Mexican Labor in the Almaden Mines

Title

Mexican Labor in the Almaden Mines

Description

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.”

Scholar Talk

https://vimeo.com/811460873/fb42898de0

https://vimeo.com/811442085/e321eb3e5a?share=copy

https://vimeo.com/811442033/a2ab5eadc9?share=copy

Additional Online Information

New Almaden - U.S. National Park Service

New Almaden Quicksilver County Park Association

“New Almaden and The Mexican” SJSU thesis (1977)

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 017