Curious unions: Mexican American workers and resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898–1961 9780803237919, 2012013286

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CURIO U S U N IO N S

Race and Ethnicity in the American West

series editors: Albert S. Broussard Maria Raquel Casas Dudley Gardner Margaret Jacobs

C URIOUS UNIONS Mexican American Workers and Resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898 –1961

frank p. barajas

University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London

© 2012 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Chapter 4 was originally published as “Resistance, Radicalism, and Repression on the Oxnard Plain: The Social Context of the Betabelero Strike of 1933” in Western Historical Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 29–51. Copyright by the Western History Association. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barajas, Frank P., 1964– Curious unions: Mexican American workers and resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898–1961 / Frank P. Barajas. p. cm. — (Race and ethnicity in the American West) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8032-3791-9 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Foreign workers, Mexican—California— Oxnard—History. 2. Mexican Americans—Civil rights—California—Oxnard—History. 3. Labor movement—California—Oxnard—History. 4. Mexican Americans—Cultural assimilation— California—Oxnard—History. I. Title. hd 8081.m 6b 37 2012 331.6'368079492 — dc23 2012013286 Set in Fournier. Designed by Nathan Putens.

CONT ENTS

List of Illustrations … vii Acknowledgments … ix List of Abbreviations … xiii Introduction … 1 1 Early Curious Unions … 13 2 The (Re)Creation of Community … 49 3 Segregated Integration … 91 4 Bitter Repression, Sweet Resistance … 131 5 The Emerging Mexican (American) … 163 6 Creating César … 215 Conclusion … 261 Notes … 265 Bibliography … 325 Index … 345

I LLUSTRAT IONS

Map of Oxnard, California, 1950 … xvi Table showing land tenure … 33 photographs 1 Two sugar beet workers hoeing a field … 39 2 Mexican women residents at a sugar beet ranch … 40 3 Betabeleros thinning on hands and knees … 42 4 absc factory in Oxnard … 47 5 The Oxnard brothers, 1918 … 47 6 absc Chinese cooks having lunch … 52 7 An absc adobe residence … 60 8 Two families outside an adobe residence … 61 9 An adobe residence on the Borchard Ranch … 61 10 Japanese Obon festival portrait, 1924 … 88 11 China Alley … 95

12 House at 523 Meta Street … 99 13 House at 651 Meta Street … 99 14 absc adobe homes … 100 15 Employee homes on the factory grounds … 101 16 The superintendent’s house at the factory … 101 17 Oxnard Aces baseball team, circa 1930 … 127 18 Japanese sugar beet workers at Maulhardt Ranch … 136 19 Betabeleros in Oxnard … 137 20 fsa camp for evicted workers … 174 21 A meeting at the El Rio fsa camp … 175 22 Children of citrus workers at the fsa camp … 176 23 Charles Todd conducting ethnographic research … 177 24 Two men providing entertainment at the fsa camp … 178 25 Children under a U.S. Department of Agriculture sign … 179 26 Frank V. Barajas … 180 27 Chief Hinostro with officers Chronister and Robbins … 187 28 cso members in California, circa 1954 … 228 29 cso members during the Oxnard general election, 1958 … 233 30 Dionicio Morales at the Oxnard Buena Vista bracero camp … 247

viii

list of illustrations

ACK NOW LEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the support of many people. I was fortunate to start my PhD program at the then Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) under the tutelage of Vicki L. Ruiz. As she has done with so many other graduate students, Vicki guided my development into a historian. As an undergraduate and ma student at California State University, Fresno, I was introduced by Sidney H. Chang to the method of historical inquiry and writing. While I was at csu Fresno, Professor Chang enjoyed the reputation of having mentored the largest number of history students who went on to obtain doctorates. So I was privileged to have had the opportunity to learn from and be advised by two exceptional scholar-teachers. Other historians influential to my development are John W. Bohnstedt, Janet Brodie, Robert Dawidoff, and Joseph González. Their advice, encouragement, and support have contributed to my academic success. As I entered the world of teaching I was fortunate to have been mentored by a number of people. As a mentee of the Minority Mentorship Program at the Ventura County Community College District, I learned the fundamentals of teaching a college course under the supervision of Professor Larry Manson at Ventura College. That mentorship program and subsequent employment at Moorpark College as a summer school lecturer and as a grader for Professor Daniel Brown led to my first fulltime teaching gig, at Cypress College. It was there that Joseph Boyle, Luz Calvo, Neill Cooney, Enriqueta Ramos, and Thomas Reeve guided me as I began to learn the art of teaching. Thomas Reeve in particular encouraged me to pursue a doctorate. Enriqueta and Luz demonstrated the political act of teaching as we served as Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanos de Aztlán advisers in the heart of Orange County, California, in the mid-1990s. ix

At Claremont I experienced a strong sense of belonging as I studied along with Phillip Castruita, Virginia Espino, Matt García, Lara Medina, Alicia Rodriquez, and Antonia Villaseñor. The mixers and seminars we experienced together helped me endure the first, and most critical, year of my doctoral program. This core group of Chicanas and Chicanos linked the theory and historiography we came to learn to the community narratives from which we came. Their achievements in academe continue to be an inspiration. After obtaining my doctorate, I left Cypress College to be one of California State University Channel Islands’ first thirteen faculty members. The faculty and alumni of csu Northridge were critical in my transition from working at a community college to teaching at a university. These persons were Rodolfo F. Acuña, Jorge García, the late Avie Guerra, Fermín Herrera, the Moreno brothers (José and Luis), Francisco Romero, and Armando Vázquez. And although not affiliated with csu Northridge, Steven Arvizu (as a former csu professor, provost, and community college president) helped me comprehend the new system I found myself in. Jaime Casillas also provided support at this moment in my career. I would not have survived the first years of my probationary period without their backing. And how can a historian, or any academic in the humanities for that matter, achieve success in his or her career without the help of librarians? When I was an ma student at csu Fresno, librarian Thomas Ebert exposed me to the world of government documents. He also saw abilities in me that I did not know I had. In fact, I remember him saying, “Frank, when you write your book . . .” At that point in my life I had not imagined taking on such a challenge. Then there were the great librarians at the Claremont Graduate University and Cypress College. At csu Channel Islands, Connie Kelly, Steve Stratton, and Amy Wallace unfailingly fulfilled my research requests. I can always count on them and my other colleagues at the John Spoor Broome Library to support my research and teaching. Outside my university, many other librarians at Stanford, Wayne State University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Oxnard Public Library aided my archival work. And then there is librarian Charles Johnson at the Museum of Ventura x

acknowledgments

County. From the start of this project to its completion, Charles has introduced me to the archival treasures of his library. His continued assistance and friendship are important to me. I am also very lucky to have faculty and administrative colleagues at csu Channel Islands who provided critical insight and guidance in the tenure and promotion process, the improvement of my teaching, and the publication of this book. I cannot imagine a more supportive group of colleagues. They are William Hampton Adams, Rainer F. Buschmann, William Cordero, Lillian Vega-Castañeda, Marie Francois, Ivona Grzegorczyk, Phillip D. Hampton, Elizabeth Hartung, Jacquelyn Neva Kilpatrick, Nian-Sheng Huang, Carol Holder, Joan M. Karp, Alexander W. McNeill, James H. Meriwether, Dennis Muraoka, Ed Nuhfer, Joan K. Peters, Jack Reilly, Richard R. Rush, Wm. Gregory Sawyer, Ashish Vaidya, Kevin Volkan, Ching-Hua Wang, Daniel W. Wakelee, William J. Wolfe, and last but not least, José M. Alamillo. Since he joined csu Channel Islands, José has been a very giving faculty colleague and friend in making me aware of literature and archives related to our shared work in Chicana/o studies. I am also indebted to Professor Jorge García, my colleague in the math program, for reviewing the translation of Spanish-language excerpts to English. And as the California State University system has maneuvered through an interminable budget crisis, my faculty and administrator colleagues have maintained an extraordinary commitment to teaching, scholarship, and service. To press forward the production of scholarship, they have served on university committees that supported my proposals for csu Channel Islands’ Faculty Development Mini-Grants, Instructionally Related Activities Funding, the Provost’s Faculty Resource Grant, and a sabbatical leave for this book. I would also like to thank Stephen J. Pitti for his thoughtful 2003 e-mail urging me to transform the dissertation into a book. Stephen also informed me of the existence of Fred Ross’s book Conquering Goliath, which served as the foundational research for chapter 6 of this book. Verónica CastilloMuñoz also provided incisive feedback on this chapter. Peter Richardson has also been supportive over the years in my desire to be a more effective writer. Lorena Oropeza provided clever suggestions as I created the book proposal for this project to send to publishers. And I am also acknowledgments

xi

very grateful to Matt Bokovoy and Elisabeth Chretien at the University of Nebraska Press. Matt swiftly expressed interest in my book proposal and moved the manuscript through the review process in equally short order. And Elisabeth was very responsive to my many queries regarding permissions and other issues involved with the publication of this book. Similarly, Jonathan Lawrence improved this book’s style with his thorough copyediting. I also need to thank all those who shared their life stories for this project. I am particularly indebted to Antonia Di Liello, Dr. Manuel M. López (my optometrist and former Oxnard mayor), Manuel Pérez, and Robert Valles. As an octogenarian student at csu Channel Islands, Antonia is a model example of lifelong learning and the transformational clout of Chicana/o studies. Our conversations enhanced my appreciation of the harsh realities that people of Mexican origins faced for much of the twentieth century. Similarly, Dr. López, Manuel Pérez, and Robert Valles informed me of benchmark events in Oxnard’s history, the names of leaders in the community, and the cross-cultural dynamics of the past and present. These conversations often took place while Dr. López examined my eyes, while Robert and I were side by side on exercise treadmills, and in Manuel’s living room. And there is my immediate family. Mom and Dad (Ramona Piñon Barajas and Frank H. Barajas), since I can recall, encouraged me to obtain a higher education. While we were at the dinner table my father did this by advising me to take college-prep courses over shop, and my mother by not allowing me to work in the citrus packinghouses of Oxnard. Their faith in me kept me going when I contemplated quitting my undergraduate studies at a secluded desk in the Henry Madden Library of csu Fresno. And then there is my college sweetheart and now wife, Linda Guajardo. You have given us children (Santiago and Sofía) that match your beauty and smarts. You three are at the center of my world.

xii

acknowledgments

A BBREVI AT IONS

absc

American Beet Sugar Company

aclu

American Civil Liberties Union

acwu

Agricultural and Citrus Workers Union

af

Associated Farmers

afl

American Federation of Labor

afvc

Associated Farmers of Ventura County

awoc

Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee

cawiu

Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union

ccc

Civilian Conservation Corps

cfge

California Fruit Growers Exchange

cic

Colonia Improvement Company

cio

Congress of Industrial Organizations

cs

Community Service

cso

Community Service Organization

cucom

La Confederción de Uniones Campesinos y Obreros Mexicanos (Confederation of Mexican Farm Laborer and Worker Unions)

fba

Filipino Brotherhood Association

fha

Federal Housing Authority

fps

Farm Placement Service

fsa

Farm Security Administration

xiii

ild

International Labor Defense

imc

Independent Mexican Committee

iww

Industrial Workers of the World

jaa

Japanese Association of America

jmla

Japanese-Mexican Labor Association

nawu

National Agricultural Workers Union

ncdpp

National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners

nflu

National Farm Labor Union

nlrb

National Labor Relations Board

oflc

Oxnard Farm Labor Center

plm

El Partido Liberal Mexicano (Mexican Liberal Party)

sbflu

Sugar Beet Farm Laborers Union

scbga

Southern California Beet Growers Association

scic

Santa Clara Irrigation Company

sra

State Relief Administration

uffvg

United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Growers

ufm

Unión Federal Mexicanos (Mexican Federal Union)

upbmi

La Unión Patriótica Benéfica Mexicana Independiente (Patriotic Union to Benefit Mexican Independence)

upwa

United Packinghouse Workers of America

uso

United Service Organization

vcfb

Ventura County Farm Bureau

vcfla

Ventura County Farm Labor Association

wac c

Western Agricultural Contracting Company

xiv

list of abbreviations

CURIO U S U N IO N S

COOPER RD.

GRANT 3RD

AVE.

AVE. JUANITA

AVE.

AVE.

ANITA

Ramona Elementary School

ST.

9TH

ST.

ERN

IC RAIL ROAD SPUR LINE

LN.

PACI F

American Beet Sugar Company adobe housing Guadalupe School

ST.

Guadalupe Church

5TH ST.

Buena Vista Labor Camp

American Beet Sugar Company factory grounds

C ST.

ST.

7TH

OXNARD

Community Center 8TH

UTH

FACTORY

ST.

ST.

6TH

ST.

Plaza

META

ST.

China Alley District

5TH

SO

BLVD.

A

B

ST.

E

F

G

H

HARRISON

ST.

Roosevelt Elementary School 4TH

1ST

Juanita Elementary School

C

ST.

RD.

ST.

ST.

1ST

ST.

3RD

AVE.

ST.

ST.

ST.

2ND

ST.

ST.

D

ST.

MAGNOLIA

McKINLEY

DR.

AVE. GARFIELD

PALM

HAYES

AVE.

DR.

ROOSEVELT

COLONIA BEVERLY

BONITA

AVE.

AVE.

DEODAR

AVE.

AVE. AVE.

Seaboard Lemon Association Plant DORIS

WOOLEY RD.

CALIFORNIA Oxnard

Los Angeles

WOLFF ST.

OX

NA

RD

0 BL

VD .

HILL ST.

Map of Oxnard, California, 1950

0.25 mile

INTRO D U C T IO N

For much of the twentieth century, an imposing factory in the fields of the Oxnard Plain stood at the center of a community named after three brothers — Henry, James, and Robert Oxnard — that did much to establish the sugar beet industry in Southern California. The Oxnard brothers, like other sugar beet magnates, developed a curious union with local independent growers. They provided the science and technology to propel the production of sugar beets, and they contracted with growers to produce this relatively novel, yet lucrative, crop in Southern California. Sugar beet refineries then took responsibility for both obtaining and maintaining the workforce needed for the backbreaking cultivation and harvest of this crop.1 The early integration of the interests of the Oxnard brothers’ American Beet Sugar Company (absc ) with that of independent growers spawned a multitude of other curious unions. Their enterprise depended on the recruitment and distribution of an industrialized labor force of exploitable non-whites. Overlapping cycles of recruitment introduced a cross-cultural array of migrant workers that began with Chinese workers and ended with people of Mexican origins. Between these two groups, men, women, and children of Japanese, Filipino, Sikh, and white origins toiled in the fields of this Southern California coastal community.

