year-round warehouse jobs. Second-generation, English-speaking Mexican American women moved easily from the cannery line to higher- paying supervisory positions and front-office jobs.
Women Dominate the Ethnic White Cannery Labor Force Pre-WWII
Canneries are labor-intensive operations, and the labor force required to serve this expanding industry grew with the increase of orchards under production. Jobs were clearly divided along gender, ethnic, and racial lines. Chinese men, Mexican Californio women and men, and Anglo men and women filled the first cannery jobs when the canneries during the 1870s and 1880s. Following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish immigrants soon dominated the Santa Clara County cannery labor force into WWII. By the 1930s, Santa Clara County’s 38 canneries were the largest employers of women in California. Historian Glenna Matthews divides these canneries into three categories: the large corporate canners of Libby’s, Hunt’s, or Calpak; the smaller joint firms such as Richmond-Chase (2,073 peak season workers); and the marginal single canneries, including Garden City Canning Company (197 peak season workers). In the 1930s, white ethnic women had risen to supervisory positions as floor ladies, with full authority over subordinates. During WWII, many of these women moved to better paying positions in defense industries and jobs vacated by men. By the mid-1940s, the percentage of women in the American workforce had expanded from 25 to 36 percent. With the wartime labor shortages, more Mexican women were recruited to work in the canneries.
Cannery Life: Del Monte in the Santa Clara Valley - History of San José
Looking Back: Canning in the Valley of Heart's Delight | San Jose Public Library
Santa Clara Valley Women Cannery Workers
Formation of Producer Exchanges in Santa Clara County
Canners and growers formed producer exchanges or cooperatives in which groups of farmers producing the same type of crop collaborated to negotiate prices, hire labor, and access larger markets. In agriculture, these exchanges were characterized by ”horizontal integration,” in which companies of the same industry band together for harvesting, processing, and selling. Just as in Southern California citrus, Santa Clara County canners and growers formed a producer exchange in 1899. San José Fruit Packing Company (SJFPC) joined with seventeen other companies (including half of the canning establishments in California) to form the California Fruit Canners’ Association (CFCA), which eventually operated 28 fruit and vegetable canneries through the state and acquired operations in four other states. Within four years, CFCA was the world’s leader in fruit and vegetable canning and drying. By 1916 the CFCA had merged with five other canneries to form California Packing Corporation (CalPak), developing into the Del Monte Brand, the first national company in the United States, offering 50 products. Cannery operations were large facilities, with warehouses, processing facilities, railyards, garages, shops, and offices, employing several hundred to several thousand people. As a regional hub for the food processing industry, local canneries received produce not only from the Bay area but from much of Northern and Central California. Historian Glenna Matthews states that by the 1930s Calpak was the largest canner in California and Santa Clara County had become the fruit processing capital of the world. This photo shows women packing prunes at Calpak Plant No. 51 on Bush Street, south of The Alameda.
The History of Cannery Development in Santa Clara County
Following early experimentation with horticulture, the canning industry was established in 1872. Aided by an expanded railroad system and access to broader markets, Santa Clara County became the capital for fruit processing/canning. In 1920, the county produced 90% of California’s canned fruits and vegetables, a share that continued into the 1950s. Increased mechanization and more efficient processes gradually replaced most of the hand labor in the canneries. The construction of new packing houses and canneries west of the Guadalupe River, north of Jackson, and south of Keyes Street drew migrant ethnic Mexican laborers into those areas of San José. Early promoters called San José “The Garden City.” To take advantage of bumper crop years, keep their product fresh after the season, and utilize distant markets, orchard ranchers preserved their fruit through canning and drying. In 1871 at his home on The Alameda, Dr. James Dawson, a local doctor/fruit grower, formed Dawson & Company, which In 1875 was renamed the San Jose Fruit Packing Company (SJFPCO), located at the corner of Fifth and Julian Streets. In 1893 the company, relocated to the west side of the Guadalupe River south of Auzerais Street, was the largest cannery in the world. By 1900 canned food production had become the second largest industry in California, with Santa Clara County in the lead. During the 1930s, 38 canneries hiring up to 30,000 people at peak season operated in the county, several run by huge corporations such as Libby’s, Hunt’s, Richmond-Chase, and Calpak. Commercial sales of fruit increased with the construction of the San Jose Fruit Packing Company facility in 1875. Workers at the first canneries included local residents and seasonal migrants. Some employers offered company housing for skilled workers, though individually rented boarding house rooms and hotel rooms were more typical. Worker neighborhoods with small family homes soon appeared adjacent to packing houses and canneries. San José's Eastside grew after the Mayfair Fruit Packing Company was constructed in 1944, in the largely Mexican neighborhood known as the Mayfair district.
World War II became known as California’s second gold rush. Growers turned to the federal government to help fill the labor gap created by military enlistment and government military contracts, which were not open to Mexican workers. The 1942 Emergency Farm Labor Agreement signed by Mexico and the U.S. sent thousands of braceros (men who work with their arms) across the border to fill lower-paid, seasonal agricultural jobs. The war-time emergency program lasted until 1964 and deterred any successful agricultural unionizing efforts undertaken by Mexican farmworkers during WWII and after. By July 1945 more than 58,000 braceros were working in agriculture (cannery and farm work), with almost 62,000 on railroad crews. At the peak harvest season of August 1954, there were 1,000 braceros employed in Santa Clara County. According to the transnational agreement, bracero workers were not to undercut local domestic labor and were to be provided with adequate housing. It was up to the Mexican consulate to inspect bracero living and working conditions. In California, with Mexican consular offices only in Los Angeles and San Francisco, it was difficult to monitor the program and enforce the terms of the agreement.
Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942 - 1964 | National Museum of American History
Hispanic Americans: Migrant Workers and Braceros, 1930s-1964 — Calisphere
My mom was working at the camp. She had to keep track of the kids. There were probably a half dozen little kids there. [The rest of the kids worked] with my dad. If you can carry a bucket, and you can pick a prune, you were old enough. In the 1940s, there were no regulations.If you wanted to bring your five-year-old to pick prunes, you could take him. Nobody said anything. [We would start at] seven o’clock in the morning. My mother used to make tacos and send them to us ‘cuz we weren’t too far from the camp. [We’d] work until five o’clock at night. InSouthern California [citrus], they would shake the trees and [but in Santa Clara County you would pick prunes off the ground… You would put them in a bucket, then you fill the boxes. They [the prunes] would fall and get pieces of dirt in them and get a little damaged. So you had to be on your knees, or one knee, whichever way you could. If you had a child, he’d have a little bucket. The full buckets probably weighed thirty pounds. Some mothers picked prunes, whole families, men, women, and children. Everybody picks prunes. Here in San José ,you would pick apricots off the tree. If it falls off you don’t pick it because everything here went to the canneries. Here in San José, when you picked apricots, you had to carry your own ladder,[wooden ladder]. They didn’t have aluminum ladders like they do now. Fernando ChavezInterview by Dr. Margo McBane, Ph.D. and Peggy Wallace, Feb. 6, 2008, Cupertino, CA. In the summers, we went to the San Joaquin Valley from San José to work. I started at 6-7 years old picking cotton. Well, you had to get up at four in the morning ‘cause it’s too damn hot in the [San Joaquin] Valley. I mean by noon you’re already at 105, 110. So we’d get up early… So my mom would have her sack, and I’d have mine, and my younger brother Jim, would be with my mom’s sack, we’d pull him, and my other brother would be with me. He was more sickly than my other brother. He had asthma, he had eczema, and things of that nature. So we used to drag him ‘cause it was dark when we were out there picking. The only thing…they’re out picking cotton and you get the little things stuck in your fingernails and stuff. We tried to wear gloves, but it was hard because you couldn’t feel the cotton to pick. When we would go to Wasco, we would stay with my grandfather. He only had a one bedroom house, and so it was a house full of people [laughing]. Besides my grandparents, there were two other families. My aunt Alice and her kids, she had six, and then my brothers and I and my mom. We would take mattress outside and sleep out in the front yard. It was so hot, and there was no air conditioning. Their big thing was to get what they called “swamp coolers”. You used water to cool off. There was no air conditioner, that was the air conditioner in those days. I remember going and dumping all the cotton and weighing it, they weighed it before they dumped it. My mother would take the money we made. And I graduated from cotton to picking grapes in Del Rey with an uncle of mine. Coming back to San José, it was always prunes, mostly prunes, apricots, and then pears. It’s hot [laughs] and, well, the first thing you learn as a farmworker, you ask in terms of pay. Okay, how are you going to pay me? By the bucket, the box? What got me out of the farmwork was, I was probably about twelve, thirteen years old, we went, my mom and I, we had an aunt and uncle that were across from the old IBM building, across from where my grandfather had his ranch. My aunt and uncle were foremen on a ranch, and my parents left us there for the summer. So, when the owner came, I was asking, ‘How much are you paying us? Well how much would I get for picking a ton of prunes?” He looked at me [surprised]. “Yeah, you’re gonna pick a ton of prunes…” He gave me some number, and I said “Oh, okay.” Well I picked a ton of prunes. But when he put that money in my hands, I’m looking at it going, “Wait a minute. A ton of prunes. No, this doesn’t equate.” It was like seven dollars or something like that. But that’s what it was like… When you’re picking prunes, or you’re picking anything, you couldn’t wait to get closer to the road. Wherever you were working, to get closer, to see what people were driving. That there were people driving nice cars, or doing something you couldn’t do. I couldn’t be out there going on a luxury drive or whatever. But then you’d come back away from the road, because you’re working in rows, particularly with fruit or vegetables. Richard Vasquez Interviewed by Dr. Margo McBane, Ph.D. and Margarita Garcia Villa, Dec. 21, 2016, Watsonville, CA In the [San Joaquin] Valley…when I was nine, [my family] used to stop like in Mendota and chop cotton. Then we would do apricots and prunes [in San José}. And then after that they’d go back and pick cotton and they did grapes [in the San Joaquin Valley] and they went back and forth from Fresno [to San José]. I was born in 1934. In them days you had to work as soon as you started walking, you carried your sack for picking cotton. We thought it was fun. We had a potato sack. My dad used to buy…. one hundred pounds of beans, one hundred pound of potatoes, and that was for the winter to eat. We lived in Firebaugh, when I was five years old, and that’s when I remember I used to pick cotton….Because when that the cotton grows in a ball like this, and then when it starts opening up like that, it has like [sharp, pointy] stickers right there, and when you go get the cotton, that’s what gets your fingers right here [stabbing you]. My dad always had a car. In Fresno we used to live under trees all the time, in tents. My dad always had like three tents. I remember one year…that was in forty-one, in this one camp…it was raining all night…By then we had cots, army cots… One of my brothers and I used to sleep on the same little cot, and then when they said, “Time to get up!” We were going to get up and I looked down and there was like about a foot of water. When we came [to San José], my dad used to make four walls out of the apricot trays. [The growers would] dry the apricots on the trays. [My dad] used to tie them up with wire and make the walls. And then like on one side he would leave an opening like a door. And the boxes, the fruit boxes, those were the cabinets. The growers didn’t provide housing. We used to work up there in Evergreen [in San José]…The growers grew apricots and prunes. In apricots we used 8 foot wood ladders that weighed 35 or 40 lbs, you carried from tree to tree. You put your hand through one of the steps and you drop the ladder like this, and then you just carry it [to the tree you are picking]. You carried a metal bucket that weighed five or ten pounds… Now you climb up… and you pick [the apricots] with your hands… They’re real small, and they’re real soft. Say a branch is coming up like this, and you hang the bucket on the branch, and whatever is hanging around that branch you can just [put in the bucket]. And then when it gets too heavy you put [the bucket] on the ladder and then you start picking. [When full, the bucket weighed] I think forty-five, fifty pounds. They get pretty heavy. They wouldn’t let me pick them until I was twelve…thirteen. [In apricots, you dump in boxes, then women would cut them, take the pits out, and put them] on wooden trays to dry. The trays were about 8 feet long and 30 inches wide…First what they do, they stack them, …about five feet or six feet high. But five feet mostly. And they have little spurs, little rails [to put them on], and they have little cars that they used to push them into what they called a smoker, a dryer [or shed]. And then they put sulfur and then they burn the sulfur. And then they push the car, the little cart in there with the trays and everything. They’re all still stacked, and then they close the doors, and have them sealed so no smoke comes out. So that’s the way they cure them. And the next day they pull that out, and then they have men that spread [the trays] out…They leave them there for days until they are dried out. [With prunes], if you were three years old you could pick. Anybody could walk in, [and pick them] right off the ground. Most of the time apricots and prunes start in the last days and weeks of June. Walnut season goes through July, August, September. Like the last two weeks of August and then all through September. A lot of times we used to pick walnuts three times. Like we had to wait for whatever dropped by itself. And the second time a lot more fell down by itself. On the last one we have to shake the trees. They give you a long stick with a hook on it, and that’s what they call the shakers. You shake the tree. You knock everything down. In Fresno, in walnuts, we had to pick by hand and put into boxes. Before, they used to have small boxes, you know like…about ten inches high, and they’re about fourteen inches wide…and about thirty inches long… We used to fill them up. When we did it with my dad or with my brother, they used to put about six boxes together, and we just went and dumped [into] them. Because that way you wouldn’t be wasting time to wait for somebody else to dump it. We were pretty smart. You work with just the family… When I was older, like sixteen, fifteen or sixteen, I used to go with my brothers and my sisters. There was a lot of families, so you just took one row. You just went on that one row or you took two rows, and that belongs to the family. And everybody between the trees, you couldn’t go on [the other family’s] side, …that was your tree, your side. You couldn’t go on that side or else they’ll be throwing rocks [at you]. My dad always built a fire [at lunch time], yeah. No matter how hot it was. I remember sometimes [in the San Joaquin Valley] he was picking grapes in the summertime and it was real hot, like right there in Sanger. My mother always made, now we call them burritos, but in them days they were tacos. Tortilla tacos, and she used to make a big pot of them, and they were always wrapped in cloth, and they were still warm by twelve o’clock, the time we were going to go eat. They were filled with beans, rice or potatoes. Whatever there was. Most of the time there were just Mexicans [we worked with]. The only time I saw other people, white people and black people, I was already seventeen, was when I went over there in Los Banos. We were picking cotton, and they used to bring people from Oakland, a bus of white people and a bus of black people, in the 1950s. Where they worked different, it was when I was like six years old in the 1940s, we lived in a camp in Firebaugh, in a camp they called it Giffins, that must have been the name of the owner or something….They had a reservoir, and then the water used to come in from there, but there was a bridge. And only white people lived on one side, and all the Mexicans on the other side. That divided everybody. And you couldn’t go on that side, or you couldn’t go pick where they picked, they picked in different places. That was in cotton. Herminia and Leandro Villareal Interviewed by Margo McBane, Ph.D. and Joseph Rivera, Nov. 12, 2005, San José, California
During the 1920s and 1930s, Mexicans performed 80% of the harvest work in Santa Clara County. Racially and ethnically segregated workplaces were the norm in orchard and row crops, with each group working either a different crop or at a different skill level and getting paid different amounts. Anglo male farmworkers filled the skilled year-round work of pruning and irrigating, while Mexican immigrant workers were forced into seasonal harvest jobs. Mexican workers labored for at least ten hours a day, seven days a week during harvest season and were paid on a piece-work rather than hourly basis. With the introduction of specialty crops in the late 1800s, only male workers were hired; however, employers soon found they could attract and retain workers if they employed men with families. Between 1920-1940 first-generation Mexican immigrant men and children, who began work at five or six years of age, often worked as a group, with only the father paid for his entire family’s labor. Mexican immigrant mothers stayed at home to care for their babies and campsites; women did not enter cannery work in Santa Clara Valley until World War II. Child labor laws (covering minors under age 15) were not created until 1938 when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which was not enforced until after WWII. The federal Fair Employment Practices Committee, established by the Roosevelt administration in 1941, found that more than one-third of all complaints came from Mexican agricultural workers.