1

The union of lumpen workers and residents within and outside these industrialized fields promoted the creation of unexpected, and often intricate, cross-cultural relationships. As early as 1903, labor contractors, both Japanese and Mexican, united to resist their displacement by a contracting company created by the absc , financiers, and growers. These Japanese and Mexican contractors served as labor organizers of sugar beet workers. The interests of labor contractors have traditionally been antithetical to those of workers. Historically, growers have utilized labor contractors, in large part, to buffer themselves from labor provisions directly related to pay, recruitment, and conditions, which is why such contracting would be at the center of tensions from this period to 1959. That was the year César Chávez, as an organizer of the Community Service Organization (cso ), led domestic farmworkers to challenge the concentrated power of the Ventura County Farm Labor Association and the larger agriculturalindustrial complex made up of state and federal agencies, elected officials, the media, and other interests that had supported the elusive “contractor” arrangement. From the late nineteenth century onward, Mexicans encountered, in addition to a conflictual labor environment, a Southern California that both romanticized and vilified much that was Mexican. Boosters attempted to erase Southern California’s Mexican heritage by superimposing a myth that was Spanish. The discrimination Mexicans experienced in schools, public spaces, employment, and with law enforcement reaffirmed the subordinate status of Mexicans born on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. They identified themselves, and were identified, as Mexican, but with nuanced distinctions.2 Cultural borders between Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens became pronounced as the U.S.-born offspring of Mexican immigrants began to dominate this population. Many U.S.-born Mexicans saw themselves as more acculturated and less Mexican than their parents. Immigrant deportation and repatriation campaigns of the Great Depression solidified the formation of a Mexican American identity throughout Southern California. And at the start of World War II, agribusiness’s successful lobbying for the federal government’s subsidization of imported Mexican workers (the bracero program) made this true.3 2

introduction

Between the Great Depression and the conclusion of World War II, two events occurred on the Oxnard Plain that complicated the relationship of the U.S.-born with Mexican nationals. In the nadir of the Great Depression, another, yet unsuccessful, sugar beet strike took place in 1933. Then a more regional strike that involved Southern California citrus pickers and packinghouse workers commenced and concluded in a stalemate in 1941. The following year, once the United States entered World War II, Franklin Roosevelt’s administration entered into a bilateral agreement with Mexico to contract laborers for an agricultural industry that putatively lost a significant part of its workforce to military service and war-related industries. Even after the war, longtime Mexican residents found themselves increasingly competing, ineffectively, against braceros, who were favored by employers. Enamored with the utterly exploitable character of braceros, growers colluded with local, state, and federal functionaries to maintain unimpeded access to braceros at the expense of domestic agricultural workers, both local and migrant. So interlocked were these interests that an agricultural-industrial complex intensified, unifying the agribusiness boardrooms with the councils of government.4 The bracero controversy reached an apex in 1959 and marked Chávez’s conversion from an organizer in the cso to a labor leader. In 1962, Chávez resigned from his much-loved cso to pursue his “dream,” as he characterized it, of creating an effective farmworkers union. In his valiant attempt to actualize the dictates of Public Law 78, which was intended to regulate the agricultural industry’s use of braceros, Chávez found the soft underbelly of the agricultural goliath. He then submitted to public exposure the industry’s abuse of power. But farmworkers needed a union that tapped into the inherent strengths of their communities: dogged persistence, focus, discipline, high-profile public protest, and unity. Chávez’s labor-organizing experience in Oxnard served as the training ground for his formation of the National Farm Workers Union in 1962.5 Curious unions of cross-culturalism defined the historical importance of the Oxnard community in California history. For that reason, this book examines the lives of people rooted in the political economy of this agricultural plain, starting with sugar beets. Other narratives have examined introduction

3

Mexican American life in the citrus industry only, and at the margins of communities. But Curious Unions contends that the Mexican community, although segregated within and outside institutions, did not exist at the periphery of society. As men and women of Mexican origins endured the indignities of discrimination, Oxnard elites found it in their interest to integrate them into the larger community. For example, because the absc needed a consistent and reliable workforce to produce sugar beets, it constructed segregated company housing for Mexican sugar beet workers (betabeleros) and their families. And as elites marginalized Mexicans within segregated residential areas, they also integrated them within the larger political economy. absc officials and independent growers also became increasingly dependent on Mexican and Japanese labor contractors to ensure the resupply of workers. Curious unions among sugar beet industrialists and independent growers extended into other areas of public life. To understand their significance is to reinterpret Southern California history. Chapter 1 details the pre-industrial history of the Oxnard Plain, beginning with that of the first Americans, the Chumash. The Chumash created the first of many curious unions within and outside Southern California based largely on networks of trade. This account highlights the complexity of Chumash culture, both internally and in relation to other pre-Colombian societies. And although cooperation between the Chumash and other groups along the Central Coast existed, tensions also arose, albeit not to the extreme levels that characterized the Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. periods. When the Spanish arrived, the Chumash greeted them without fear or submission. Spanish colonialism, however, quickly disrupted the interdependent Chumash communities of the Central Coast, especially in what is today Ventura County, and forcibly concentrated them at the San Buenaventura Mission. The union between the Chumash and Spanish missionaries dramatically altered (many contend destroyed) the Chumash way of life. The brutal exploitation of Chumash neophytes instigated a massive rebellion in 1834. The Mexican territorial government reorganized mission lands into expansive feudal ranchos as the 1830s punctuated the end of the mission system with secularization. Rancho elites operated cattle ranches 4

introduction

for sustenance and the hide and tallow trade, as Richard Henry Dana Jr. colorfully describes in Two Years before the Mast. The organization of the ranchos evidenced the relationship of propertied Mexicans, or Californios, among themselves as well as curious and opportunistic white American interlopers who served as an advance guard for the ultimate conquest of the region by the United States. After the Mexican-American War of 1846–48, white migrants and representatives of industrialists began to systematically dispossess Californio elites of the land they controlled. On the Oxnard Plain, the Gonzales family’s shrinking Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia underscored the methodical decline of Californio elites on the Oxnard Plain. Attorneys of Pennsylvania petroleum magnate Thomas Scott used the legal system to intimidate susceptible Mexican landowners into ceding their property so that Scott could tap into its resources and sell to land-hungry white farmers, many of whom were already squatting on the dissipating Mexican land grants.6 This accelerated the destruction of existing community networks and the influence of the Californios. The real property of Californios steadily diminished with the settlement of land-hungry white migrants. And so did the social status of Mexicans, particularly in regard to the fault lines of race. The romanticized Californio became an ordinary Mexican. The loss of status intensified with the entrance of downtrodden, yet by no means defeated, Mexican refugees, both political and economic, toward the end of the nineteenth century and for much of the early twentieth. Chapter 2 examines how Mexicans — nationals, longtime residents, and U.S. citizens alike — integrated themselves into an Oxnard community that segregated them in marginalized neighborhoods and subordinated them within the agricultural economy. They asserted themselves by participating in public fiestas and patriotic celebrations of both countries; they also competed in organized sports such as boxing and baseball. Baseball in particular allowed team members to travel the circuit of play by car, fostering social networks throughout Southern California. But as Mexicans integrated, anxieties arose about the city’s presumed “Mexicanization.” introduction

5

Chapter 2 also explores boundaries that limited alliances. Satraps of the sugar beet industry, for example, restricted the physical space in which non-whites lived. But Oxnard residents created cross-cultural relationships from varying strata of the community despite covenants, both de facto and de jure, that segregated residential neighborhoods, schoolchildren, and workers. For example, the absc ’s chief employment officer, Robert Beach, and his wife worked with Mexican civic activists in programming youth activities and community projects.7 Nevertheless, some in the white community continued to view Mexicans as a threat to the city’s public and moral well-being. Despite segregation, some cross-cultural unionism also occurred. Chapter 3 examines the effect of segregation in various communities as well as the significance of cross-cultural engagements. While subtleties of cross-cultural tolerance and acceptance complicate the understanding of discrimination, they do not diminish the dehumanization that non-white communities experienced. Yet this analysis also highlights how Mexican residents created the foundation upon which to challenge such discrimination. Over time the struggle of Oxnard Mexicans not only galvanized their own identity but also influenced how they viewed other individuals and groups. That is to say, the paradox of pervasive discrimination and cross-culture unity informed how individuals and groups recognized each other’s humanity despite the dominant social mores of the time. A salient argument of this book reconsiders an oppositional “us versus them” by examining, first, the dynamism of cross-culturalism in various settings and times on the Oxnard Plain, and second, the way cross-culturalism subtly redefined Americanism as Progressive Era reformers sought to “Americanize” Mexican residents. Cross-cultural alliances involving labor upheaval during the first half of the twentieth century further complicate an “us versus them” paradigm for Mexicans and whites. Chapter 4 details the eruption of a major and violent labor dispute in this Southern California community five years after the opening of the absc factory and two years after the town was incorporated and named after the Oxnard brothers. In 1903 a largely biracial union — led by labor contractors — formed that consisted of Mexi6

introduction

can betabeleros and their Japanese counterparts. Another curious union emerged during this labor dispute as other Japanese and Mexican labor contractors sided with the financiers and growers linked with the absc . These dueling cross-cultural groups of unequal influence nuanced the matrix of interaction. The focal point to be emphasized with this event will be the unique cross-cultural cooperation not only among workers but also between workers and labor contractors, whose interests were not historically always the same, and of sugar beet financiers with Japanese and Mexican labor contractors. The conclusion of the 1903 strike also provides an opportunity to investigate the subsequent entrance of individuals and groups that challenged the might of an agricultural-industrial complex. These radical dissidents emerged in Southern California with anarchists and socialists throughout the Southwest. Although the Industrial Workers of the World (iww ) and their free-speech campaigns dominate the historical narrative of agricultural labor radicalism in the early twentieth century, Chicana and Chicano historians have highlighted the arrival of Ricardo, Enrique, and Jesús Magón to Southern California. The Magón brothers established El Partido Liberal Mexicano (plm , Mexican Liberal Party) cells in many parts of the Southwest as they fled persecution in Mexico. They continued to criticize the Mexican government of Porfirio Díaz for being a marionette of foreign capital, especially that of the United States. The Magón brothers published the plm newspaper Regeneración in Texas, Kansas, California, and other parts of the Southwest. The publication’s critique of industrial capitalism’s grinding oppression of labor won the Magón brothers the hearts and minds of U.S. anarchists such as Emma Goldman as well as many Mexican workers. It also engendered the enmity of the U.S. government. The Magóns would be stalked by law enforcement, jailed, and imprisoned for violating the U.S. neutrality laws. Ricardo Flores Magón would ultimately die in Leavenworth in 1913.8 A brief discussion of the plm portrays the context in which dissidents on the Oxnard Plain lived and how they helped germinate an ideological tradition of labor protests before and after the sugar beet strike of 1933. Simon Berthold (a plm adherent) and iww organizers elevated concerns of an emerging and increasingly sophisticated agricultural-industrial complex. introduction

7

With the increasing presence of people such as Ricardo Flores Magón, a composite entity of growers, financiers, law enforcement, and the media systematically culled labor leaders by intimidation and persecution within and outside the Oxnard Plain. The 1933 sugar beet strike, although unsuccessful, reveals the curious union of interests not only within the agricultural-industrial complex but also within the Mexican community, particularly in the latter’s developing alliances with Communist Party activists and its affiliated labor arm, the Cannery Agricultural Workers Industrial Union. Alliances also included support from the American Civil Liberties Union and the International Labor Defense League, which were committed to protecting the civil liberties of such groups.9 Catalyzing these alliances, the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión of Los Angeles and the Western Worker provided coverage to counterbalance the pro-agribusiness reports of the Los Angeles Times and the local Oxnard Press-Courier. The strike also showed how a similar curious union failed to germinate among Mexican sugar beet workers with Filipinos as it did in 1903 with the Japanese. The examination of the 1933 Oxnard strike, however, goes beyond the agricultural-industrial complex’s exercise of power against labor dissidents. Cross-cultural and cross-political alliances challenged the hegemony of agribusiness during the depth of the Great Depression. The Mexican community relied on community networks of recreation and leisure to mobilize support for the striking betabeleros and their families. The mutual aid society La Unión Patriótica Benéfica Mexicana Independiente (Patriotic Union to Benefit Mexican Independence) provided the organizational framework and geographical locus of support. The sugar beet strike of 1933, despite its failure, compelled Ventura County growers to raise the wage rate of agricultural workers to prevent future disputes. As other strikes in the region emerged, government agencies mandated minimumwage reforms and an end to child labor in the sugar beet fields. The strike also exposed how growers intimidated the Mexican community to keep it from joining protests. The agricultural-industrial complex’s creation of the vigilante organization the Associated Farmers developed from such labor resistance. Charles C. Teague, co-owner of the national citrus giant the 8

introduction

Limoneira Company in Ventura County and president of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, spearheaded this endeavor statewide.10 Although the sugar beet strike of 1933 was unsuccessful, the Mexican community continued to resist discriminatory oppression on the Oxnard Plain. This was true as the sugar beet economy yielded to the dominance of citrus. Chapter 5 opens with the Southern California citrus strike and its manifestation in Oxnard on the eve of World War II. Citrus growers responded to the struggle of pickers and packers by unleashing the interlocked capacity of the Associated Farmers in Ventura County. The examination of the strike also details the actions of federal and state agencies in the Farm Security Administration, the California State Relief Administration, and the Agricultural and Citrus Workers Union–American Federation of Labor in this labor struggle. It illustrates the continued tradition of community organization, mutual aid, recreation, and leisure in supporting agricultural workers. Although the citrus strike of 1941 did not settle the grievances of Mexican workers, democratic ideals espoused during World War II encouraged the further development of a Mexican American identity. Mexican residents on the Oxnard Plain questioned social norms. The internment of Japanese Americans and the systematic persecution of zoot-suiters underscored the second-class citizenship of non-white populations. As a result, the Mexican community reconsidered its own character while continuing to confront discrimination. The reformulation of a Mexicanist identity to one that was becoming more Mexican American was also placed in relief as braceros entered the county ostensibly to fill shortages in the agricultural labor pool. Chapter 6 continues the discussion with an exploration of the rise of post–World War II Mexican American organizations in Ventura County. For example, César Chávez used a cashiered Quonset hut to base a Ventura County cso get-out-the-vote campaign in 1958. Behind the posters that urged residents to vote in the election there existed a partially covered marquee that identified the structure as the headquarters of the Latin American Veterans Club. This club doubled as the headquarters for the cso , which mobilized Mexican residents of Ventura County, and more specifically Oxnard, to address police brutality and immigration issues. It introduction

9

also provided them with English and citizenship courses for the application process that would lead both naturalized and U.S.-born citizens to register to vote in elections. The Oxnard Mexican community’s tradition of resistance girded Chávez’s cso . It allowed Chávez to mobilize others around the continuities of discrimination and exploitation dating back to the early twentieth century. The cso energized Oxnard’s La Colonia Mexican community to register and vote in the election of 1958 in the midst of the civil rights movement and a national economic recession. The success of this campaign provided the template the cso and underemployed domestic workers used to effectively challenge the agricultural-industrial complex’s employment of bracero workers to depress the prevailing wage rate and systematically displace domestic workers within and outside the farming economy. Chávez and the cso curiously united cultural networks in their struggle to topple the bracero program and challenge the core of the agriculturalindustrial complex. The examination of this struggle accents an intriguing collusion of state and federal agencies with agribusiness in the systematic impoverishment of domestic workers, both local residents and migrants, by favoring the employment of braceros within and outside the defined agricultural work prescribed by Public Law 78. But Chávez’s victory was ephemeral, and the movement he created dissipated once he left the Oxnard Plain. It did, nonetheless, nationally expose the endemic corruption of the bracero program and of state and federal functionaries who allied themselves with the interest of agribusiness. Chávez’s 1958–59 Oxnard campaign demonstrated that although the agricultural-industrial complex had a long and often brutal history of vanquishing incipient labor unionism, it was not invincible. The bracero controversy in Ventura County confirmed that the creation of an effective farmworker union was possible. Chávez resigned from the organization that he cherished in 1962 after the cso leadership refused to commit to organizing farmworkers. Acts of agency on the part of the Mexican community on the Oxnard Plain arose from a hierarchically structured agricultural economy in which they found themselves marginalized. And as the local captains of agriculture interlocked their interests with elites in other industries and government, 10

introduction

the Mexican community of Oxnard formulated a variety of alliances of their own. Some involved self-help societies and political partnerships, and others involved cross-cultural coalitions. These interactions complicate previous narratives framed largely in conflict. Although struggles against injustices certainly defined the experience of Mexican Americans, examples of toleration and, perhaps more importantly, extraordinary unions of mutual succor and benefit force a reconsideration of the discernment of the Mexican American experience.

introduction

11

1 EARLY CURIO U S U N IO N S

Prior to the start of the twentieth century, four distinct yet interwoven cultures occupied the Oxnard Plain: Chumash Muwu, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo American. All conducted commercial activities with communities within and outside the region, exchanges that encouraged cross-cultural unions and adaptation. Change occurred under conditions of mutuality, on the one hand, and of violent coercion, on the other. Spanish colonizers, Mexican settlers, and U.S. conquerors continued a tradition of commercial activity that complicated cross-cultural relationships and begat curious interactions. Prior to the arrival of European interlopers, Muwu praetors assigned an ’alak’tsum official to maintain security while large crowds enjoyed music, observed ceremonial performances, and conducted trade. Merchants from Arizona, Baja California, the Los Angeles Basin, the San Joaquin Valley, and Vancouver, British Columbia, traveled by foot and sea to participate in commercial festivals hosted by the Chumash Muwu village on what is today the Oxnard Plain. The Chumash of the Oxnard Plain have been largely erased from the general public’s memory. But the history of this civilization rose from the dead throughout the twentieth century as farmworkers tilled the soil and unearthed the faunal remains and artifacts of the area’s first Americans. The Muwu and their neighbors, the Wenéme, lived a few miles north of 13

what is now Port Hueneme. The Ventura County Chumash were referred to as Ventureños after the Spanish mission of San Buenaventura. Many Ventureño rancherias (villages) existed along the Central Coast regions of the Santa Barbara Channel as well as the interior prior to and during the colonization of California by the Spanish.1 The Chumash civilization was one of the largest original populations in California, dating back 5000 to 6000 bce . They lived as far south as Malibu and as far north as San Luis Obispo. A distinction existed among the Chumash between those who occupied the Channel Islands, those who lived on the mainland coast, and those who resided inland.2 Despite this geographic segmentation, Chumash villages were economically interdependent. The Muwu, for example, lived on a lagoon. Chumash residents on the mainland coast traded with the Muwu, whose economy centered on the maritime. The Simo’mo, however, lived further inland and were dependent upon a hybrid economy of fishing, game hunting, and systematic gathering. The Simo’mo abandoned their inland villages around 1250 ce , most likely because drought forced them to migrate to more bountiful areas. The Chumash civilization, however, was not an island unto itself. An intricate system of trade and commerce between the Chumash and commercial representatives of other societies diminished the region’s insularity.3 Itinerant merchants exchanged specialty crops and products not accessible to their respective villages. Inland and mainland coastal Chumash traded food, baskets, and manufactured items derived from game animals. And the island Chumash benefited from the ocean’s bounty and produced ornaments made of fish bones and seashells.4 The Economy Southern California people of this period operated under a pre-capitalist surplus economy that used poncos (strings of rounded and polished olivella shell beads) as currency. Villages with a surplus crop of acorns bartered or accepted poncos from neighboring communities. Participants standardized a system of exchange to facilitate commerce. Trading parties used a system of basket measurement and strings of beads to measure goods. 14

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And merchants and political leaders of the Oxnard Plain hosted feasts, ceremonial music, and dance to promote these commercial fairs.5 Larger tribelet sites served as cross-cultural hubs that hosted the fiestas of commerce. These events were strategically located among mainland coastal villages between inland and island tribelets. The Muwu of the Oxnard Plain region, renowned as one of Southern California’s important commercial centers, enjoyed significant political influence in the region. Chumash representatives traveled from as far away as San Luis Obispo to conduct trade here, while merchants from other tribes journeyed from locations in the San Fernando Valley, Newhall, Tejon, and as far away as the Pacific Northwest to participate in the Muwu fiestas. They traded artistic and durable basketry, delectable foods, intricate fishing tackle, and premium plank canoes. The technical skill required to produce these specialty products made them highly prized. Chumash women of the Oxnard Plain and the rest of Southern California primarily produced the valued basketry to be sold at the fiestas and used as a standard of measurement to conduct trade. Chumash women also gathered and processed acorns and seeds, while men manufactured fishing tackle, produced plank canoes, and hunted game animals and fished.6 Itinerant merchants sold a wide assortment of products. Chumash of the Central Coast region, for example, imported cotton blankets from various parts of the Southwest and shell products from the region of the Vancouver Islands. Yokuts of the southern section of the San Joaquin Valley bartered obsidian, steatite beads, vegetables, salt from saltgrass, and herbs. And they obtained various types of seeds, acorns, whole pisom clamshells, dried starfish, and sea urchin shells. The ’alak’tsum policed the area during the trade fairs and sought out suspects when merchants reported items missing or stolen. The ’alak’tsum also confronted and expelled uninvited guests.7 Life on the Oxnard Plain, however, was not one big fair. Fernando Librado, a Chumash informant of the late nineteenth century, detailed a conflict between the Muwu and the Tejon. It began when a Muwu chief sentenced a Tejon woman married to a Muwu man to death for adultery. So cross-cultural exchange was not limited to the material. Economic early curious unions

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exchange facilitated kinship ties between families of separate villages. Intertribelet and intertribal raids increased as environmental resources became scarce. Many Native Americans practiced raiding for the specific purpose of obtaining women and children. If they were not traded to other tribes, captive women and, especially, children, were eventually integrated into the host society.8 The Order of Life A hierarchical structure defined Chumash society. The wot, or chief, headed the elite class at the Muwu village. One of the more prominent wots of the Muwu was Kwaiyin, who delegated his authority among subordinate chiefs, known as paxa. Women were eligible to hold the position of wot. Pomposa ascended to the position of a Muwu wot in 1862. Twenty paxas made up an organization called an ’antap, or council, which was made up of craft specialists who decided political questions and promoted commercial fairs. Members of the ’antap performed both religious and secular ceremonies at the fairs. The actions of the ’antap cult represented the fusion of political, commercial, and spiritual duties that culminated in a theocratic society. Below the ’antap and wot, the ksen relayed information about the fairs to tribelet villages throughout and outside of Southern California.9 Archaeologists have discovered a number of Simo’mo grave sites in which wealthy, political leaders were buried with bead jewelry, basketry, digging sticks, and fishing and hunting gear that demonstrated an intricate class structure within Chumash society on the Oxnard Plain.10 Utilitarian artifacts also provide insight into the gendered roles of the Chumash. Grave markers and basketry in the Santa Monica Mountain region suggest that during the Early Period (3500 to 1400 bce ) the subsistence activities of Chumash women outranked that of men. A shift began in the division of labor as climate change desiccated the region and affected subsistence gathering during the Middle Period (1400 bce to 1150 ce ) and the Late Period (1150 to 1782 ce ). As vegetation diminished, the Chumash became increasingly reliant on the hunting and fishing performed by men. Men monopolized privileged social positions by the Middle Period.11 And within the interstices of gender existed work performed by the berdache, men who 16

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socially defined themselves as women.12 In Chumash society the berdache not only performed duties of men and women but also specialized in the preparation of the deceased for burial, unifying the genders and bridging the transition from life on Earth to the spirit world.13 Spanish Interlopers Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo’s first contact with the Chumash of the Oxnard Plain region occurred on 10 October 1542. Cabrillo observed the existence of large homes similar to those in Mexico. The Muwu recounted to Cabrillo and his crew of bearded Christians stories of a similar expedition in the Southwest interior. These accounts demonstrate that cross-cultural interaction among the first Americans throughout the borderlands did more than just promote commerce; it also allowed them to share intelligence about the actions of Spanish interlopers. The Muwu, nevertheless, made Cabrillo and his men feel so welcome that Cabrillo distributed presents — the first since their departure from the island of San Salvador. Cabrillo also noted the impressive fleet of swift plank canoes. Other Chumash villages greeted Cabrillo with enthusiasm and only occasionally with outward signs of trepidation. The age-old custom of trade overshadowed any fear that the Chumash may have had of strangers from a different shore.14 After leaving the Muwu, Cabrillo sailed northwesterly on 13 October and passed another Chumash village at Port Hueneme, known as the Quelgueme or Wenéme. Sebastián Viscaíno followed Cabrillo in 1602, but he did not land. Gaspar de Portolá led the first overland Spanish exploration, entering near the Oxnard Plain in August 1769. Father Juan Crespí accompanied this expedition from the eastern end of El Rio de Santa Clara (Santa Clara River) near the San Fernando Valley. When the Portolá expedition arrived, local chiefs from the mountains and islands of the Santa Barbara Channel greeted them to conduct trade. The Chumash presented the Spanish with gifts of seeds and fish, as they did with Yokuts of the San Joaquin Valley, the Gabrieleños of the Los Angeles basin, the Yuma of the Southern California–Arizona region, and others of the Pacific Northwest. At the conclusion of business they entertained their guests with music and dance throughout the evening and early morning — to early curious unions

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the point that the Spanish became desperate for a restful night’s sleep. Crespí named the site of Ventura “La Asuncion de Nuestra Señora” on 14 August. Thirteen years later, Franciscans, with the toil of the Chumash Shisholop, built Mission San Buenaventura.15 Before the mission was established, though, the Chumash of the Santa Barbara Channel region experienced dramatic change in their way of life. This occurred as European diseases spread and devastated the Chumash. Epidemics of smallpox, influenza, and typhoid ran rampant by direct contact with the expeditions of Cabrillo and Portolá. Itinerant merchants and extended-family members who had direct contact with the Spanish or other infected groups acted as carriers of the deadly viruses.16 At the time the Spanish arrived, as few as twenty-five hundred and at most forty-two hundred Chumash lived in the surrounding area of Ventura and the Oxnard Plain. By 1810 the Franciscans baptized residents of Chumash villages surrounding Mission San Buenaventura, including the Muwu, who found themselves forcibly uprooted from the lagoon to live within the confines of the mission. Not all of the Muwu, however, left the lagoon. Archaeological evidence in the form of ceramic shards originally produced at Mission San Buenaventura suggest that a Muwu contingent remained at the lagoon.17 Mission San Buenaventura enabled imperial Spain to solidify its claim to the Santa Barbara Channel region of Alta California. Franciscan priests embarked on the repression of the Chumash by both their forced removal to the mission compound and their Hispanicization. Given the Mexican government’s lack of support for the mission of Alta California after 1821, dissension increased among the neophyte population. The Chumash Revolt of 1824, which started at Mission La Purissima and Mission Santa Ynez to the north, demarcates the steady decline of the Spanish/Mexican mission era. Severe conditions and abuse fomented resentment among the mission neophytes and led to the insurrection. Spanish and subsequently Mexican soldiers also raided villages of the Chumash at Tejon to replenish the mission population, which died from physical exhaustion, malnutrition, and disease. Soldiers targeted Tejon villages because they served as sites of refuge for neophytes who escaped from Mission San Buenaventura. The more immediate cause of this revolt, however, was the corporal punishment 18

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inflicted on a Purissima neophyte woman accused of instigating dissent. Soldier Valentín Cota of Santa Barbara, an eventual land grantee of Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia (later deterritorialized to the city of Oxnard in 1903), meted out the penalty. This prompted neophytes of La Purissima and Santa Ynez to orchestrate an overthrow of the mission system set for 22 February 1824.18 Neophyte couriers traveled to Mission San Buenaventura to recruit additional support for the rebellion. However, word reached Father Francisco Nuñez, who informed Raymundo Olivas of the insurgency in order to organize a defense. As a result, the rebellion at Mission San Buenaventura failed before it started as the insurgent courier found himself betrayed by a Chumash alcalde (overseer) who turned him over to the guards of Mission San Buenaventura. But this was not the only challenge. Twenty Mojave itinerant merchants seeking trade with the Ventureño had found themselves in a pitched battle with Mission San Buenaventura soldiers five years before the 1824 rebellion. The conflict emerged after a Spanish soldier struck one of the Mojaves. When the fighting ended, ten Mojaves lay dead. The other ten escaped.19 A tragic consequence of the establishment of Mission San Buenaventura near the Oxnard Plain was the dislocation of the Muwu. Most evident was the severe decline in its population. This, however, does not suggest the erasure of the Chumash, who reorganized themselves into distinct communities within and outside the Oxnard Plain after the secularization of the mission system in the 1830s. Intermarriage among members of various Chumash villages aided the survival of this civilization.20 The Chumash adoption of Spanish surnames along with the shared somatic features of Chumash and Mexicans caused many non-Chumash to confuse them as Mexican. This was especially the case as a steady stream of Mexican immigrants entered the area as commercial agriculture expanded on the plain by the early twentieth century. Curious Bounties The first non-native crops nearest the Oxnard Plain arrived with the establishment of Mission San Buenaventura in 1782: apples, peaches, pears, pomegranates, melons, olives, beans, wheat, barley, and corn. In 1794, early curious unions

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Franciscan missionaries directed the neophytes to construct an irrigation ditch from the Ventura River to surrounding mission lands to water the fields and orchards of this imported bounty. The Chumash tilled the land with wooden plows pulled by draft animals and sowed the seeds of crops. Mission San Buenaventura maintained a variety of livestock. In 1816, 23,000 head of cattle, 13,000 sheep, and 4,500 horses grazed the pastures of the mission. Cattle devoured the land’s flora of the southeastern section of mission lands, which extended across the Santa Clara River, the width of the Oxnard Plain, to the Mugu lagoon, and pastures adjacent to Port Hueneme. As the herds consumed the region’s native grasses, which sustained game animals, the Chumash grew more dependent on the mission for sustenance.21 Chumash neophytes cultivated crops primarily for the subsistence of the mission, presidio, and pueblo settlements. Mercantile regulations prohibited the development of an agricultural system for commercial export. Illicit trade, however, did occur with the entrance of vessels from Peru, the northeastern United States, and Russia. Trade expanded, particularly with New England commercial interests under the administration of the Californios in 1821.22 The Mexican territorial government of Alta California issued a secularization proclamation in 1834 and assumed control of the lands of Mission San Buenaventura. Afterward, a limited number of Chumash farmed small plots. Most Chumash men and women, however, worked as vaqueros (herders), casual laborers, and domestic servants. Other mission neophytes descended to virtual forms of serfdom, convict labor, and indentured servitude during the Californio era and the U.S. occupation. Social violence, particularly with the advent of the California gold rush, also characterized much of the lives of the former mission Chumash. Many experienced extreme poverty and suffered from malnutrition and alcoholism.23 After Mexico’s secularization of the California missions, marriage increased between the Chumash and other groups. Census data of 1793 recorded only thirty-nine Spanish colonial settlers living in Alta California, thirty-five of whom were Franciscan missionaries. The union of the Chumash with Mexican settlers, especially from Sonora and Sinaloa, occurred 20

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with a group that was largely mestizo. Those in the census privileged with the designation “Spanish” or “criollo” (of Iberian lineage but born in the Americas) were most likely mestizos but labeled as European in origin due to their social and political standing. And a significant portion of Spanish and Mexican settlers who entered the Pacific region of the Channel Islands had dna of African provenance. Approximately 36 mulattos (person of mestizo and African ancestry) out of 191 inhabitants lived in the neighboring pueblo of Santa Barbara during this period. More than half of the founding settlers of Los Angeles were of African derivation. Persons with African ancestry made up 20 percent of the population in Spanish California in 1790.24 Mexican settlers constituted a mestizaje population of African, Indian, and European ancestry before entering Alta California. And there emerged yet another variation of José Vasconcelos’s la raza cosmica (cosmic race) from the contact of the Chumash and Mexicans. A Population of Guitar Twangers Immense feudal ranchos emerged under the stewardship of Mexican territorial governors. Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado allocated more than 50 percent of the land grants from 1837 to 1841 in the surrounding area in what is today Ventura County. Eight major ranchos existed on the Oxnard Plain. To the north was Rancho Santa Paula y Saticoy, a rectangular land grant that stretched along the Santa Clara River. Important sites within Rancho Santa Paula y Saticoy consisted of the current towns of Montalvo and Saticoy. Montalvo became a depot of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1880s. Approximately 17,800 acres of land made up Rancho Santa Paula y Saticoy, which Governor Alvarado granted to Manuel Jimeno Casarín in 1830. Rancho Santa Clara del Norte, the second largest on the Oxnard Plain, neighbored Rancho Santa Paula y Saticoy. One-fourth of Rancho Santa Clara del Norte ’s northwestern perimeter paralleled the Santa Clara River. Governor Alvarado granted this land of some 49,000 acres to Juan Sánchez in 1837. On the east side of Rancho Santa Clara del Norte stood Rancho Las Posas. This rancho was granted to José Carrillo in 1834 by Governor José Figueroa and spanned approximately 27,000 acres. The town of Somis within Rancho Las Posas would later become early curious unions

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a major producer of citrus and sugar beets in Ventura County. José de la Guerra y Noriega later obtained Rancho Las Posas and expanded the grant to include 125,000 acres. José Pedro Ruiz owned Rancho Calleguas, just south of Rancho Las Posas. Governor Alvarado granted nearly 10,000 acres to Ruiz. South of Rancho Calleguas existed Rancho Guadalasca. With 30,000 acres of land, this was the third-largest rancho on the Oxnard Plain.25 Opportunities for women of the elite Californiana class expanded during the Mexican era of Alta California. At least sixty-six women became land grantees after 1821, many unmarried and widowed. Others shared land titles with male siblings or close relatives. On the Spanish/Mexican frontier, women maintained control of their belongings after marriage, and all assets accumulated thereafter were community property. Upon the death of her husband, Lieutenant Joaquin Maitorena of Santa Barbara, for example, Isabel Yorba (daughter of María Josefa Grijalva and Antonio Yorba, owner of Rancho Cañada de Santa Ana) petitioned the Mexican territorial government for land near the Santa Barbara presidio and was granted Rancho Guadalasca in 1836 on the former territory of the Muwu. Yorba built a palizada (fenced enclosure) and an adobe home there. Yorba also raised forty horses and five hundred head of cattle. She occupied Rancho Calleguas until 1855, then moved to Santa Barbara and managed the grant on an absentee basis.26 Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia on the Oxnard Plain stood at the center of these nineteenth-century seigniorial grants. Governor Alvarado awarded some 45,000 acres of land in 1837 to eight Mexican soldiers of Santa Barbara — Valentín Cota, Vicente Pico, Rafael Valdez, José María Valenzuela, Vicente Feliz, Leandro Gonzales, Rafael Gonzales, and Salvador Valenzuela — but only Rafael Gonzales lived there. The major geographical and demographic sites of this area consist of what are today the cities of Oxnard, Camarillo, Port Hueneme, and the unincorporated town of El Rio.27 Eighty-four persons resided in the area surrounding the Gonzales adobe on Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia in 1850. Eleven persons — seven males and four females — lived in the Gonzales household. Of the eighty-four people in census site 248 22