Well, they didn’t have houses. Most of the Mexicans had their own little tents that they brought along with them, living in their car. All the tents hanging off the cars, just like you see in THE GRAPES OF WRATH. They really had big cars because they really needed them—even though they were more expensive to keep up. There was very little eviction because they didn’t live in any place. They had their own things with them, just like a snail would; you carry your own shells with you. They could take the tents off the land, when people said you have to get off the land. Because if you came to pick peas, you generally camped on the land that the peas were on. Elizabeth Nicholas (1930s CAWIU Santa Clara Valley cannery union organizer) Interview by Margo McBane, 1970s, MountainView, CA. We went to Santa Maria, and my dad bought a tent and he made a great big bed. The whole family slept on that one big bed…. [We had our own stove] and my mother was good at [setting up the tent]. She would get the boxes that they used to pick tomatoes and prunes and she would just stack ‘em and make shelving. And she’d cook outside. Sid Duran Interview by Margo McBane, Oct. 3, 2011, San José Chapter GI Forum Headquarters We were 13 kids. And we used to go pick apricots in Saratoga. There’s a street, it’s called Cox Avenue. And we picked prunes for Ed Cox. So when he brought us, he would just tell us, “Okay, you can camp in that bare area there”. He had one outhouse and one faucet sticking up from the ground, and everybody got water from that one faucet. And some people brought tents. [My mom and my granddad] had a tent, and so we used it. At that time, on the beds there were no box springs and mattresses like we have now. They were the bare springs, and the mattresses were the cotton… that you would roll up. So, we would take our beds from the home and we would roll them up and tie it with a piece of rope. Tie each end and throw them up in the truck, four of those or as many as we needed. We didn’t bring food because when we got here we would ask Ed Cox to advance us some money so we could go to the grocery store and buy food. And so my mother would pack most of the stuff in about three old tin bathtubs that had holes in Them…that are small at the bottom, wide at the top… [When we got to the campsite] First of all, we would get some apricot [and prune] trays and stand them up and tie them with wire and… make two rooms. [Then we would take more trays] and make a platform upside down and unroll our mattress on that. And my mom and dad slept on one side,... [And the 13 of] us on the other side. My dad would make a mound of dirt and maybe two feet wide and eight inches high. He would [take one of the three old tin tubs] turn it upside down on that mound of dirt just to elevate it a Little bit. He would cut a hole on the side of the tub and that was my mother’s stove…. When we bought food, we always bought a hundred pound sack of flour and a hundred pound sack of beans…we couldn’t go to a store and get milk, my mother always bought canned milk in boxes… My mother would then make tortillas, probably at least twice a day from scratch. She would stand up a hundred-pound sack of flour and open it up. Then she would get a pan, maybe six or eight inches deep… She would make the dough by hand. She knew exactly how much water to put in it and a little salt and baking powder. She had done it millions of times. In five minutes she would have enough dough to make three or four dozen tortillas by hand. She would roll them out by hand and cook them on top of the bottom of that tin top. And she would make potatoes and eggs. She used to cook potatoes in a big frying pan and she would crack a half dozen eggs. That’s how we ate eggs and potatoes. Fernando Chavez Interview by Margo McBane and Peggy Chavez, Feb. 6, 2008, Cupertino, CA.
Most Mexican immigrants arriving in the 1920s and 1930s could not afford to rent or buy permanent housing in Santa Clara County’s Mexican colonias. Early Mexican rail crews in Santa Clara County were housed in tents and work camps, bunkhouses, or in rooms near railyards. As adjacent communities and industries grew, boxcar housing in the railyards became the nucleus of the first Mexican worker neighborhoods. When they turned to migrant farm work, many Mexicans would camp on growers’ land. By the late 1920s and 1930s, migrant families acquired used cars and brought their own tents, mattresses, and cooking equipment on the road. Migrating in a car with a family of 12 or more was a challenge! During fruit season, workers found that most growers offered no housing or sanitary facilities, so they camped under bridges or in tents in the open fields or built temporary shelters with fruit boxes. Innovative families used wooden crates to create tables, chairs, cabinets, or bed platforms. Not until WWII did ethnic Mexicans come to settle more permanently in the segregated colonias of San José or Santa Clara County, called by Anglos “Mexicantown” or “Jimtown” in reference to Jim Crow laws of the South.
Ventura County 1941 Great Citrus Strike Refugees Quotes
I lived in Santa Paula until I was 18. Then in February of 1943, I was drafted into the Army. My family was still living in Santa Paula. In [1941] the [Limoneira Company citrus] strike was lost, and my dad did not want to go back to picking lemons. They moved to San José… We knew San José best because we used to come and pick prunes [and apricots] here every year. The ranchers in San José would go and pick you up [in Santa Paula] because you couldn’t pack 13 kids and mom and dad in a car to come from Santa Paula…to San José with all your bedding and dishes and all the stuff you need because you were camping. The ranchers wanted to guarantee that they had enough workers to help pick their crops, so they would bring two extra families, three families, five families, six families. Whatever they needed. And then, after the apricots, then they would take you back. [In Santa Paula] we used to live in the Limoneira [Company] housing… In July, that is apricot season [in San Jose],.... In August, we used to pick prunes and then… we used to go back [to Santa Paula] and pick walnuts [and lemons]. So we knew there was a lot of work [in San José], you know, ranch work… irrigating, pruning, picking the crops and all that kind of stuff. [After WWII] [in San José] they worked year-round… -- cherries, pears… And then in the winter time you’d spray trees and prune the trees. There was always work. In San José, they had a lot of farm labor offices. All you had to do was call them up. The ranchers would call the farm labor office, and you would tell them, “I need three men, four men, to irrigate or prune or whatever, to pick or whatever”. Workers just call there and say, “I am looking for work.” And you didn’t have to go there. You could call up, and they would send you. That’s what my mother did. They knew her already. She’d call and say, “I have two men that want…work”. Then she’d tell my father and my brothers, where they needed help. And they’d just go there, and they had a job. [After WWII] I decided that I wanted to learn a trade, and, and the government was paying for it [through the GI Bill]. They would pay for you to go to school and learn something. That was part of the benefits you would get in the Army. And so I decided that I couldn’t go to college for four years because I already had two kids, and I worked to support them. I wanted something…that was better than working in ranches, and so, I picked barbering. And that’s what I have done for since 1950, 57 years. Fernando Chavez Interview by Dr. Margo McBane, Ph.D. and Peggy Wallace, Feb. 6, 2008, Cupertino, CA.
Ventura County 1941 Great Citrus Strike Refugees
One group of Mexican migrants that came to Santa Clara County were from the citrus region of Ventura County, or the Southern Santa Clara Valley. (We use the term Santa Clara County here instead of Santa Clara Valley so as to clarify which region we are referring to.) In Ventura County citrus workers harvested the lemon crop during the winter months and were then available for other crops during the more traditional summer harvest season. Historian Margo McBane found that growers from the north sent trucks down to Ventura County (around the Santa Paula region) to pick up citrus worker families to live and work in Santa Clara County for the summer fruit harvest. After the Great Citrus Strike of 1941 in Ventura County, many of these workers, who had been evicted from company housing during the strike, as well as family and friends from the Santa Paula region, chose to come to work permanently in Santa Clara County.
Puentes Brothers Mexican Family History San Jose, CA 2/24/2019
Racial Segregation Practices at the Limoneira Company and Santa Paula, 1893–1919
Migration Routes Leading to Santa Clara County Quotes
"My father was born in Sialo, Guanajuato and my mother was born in Big Springs, Texas. And my dad came across the border when he was two or three years old… Both my grandparents, my maternal and my paternal grandfather came from the same town, Iropato, Guanajuato. They came as farm workers. They worked on ranches in Mexico in Iropato, when they came [to the U.S.] they were farm workers. My father, and my mother’s father, my grandfather, worked on the railroad, the Union Pacific Railroad. And for that reason, I… have over 2,000 relatives in 46 states, the majority is in California, Texas, because of the railroad. They came prior to the Revolution, around 1910. That’s the reason my mother was born in Midland, Texas, because of the railroad. Midland is like the hub of the Union Pacific. What happened was when my grandfather’s family, mostly males, came up from Guanajuato, they came up to Texas, and that’s where they found the railroad. And so some of his brothers went to Illinois, some stayed in Big Springs, and the others, my grandfather and one brother came to California, and they landed in Wasco. They came for work. There was no family, they were the first of family there. That’s what drew everybody, you know, it was getting out of the fields, and doing something different, making money. My grandmother wasn’t happy, because when you’re working with the railroad you gotta move, and so my grandmother was always losing clothes, because she would wash and hang clothes out, and the train would leave! (laughs) They lived on the train. That was like luxury, if you could live on it. From Wasco, my mom had come to San José before, because her oldest sister, my Tia first came up to San José. She invited my mother to come to work in the canneries. My mom did, she came to work one summer, I think she was a senior in high school. And after school was over she moved back to San José. But in the ‘40s she went back home and met my dad in Delano at the dance. I don’t know their specific ages, but they were in their early 20s, and they got married at Sacred Heart church in San José in 1940, ‘cause I was born in ‘42." Richard Vasquez interviewed by Dr. Margo McBane, Ph.D. and Margarita Garcia Villa, Dec. 21, 2017, Watsonville, California "I was born in El Paso, Texas, June 30, 1936. So was my sister. [My parents] were from Mexico. They got married in 1930. They stayed in El Paso six years. My dad and grandfather worked on a dairy. Then we came from El Paso to LA in 1936, I was two months old. We had a lot of family living in LA, all our aunts. My dad's family was a family of 10. My aunts came in the 1930s, they were going to school in Downey because my aunt lived in Lakewood and the other aunt lived in Norwalk. They had a strawberry farm. I think they got married very young. Yeah. My aunt Tilly got married when she was about 14. Yeah. And then she got married. Neither aunt worked, only their husbands. I think we came to Santa Clara Valley in 1947. We ended up in Hollister and we didn't go back to LA again. I know when we came from L.A., there was an uncle of ours that said, with your kids, you could make a lot of money picking prunes. Oh, I didn't even know what prunes were. And ah we did for a little while, about 2 years. In Hollister we were cutting apricots because it was in June and then we came to Gilroy. And we were cutting grapes. But my dad had never picked. He worked in a dairy. So we ended up going back to the dairy. My dad got a job there and it was a milk vendor from Gilroy with Mr. Benny Gilroy." Julia Barrientos Interview by Dr. Margo McBane and Suzanne Guerra, April 23, 2012 at her home in San José, California "The camp was...Giffens Camp, and that was 1942…. In them days…every three months or every month...you could collect stamps, and that was the only way you could buy shoes for the family…because of the war. [We lived in a shed]. It was like 9x10 or 12. Well my dad used to put two of them together. And whenever we went to a camp, they could do that, put two cabins together. He'd get an extra one, you know, for the boys… We were all eight: five sisters, and three boys, and then my parents… My older brother used to make us kites. During the...the summer times, we'd spend it at the camp. All we did was just go swimming, they had little canals, irrigation ditches. And that's where we used to go jump in 'em and fool around. [This was in] Firebough, mostly cotton. Well that was when I was five years old. Then we lived in another camp, Briton Camp. that was in Firebough too. Nobody would stay home. My dad wanted everybody. “Let's go! Everybody is going.” [I would] make little bunches in the middle of the row. I would go in front of my mother or my dad and I would, you know, pick up the little bunches…[of cotton balls]... When it gets time for the cotton to start opening, the cotton falls to the sides. And that's when you pick… We used to go pick and cut those things…“Cabola.” Like the ball, we call it, “bola.” They always said, “Vamos a pescar la bola.” Let's go pick the bolas, the cotton balls. When you're picking cotton…when the thing opens up, the cabola opens, the ball opens up like that, they call that a “cabola.” It's all dry. And it has real sharp points on it. And when you go like that to get the cotton, you are hitting that with your fingers. A lot of people [wore gloves], but we couldn't afford em. A lot of people picked cotton, my sisters did. My father used to buy [my sisters gloves] so they wouldn't mess up their fingers. But they didn't care about us. When I was seventeen I still picked cotton. That's why I remember, that it messes up all your fingers. In that same camp, the Briton Camp. That was the only Christmas present I remember. [The camp owners] used to come around with a big truck and any kid that was outside, they would give you a little gift or something. And I got a little bus. It was a tiny bus. At that time they had a grader, that was leveling off the ground. So that when it rained, everything used to get all muddy and everything. So, they were gonna fix it. And I was playing with the truck out in the dirt. Then when I saw the grader coming, I got scared. So I took off running – that was in front of our cabin – and then when I went inside, I realized I forgot I left my bus outside. And when I was going to get the bus, that grader mashed it all up. That was the first toy I ever had. I said, “oh boy.” Workin' in the fields you can't make a life… The only way you could live, if is you had a big family. [The camp manager would ask], “How many are gonna pick?” And nobody could say no. They wanted most of the family to be pickers. They don't anybody staying home or anything. My aunt used to [stay home], like my uncle told them, “No, she can't pick, she can't work”, because she had..one or two little kids." Leandro Villareal Interview by Margo McBane, Ph.D. and Joseph Rivera, Aug. 28, 2008, at his home in San José, California
Migrant Routes Leading to Santa Clara County
Before WWII, Mexican immigrants joined the agricultural migrant routes that eventually led to the fields and orchards in what is now Santa Clara County. Due to the nature of their low-paid seasonal jobs, most ethnic Mexican migrants were unable to join permanent colonia settlements throughout the county. On the road, they might stay a week or a month working a crop in one location until the harvest ended and then moving onto the next. One route began in the lower part of California around San Diego or Imperial Valley, starting in February with row crops such as cantaloupe, tomatoes, or garlic. From there, migrants headed up to the Los Angeles area (primarily in the citrus orchards); then over the Tehachapi Mountains to the San Joaquin Valley working in row crops; then up through Bakersfield, Visalia, Fresno, Modesto and over Pacheco Pass to Hollister and Gilroy; then north to Santa Clara County; and finally back south again. A second route extended north from the Los Angeles citrus area up the Central Coast through Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and Nipomo, and the Salinas Valley working row crops. The route continued to Santa Clara County in June for orchard or row crops, then over to the Fresno area in August for grapes or other row crops, and then returning south to the Los Angeles area. Flood conditions in the Rio Grande Valley pushed a new group of Mexicans, particularly from Del Rio, Texas, onto the migrant path to Santa Clara County after WWII. These workers and their families joined California’s unskilled, low paid, seasonal migrant labor force, though many were eventually able to obtain cannery work and settle into permanent housing in Santa Clara County’s Mexican colonias.