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of Ranch El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia, eighty are listed as born in California, two born in Mexico, and, curiously, two born in Ireland.28 Rodeos (cattle roundups), matanzas (the slaughtering of cattle), and hide preparation made up the large majority of labor for commercial export on the Oxnard Plain. Rancheros and their vaqueros from diverse land grants cooperatively rounded up and separated cattle distinguished by their brands. Rodeos took place in the spring and fall on the Oxnard Plain. In an 1884 edition of the Ventura Democrat a journalist provided the following details: Sometimes there were as many as 20,000 cattle gathered on one rodeo ground, and 300 to 400 well-mounted vaqueros guarding and parting out from that vast herd, without creating the least confusion, mishap, or disorder. A general rodeo was always a grand affair, and was attended by cattle owners and vaqueros from near and far. The cattle from distant parts of the range were gathered nearer on the day before the rodeo. And on the morning of the rodeo, from dawn of day until nine in the morning, from every direction long lines of cattle would be seen traveling, in their long surging trot, straight to the rodeo ground, while the loud ringing whoop, whoop, whoop-la of pursuing vaqueros echoed and reechoed in the rear. As soon as cattle and outriders were all in, they were ready to begin work of parting out. The vaqueros work in couples. . . . A single horse-would lasso, throw and tie a wild steer in 10–12 seconds without assistance.29 Rancho Calleguas hosted the largest of the cattle roundups. Vaqueros herded cattle from distant parts of Southern California, such as from Newhall in Los Angeles County.30 After the rodeos, vaqueros embarked upon the bloody matanza. The slaughter took place adjacent to the seashore in order to spare ranch hands the arduous task of disposing of the carcasses; the tide simply carried them out to sea. In the absence of refrigeration, the rancho population consumed or dried a limited proportion of the beef due to the massive number of cattle slaughtered. If a matanza occurred away from shore, dogs and scavengers feasted on the carrion. The hides and tallow were the most valuable early curious unions

23

commodities of the cattle. Ranch hands cured the hides by spreading them on wooden stakes to prevent them from coiling. Rancheros transported the cured hides forty-five miles north to Santa Barbara, where they were sold and loaded onto ships headed south to San Diego to undergo a secondary process of preparation.31 Californianas performed a range of work depending on their class status. While some women cooked, tended to the needs of children, and supervised the work of servants, others rustled cattle and broke untamed horses.32 The rancho economy in Southern California boomed largely due to the gold rush in the north. The entrance of gold seekers from the eastern United States and all over the world created an insatiable demand for beef. The value of one cow for market ranged from ten to twenty dollars, while in the gold fields of the Sacramento region the animal increased in value to fifty dollars. Sixty thousand head of cattle roamed the ranchos of what was then Santa Barbara County.33 The ranchos of California also raised sheep and cultivated subsistence crops. A demand for wool emerged during the U.S. Civil War. During the next decade, seventy-five thousand sheep grazed the plains of the surrounding area and approximately eighteen thousand grazed Rancho Santa Clara del Norte. Even a larger number grazed on the land once consisting of Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia. Along with the cattle and goats, sheep made up much of the diet of the Californios. Other ranchos specialized in the production of wine and brandy.34 The ranchos enjoyed a reputation for throwing elaborate fiestas that lasted several days. Edwin Bryant attended such a fiesta of Juan Sánchez at Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara del Norte. Jefferson Crane, one of the early white migrants in Santa Barbara County, attended the annual fiesta of the patron saint of San Miguel, celebrated on 29 September 1862 at Saticoy. Rancho Calleguas annually sponsored one of the more grandiose rodeos, fandangos, and fiestas. It was at these events that the Californios reinforced their authority. The ranchero and his family received deferential respect in exchange for the sponsorship of the lavish festivities for the enjoyment of fellow elites, townspeople, servants, and vaqueros. The hosts entertained guests with bullfight exhibitions and vaqueros roping, 24

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tying, and branding cattle. One event, in particular, afforded the more youthful caballeros an occasion to exhibit their masculinity and riding talents. In this competition, paired participants raced on horseback to assigned roosters buried in the ground to their necks. The rider who snatched his first won.35 The Nearly Complete Destruction of the Californios A series of forces destroyed the power of the Californios. Legal challenges to rancho titles, bankruptcy related to attorneys’ fees to defend against these sorties, decimating droughts and floods, and debts incurred by taxation and gambling contributed to their decline during the second half of the nineteenth century. The Land Act of 1851, which established a Board of Land Commissioners to settle land claims, dispossessed Californios of 40 percent of their real estate. Mortgage foreclosures in the Santa Barbara region contributed to this end. One descendant of a ranchero lost 75,000 acres of land to a white American lawyer entrusted with the power of attorney. And there was Ygnacio del Valle, who controlled some 48,000 acres near the San Fernando mission but died in 1880 heavily in debt and with only 1,500 acres under his control.36 An account by Richard B. Haydock, a longtime resident of Ventura County and educator in Oxnard, provides a vivid, albeit nostalgic, recollection of the Californios. Haydock recalled that most of the Californios lived humbly in small wood-framed houses, and others lived in immaculately kept dirt-floor adobes. The rancheros continued to barter cattle hides and tallow for manufactured goods to the extent that the hides came to be referred to as “California bank-notes.” Californios, however, found themselves increasingly impoverished. To survive they used a combined system of trade and credit to conduct business with white merchants. Haydock detailed that many Californios paraded around town with “saddles with silver mounting and reins made of platted horse hair. Add to these a gay waistcoat, fancy leggings and silver rowels, and you had a real dandy of a day. The sombrero sometimes cost more than the average man. The women seldom or never wore hats, but all had their mantillas [veils]. The politeness of these people was a lesson to some Americans.”37 early curious unions

25

The landholdings of Mexican ranchers steadily diminished due to debts incurred from the purchase of goods on credit and the combined effects of the destruction of the cattle economy resulting from a decrease in the demand for beef in northern California and the droughts and floods during the 1860s and 1870s. José Gabriel Ruiz, son of José Pedro, sold a large portion of Rancho Calleguas to Juan Camarillo in 1875. A byzantine trail of transfers, claims, counterclaims, and uncertain boundaries defined this sort of transfer of land.38 The ultimate dispossession of Rancho Calleguas into the hands of Juan Camarillo serves as a notable exception to the more common scenario of white Americans appropriating the property of the Californios. Camarillo entered Alta California as a twenty-two-year-old apprentice tailor in the Hijar-Padres expedition of 1834. He married Martina Hernández, the daughter of an administrator at Mission San Luis Rey, and moved his wife and eight children to San Buenaventura in 1857. By 1860 he was one of area’s largest landowners, with more than sixteen thousand acres and ten thousand head of cattle and sheep.39 Camarillo’s ability to augment and bequeath his property to his heirs, while other Californios descended to a state of destitution, enabled his family to remain politically influential well into the twentieth century. This allowed the Camarillo family to enjoy extensive social interaction with white Americans by way of civic engagement and involvement within the Catholic Church. They may have been perceived as relics of a Spanish past, not Mexicans of the present. Thomas Bard, later a U.S. senator from California, felt that one reason why white Americans welcomed the Camarillos into their social group was because of their perceived limited interaction with workingclass Mexicans. White Americans recognized elite Californios as ethnically Spanish — a designation that many Californios themselves welcomed if not embraced. Mexicans who worked for the Camarillos, however — both U.S. citizens and Mexican nationals — were identified as Mexican.40 The Camarillo family used social events to bridge the social and ethnic gap between themselves and the white elites that dominated the Oxnard Plain. Accommodations they made to maintain their influence in an environment 26

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generally antagonistic toward anything Mexican, however, must not be viewed as a cultural betrayal.41 The capacity of families such as the Camarillos to maintain their elite status ought to be examined carefully, as it represents the ability of some Californios, albeit a small number, to negotiate their status in the face of hostile change. And despite Bard’s perception, the Camarillo family maintained close ties with the Mexican community well into the twentieth century through their participation in cultural celebrations, their involvement in the Catholic Church, and their sponsorship of recreational facilities, such as constructing a baseball diamond for working-class Mexicans. The romanticized imaginaries of Bard and Haydock toward the last of the Californios of Ventura County may have been rooted in the fact that these glorified Mexicans did not present a threat to the ever-expanding power of the white American population. As long as the Californios remained few in number, migrant whites could appreciate them as quaint anachronisms and censor the larger history of Mexicans in the state. The propertied status of Californianas provided an avenue for a few opportunistic white migrants to marry and in the process acquire additional Californio land.42 But Californianas were not merely pawns facilitating political and economic alliances between foreigners and their parents. They married foreigners for many reasons: out of love, to elevate or maintain their own social status, to escape an austere frontier environment, or to enjoy a modicum of social mobility. They also married foreigners because there was an insufficient number of Californio suitors. This seems to be a reason why María Teresa de la Guerra y Noriega, daughter of comandante José de la Guerra y Noriega of the Santa Barbara presidio, married William E. P. Hartnell, who was an agent of the John Begg and Company in the trade of cattle hides and tallow. This union would produce eighteen children.43 The ruin of the Oxnard Plain rancho economy began with the drought that hit Southern California in the 1860s, which reduced Ventura County’s cattle herd by 97 percent. Even before then, seasonal rains did not saturate the land sufficiently to germinate the needed acreage of grasslands for an expanding economy of cattle and sheep. The ecological crisis became so early curious unions

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extreme that in 1862 only two thousand head of cattle out of sixty thousand survived on Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara del Norte, owned by the Sánchez family.44 As this occurred, rancheros found themselves unsustainably leveraged financially from a combination of assessed taxes on their real property and various forms of debt. To pay these obligations, Californios obtained further credit secured by their land. Many mortgaged each acre of land for twenty-five cents at a compounded monthly rate of 5 percent. These forces sealed the fate of the Californios.45 Mexican rancheros also found themselves defending their real property before the Board of Land Commissioners established under the Land Act of 1851 amid the rising presence of white settlers in California. Verifying land grants proved difficult. Many diseños (maps) that detailed the land grants used impermanent markers such as trees, river bends, hills, and rock formations to describe the boundaries of a land grant. In other instances there were no diseños. The board and the District Court of Appeals upheld three-quarters of the land grant titles, but the debt incurred during the protracted litigation, which lasted an average of seventeen years, ultimately resulted in the in-kind transfer of Californio real property to white lawyers. And rancho land that could not be defended was deemed public domain. Despite these issues, all the Californio rancheros on the Oxnard Plain found their grants confirmed or officially deeded by the 1870s.46 One of the more enterprising ranchos on the Oxnard Plain was Rancho Calleguas, which was owned and managed by Juan Camarillo and his son Adolfo. They leased and sharecropped the land to farmers, and Adolfo also experimented with specialty crops such as lima beans. He became so successful in the production of lima beans that he spearheaded a movement that led to the organization of the Oxnard Lima Bean Association by the turn of the century.47 Most Californios on the Oxnard Plain, however, did not experience the success of the Camarillos. Federico and Antonio Schiappapietra of Genoa, Italy, for example, took over a parcel of Rancho Santa Clara del Norte from Juan Sánchez in 1864 when he could not settle a debt of five thousand dollars. The Schiappapietra brothers demanded that the debt be 28

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paid in cash, not in kind, and took possession of the property after a local bank refused to take over the debt secured by the land. The Schiappapietra brothers owned twelve thousand acres of Rancho Santa Clara del Norte.48 The Coup de Grâce of the Californios The presence of white Americans added to the problems of Californios. Land-hungry squatters coveted rancho real estate and formed associations to claim land they deemed unoccupied. One of the more prominent cases of the Oxnard Plain involved, ironically, future senator Bard, who managed the real estate of Pennsylvania oil and railroad magnate Thomas A. Scott on the former Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia as of 1871. Noise over the land arose during the 1870s and 1880s as squatters claimed the land owned by Scott.49 By the 1870s, foreign merchants and white Americans increasingly began to enter the area, many from the Midwest. They were ethnically French, German, Irish, Italian, Swiss, and Portuguese, and religiously Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Jewish. The forces that promoted their entrance to Ventura County varied. Many were elderly and infirm seeking refuge in California’s temperate climate. Others ventured in from Georgia, Texas, and Oklahoma to escape the oppressive system of the crop lien. Another contingent simply tired of the bitter-cold winters of the Midwest. The emergent population of Oxnard took on the general character of the larger region of Southern California: “old stock” Americans with northern and western European origins viewed the Irish (Catholics, particularly), Italians, Greeks, Jews, and other immigrants from southern and eastern Europe as undesirable. On the West Coast, however, these “new” immigrants obtained the racial status of being white in the context of the increasing presence of Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, and subsequent Asian immigrants.50 Land speculators and representatives of oil industrialists also filtered into the area of Santa Barbara County in the 1860s. Levi Parsons — Thomas A. Scott’s attorney — who had a reputation as the “wiliest of all the legal carnivores,” orchestrated a series of land-grant purchases on the Oxnard Plain by 1864. He employed methods of legal intimidation to force early curious unions

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Ventura County Californios to surrender their land. Parsons strong-armed Juan Camarillo into selling 17,717 acres of Rancho Calleguas for $17,754 on 12 September of that year. Parsons and his team of lawyers acquired chunks of Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia and Rancho Las Posas just before the national financial panic of 1865. Parsons then deeded and patented these purchases, which totaled eighty-one thousand acres, in Scott’s name. Accurate and detailed surveys of these purchases did not exist at the time. This led to protracted legal disputes over boundaries, which would not be settled until Bard himself surveyed the property.51 Bard speculated and leased Scott’s property on the Oxnard Plain with the power of attorney to manage and sell land at a lucrative 5 percent commission. Michael Kaufman purchased 160 acres, at twelve dollars an acre, on the former Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia in November 1868. John D. Patterson, a former New York farmer, purchased five thousand acres of that rancho at eight dollars an acre. Land not immediately sold was leased to sheepherders at a yearly rate of twelve cents per head. This enabled Bard to pay the tax assessments on the property.52 The 1860s was a period of transition in the decline of the Californios on the Oxnard Plain, at least for the few that survived. Richard Haydock, principal of the Oxnard grammar school in the early twentieth century, recalled that the cattle and sheep business continued to be a central component of the plain’s economy up through the 1870s. Land-hungry settlers took over with the public auction of sixteen thousand acres of Rancho El Rio Santa Clara O La Colonia between 1882 and 1888. Bard negotiated a reduced passage rate with the Pacific Coast Steamship Company in order to market this property to white Americans. This ignited a real estate boom. The auction of land took place in the Hueneme Public Hall and launched a demand for new homes to accommodate the tide of migrants; one-half million feet of lumber from Puget Sound would be imported to house them.53 A Curious Demographic Landscape Since the early years of the California gold rush, whites migrated into Southern California from the northern centers of Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Jose. They initially arrived at San Buenaventura and other 30

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areas in what was then Santa Barbara County. Those from Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa began their westward trek along the Santa Fe, Oregon, and Mormon Trails. Others originated from the northeastern states during the 1850s. Argonauts traveled on government-subsidized U.S. Mail and the Pacific Mail steamship companies down the Atlantic coast, then across the Panama Isthmus to the Pacific to board vessels to San Francisco. Other sea travelers circumnavigated Cape Horn.54 The production of grain dominated the area’s economy as white farmers settled the Oxnard Plain. They hauled barley and corn on wagons pulled by teams of eight to ten horses to Bard’s wharf at Hueneme to be shipped to San Francisco. Schooners charged $1.50 to $1.80 per ton to transport these crops northward, while steamships charged $2.50 per ton to the same destination due to their more expedient service. By 1888, Port Hueneme shipped 508,118 sacks of barley on 236 ships annually.55 The first land boom on the Oxnard Plain, between 1868 and 1876, began with the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Other latenineteenth-century migrants entered the area by way of the stagecoach line of Flint, Bixby, and Company and a steamship that docked at the Ventura wharf. Settlers from outside the state transformed the plain’s economy to a market-oriented system of agricultural production. James Connelly and Lawrence Greenwood cultivated hops and malt for the brewing of beer. Christian Borchard began to plant mustard seed. Others cultivated barley and attempted to grow wheat. However, wheat production proved ineffective due to rust caused by the damp and cool climate of the Oxnard Plain. Nathaniel H. Blanchard organized the incorporation of the Limoneira Ranch in the nearby town of Santa Paula, which specialized in the production of citrus.56 In 1873 the townships of Ventura, Saticoy, and Hueneme seceded from Santa Barbara County and formed Ventura County. Bard and William D. Hobson spearheaded this movement. Ventura County boosters distributed literature to the Midwest and East to lure settlers. Charles F. Outland listed various brochures and pamphlets with titles such as “Pen Pictures of Ventura County, California: Its Beauties, Resources, and Capacities”; “Homes, Health, and Pleasures in Southern California”; “Ventura County California: Its Resources, Etc., Etc.”; early curious unions