Patterns of Agricultural Labor Migration within California, By Paul S. Taylor and Edward J. Rowell
They had the Mexican Revolution, con (with) Francisco Villa, and all the trains, and the buggies. All the people [were leaving]. So my mother came in a buggy, and my dad just got with other people and they drove on horses to Texas. My mama was from San Luis Potosi and my dad was from Allende or Morelos, in the Chihuahua state. My mother came through…Piedras Negras! My dad was only nine, my mom was about five years old. They were children when they got here. My mama didn’t come with the rest of her family. She stayed with her godmother in San Luis City. And so later on one of her brothers went and got her from there, [and brought her to Poth, Texas]. So my mother was in Poth, in Poth City, and my dad he was in…Fall City. My mother was fourteen and my dad was twenty. My dad was working in the railroad in Fall City. They met in a ranch dance. Beatrice Sanchez interview by Dr. Margo McBane and Joseph Rivera, Sept. 9, 2006, San José, CA. My parents were born in Mexico. My father was born in 1900, and my mother was born in 1903. That was during the revolution of… Pancho Villa, because my father never liked him. He never wanted to hear his name...because he did a lot of damage to the people. Like he was in charge, he was a king… If he told a man, “I want your wife.” He could take her. And that’s what my grandfather didn't like. So they…and a lot of people, all came to L.A [from Durango] in 1906, I remember my father telling me. [They came to] San Bernadino mostly. There were all ranches, just ranches in Southern California and Duarte… So then they... all decided to spread out, all the families that came. Some of them stayed in Los Angeles, San Bernadino… My father and his father, and his mother and all, they decided to come to the crops, you know, grapes, and prunes, and all that around here. But [my mother] came with her family, and [my father] came with his family. My mother had...three sisters and two brothers… My uncle told us that he was nine-years-old, when their mother and father had an accident and they were both killed… Different people took [the kids] in. So one sister came to live in Lemoore and...the other one stayed in San Bernardino. My mother was already a teenager, she was the oldest...like fifteen and she married my father, he was about three years older.” Leandro Villareal Interview by Dr. Margo McBane, Ph.D. and Joseph Rivera, 8/28/2008, his home in San José, CA.
WWI created a farm labor shortage in California as European immigration became restricted and Anglo American men were recruited into the military. During WWI the market for American crops expanded to meet Europe’s needs. After the war’s end in 1919, the 1924 Immigration Act ended all Asian immigration to the U.S. and created an even greater farm labor shortage in California, where many Japanese laborers were employed. Many Mexicans, pushed out of Mexico due to the ravages of the Mexican Revolution from 1910-1920, were now pulled into the U.S. to work in Southwest agribusiness. A wave of up to one million refugees sought employment throughout California while fleeing Mexico’s political instability, social turmoil, and poverty. By the 1920s, the California agricultural labor force became “Latinized,” with 82% of the jobs filled by ethnic Mexicans. Mexican immigrants soon filled the labor gap, traveling—and working along the way—by rail and later car. Most Mexican Revolution refugees traveled to the U.S. by train through El Paso. There was no rigid border between the U.S. and Mexico until the Labor Appropriation Act of 1924. Refugees joined Mexican traqueros or track workers, who had been working on U.S. railroads since the end of the 19th century. Not only did the Mexican Revolution refugees work on the railroads, but they also sought seasonal jobs in agriculture, working their way north to Chicago and west to New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The Mexican American path of agricultural migration throughout the U.S. had begun. According to historian Stephen Pitti, approximately 82% of all the ethnic Mexicans laboring in Santa Clara County in the 1920s and 1930s worked in unskilled and seasonal agricultural work.
Early Twentieth Century Mexican Immigration to the U.S. - SHEC: Resources for Teachers
The History of Mexican Immigration to the U.S. in the Early 20th Century | Insights
A Growing Community | Mexican | Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress
The Effect of the Mexican Revolution on Mexican Immigration to the U.S. | Unsung History
"The Storm That Swept Mexico" - PBS Documentary on Mexican Revolution
Orchard crops that ripened at the same time caused a problem for orchard ranchers as fruit flooded the local market and decreased profits. Ranchers needed to extend the shipping period in order to increase their profit margin. While train car refrigeration had not yet been invented, canning and drying fruit extended the purchase time by allowing fruit to be shipped to distant, more competitive markets, increasing sale prices. Drying fruit could be processed easily at an orchard, with cut fruit spread on wooden trays to dry in the sun. Experimenting with different fruits, farmers discovered that the prune, le petit prune d’Agen, dried beautifully, resulting in a good appearance and delicious taste. Through most of the 20th century, fruit was dried in orchards and then sent to factories to be packed and shipped. Families were often hired to work in the drying sheds. Packinghouses, on the other hand, were located next to train tracks for easy shipping and functioned much like a cannery. As historian Glenna Matthews notes, the main difference between packinghouse work and cannery work is that packinghouses jobs were not as rigidly segregated by gender. By the 1930s there were only 13 packinghouses in Santa Clara County compared to 38 canneries.