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“Ventura Development Association”; and “Homeseekers and Tourists’ Guide and Ventura County Directory.” The first three of these tracts were published between 1880 and 1885, the last two in 1888 and 1898.57 A second population boom in the region occurred during a price war between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe in the late 1880s. The competition between the two lines was cutthroat. Passenger fares to Southern California fell as low as a dollar per ticket, and the railroad hired journalists such as Charles Nordhoff to create promotional literature. Romantic portrayals of Southern California by Nordhoff ’s 1871 publication, California: For Health, Leisure, and Residence, and by Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona (1884) elevated boosterism to new heights. Developer George Walden named the town of Montalvo (between the present cities of Oxnard and Ventura) after Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo, the Spanish novelist who authored the early-sixteenth-century romantic novel Las Sergas de Esplandián. This demonstrates the central role that the Spanish and rancho mystique played in the promotion of Ventura County real estate.58 Land tenure on the Oxnard Plain varied in size and form, and individual landholding decreased overall as additional white migrants entered the area. This became the case with the cultivation of specialty crops such as sugar beets, lima beans, and later citrus. The competitive character of commercial agriculture influenced growers to rationalize production to survive and expand. Census data for Ventura County indicate that from 1860 to 1940 a smaller proportion of farmers worked more than 100 acres of land. Eighty-four percent (376 farmers) cultivated more than 100 acres of land after the virtually complete elimination of Mexican ranchos by the 1880s. In 1890 only 58 percent (444 farmers) did so. And by 1900, 55 percent (698 farmers) tilled more than 100 acres. Ten years later only 51 percent (660 farmers) cultivated more than 100 acres of land. As the cultivation of land in Ventura County expanded — explaining the real growth in the number of growers that cultivated more than 100 acres of land — proportionately fewer growers were involved.59 With smaller plots of cultivated land increasing in number there also emerged a significant segment of tenant farmers between 1900 to 1910. 32

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In 1880, for example, 61 percent (347 out of 573) of farmers in the county owned land; the other 39 percent (226) participated in some variation of tenancy. Ten years later, 71 percent (553 out of 779 farmers) of the land in the area was owned, while 29 percent (226) was occupied by tenants. In 1900, 49 percent (553 out of 1,141) of ranches were owned entirely by one person, while 18 percent of ranchers (208) were part-owners of land, and 33 percent (380) of farmers were either tenants or managers of land. And in 1910, 69 percent (895 out of 1,293) of ranchers owned their land, while 31 percent (398) were either renters or managers of land (see table 1).60 With these variable forms of land tenure there developed a nuanced tenant system of commercialized agriculture challenging the Jeffersonian myth of the solitary white household tilling the land. Table 1. Land tenure YEAR

LAND OWNERS

TENANT FARMERS

PART OWNERS

1880

347 (61%)

226 (39%)

573

1890

553 (71%)

226 (29%)

779

1900

553 (49%)

1910

895 (69%)

208 (18%)

TENANTS/MANAGERS

TOTAL

380 (33%) 1,141 398 (31%) 1,293

Data in the 1940 census list five variations of tenancy within Ventura County from 1880 to 1910: part-owner, money-renter, share-renter, sharecash, and manager.61 Individuals designated as part-owner owned land but also rented additional acreage to augment their crop production or to graze livestock. Money-rent tenants paid cash up front or on a month-to-month basis to use land owned by another. Share-rent and share-cash tenants, on the other hand, operated similarly to sharecroppers of the South. At the end of a season, depending on the crop, share-rent tenants set aside onequarter to one-third of a harvest for the landowner as payment for the use of the land. Share-cash renters, on the other hand, settled their financial obligations with the profits obtained from the selling of crops, in most instances tree fruit. Managers, on the other hand, operated and cultivated crops on behalf of corporate landowners or investment companies.62 early curious unions

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Available census data provide limited demographic information regarding farmers in Santa Barbara County. For example, the 1880 census mentions the existence of 713 farmers irrespective to ownership or tenancy. Information for the 1890 census is not available, while for the 1900 census the government counted 1,149 farmers, of whom 1,139 were listed as white and 10 as “colored.” Ten years later the total number of farmers in the county had risen to 1,293, of which 965 were designated as native-born whites, 307 were foreign-born white farmers, and 21 were Negro or other than white.63 In 1871, growers organized into the Santa Clara Irrigation Company (scic ) to facilitate the expansion of a market-oriented agricultural economy on the Oxnard Plain. The scic dredged a twelve-mile channel to transport water from the Santa Clara River to the fields of Hueneme. Previously, farmers had obtained water largely from artesian wells. Bard also constructed a deep-water wharf at Point Hueneme, the largest shipping site between San Pedro to the southeast and Santa Cruz to the northwest.64 He also subdivided land on the plain — originally purchased in anticipation of exploiting subterranean oil reserves — to sell to individuals such as Jacob Gries, Peter Donlon, William T. Rice, and James Saviers. These settlers joined other enterprising growers who had previously cultivated land under the control of the federal government up to 1867, individuals such as Christian and Johannes Borchard, Jacob and Gottfried Maulhardt, James Leonard, John G. Hill, and Dominick McGrath. The lack of irrigation and lumber, however, inhibited a larger influx of migrants not only to the Oxnard Plain but to other areas of the county as well. This began to change, however, with the establishment of the scic and a Southern Pacific depot at Montalvo in 1887.65 Growers eager to take advantage of access to national markets experimented with the production of oranges, lemons, apricots, walnuts, and other specialty crops from the 1880s to the turn of the century. The entrance of the railroad and the invention of refrigerated railcars made this possible. Orange production proved futile due to the Oxnard Plain’s frigid climate, but lemons of the Eureka variety proved profitable. Area growers also attempted to cultivate sugarcane, but the low sugar content of this plant 34

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on the plain made it unsuitable. Viticulture, however, was relatively successful on Rancho El Rio Del Norte.66 Areas in the West with sandy loam soil, such as that on the Oxnard Plain, adopted a highly capitalized form of agricultural as the end of the nineteenth century approached: sugar beets. Sweet Unions In 1870, Ebenezer H. Dyer established the United States’ first commercial sugar beet factory at Alvarado, California, and by the end of the century it led the nation in sugar beet production. Eighteen years later, Claus Spreckels constructed and operated the largest producing beet sugar factory at Watsonville, California. Then Henry and Robert Oxnard created the Chino Valley Beet Sugar Company in 1891, later renamed the American Beet Sugar Company (absc ).67 With their monstrous brick buildings, bellowing smokestacks, and network of railroad lines to import and export materials and sugar, these factories symbolized the rise of modern, industrialized food processing. In early 1889 the Hueneme Herald promoted the idea of producing sugar beets on the Oxnard Plain, extolling the “loose loamy soil” that, in its opinion, required no irrigation. The newspaper went on to inform area farmers of Claus Spreckels’s prize of $1,000, which would go to the planter who produced the most tonnage of sugar beets from one hundred acres of land. Spreckels also promised a $250 premium to the person who produced the largest tonnage of sugar beets from ten acres. He offered to send experimental seeds and a chemist to analyze the soil to entice Oxnard Plain farmers. After the harvest, Spreckels planned to perform trials determining their sugar content. Further interest in the production of sugar beets emerged as the Herald announced that Spreckels envisioned the construction of ten additional plants in California. Growers throughout the state imagined hefty profits from a potential sugar beet bonanza.68 The availability of sixty thousand acres of fecund sandy loam soil made the Oxnard Plain an excellent site to cultivate sugar beets and establish a refinery. Artesian wells and the scic irrigation system already existed to provide the water to facilitate the production of this new crop.69 Henry Oxnard and his brothers Benjamin, James, and Robert were sugar beet early curious unions

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magnates with factories in New York and Louisiana and had expanded the operations of the Oxnard Beet Sugar Company in California, Colorado, and Nebraska. The father of the Oxnard brothers, Thomas, had been a sugar refiner in Boston and was married to Louise Adeline Brown, the daughter of a Louisiana sugar planter. Henry, a Harvard graduate and the business leader of his brothers, recognized a lucrative opportunity as he learned that the United States imported more than 100 million dollars’ worth of sugar each year. He toured Austria, France, and Germany to study the methods of European sugar producers. Ninety percent of the equipment for the Oxnard brothers’ refinery in Grand Island, Nebraska, came from Europe.70 Intrigued by Spreckels’s gargantuan operations in northern California, Henry hired European experts in the production and refinement of beet sugar and purchased state-of-the-art technology to narrow Spreckels’s lead. The Oxnard Beet Sugar Company went as far as to create facilities to train personnel on the science of sugar beet production. Henry also lobbied Congress, with the support of the Department of Agricultural, to exempt the importation of sugar beet seeds and refinery technologies from duties. And he was a cunning promoter; he earned a reputation as being the “smoothest” lobbyist in Washington dc .71 The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which sought to diversify the nation’s economy, hard hit by a depression in the 1890s, believed communities would benefit from the ripple effects of the production, refinement, and distribution of beet sugar. The department also viewed sugar beets not only as a commodity but as a crop whose by-products of pulp, tops, and molasses could be used to fatten cattle. The remaining roots of the sugar beets also helped to regenerate the fertility of the soil. For the Department of Agriculture, the promotion of the sugar beet industry was a means to modernize the agricultural economy. The consolidation of production would professionalize the workforce.72 In 1896, Henry Oxnard, as president of the absc , spoke before the House Ways and Means Committee to obtain enhanced support for the nation’s inchoate sugar beet industry. He desired for the industry the marriage of private interests with public subsidies — a central partnership 36

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of an emergent agricultural industrial complex. Oxnard emphasized the advantage that European sugar producers, particularly those in Germany, enjoyed in experience, government protection and rewards, technological advancement, and low-cost, fluid labor. Oxnard pressed the committee to institute higher protections and subsidies, in the form of monetary bounties, to allow American sugar producers to bloom and eventually meet the nation’s craving for sugar. Oxnard directed the committee’s attention to data that demonstrated the United States’ annual consumption of over 2 million tons of sugar, more than 1.7 million tons of which was imported. Oxnard declared that domestic producers needed to construct 920 new factories to meet the nation’s demand for sugar. He characterized this as “the great national object.” But the United States faced a steep curve relative to the long history of sugar beet production in Europe and other parts of the globe. To advance the competitiveness of U.S. sugar beet producers, Oxnard encouraged the adoption of federal policies that matched the export bounties and import tariff protections that European nations extended to its producers. Oxnard also testified regarding how sugar refiners needed to educate farmers on the methods and means to produce quality sugar beets.73 The need for domestic sugar producers to pull alongside their European rivals was made more urgent as sugar consumption in the United States steadily rose. After the Civil War the annual per capita sugar consumption of Americans stood at nearly twenty-nine pounds. By 1896 this had doubled, to sixty-eight pounds, as the population acquired a sweet tooth for sweet baked foods, soft drinks, spirits, and pharmaceuticals. A special congressional report in 1898 characterized the consumption of sugar as an indicator of a nation’s sociopolitical advancement on the world stage.74 While Oxnard Plain growers concentrated on the production of sugar beets, the federal government, under heavy pressure from sugar beet refiners — particularly Henry Oxnard, who came to be called the “Sugar King” — instituted a two-cent protective duty on every pound of imported sugar, accompanied by a two-cent subsidy for each pound domestically produced. This was in addition to state government tax exemptions that already existed. The federal government maintained protections on domestic sugar from 1890 to 1909, although the bounties fluctuated with the political early curious unions

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winds in Washington dc . One of the most significant developments in the rise of U.S. sugar beet production resulted from the Dingley Tariff of 1897, which placed a seventy-eight-cent ad valorem duty on foreign sugar, thereby creating high demand for domestically produced sugar.75 Consumer demand and the lucrative character of domestically produced refined sugar served as the backdrop for the economic development of what would become the city of Oxnard after 1898. Although it is often noted that the Dingley Tariff served as the impetus that accelerated U.S. sugar beet production, the industry boomed due to a variety of factors: imported technologies, the recruitment of a steady labor force, previous government protections and subsidies in the form of tariffs and bounties (both at the federal and state level), and the determination of sugar magnates to meet the demand of a growing population and realize enormous financial gains.76 Companies such as the absc found it necessary not only to lobby Congress for protection and rewards but also to persuade landowners to devote their resources to the production of sugar beets. Many were hesitant to do this due to the intensive labor required for the cultivation and harvest of this crop. After plowing and planting sugar beet seeds, for example, workers (men, women, and children) kneeled and stooped over each row, acre by acre, blocking (spacing) out clusters of seedlings with the use of the notorious short-handle hoe. Field workers later thinned each sugar beet cluster to allow only the largest to flourish, which maximized the sugar content of each plant. Workers then stooped over each row with the short-handle hoe, at least three more times before the harvest, to remove weeds. They loosened the soil after the crop matured to pull the enormous carrot-shaped sugar beets from the ground, topped the crowns with bayonet-like knives, and tossed them onto wagons headed to the refinery. Each phase involved ten- to twelve-hour days of fast-paced work. Women and children as young as six years old joined men in all stages.77 César Chávez, founder of the United Farmer Workers Union, harbored bitter memories of his family’s slog in the sugar beet fields of California. Sugar beet thinning, in particular, he described as “the worst kind of backbreaking job.”78 38

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Fig. 1. Two sugar beet workers hoeing a field, pictured with a child. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County.

Fig. 2. Mexican women and children residents at a sugar beet ranch. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County.

Fig. 3. Betabeleros thinning on hands and knees. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County.

To convince landowners to enter into this curious union, sugar beet magnates promised to recruit and supply the needed workers. The sugar refineries contracted with railway companies to transport workers from El Paso at a rate of $9.50 for each adult (equivalent to $217 in 2011). The absc sent recruiters to Mexico in places such as Piedras Negras, Coahuila, to encourage people to immigrate to the United States to work in the fields of the betabel (sugar beet). In one extreme instance, a recruiter for the Spreckels company raided the forces of Venustiano Carranza amid the ravages of the Mexican Revolution to obtain sugar beet workers. Refiners such as the absc dispatched scientific and technological advisers, as well as labor agents, to ensure the steady and maximum production of sugar beets.79 The Plain Connection In the mid-1870s, prior to the introduction of the sugar beet, Oxnard Plain farmers began experimenting with lima beans, which proved successful and continued to be an essential crop until the second half of the twentieth century. Lima beans continued to thrive as growers discovered how quickly sugar beets exhausted the soil of nitrogen. So they rotated the planting of lima beans to regenerate the sandy loam earth. But the lima been proved to be alkali sensitive, forcing farmers to use barley as an additional rotation crop. Growers also allowed cattle ranchers to graze their herds on the beet tops left in the fields after a harvest in order for the cow dung to fertilize the soil. The absc factory moreover developed a cocktail from the by-product of beet molasses and pulp to be sold to cattle ranchers to fatten their livestock.80 The plain’s agricultural community closely monitored the actions of Henry Oxnard not only in relation to the absc ’s operations in Chino but also regarding his steady influence in Congress for policy protections and rewards for the production of domestically refined sugar. The Southern California community was also alerted to Spreckels’s interest in establishing a refining factory on the plain. Spreckels and Oxnard separately sent teams of technicians to analyze the plain’s soil. They learned that sugar beets grown in Ventura County exceeded the sugar content of sugar beets early curious unions

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grown in other parts of the state. Prior to the establishment of a factory in the area, farmers had formed the Ventura County Sugar Beet Association, which encouraged other landowners to commit to the production of some ten thousand acres of sugar beets to guarantee the establishment of a factory on what would become known as the Oxnard Plain.81 The attractiveness of bringing in a sugar beet refinery stemmed partially from the weakened profitability of lima beans and other agricultural products due to the economic depression of the late 1890s. The absc factory in Chino contracted with Ventura County landowners by January 1897 to produce sugar beets on two thousand acres. This, perhaps, piqued Spreckels’s interest in the sixty thousand acres of land in the Hueneme area and led him to find out if farmers would commit to growing ten thousand acres of sugar beets. He proposed building a state-of-the-art factory in this site if they agreed. Marion Cannon, president of the Ventura County Sugar Beet Association, declared that a conservative estimate indicated that such a factory would elevate Ventura County sugar beet value by $1 million.82 The Los Angeles Times viewed the creation of sugar beet factories and farms in Southern California as a boon to the economy. The newspaper also favored sugar beets in “providing speedy and remunerative income to farmers of small means” unable to wait several years for budding orchards to produce fruit.83 Albert Maulhardt, Johannes Borchard, and Thomas Bard courted the Oxnard brothers for several days in Los Angeles to establish a sugar beet factory on the Oxnard Plain. Their effort proved successful, and on 4 November 1897 the Los Angeles Times reported the absc ’s decision to fast-track the construction of a refinery in the Santa Clara Valley, later to be known as the Oxnard Plain. For years, Maulhardt, “the principal enthusiast,” had encouraged landowners in the area to commit to the production of sugar beets. He, Borchard, and Bard promised the absc the devotion of ten thousand acres to the cultivation of sugar beets for five consecutive years and to sell the beets at $3.25 a ton — 25 cents below the price paid to farmers in Chino. The concession of a lower price per ton was to encourage the creation of the factory site there, at a cost of $200,000 to area growers over a five-year period. They also promised the 44

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absc one hundred acres for the factory site a few miles from Hueneme’s central district. The Southern Pacific Railroad also agreed to construct a spur line to the factory from Montalvo. Sugar beet farmers would transport their harvest by way of wagons to the Montalvo railway station for transport to the Chino factory while the factory and the spur line were being constructed. Excited by the deal, the Times reported a capital investment of $2.5 million in the construction of the proposed refinery, which would process two thousand tons of sugar beets daily. The venture would employ one thousand persons in the factory and another one thousand to fifteen hundred in the fields.84 Charles Etting extended to Henry Oxnard the option of buying four thousand of his eight thousand acres of farmland to solidify this curious union of local growers with the absc . And Thomas Rice agreed to sell one hundred acres to Oxnard for the factory site for $25,000. Area growers arranged to reimburse Oxnard for his purchase of the land overtime by having ten cents deducted from each ton of sugar beets contracted between them and the absc .85 It was a sweet deal. As of 1897, the average annual yield of sugar beets per acre stood at 13.5 tons, which translated to a profit of $48.35 per acre (equivalent to approximately $1,000 per acre in 2011 dollars) at the agreed-upon $3.25 per ton. By 1900 that profit would increase to $59.01. The positive results in the production of sugar beets convinced the company to purchase 175 acres on the east side of Saviers Road for its refinery and an additional 3,000 acres in the eastern outlying area of Pleasant Valley to ensure that additional land would be devoted to the growing of sugar beets.86 The Oxnard brothers initially negotiated with Bard to establish the factory at Hueneme to facilitate the transportation of refined sugar to market by sea. Access to the rail system of the Southern Pacific by way of a spur line constructed concurrently with the factory apparently convinced Henry Oxnard to locate the factory away from the Hueneme site and on subdivided land of the former Rancho Santa Clara O La Colonia, previously owned by Aranetta and John G. Hill. The absc factory led to the boom of the eventual city of Oxnard, making it the economic locus point of the county. The company then prepared farmers to produce the early curious unions

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required sugar beet harvest to supply the plant. L. Hache, superintendent of contracts for the absc , notified them that ten thousand acres of sugar beets would be necessary for the year 1898. And the Oxnard brothers transferred Chino factory manager Major James Alexander Driffill (a Pomona orange grower, originally from Rochester, New York) to Ventura County to manage the new facility.87 But the state-of-the-art sugar beet refinery would not be an isolated enterprise on Ventura County’s coastal plain. Henry Oxnard and Aranetta Hill incorporated the Colonia Improvement Company (cic ) to promote the integrated interests of the absc and provide the required infrastructural support. This entailed the construction of homes for a segmented labor force, roads, utilities, public services, and enterprises related to real estate. Combined, the two controlled 1,241 of 1,500 shares of stock. The cic purchased three hundred acres adjacent to the refinery site to serve as the headquarters of this emerging company town. After his arrival, Driffill would not only head the cic as its president but also serve as the director of the First National Bank of Oxnard and found the Oxnard Light and Water Company and the Oxnard Publishing Company.88 The absc factory was completed in 1898. However, because of a drought in 1898 that inhibited the harvest of a sufficiently large crop of sugar beets, the processing of sugar beets did not commence until 1899. Company officials extolled the new factory’s importance nonetheless. Of the eight beet sugar refining plants in Southern California, the Oxnard factory had the largest processing capacity, at 2,000 tons of beets a day.89 And in 1902, when the factory processed 250,000 tons of sugar beets from within and outside Ventura County, Ella Enderlain in Sunset magazine touted the company’s contribution to the economy. She reported that this production translated to $1.5 million (equivalent to more than $4.1 million in 2011) for growers and another half million for the industry’s employees. Enderlain declared that in four years this factory in the fields had created “a bustling, thriving commercial little city.”90 This was prophetic, as the sugar beet factory attracted a cross-cultural mix of people from different parts of the country and world. 46

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Fig. 4. The absc factory in Oxnard, circa 1915. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County.

Fig. 5. The Oxnard brothers, James, Robert, Henry, and Benjamin, in 1918. Courtesy of the City of Oxnard, Oxnard Public Library.

Interaction with people from within and outside the Oxnard Plain influenced the economic and cultural development of four civilizations. Different forms of exchange that involved the use of poncos, religion, hide and tallow, or specialty crops such as sugar beets altered the social structure of the Muwu, Spanish, Mexicans, and Anglo Americans. Cultural and social change was directly linked to the economic transformations of this region. In relation to the sugar beet industry, chapter 2 will examine social and occupational structures in Oxnard from the turn of the century to the late 1930s.

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2 THE (R E)C R E AT IO N OF C O M M U N IT Y

Landowners transferred thousands of acres of land to the American Beet Sugar Company after Henry Oxnard finalized an agreement with the plain’s leading landowners to unite in the production of sugar beets. Tracts of land sold continued to be identified as Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia. And Mexicans experienced new levels of deterritorialization with the sale of each subdivision of the former rancho. The entrance of the sugar beet industry tilled over the Mexican community’s historical presence. Oxnard’s attorneys worked feverishly in the submission of deeds to the county’s records office in the transfer of land within and outside the city eventually named after him. Charles Etting, for example, sold nearly three thousand of his eight thousand acres to Oxnard. Other landowners who did the same positioned themselves to profit from the imminent boom. In fact, the community’s “first house” served as a real estate office to market 25-by-110-foot business lots.1 The absc takeover of the former Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia reshaped the makeup of the population and determined where and how the residents of Oxnard functioned for much of the first half of the twentieth century. Henry Oxnard was the principal stock owner of the Colonia Improvement Company and the Oxnard Construction Company, so Oxnard was a company town in every sense. The managers 49

and growers of the sugar beet industry, moreover, determined the norms of the community that governed the de jure and de facto social relations. The hegemony of the absc eclipsed the institutions of the Mexican community that had survived since the Mexican-American War. But these institutions were resuscitated as the absc of Ventura County attracted Mexicans from within and outside the nation. And the subsequent demand for housing, industrial buildings, services, and agricultural production attracted a diverse labor pool. Mexican agricultural workers on the plain negotiated their circumstance in the betabel economy with the promotion of cultural celebrations, the creation of organizations, and the control of space in the face of phantasmagoric transformation. And as the sugar beet industry integrated Mexicans into the economy it simultaneously segregated them in employment and residency. However, this was not accomplished without subtle and overt resistance. A polyglot of petit entrepreneurs established businesses — including bootlegging during Prohibition, the sex trade, and narcotics — that serviced both migrant workers and permanent Asian, black, white, and Mexican residents. This cross-cultural population, however, did not devote its entire existence to toil. Groups within the city created social bodies that strengthened their sense of community, and mutual aid and auxiliary organizations served as mediators to the larger population. People in Oxnard — and Mexicans in particular, whose lives became largely defined by the work they performed — organized formally and informally to reinforce protective bonds that enabled them to create curious unions with others. Mutual aid and auxiliary organizations also promoted a collective confidence in the Mexican community that allowed its leaders to create partnerships, albeit many times unequal, with the extant captains of the sugar beet industry. Integrated cultural events advanced a fantasy of communal harmony. Mexican leaders promoted networks in the sponsorship of community events that alleviated the realities of an industrial environment and assuaged the consciences of exploitive elites. This sense of tolerance served a purpose, especially for those who invested heavily in the agricultural economy. absc officials, ranchers, and municipal leaders, for example, understood the 50

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critical value of the stable presence of a more exploitable and less expensive non-white labor force to the city’s flourishing sugar beet economy. The first part of this chapter details the occupational opportunities of the Oxnard Plain’s subordinated Asian and Mexican populations. The second part examines how many of these workers established institutions that allowed them to forge a sense of community in a new city. The absc ’s presence created an instant demographic and economic boom in Ventura County and ignited a demand for homes. To address the shortage, structures were imported from other parts of the county atop wagons pulled by teams of horses. Three homes were imported from Hueneme and seven from Saticoy, a school arrived from Pleasant Valley, and Jack Hill relocated an old barn from Montalvo to the plaza district of Oxnard to be converted into a three-story boardinghouse. Hill also constructed the first residence, which doubled as a real estate office. With the expansion in the city’s population, Christian churches and Buddhist temples began to dot the landscape. Parishioners transported a Presbyterian church from Saticoy and a Methodist church from El Rio (more popularly known as New Jerusalem in the early twentieth century), and a congregation of Baptists worshipped in a decommissioned railroad car of the Southern Pacific.2 absc officials, with the aid of the Oxnard Courier as their surrogate voice, promoted the factory’s successful operation as synonymous with the interests of the city, and convinced Ventura County–area residents to literally buy into the development of the sugar beet industry: what was good for the absc was good for the city of Oxnard. Boosters advertised commercial lots of 110 by 140 feet that ranged in price from $300 to $500 each. Residential lots of 50 by 140 feet cost from $250 to $350. The Colonia Improvement Company aggressively marketed the town to potential businesses, home buyers, and investors.3 Oxnard Orientalism Many residents of Ventura County entered as laborers of the Southern Pacific Railroad during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chinese, white ethnics, Japanese, and Mexicans left the arduous life of the (re)creation of community

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Fig. 6. absc Chinese cooks having lunch. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County.

railroad construction to settle in the land of sugar beets. They worked as bricklayers in the construction of the absc factory or as employees within the walls of the new refinery. Asian residents of the early century found themselves excluded from employment in the absc factory. Many Chinese males worked as cooks to feed ranch hands on the Oxnard Plain. Others, as well as Japanese, leased land to grow truck vegetable crops and sugar beets. Another segment established grocery stores and businesses that catered to the needs of compatriots and of the larger community. Chinese, East Indian, and Japanese men performed much of the cultivation and harvesting of barley, lima beans, and sugar beets on the plain prior to the entrance of a significant number of Mexican immigrant workers by the first decade of the twentieth century. Growers of these crops ventured into the downtown Chinese ethnic enclave of China Alley to recruit farmworkers.4 In March 1922 the Oxnard Daily Courier found it newsworthy to report on the hundreds of Asian and Mexican sugar beet workers segregated within and outside the city with the arrival of the harvest season. It recognized the collateral economic benefits of this migration when it noted that “the wages they make are spent in making times good in the city.”5 East Indian single men also labored in the sugar beet and lima bean fields of Ventura County during the early part of the century. Approximately sixty-eight hundred resided within the western United States between 1899 and 1914. Olen Adams worked on the Thompson ranch in Ventura as a ten-year-old boy. Paid “two bits,” or twenty-five cents, more per day than East Indian lima bean hoers and pilers, the young Adams was instructed to stay ahead of them and set a regular pace of work. The landowner’s regimentation of the labor of East Indian men by hiring a child provides a glimpse into an intriguing dynamic. It illustrates the resistance of East Indian workers to the intensity of agricultural labor, in this case the hoeing and piling of lima beans. And, perhaps, aware of this work deceleration, growers and their overseers implemented a method to measure the rate of performance of their wage laborers. The utilization of a white ten-year-old boy also implies that employers found field work degrading to the status of adult white males. The Thompson ranch paid twenty-five cents extra to the (re)creation of community

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the young Olen Adams to lead this crew of hoers and pilers. Apparently, the labor of a white child had higher social and economic value than that of grown East Indian men.6 Chinese laborers cultivated and harvested the crops on the Oxnard Plain for much of the late nineteenth century. But East Indian farmworkers became increasingly critical to growers as the Chinese population contracted in size due to the combined effects of natural deaths of this predominantly male society and the prohibition of Chinese immigration by way of the Chinese Exclusion Acts. One farmer estimated the population of East Indians in Oxnard at one thousand between 1905 and 1920.7 When access to a non-white group of agricultural laborers no longer met the demands of growers they were simply replaced by another. This was the cyclic practice of California. Ventura County growers imported Pala Indians from the Sherman Institute in Riverside (similar to the “outing” program conceived by Richard Henry Pratt, superintendent of the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, to assimilate Native American Indians). Lima bean growers also relied upon a ready supply of white migrant laborers who camped in “hobo jungles” on the eastern margin of the city, under eucalyptus windbreaks that paralleled the tracks of the Southern Pacific on Fifth Street. The labor agents of growers hired men from these “hobo jungles” prior to the mechanization of agriculture. The harvest of lima beans lasted anywhere from thirty to forty days, and growers refused to establish any sort of housing for field workers during this period. Officials and residents, however, tolerated the presence of “hoboes” for the period in which the agricultural industry required their labor. Afterward, the Oxnard police embarked on systematic campaigns to run out white migrant workers from the city’s limits. Similar to the sentiment in relation to Mexican migrant laborers, ranchers held the attitude toward “hoboes” that “When we want you, we ’ll call you; when we don’t — git.”8 The mechanization of agriculture diminished the need for a lumpen population of white agricultural workers. It also produced a more salient division between what was considered fitting employment for white males and for non-whites (Asians and Mexicans predominantly). As machinery 54

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began to play a larger role in Ventura County agriculture, employers transitioned from hiring “hobo” field workers.9 Employers also demanded a stable source of labor, as the city’s economy increasingly centered on the production of refined sugar. The three phases of growing sugar beets, in particular, intensified this dependence. After the planting of sugar beet seeds and sprouting, for example, field workers stooped over each row and thinned crops by pulling and spacing plants approximately eight inches from each other, with four inches between each row. During the maturation of the sugar beets, growers directed laborers to further cultivate the plants by irrigation and, again, stooping over with the infamous short-handle hoe to excise nutrient-depriving weeds. The last stage of the season entailed the pulling, topping, and striking of the beets. Men, women, and children of the betabel stooped over and extricated by hand the enormous carrotshaped sugar beets, cut (“topped”) the stemmed upper portion with a long bayonet-shaped knife, and struck the beets together repeatedly in order to remove as much soil as possible. The sugar beets were then loaded onto horse-drawn wagons for transport to the processing factory.10 The introduction of tractors alleviated pressure on Oxnard Plain growers to locate an adequate supply of non-white workers. Six 45-horsepower Holt Caterpillar tractors entered the area market by mid-1918. Each cost $4,700 (equivalent to $70,000 in 2011 dollars). Area schools provided classes in the maintenance and operation of these tractors to facilitate the use of this new technology.11 Agricultural machinery nuanced the racial hierarchy involved in field work. Oxnard resident Coletha Lehmann stated that anonymous crews operated horse-drawn threshers in the harvesting of lima beans. When the labor of non-whites was observed, reports identified African American, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican subjects. In the case of the threshers, however, no such indication was given. The mechanization of agriculture provided one signifier of a worker’s position in the organizational order. One native resident of Oxnard stated that one rarely saw a Mexican laboring “under the shade” or within the absc factory or manufacturing establishments. This concept of working under the shade signifies the reality that Mexicans, by and large, performed the most grueling labor, under the unremitting rays of the sun.12 the (re)creation of community

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But sugar beet work under and outside the shade was equally dangerous. Industrial accidents were much like those experienced by immigrants in Chicago’s meatpacking industry and eastern steel mills. Sugar beet workers in the factory fell into hot vats of sugar beet and lost limbs to machinery. Others who worked outside the factory were run over by wagons fully loaded with sugar beets. Such industrial accidents were caused by a speedup system that physically exhausted maintenance workers and technicians as well as field hands and, as a result, made them more susceptible to such hazards.13 In 1898, San Francisco labor contractor Hanzo Kurihara, who lived in El Rio, recruited the first crew of Japanese laborers to work in the sugar beet fields of the Oxnard Plain. By the following year, an additional one thousand Japanese workers lived in Oxnard. Due to the scarcity of housing, early Japanese residents lived in a “tent city” in the southeast area of the city, called Pleasant Valley. Kusabura Baba, another labor contractor, originally from San Francisco, recruited a second cohort of Japanese laborers, many of whom had previously worked as miners or lumberjacks and for the Southern Pacific. Resident Japanese of Ventura County identified the growing number of migrant laborers, of all sorts, as buranke katsugi, or blanket carriers, due to their itinerancy.14 Japanese sugar beet thinners averaged $3.50 a day, with some of the more experienced earning $6.00. The less adept earned as little as $2.00 a day. The Oxnard Daily Courier also reported the presence of Japanese women in the thinning of sugar beets. Japanese immigrants also leased and cultivated their own sugar beet crops for the absc factory. H. Otomo, Y. Kubayama, and K. Sato rented 288 acres from Joseph Lewis to grow sugar beets. Japanese workers dominated the region in the cultivation of sugar beets as of 1912. But during the early twentieth century there was also an influx of East Indian Sikhs, Mexicans, and Koreans in the fields of the Oxnard Plain. Japanese field labor diminished, however, in proportion to the increased use of Mexican workers as sugar beet production expanded during the early twentieth century. The reliance upon Mexican labor grew with the rise of Yellow Peril hysteria.15 In 1906 the Courier 56