Viewing the Californios’ cattle-based hide and tallow trade as wasteful, Anglo Americans concentrated initially on dry wheat farming in the 1850s and the 1860s. Over the next hundred years, until the 1960s, Anglo growers shifted to more profitable irrigated specialty orchard crops–cherries, pears, plums, and peaches. By 1930 growers devoted 65% of Santa Clara County land to fruit trees, expanding from only ten acres in 1890. According to historian Jacklyn Greenberg, prune trees dominated fruit production in Santa Clara County, which became the nation’s largest exporter of prunes between 1920 and 1940. Most of the specialty orchard and row (tomato and pea) crop farms were smaller than the large-scale, agribusiness farms of Salinas and the San Joaquín Valley. By 1915, local boosters dubbed Santa Clara “The Valley of the Heart’s Delight.” Following early experimentation, the canning industry, established in 1872, accelerated the distribution of fruit crops to markets made accessible by railroads. The value of these crops grew rapidly with the construction in 1864 of the first commercial rail line to Santa Clara County, the San Francisco-San Jose Railway, which was sold to Southern Pacific in 1887. In the early 20th century (1910s to 1960s), Santa Clara County became the nation’s capital for fruit or specialty crop production and processing (canning). With the shift to specialty irrigated crops, a large labor force was necessary for harvesting and drying. During the dry-farm years of wheat production in the 1850s-1860s, Anglo-American men carrying their belongings on their back migrated throughout California in search of harvest work. With the shift to specialty orchard crops in Santa Clara County in the 1870s, an even larger labor force was needed for planting, irrigating, weeding, and harvesting. Many early farmworkers in specialty crops were Mexican Californio men and families who had lost their land and become wage laborers. Workers also included Chinese immigrant men and ethnically white immigrant families, such as Portuguese, Spanish, and Italians. By the 1890s Japanese men entered the specialty crop labor force and were joined in the 1910s by Japanese women and families. The availability of low-cost migrant farm labor helped expand fruit ranching in Santa Clara County.
Facing ongoing social, political, and economic marginalization in Anglo American San José in the 1850s and 1860s, many Mexicans sought jobs in the thriving Almadén Mining Company, which became the second largest producer of mercury in the world. According to historian Stephen Pitti, The New Almadén Mine became the first industrial site in the West to employ Mexicans. Members of the Berryessa, Alviso, and Suñol families joined other Mexican and Chilean immigrants to work at the company. As Pitti notes, the low-paid Mexican mine workers formed the largest community of Spanish speakers anywhere in California. Gaining the expertise of miners from northern Mexico was a boon to the company. Almadén became very successful and in turn provided job security, of a sort, for Mexican workers. Workers often had to compete at Almaden: wages were kept low by workers underbidding each other to continue employment. Working conditions were also extremely hard, and Mexicans were restricted to heavy manual labor, often working in teams of six to eight men in ten-hour shifts. Laborers climbed ladders, carrying heavy sacks of ore (some up to 300 pounds) on their backs “with a strap over their forehead.” The work continued day and night, six days a week. Work and living environments were segregated. Cornish or Irish worker families lived in “Englishtown” located down the hill from the mines, while Mexican miners’ families lived at the desolate top of the hill in “Spanishtown,” near the mine’s smokestacks that spewed mercury fumes. The toxic environment destroyed families’ attempts to raise poultry or vegetables; the company compounded the problem by dumping tailings from the mines next to and between the worker’s homes. Unable to produce their own food, Mexican miners grew more dependent on the mine owners for food, buying expensive groceries from the nearby company store. The closest water was located a mile away at the Hacienda, the offices of company management. Pitti notes that these harsh working and living conditions drove the Mexican miners “to make new political demands and hone a sense of Latino identity for the first time in U.S. history.”
New Almaden - U.S. National Park Service
New Almaden Quicksilver County Park Association
“New Almaden and The Mexican” SJSU thesis (1977)
ANTI-VAGRANCY ACT (THE "GREASER" ACT) CHAPTER CLXXV AN ACT To Punish Vagrants, Vagabonds, and Dangerous and Suspicious Persons (Approved April 30, I856) The People of the State of California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows Section 1. All persons except Digger Indians, who have no visible means of living, who in ten days do not seek employment, nor labor when employment is offered to them, all healthy beggars, who travel with written statements of their misfortunes, all persons who roam about from place to place without any lawful business, all lewd and dissolute persons who live in and about houses of Ill-Fame; all common prostitutes and common drunkards may be committed to jail and sentenced to hard labor for such time as the Court, before whom they are convicted, shall think proper, not exceeding ninety days. Section 2. All persons who are commonly known as "Greasers" or the issue of Spanish and Indian blood, who may come within the explained that his aim was to return California to Mexican rule and avenge the loss of the rights of Mexican Americans. An outlaw to some, and a folkhero to others, much like the mythic Zorro, provisions of the first section of this Act, and who go armed and are not known to be peaceable and quiet persons, and who can give no good account of themselves, may be disarmed by any lawful officer, and punished otherwise as provided in the foregoing section. Section 3. It shall be the duty of any Justice of the Peace, on knowledge or on written complaint from any creditable person of the State, to issue his warrant to apprehend such person or persons, and upon due conviction to send such person or persons to jail, as prescribed in section first of this Act; and on a second conviction for second the same offense any offenders may be sentenced to the County Jail for such additional time as the Court may deem proper, not exceeding one hundred and twenty days…”
By the early 1860s, Californios faced deteriorating economic, social, and political status, suffering “a second conquest” by the Americans. As historian Stephen Pitti notes, Anglo Americans racialized their views of Californios seeing the entire Mexican population as oversexed, criminal degenerates. Mexicans became the victims of racial violence as self-appointed Anglo vigilantes shot or hung any Mexicans they considered criminals. Mexican Californios were called “greasers," a term originating from the Mexicans engaged in the hide and tallow trade who, while processing beef fat, became covered with grease. In 1855 the California Greaser Act was passed, an anti-vagrancy law targeting all ethnic Mexicans. Further, the California Act of 1855 ended the State Constitutional requirement that laws be translated into both Spanish and English. These laws institutionalized racism in Santa Clara County, encouraging harsher punishments for non-white residents. Historian Stephen PItti points out that between 1850-1864 “all but one of the accused criminals hung in the county were ethnic Mexicans.” Mexicans could not sit on a county grand jury until the 20th century, and between statehood in 1850 to 1900 Mexicans could not become a sheriff or police officer. Without legal protection and with limited access to land or jobs, during the 1860s and 1870s a few Californios became bandits or highwaymen to avenge the harassment and racial discrimination Mexicans residents endured. Joaquín Murieta is the most famous of the “social bandits.” Tiburcio Vásquez, grandson of the first mayor of San José and an educated, bilingual member of an upper class Californio family, was another. Some Californios considered Vásquez a “Robin Hood,” fighting against Anglo atrocities and upholding Mexican civil rights. Anglo Americans considered him an outlaw. Accused of crimes committed from 1854 to 1874, he was tried and convicted for one murder and executed by hanging in 1875 in the jail yard behind Santa Clara County Court House across from St. James Park. While he admitted that he was an outlaw, Vásquez came to symbolize resistance due to legitimate grievances against Anglo American domination and Mexican lynchings that had become all too common.