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reported anti-Japanese sentiment by white residents who questioned the necessity and prudence in the employment of Japanese field workers. In answer to the question “Why do you give so much work to the Japs?” an unidentified Oxnard rancher said: “Up to 1904 I hired white labor as much as possible, and would yet but they have too many tricks. For instance, I told them to pull all the beans that the knife had not cut. Instead they covered up the uncut green bean vines with their little piles of beans, and when the threshers came the green vines pulled the pile from the fork, making extra work and leaving a vine too green to thresh. The Japs do just as they are told.”16 Yellow Peril hysteria in California escalated during the first half of the twentieth century despite the perceived tractability of Japanese laborers. Under pressure from anti-Asian groups such as the Native Sons of the Golden West, the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt negotiated the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907 with Japan. Under its terms, Japan agreed to restrict the immigration of Japanese laborers to the United States in exchange for the suspension of the de jure segregation of Japanese students in San Francisco’s schools.17 The Daily Courier pointed to the expansion of Japanese tenant farming on the plain as white growers expressed fear over the prevalence of small Japanese farms throughout the state. In April 1912 the newspaper noted the prominent role of Japanese contractors in the thinning and hoeing of beet fields at seven dollars an acre. This made the front page and carried the headline “Japanese Are Making Most Money in Beet Thinning.” The next month the newspaper noted that “The Japanese are not the only foreigners [read non-white immigrants] who have promoted themselves from working on their hands and knees to farming operators for themselves.” The newspaper reported that Fatha Singh, an East Indian, in partnership with his countrymen, rented land from J. M. Stewart and obtained the necessary supplies to grow apricots, olives, and black-eyed peas. These alarmist reports underscored the anxiety among a large segment of white growers throughout California. In 1913 the state legislature passed the Alien Land Law, which prohibited “aliens ineligible to citizenship” (nonwhite immigrants) to own or lease land for more than three consecutive years. Although alien immigrants consisted of groups of people from a the (re)creation of community

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variety of national origins, the Alien Land Law, like other discriminatory immigration laws, specifically targeted Japanese farmers. Japanese agriculturalists, however, circumvented the California Alien Lands Laws of 1913 and 1920 by placing the title of their property in the names of their children or trusted white associates and by forming corporate entities. For example, Shingoro Takasugi organized his fellow countrymen to create, with the aid of an attorney, the Asahi Corporation. By 1920 Japanese farmers controlled 361,276 acres of land in the state and earned $67 million from their crops.18 Although the Alien Land Laws did not effectively restrict Japanese or other Asian immigrants from purchasing or leasing land, they did represent the entitlement that the white population held toward the ownership of land. Ruling white growers — and society at large, for that matter — tolerated the presence of disenfranchised Asian and Mexican immigrants as long as they remained subordinate. The larger community felt their interests threatened once a non-white immigrant group such as the Japanese or East Indians exhibited a modicum of economic success. This stemmed from the white population’s predominant view that the wealth and opportunities of the United States belonged to them. Many whites, moreover, interpreted the economic and social advancement of Asians and Mexicans as a limitation of their own life chances.19 Betabeleros of the World Unite! From the start of the twentieth century, demand for agricultural labor intensified with the region’s diversification of specialty crops. Mexican migrants abandoned the backbreaking work of the sugar beet fields to labor less arduously and earn more in the county’s orchards and lima bean fields. As early as 1902, this alarmed growers. The Oxnard Courier found it newsworthy when Mexican laborers left the city for employment in other areas of Southern California. The newspaper speculated that the Mexican laborers left to thin sugar beets in Los Alamitos in Orange County due to Japanese dominating the beet fields of Oxnard. It is more likely, however, that these individuals exercised just about the only leverage they possessed in obtaining higher pay. They weighed their options 58

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and pursued job opportunities that most benefited them economically, whether in agriculture or in other industries.20 Job advertisements mitigated recurrent fluctuations in the labor market. Announcements lured Chinese, East Indian, and Mexican labor from near and far to the Oxnard region and other areas producing sugar beets. Refineries like that of the absc kept their promise to sugar beet growers to ensure the availability of workers to conduct the backbreaking labor required to grow sugar beets. The absc sent agents to El Paso, Texas, to recruit families, pay their railway fare, and promise return passage if they chose not to remain. Telegraph communication also allowed growers to instantaneously place orders for laborers between regions — for example, from South Texas to Southern California — and have special trains filled with families within a couple of days. Robert Valles recalled that his uncle described reading a number of bulletins in El Paso that recruited workers for Southern California. His uncle and his wife and children sought to escape from the ravages of the Mexican Revolution. One of them announced, “trabajo en el betabel en [sugar beet work in] Oxnard.”21 The mobilization of the U.S. economy during World War I exacerbated the scarcity of workers. The Better Beet Culture Committee, which represented all seven of the beet sugar factories in Southern California, invested $100,000 (equivalent to more than $1.7 million in 2011 dollars) in 1917 to import sixteen hundred Mexican agricultural workers, under bond of the U.S. government. The recruitment effort became more difficult as rumors circulated in Mexico that Mexican nationals would be drafted into the U.S. military to fight in Europe. A group already traumatized by the Mexican Revolution was uncomfortable with this possibility. The absc hired Robert G. Beach as labor supervisor responsible to “overcome the labor difficulties” in Oxnard. Another significant problem was how to stabilize the residency of workers on the plain in order to cultivate and harvest the sugar beet. Beach’s first recommendation called for the absc to follow the example of Colorado beet industrialists in constructing and providing rent-free housing for betabelero families. The development of adobe housing would also help the absc keep Mexican betabeleros in Oxnard by their employment in the off season to construct these crude residences.22 the (re)creation of community

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(Above) Fig. 7. Adults and children outside an absc adobe residence. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County. (Top right) Fig. 8. Two families outside an absc adobe residence. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County. (Bottom right) Fig. 9. A family outside an adobe residence on the Borchard Ranch. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County.

The creation of adobe residences was a key component in the retention of Mexican workers that the absc supplied sugar beet growers. In 1917, absc factory manager Frederick Noble, through his field representatives, implored sugar beet growers to establish adobe residences to not only attract Mexican families but also to encourage their retention or return. In a March 1919 meeting, Noble declared, “The secret of handling labor is getting permanent places for them to live.” Beach also directed absc field representatives to inform Southern California sugar beet growers that their counterparts in Colorado learned that the provision of adobe homes effectively attracted and retained betabelero families. Noble then told his company subordinates in Oxnard to relay to growers that it was in the best interests of the industry as a whole that they treat their Mexican field workers well. The absc understood that betabeleros, based on the Colorado example, returned to work the fields of growers that treated them amicably and provided them a “square deal” for their labor. This was critical to the absc , as 90 percent of the field workers were Mexicans.23 Agricultural production that involved sugar beets, lima beans, citrus, or other specialty crops was dependent on an inexpensive labor pool and good weather. Concern regarding the availability of Mexican labor weighed heavily on the minds of growers just as much as, if not more than, the arrival of too much or too little rain. From the start, landowners stipulated in their contracts to produce sugar beets the absc ’s obligation to import and supervise Mexican workers in the cultivation and harvest of their crops. In 1913 the absc opened an employment office of its own at the Simon Cohn building on Saviers Road (later renamed Oxnard Boulevard) as one component of fulfilling this promise. The employment office, directed by T. E. Walker, coordinated the needs of Oxnard sugar beet growers with local labor contractors. The two groups met at the employment office and negotiated an agreement as to the price for each acre of sugar beets cultivated and harvested. The Oxnard Daily Courier reported in February of that year that a syndicate of labor contractors — a large portion of them of Japanese and Mexican descent — charged fifty cents above the absc schedule to twice thin and hoe each acre of sugar

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beets. The rate to cultivate an acre of sugar beets also depended on soil conditions and the amount of weeds on a given field.24 In May 1918 the city of Oxnard united the duties of public office with that of the private sector when it appointed C. J. Elliot, the justice of the peace, to serve as the local labor agent. Elliot informed individuals of employment opportunities and took the requests of growers for workers. Ventura County growers formed the Santa Clara Agricultural Association that September. The new organization was headed by Oxnard grower and banker Charles Donlon. Its members did not operate as individual capitalists in competition with each other; instead, they operated more like a cartel to surmount the challenge of acquiring a surplus supply of workers and setting an industry-wide wage rate to avoid free-market competition among employers that would work in the favor of workers. The organization was originally scheduled to meet in Elliot’s office, but it relocated to a nearby fraternal hall due to the unanticipated attendance of more than fifty area growers. J. P. Dargeitz, of the state labor commissioner’s office in Sacramento, informed the association in 1918 that the shortage of agricultural labor affected the entire state of California. Raymond F. Crist, deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Naturalization of the U.S. Department of Labor, also announced that year that Mexican labor was in demand not only as farmworkers but also in the mining industry throughout the Southwest.25 At the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, seventy-four African Americans resided in the city of Oxnard. Like other non-whites on the plain, they labored as field workers, packers, truck drivers, and domestics. In 1919, Baptist minister J. D. Pettigrew established a labor office at his church to meet the needs of employers and his African American parishioners. The local paper announced that “the new pastor [of] the Colored Baptist church, here has established a free labor bureau for colored people, with the double idea of increasing his own congregation and supplying help to those who need it.”26 So, according to the Oxnard Daily Courier, the spiritual concerns of the church converged with that of the community’s economy.

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In 1918 the Ventura County Farm Bureau (vcfb ) established a maximum daily wage rate at $3.00 (equivalent to $44.00 in 2011 dollars) for the harvesting of crops. If a grower provided housing, broadly defined, for a laborer the vcfb considered $2.00 a just daily wage rate. The bureau also established the wage rates of other forms of agricultural labor. vcfb members, for example, agreed on a wage rate of $1.00 for every acre of piled lima beans by workers not housed by the employer. Laborers who harvested and packed a ton of walnuts received from $2.00 to $5.00 a day. absc officials pronounced at a bureau meeting in August 1918 a maximum rate of 95 cents for the topping of one ton of sugar beets. Each acre needed to produce at least ten tons of sugar beets to warrant this pay rate, however; the wage rate was reduced to 67 cents for each ton of sugar beets topped if an acre produced twenty tons or more. Apricot ranchers who met in Ventura in 1923 similarly decided to pay $3.00 for a nine-hour harvest day, or 15 cents a box.27 So the religion of the free market did not apply to growers when it came to the wages of their workers. Mexican Labor Integration Once the agricultural-industrial complex (consisting of associations, public agencies, and the interlocked interest of refineries, packinghouses, finance, and real estate, for example) acquired its labor force, there arose the challenge how to maintain it in ready supply. absc officials, acting upon the recommendation of labor supervisor Beach, developed an adobe housing project for betabelero families on Fifth Street, off of Oxnard Boulevard, adjacent to the Southern Pacific railway depot on the east side of the spur line that largely demarcated the geographic segregation of non-whites in the community. But work did not completely define the life of the Mexican community. In 1920 the renowned Escalante Circus of the Southwest entered Ventura County to perform within the Mexican enclaves and labor camps of El Rio, Oxnard, Ventura, La Limoneira in Santa Paula, and other communities in Southern California. When they were denied permits, Mexican traveling circuses held tent shows on the outskirts of a city. Early in the century, Oxnard authorities associated such circuses with public 64

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drunkenness and the destitution of families, which led to an increase in public relief. absc managers — many of whom moonlighted as elected city officials — contended that the circuses influenced Mexican heads of households to squander their income in saloons rather than care for their families. But the difficult maintenance of a fluid source of farmworkers, linked with the notion that the disposable income of workers stimulated the economy, altered the judgment of the city’s fathers toward Mexican circuses. Oxnard mayor Joseph Sailer — also superintendent of the absc factory from 1915 to 1917 — stated in the consideration of a permit in 1919 to the Escalante Brothers, “The Mexicans all have money now. The sooner they go broke the sooner they will go to work. Let’s give them the permit.” When the city council again considered the Escalante Brothers’ permit application the next year, the Oxnard Daily Courier reported that “Now they [Mexican field workers] have so much money that they often will not work and hence the trustees [city council members] are not averse to providing means for spending it.”28 White residents viewed the significant presence of Mexicans as a threat to public order and safety, particularly as the local newspaper dramatically detailed crime in the city. A dragnet in 1921 sought two Mexicans in connection with the murder of two law enforcement officers. The Daily Courier characterized the suspects as transients. To quell hysteria in the community, Oxnard police chief A. J. Murray promised to segregate all Mexicans from the general community and to expel every non-working man from the city. But nothing ever became of this initial reaction. Chief Murray, perhaps, realized the necessity for a more measured response due to the critical dependence of local growers for a surplus supply of Mexican labor. Murray stated, “I am going to start today to get rid of every man who is idle. Every man who is not employed or is not of any value to the town whatsoever will have to leave. . . . But I do not want ranchers blaming me for a scarcity of these men.”29 Murray’s statement illustrates the sensitive balance required to ensure the presence of an adequate pool of agricultural labor and the maintenance of order in light of the existence of a population of young, (many) single males. the (re)creation of community

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The city’s Mexican population grew with the absc factory’s expanding economy of scale. The absc seasonally imported one thousand Mexican migrant laborers and housed them at the adobe dwellings adjacent to the absc factory. One geographer described this early barrio community as a “dormitory for Mexican laborers.”30 The number of Mexican immigrants in Southern California — and in the larger Southwest, for that matter — increased before the rise of commercial agriculture. As historian Jeffrey Garcilazo demonstrated, the “railroads functioned as a conduit for the movement of Mexican workers from one occupation sector to another.”31 Manuel M. López, whose parents migrated from Zacatecas to the United States during the Mexican Revolution, stated that “on September 4, 1916, they left Jerez [Zacatecas] to El Paso and then they came to Needles, California, and worked on the railroad there, probably for a year or so, and then he heard about the sugar factory and came to Oxnard.”32 Ignacio Carmona also recalled that after his entrance to the United States in 1924, “My father quit the railroad because we moved to LA. He then started work for the Griffith Company, a road-building outfit in Los Angeles. Everything was done by hand — grading, laying the blacktop. They occupied a lot of people to do that, and my father was one of them.”33 Other families ventured to Ventura County to find work other than railroad construction in states such as Kansas. Antonia Di Liello’s family lived in Longton, Kansas, while her father, Antonio Arguello, and extended family worked on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in the 1920s. Antonio moved his family to Oxnard to work in the sugar beet fields as well as for the Ventura County Railway.34 The sizable presence of Mexican families and workers highlighted not only the region’s transition to a more commercialized economy but also the replacement of one subordinated group by another. As the male population of Chinese immigrants — who made up two-thirds of the workforce in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad — decreased, the battery of Chinese exclusion laws precluded the entrance of a new generation of Chinese workers. Mexican traqueros (railroad workers) and other immigrant groups — many of whom would assume a restricted condition like the Chinese, such as East Indians, Italians, Japanese, and Portuguese — filled 66

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the demands of railroad construction in the Southwest. And like the Chinese before them, they transitioned to industries made possible by the development of this novel form of transportation in the West.35 The Curious Birth of a City The factory in the fields that was the absc refinery transformed the Oxnard Plain into an industrial agricultural community. Yet it maintained a rural quality influenced by the technologies of travel (auto and rail), commerce, communication, and energy. These forces integrated other Ventura County agricultural communities with each other as well as with Los Angeles. Oxnard was very much a “rurban” community, “neither city nor country but everywhere a mixture of both,” as Carey McWilliams defined in 1946. The absc factory steam whistle, heard for miles, signaled the regimentation of the lives of the entire community with 6:00 a.m., 6:00 p.m., and 12:00 a.m. blasts. Boardinghouses enjoyed the patronage of white absc factory workers — some eight hundred men and their families according to one resident of the early twentieth century. Coletha Lehmann sentimentally described the centrality of the absc factory to the lives of Oxnard residents from August to November: “The farewell whistle used all the steam, and as the steam ran out there would be a dying whistle. Then everybody felt so sad; the factory was closed, men left town, the place that was all lighted up was dark again, and then you waited for the next season.”36 But the evolution of the rural with the urban led one resident to lament this change. Wenley Krouser, co-publisher of the Oxnard Courier, described the transformation of a town made up of “pioneers” to one “consisting of new men and new faces.”37 Other observers commented on the entrance of “new men” and “new faces” more optimistically. The Courier reported in March 1907, for example, the demand for Spanish-language classes due to the increase of the Mexican population in Oxnard. Merchants and shopkeepers looked upon this group as an important segment of the consumer market. The Courier admitted that extant “commercial relations with Spanish speaking nations has made the language a requisite to the training of modern business men.” And Oxnard Union High School teachers moonlighted in the conduct of private lessons in business and the (re)creation of community