The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928
From the Community | America’s History of Lynching Mexicans
Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880, continued
In Santa Clara County, the experience of Marie de Los Angeles Castro’s family is an example of the corrupt legal process during that time. Prominent as a founder of Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe and part of the De Anza Expedition in the 18th century, Joaquín Ysidro Castro served at the San Francisco Presidio. His family moved into Mission Santa Clara and was given one the few Spanish land grants: Rancho Buena Vista. During the Mexican period, Joaquín’s son José Mariana Castro acquired Rancho Las Animas and Rancho La Brea, near Gilroy, which was inherited by María Dolores del Carmen Castro and later María de Los Angeles Castro. In Castro’s words: “Today I am old and poor. The young men who were my friends who made the papers for me to sign are all very rich. They have hundreds of acres of land and much money while I sit here like an old owl in the dark corner and tell the few who ask that these men have robbed me of all that was mine by their crooked talk and their crooked laws. They smile and tap their heads and say “dreaming.” And maybe it is so that I am dreaming. Maybe old age and sickness and sorrow have climbed into my eyes and brain just as ivy climbed into the broken window of my old Casa Adobe and shut out the light of reason. But this! If this is dreaming, tell me why these men once so poor are now so rich and I am now so poor? Hold my hands Señor, look into my old eyes and tell me, if you can, why it is that out of my vast inheritance I have nothing but poverty.” From Peter Ostroske Family Archive
At the end of the Mexican American War in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo granted Mexican Californios full U.S. citizenship. At that time, only white males were granted U.S. citizenship, thereby implying Mexican Californios were considered “white.” The Treaty also promised Californios that “their property would be inviolably respected.” However, American political leaders held racist attitudes towards Native Americans and Mexicans, considering them lazy and unproductive in terms of their land use. Race-based laws, enacted by the state legislature in the 1850s and 1860s, institutionalized discrimination and segregation against Mexicans, Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans. Significantly, the informal nature of land grants belonging to Mexicans, with vaguely drawn diseño maps, made it difficult to prove their claims, and many Mexican Californios lost their lands. Even if Mexican Californios won initially, the U.S. Congress created the Board of Land Commissioners (a result of the Land Act of 1851) in San Francisco. Mexicans gradually sold most of their land during the average 17 years it took to go through the legal process of proving their claims, and resulting funds went to English-speaking lawyers or to pay land taxes. Mexicans also lost their land to Anglo American squatters. In some cases, such as with the Suñol and Berryessa families, Anglo squatters lynched the Mexican landowners and remained on the land, exercising their “squatters’ rights.” The Peralta family of San José and the East Bay lost all but 700 of their 49,000 acres. With the loss of land holdings during the late 1800s, Californio families worked wage labor jobs, such as in agriculture or in the Almaden mines.
Other Californians | Library of Congress
The Early American Period: The Mexican Colonia and Anglo San José, 1848-1919
In 1848 after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican American War, California became part of the United States. Anglo Americans now controlled the levers of power, and Mexicans struggled to retain their political, economic, and social status. In 1850 California entered the U.S. as a free state, and San José (initially called St. Joseph by the Americans) was the first incorporated city, growing rapidly from approximately 900 in 1845 to approximately 3,400 in 1860. San José also served as California’s first state capital between 1851-1853. Americans moved the central commercial district of St. Joseph away from the Mexican pueblo (known as the colonia) located on Market Street between the Guadalupe River and Santa Clara Avenue to a new area, First Street between St. John and San Fernando streets. St. Joseph became a segregated town as the Anglo ex-miners who settled in the area attempted to subjugate the original Mexican residents, preventing them from participating in American culture, economic opportunities, and politics. Out of the 48 delegates to the 1849 California Constitutional Convention in Monterey, at least eight were prominent Mexican Californio families from San José. Yet Mexican Californio political power in Santa Clara County had declined dramatically by the 1870s. As a result, displaced Mexican landowners began to settle in the downtown colonia, alongside the pueblo’s Mexican tradesmen, craftsmen, shopkeepers, professionals, and their families. Mexican residents, now restricted to living in the footprint of the old Pueblo, were marginalized in the new Anglo community.
Mexicans and the Gold Rush, 1848-1855, continued
Many Anglo and Mexican residents in and around Santa Clara Valley made their fortunes selling supplies to the gold miners. At the end of the Mexican American War, Thomas Fallon returned to San José and then to Santa Cruz, where he established a saddle business. At the beginning of the Gold Rush, Fallon took iron picks to the Sierras to sell to the miners. With his profits he bought a business/residence on the Santa Cruz Plaza and in 1849 married into a prominent Californio family that owned Rancho Soquel. Similarly, Don Antonio María Suñol, who owned a dry goods store in San José, supplied beef and dry goods to the miners. Other Californio rancheros, such as the Bernal brothers Juan Pablo and Agustin, joined Suñol and his family driving cattle to sell to hungry miners. Businesses prospered as would-be miners passed through Santa Clara, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and San José, needing supplies on their way to the goldfields. Often, miners waited out the winters in the warmer Santa Clara Valley. Discouraged miners also left the Sierras for good and settled in agricultural valleys like Santa Clara County in search of new livelihoods. This influx of settlers initiated a decline in Mexican culture and political influence, in contrast to Southern California, which retained its Mexican majority through the 1870s.
In 1848 gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and prospectors flooded in from around the world, including between 10,000-20,000 Hispanic miners from Mexico and Chile. The Californios who attempted mining were pushed out–some by violence and lynching. Others were forced to leave when selective taxes were imposed on them, such as the 1850 California Foreign Miners License Law ($20/month). This applied to all Mexican miners, even those who were citizens. Mexicans joined foreign miners in protesting the tax, but were subdued by white militias. Many of the immigrant Hispanic miners took refuge in San Jose. According to historian Stephen Pitti, between 1845-1860 the Spanish-surnamed population of San José increased by 150%.
Many Anglo Americans who settled in Mexican California chose not to become Mexican citizens, siding with the movement to incorporate California into the United States under forces led by John C. Fremont. Canadian immigrant Thomas Fallon joined Fremont’s third expedition to California and settled in Villa Branciforte (Santa Cruz). He then declared himself “captain” and crossed the Santa Cruz Mountains with the purpose of taking Pueblo San José, rejoining Fremont’s forces and raising the American flag over the juzgado (the Mexican city hall and jail). He later became mayor of San José in 1859, during the American period. The tensions that arose during the war served as an indicator of the future demise of the Mexican Californios under American rule. During the Mexican American War (1846-1848), the only battle fought in Northern California took place in Santa Clara County. “The Battle of Santa Clara” or “The Battle of the Mustard Stalks” took place in a mustard field near today's Triton Museum. American sailors, who came ashore to buy supplies from the Mexicans, were taken hostage. The battle lasted only two hours and resulted in the death of four Mexican soldiers. The battle, ironically, impacted James Reed of the ill-fated Donner party. Reed was in the area trying to recruit a rescue team for his trapped comrades in the Sierras but was unsuccessful during wartime. In 1846, the San José-based Berryessa family fell victim to Anglo-American hostilities. José de los Reyes Beryessa and his twin sons were murdered by the California Battalion, who stole their horses. The Mexican American War ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
The United States and California| Library of Congress
Mexican-American War: Causes & Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - HISTORY
Americans During the Mexican Period, 1810s-1840s
Anglo Americans first began settling in Alta California during the Mexican Period. in the 1830s-1840s, pioneers such as Johann Sutter (John Sutter) settled in the San Joaquín Valley, taking advantage of unprotected Mexican settlements that had little-to-no government oversight. Americans who wanted to live in Mexican California did have to follow Mexican law and convert to Catholicism if they wanted to become Mexican citizens. Many did, marrying into Mexican families, acquiring land grants, becoming rancheros, and joining the lucrative Mexican hide and tallow trade. Some of these settlers included English immigrant William Edward Petty Hartnell and Scottish immigrant John Cameron, who jumped ship in 1814 and was baptized and renamed Juan Bautista Gilroy at Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmelo. He then married into the Ortega family. Some of the more famous American settlers of El Pueblo de San José were members of the Donner Party, including Eliza Poor Donner, Mary Donner, William McCutchen, and the Reed Family (who purchased a 500-acre ranch between First Street and Coyote Creek). As Irish Catholics, they immigrated to Catholic Mexican Alta California hoping to be spared the anti-Catholic prejudice they had experienced as residents of the United States. The City of San José named several streets after the Donner Party: Reed, Margaret, Virginia, Martha, Carrie, Patterson, Lewis, and Keyes.
Watch The Donner Party | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
Endless Winter: A Fresh Look at the Donner Party Saga | KQED
William Hartnell: The Hero and His Colleges, by Sean F. Roney
The Story of a California Pioneer - The New York Times
In the early 1800s, Mexicans revolted against Spanish colonial rule and gained independence in 1821. During the Mexican Period of 1821-1848, the Catholic Church lost most of its land holdings in Alta California except for property surrounding church buildings. After secularization in 1833, a wholesale transfer of land grants to the Californios (la gente de razon–the Christianized residents) took place. Ranchos employed between twenty and several hundred laborers. The original plan to grant the land to the converted Indians was never implemented. A social system of seigneurialism took hold in which Californio rancheros, the land owners, and their mestizo and Indio laborers lived in a world of mutual obligation. In this paternal system, rancheros provided housing, food, and clothing to workers in exchange for their labor. During the combined Spanish and Mexican rancho periods, 500 land grants were issued, with the majority (450) carved from mission land holdings after secularization. Mexico’s 1824 Law of Colonization specified that the maximum land grant could be 48,400 acres, with the average being 22,000 acres. No longer restricted to trading only with Spanish galleons, Mexicans began engaging in “the hide and tallow trade” internationally. Mexican hides, known as “California dollars,” were used to make shoes, leather belts, and other items, helping propel the United States’ early industrial revolution of the 1820s and 1830s.
Mexican California | Library of Congress
Witness to Empire: The Life of Antonio Maria Sunol
El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848, continued
The Pueblo’s pobladores, most of whom came with Captain Juan Bautista de Anza’s expedition of 1775-1776, lived under a strict hierarchy or Sistema de Casta (caste system). One person of pure Spanish blood (pureza de sangre) occupied the top rung, with below them the mestizo (mixed Spanish and Indian), the mulatto (mixed African and Indian), then the indio (Native), and lastly the Africans. Initially Pueblo San José included five mulattos and twelve mestizos (one servant, nine soldiers, five pobladores, one male herdsman, and their wives and children).
El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, 1777-1848
In 1776, the Spanish king sent Captain Juan Bautista de Anza on an expedition to lead settlers from New Spain to California. Stopping first in Monterey, De Anza continued north to establish the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asís. In 1777, Governor Felipe de Neve, the Presidio’s commandant, ordered 68 residents to establish Alta California’s first pueblo, Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe, named after the Catholic Saint Joseph and the Guadalupe River, where it was originally located. In 1791 due to flooding the pueblo was moved to a plateau (now Market Street Plaza). Each pueblo attracted pobladores (settlers) with small land grants of four square leagues (a league being about 4,228 acres) for housing, crop farming, and cattle grazing. Soldiers or settlers could also receive small lots or solares just outside the pueblo. The nearby presidio commander controlled the state-owned land used for livestock or farming. Each pueblo was governed by an alcalde (a combination of a judge and a mayor) assisted by the ayuntamiento (city council), whose offices were located in the juzgado (jail, town hall and courthouse).
A Year in the Life of a Spanish Colonial Pueblo: San José de Guadalupe in 1809 — Google Arts & Culture
Spanish Settlements, 1769-1820, continued
Two out of the 21 missions were established in Santa Clara Valley: Mission Santa Clara de Asís (1777) and Mission San José (1797). Labor on these missions was performed by Natives from missions in Baja California brought to help acculturate local tribes, as well as native Californians from nine language groups. The majority came from the Tamyen Costanoan-speaking tribe of the South Bay and the Yokuts of the San Joaquin Valley. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. Spanish missionaries forced Natives to convert to Catholicism and work in the extensive mission fields, orchards, and workshops. To enforce church rules and prevent escape, two soldiers from a nearby presidio were placed at each mission, aided by Native converts (neophytes).
At the end of the Seven Years War (1756-1763), Spain established permanent colonies in Alta California (now known as California), which Cabrillo had claimed in 1542. Based on the Recopilación de las leyes de los reynos de las Indias (1680), the Law of the Indies, Spain aimed to transform native Californians into Catholics and productive Spanish citizens. The Spanish colonial system was based on three institutions–missions, pueblos, and presidios–established along the coast to protect and supply food for the Manila galleons, trading ships that transported goods from the Philippine colony back to Spain. The Alta California settlements were restricted to trading solely with the Spanish Galleons. The Spanish built four presidios in Alta California–San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara–to protect the missions and pueblos and control the enslaved Native American laborers. Three pueblos–San José de Guadalupe, Los Angeles, and Villa Branciforte–were established as civilian communities, occupied by retiring soldiers from the presidios, soldiers’ families, and settlers.
Spanish California | Library of Congress
Early California Exploration and Settlement — Calisphere
Hispanic Americans: Spanish Colonization and Californios, 1769-1800s — Calisphere
Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (American Indians)
With the arrival of Hernán Cortéz in Baja California, Spaniards explored the California Coast in the 1500s. In 1542, explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo ventured up to Santa Barbara looking for the mythical Strait of Anian, a supposed waterway linking the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. This imaginary shortcut would have allowed Spanish galleons easy access from the Port of Manilla in the Philippines to their trading partners in China.
Early Exploration of California (Part 1 of 2)
1768-1820s: Exploration and Colonial California — Calisphere
A History of American Indians in California: Pre-1769
Pre-Colonial Native Americans And Spanish Encounters
The original occupants of the Santa Clara County were the Ohlone tribelet of the Tamyen Coastanoan-speaking tribe. They thrived within a spiritual life grounded in animism and a lifestyle that balanced population to resources. Acorns were a staple of their diet. Anthropologist Alfred Kroeber estimated that more than 75 percent of native Californians ate them on a daily basis. Tule bulrushes provided medicine, food, and fiber for housing, boats, clothing, and baskets. At the time of Spanish settlement in the 1770s, the native California population was estimated to be approximately 300,000, or 13% of the native population of North America.
The First Peoples of California | Library of Congress
Native Americans: Pre-Columbian California to 18th Century — Calisphere