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Spanish to assist persons who wished to capitalize on transborder commercial opportunities. The high school board of trustees considered and ultimately implemented the district’s own schedule of such courses.38 Complex relationships among field workers, labor contractors, and propertied growers developed as the division of labor revolved around the cultivation of sugar beets. As early as 1903, Mexican and Japanese labor contractors emerged as middlemen between the field workers, on the one hand, and growers (many, if not all, of whom found themselves heavily influenced by the absc and banks to produce sugar beets), on the other. Oxnard growers, both landowners and tenants, experienced a diminution in their managerial independence as the power of the absc grew. Officials of the absc directed growers when to plant, instructed them how to cultivate the crop, and set the price paid for the sugar beet. By 1921, sugar beet growers paid contractors nine dollars an acre for the thinning and two hoeings of their crops. Up to a thousand laborers were strewn over the plain’s landscape at the height of the cultivation of sugar beets. Mexican men, women, and children numerically dominated positions in the work of thinning, hoeing, and topping sugar beets.39 Women, in general, on the Oxnard Plain were not absolutely confined to the domestic sphere. The scarcity of labor positioned working-class women to perform duties traditionally viewed as men’s work. Cecelia and Dora Maulhardt, sisters, each worked an eight-hour shift of a sixteenhour day, weighing beets during the harvest at the tail end of World War I. Local ranchers also turned to nine school-age women who joined the California Women’s Land Army to contribute to the war effort. Ramona Ortega Uranga and many other African American, Mexican, and Japanese women of the time worked alongside their families in cultivating sugar beets, piling lima beans, and harvesting fruit. Though unusual for women, Uranga stated, “I worked a lot, a lot. . . . They would haul trucks of alfalfa, the boys, the Duartes. And sometimes they couldn’t go. [Then they asked] ‘Mona you want to drive the truck for us?’ I said sure. I drove the truck up to there. Until they filled the truck with alfalfa. I worked a lot, a lot . . . Piling beans, driving tractors, I drove all types of tractors.”40 Other women were sole providers in households due to spousal abandonment 68

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and industrial accidents. They often took in boarders, or huéspedes, to make ends meet. An expanding number of packinghouses, canneries, and food-processing plants were established in the city as the agricultural economy continued to diversify. Women of varying ethnicities entered the wage-laboring economy with the emergence of these plants.41 Uniting Child Labor and Learning Children of migrant families toiled in the fields and orchards of Ventura County, at a severe cost to their development. All over the Southwest, education officials viewed the steady growth of schoolchildren of Mexican origins as part of the larger “Mexican problem.” Administrators and district boards in both urban and rural areas faced issues regarding the character and scope of the education to be provided to students of Mexican origins. Educators viewed the inculcation of English as a paramount objective in assimilating Mexicans into the dominant culture. A tiered system of education also buttressed the economic interests of elites.42 Ventura County school districts with migrant families euphemistically placed on the school calendar walnut and bean “holidays” to serve the demands of the agricultural-industrial complex. Schools, as a component of this complex, closed for up to four weeks to allow students of Mexican origin to participate in the harvest of crops. To mitigate the loss of time in the classroom, school officials began the school year one week early, allowed only one week for the winter recess, and eliminated the spring break. In a 1919 letter, Blanche T. Reynolds, superintendent of Ventura County Schools, asked the absc for its cooperation in relation to Mexican children attending school. Reynolds reminded absc officials that a special permit was needed to allow children under the age of fourteen to work while school was in session.43 In 1929, Helen Heffernan of the California State Department of Education condemned the “crop vacations” or holidays such as those in El Rio because they deprived 1,488 Ventura County migrant children of instruction. This system kept students out of school for a greater part of the academic year as agricultural communities staggered their crop vacations. Heffernan testified that agricultural migrant children averaged only two the (re)creation of community

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full months of schooling each year. With children attending school for only a limited number of days, officials could utilize “crop vacations” as a rationale for not providing an adequate education for Mexican children.44 However, not all children of migrant families suffered. Parents often left their children with relatives and friends while they continued with the harvest circuit, so that the schooling of their children would not be compromised. Oxnard resident Eloise Simmons, who was a young girl in the 1930s, deplored migrant life: My dad was always taking us up north to the frutas. We would go up there to pick tomatoes, prunes, even cotton in Fresno. . . . Mom and dad would go back and forth to Carpenteria. They would take us out of school so we could work out there for three or four months out of the year. Then we would come back and they would put us back in school. I think that was one of the reasons why I wasn’t interested in school because my dad was always so busy traveling. They used to call us los hongoros [mushrooms], because we would never stay in one place long enough for us to, como se dice, hacer raízes [how do you say, put down roots]. . . . And as I was getting older I didn’t like traveling, going to the frutas, so I ended up staying with one of my aunts here in Oxnard.45 To spare her daughter from harsh realities of migrant work, one single mother from Chihuahua, upon the referral of a parish priest in Saticoy, left her teenage daughter, who had a steady job at a local botica (drugstore), with the family of Panfilo and Mary Navarro in La Colonia of Oxnard. Other migrant laboring parents chose to settle on the Oxnard Plain so that their children could attend school regularly. This was particularly true as specialized agriculture diversified and canneries and food-processing plants emerged, leading to greater opportunities in year-round work.46 Many Ventura County school districts implemented a five-hour day school schedule in place of “crop vacations.” Migratory children, for example, attended class from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and would then join their parents in the fields and orchards. In order not to hinder the education of all students, school officials established segregated schools for migrant children. In fact, some Ventura County schools went as far 70

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as posting signs stating, “No Migratory Children Wanted Here.”47 The segregated buildings of migratory schoolchildren were often just roadside tents or barns with poor lighting and ventilation, many times a few hundred yards away from a permanently constructed school with the all the amenities of adequate lighting, seating, resource support, sanitation, and ventilation. The Oxnard Daily Courier reported that Heffernan intended to make demands so “that ‘migratory’ children be given the same advantage as their more privileged classmates in the matter of school housing.”48 Risky Businesses: A Love-Hate Affair A crisis arose with a labor shortage during the era of World War I. It forced ranchers to employ schoolchildren of all races to hoe sugar beets at twenty cents an hour. Ventura County growers convened in Santa Paula in February 1918 to discuss this emergency. The labor crisis deepened as a rumor circulated among members of the monolingual Spanish-speaking community that U.S. officials had made an agreement with the Mexican government that allowed for the enslavement of Mexicans. The idea was given added validity with the institution of draft registration drives prior to the United States’ entrance into the Great War in 1917. Oxnard officials also speculated that Mexican nationals would repatriate themselves to Mexico to claim, under Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, the alleged distribution of free land by the administration of President Venustiano Carranza.49 Mexicans who worked outside the agriculture industry also migrated throughout the region to market their skills. Men toiled on the railroads and emergent highways of the West. Many set dynamite as “powder monkeys” to obliterate tree stumps and other impediments to construction projects. The fatal misfire of dynamite in the construction of the Ventura County Coast segment of the Theodore Roosevelt Highway (now known as “the 1”) sent José López thirty feet into the air in 1921. Thomas Gilbride and Joe Domínguez, in another incident, virtually disintegrated with the detonation of 150 pounds of dynamite on Point Mugu Road.50 Women participated in many economic environments. They often took in boarders. These working-class women laundered clothes and prepared the (re)creation of community

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lunches for single men of different racial backgrounds.51 Others worked in restaurants along transportation routes. Marie Lockwood Whatley’s Swedish immigrant mother worked as a Harvey Girl before her family moved to Oxnard. “The old railroad stations and the depots had Harvey Houses. They were hotels, with a restaurant and everything,” Whatley recalled. “These girls were very well protected. . . . So, mother was quite young, I imagine fourteen–fifteen when she left home and started working as a Harvey Girl. They were waitresses and worked in the hotel dining room.”52 Boardinghouses at times served purposes beyond the provision of rooms and meals. In 1915, Oxnard law enforcement officers arrested and fined women proprietors of various boardinghouses fifty dollars each for the sale of liquor without a license. Other places traded both drink and the sex of Mexican, Asian, white, and black women for males disconnected from families for one reason or another. Police raids targeted these establishments, particularly during Prohibition.53 The production and distribution of alcohol (i.e., bootlegging) was another lucrative underground economy. Some Mexican households sold liquor in blind pigs (speakeasies) to augment the low-wage income derived from agricultural, domestic, or construction work. Blind pigs often operated under the cover of legitimate businesses such as grocery stores, pool halls, and cobbler shops. Bootleggers also made personal deliveries to the homes of customers, many of whom served as municipal officeholders.54 A 1928 report in the Oxnard Daily Courier highlighted how the sale of alcohol made up an important, if not the sole, source of a family’s income: “Anicato Elizalde whose two little children clung around his legs while he pleaded guilty before Judge F. B. Petit was fined $50 [equivalent to nearly $660 in 2011 dollars]. His wife, outside the railing immediately pulled out a large roll of bills, unpeeled two twenties and a ten and handed it over. Francisco Duarte, a tailor of 131 Seventh street and said to be doing a flourishing bootlegging business here was fined $100.”55 Elizalde, perhaps, instructed his children to cling onto his leg to gain the sympathy of the judge. Or, just as likely, the children were genuinely intimidated by the court. Judge 72

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Petit, in either case, may have been influenced by the drama, as Elizalde received a smaller fine than Duarte, whose family was not in attendance. Such entrepreneurs diversified their illicit inventory by selling hemp within pool halls or saloons. The red-light district of China Alley between Oxnard Boulevard and A Street and flanked by Sixth and Ninth Streets — where a cross-cultural section of men congregated for recreation, leisure, and companionship — developed a notorious reputation. The local newspaper regularly reported the sale of alcohol, marijuana, and opium here, as well as prostitution, sensationalized knifings, shootouts, and homicides. Some of the titles of these articles in the Oxnard Daily Courier read: “Booze Seller on Probation,” “‘Jazz Weed’ Source of Much Mexican Crime,” and “Dope Peddlers Caught in Raid by Federal Men.” This contributed to an enhanced sense of anxiety on the part of the larger white population and middle class.56 The prominence of China Alley along with the presence of disenfranchised men and women disturbed the sentimentalities of white residents. This angst reached new levels as “new immigrants” with origins in southern and eastern Europe, Asia, and Mexico challenged the demographic superiority of “old stock Americans.” The dramatic increase of Mexicans who escaped the economic dislocation that resulted from Porfirio Díaz’s modernization policies and the subsequent revolution added to this concern. The despair of Mexican immigrants prompted white elites in the United States to label this the “Mexican problem.”57 Business owners, however, viewed the large number of betabeleros as a stimulus to the local economy — especially on payday. The Oxnard Daily Courier reported in June 1912 that “Hundreds of Mexicans have been working in and near Oxnard in the beet fields are tonight to be paid off and there will be several thousands of dollars brought into [the] city by the laborers.”58 The lucrative character of the migrant worker economy continued beyond their stay in Oxnard. It also grew as they purchased food and clothing in preparation for their migration to the next site on the agricultural circuit, or for their inter-seasonal repatriation to Mexico during the Christmas holidays. Payroll-check-cashing fees, the purchase of gifts, and an extraordinary night out for dinner punctuated the conclusion of the sugar beet season. Major James A. Driffill, who was the absc the (re)creation of community

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factory manager from 1896 to 1917 as well as one of the directors of the First National Bank of Oxnard, placed an advertisement in the Daily Courier in 1920 to capitalize on the Mexican presence. “Tell Mexicans who cannot speak English that we can talk with them in Spanish,” ran the announcement. “Tell them to come here with their savings, or to send money across into Mexico. They will find us helpful and friendly.”59 This indicates the business community’s recognition of the economic centrality of the Mexican population in the city. The First National Bank of Oxnard also acknowledged a less-than-friendly disposition on the part of other institutions in the community toward Mexicans in the promotion of its own kindliness. Sweet and Bitter Crops An expanding agricultural industry required steady and abundant access to workers. This was particularly true as growers diversified by embarking upon the production of lemons. The integration of citrus as a specialty crop made news in Oxnard in 1912 with the arrival of a rail boxcar load of lemon trees for the Patterson ranch. The Citrus Farms Company also purchased 1,080 acres of land from Albert Maulhardt to grow lemons. More and more landowners on the Oxnard Plain cultivated lemon orchards as production proved successful and advanced systems of irrigation developed. The Oxnard Daily Courier found it newsworthy in 1913 to report on Adolfo Camarillo’s decision to plant fifty acres of lemon trees. The newspaper also reminded readers of the new lemon orchard of the Citrus Heights Development Company. In July 1918, Oxnard growers, under the leadership of Charles Donlon, assembled to discuss the formation of a lemon cooperative. William McCully, the Los Angeles representative of the Citrus Growers Exchange, attended the meeting to listen to the concerns of growers and explain the advantages of joining this association. Growers agreed to unite themselves under the Oxnard Citrus Association, an affiliate of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, during this same year. Such associations worked under the guidance of the exchange, as historian Douglas C. Sackman details, as part of a “vertically integrated corporation, developing an impressive managerial method for mapping 74

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out supply and demand across the nation.” Seven members sat on the board of the Oxnard Citrus Association, namely, W. P. Daily, W. R. Livingston, E. J. Borchard, James Leonard, Charles Donlon, A. J. Anderson, and A. Adams. A warehouse adjacent to the Hueneme wharf served as the association’s headquarters. A box of top-grade lemons packed at the Oxnard Citrus Association sold for $9.50 (equivalent to $124 in 2011 dollars) by 1919 in the Boston market. The second grade of lemons (the Seaside brand) sold at $9.10 a crate. Citrus production became a core crop of the Oxnard Plain by the mid-1920s.60 The establishment of the Oxnard Citrus Association demarcated not only the further diversification of the agricultural economy in Ventura County after World War I but also a further dependence of growers on the employment of families. This required the provision of residences to stabilize their reliable presence. To a great extent, families, both nuclear and extended, from this period onward participated in what Carey McWilliams coined California’s commercial “factories in the field.” Agricultural interests of the sugar beet, lemon orchards, or of the packinghouses formulated a work culture that followed the regimented and systematized production precepts of Frederick Winslow Taylor.61 Eight Hours for What We Will! Toil after a fashion dominated life on the Oxnard Plain. Recreation fostered community in an industrial environment that otherwise undermined a sense of fellowship. Residents organized picnics, celebrations, and other social events that promoted ethnic cohesion in response to the anomie of modern society. These activities served multiple purposes. They inculcated values and traditions of a multiethnic community, particularly to its U.S.-born second generation, and socialized residents to each other’s customs.62 Chinese residents within the China Alley district sponsored annual celebrations of the Chinese New Year with ceremonial feasts and religious services that lasted several days. The events were attended not only by Chinese residents but also by the larger community in Oxnard. The local newspaper observed one year that “Many white person[s] have visited the Chinese quarter and the dwellings of the Chinese this year, the (re)creation of community

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and all have been welcomed royally.”63 For the New Year celebration in 1929 the Bing Kong Tong Masonic Lodge invited municipal leaders to a fete at the Golden Chicken Inn at 701 Oxnard Boulevard. A six-piece jazz orchestra made up of Chinese musicians and women vocalists performed while the city’s elites enjoyed a seven-course dinner. Chinese women dressed in flapper apparel played dominoes and other games with guests when they were not dancing the fox-trot or the Charleston.64 Public celebrations of the Chinese community, however, were not limited to the commemoration of cultural holidays. Chinese leaders made sure to participate in the commemoration of U.S. holidays to integrate themselves into and gain greater acceptance from the dominant white community. The Chinese community constructed an elaborate float to enter in the city’s 1913 Fourth of July parade. It also sponsored the performance of a San Francisco Chinese boys’ band for the festivities.65 Political events in China took on added significance in the United States with the reaffirmation of the Chinese community’s identity with their homeland. The new flag of Nationalist China in 1912 waved along the city’s streets of China Alley. The Chinese community asserted itself to the observation of the general public by not only its display of the new colors of the Chinese republic but also by their congregation in the streets, patriotic songs, and fireworks. That same year the Chinese Chamber of Commerce circulated a petition for all to sign that urged the U.S. government to recognize the Nationalist Republic of China. Two years later the Sue Shing Lung Company sponsored and hosted the visit of the Chinese activist and scholar Ng Poon Chew of San Francisco. The Oxnard Daily Courier described Chew — whose wife was an architect of the Chinese Young Women’s Christian Association in San Francisco — as the “Mark Twain of China.” Chew delivered an address titled “The Chinese Republic and Its Problems” to a capacity crowd, from all segments of the city, in the auditorium of the Oxnard Union High School.66 International events before 1912 also served as the foundation of interethnic Asian tensions in Oxnard. Antipathies between China and Japan after Japan’s acquisition of Korea after the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 developed into latent unease between the Japanese and Chinese in Oxnard. 76

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Some Chinese merchants refused to conduct business with Japanese residents. Strained relations rose to the level of violence in one instance in 1915. Hachigo Akagi assaulted L. Ping of the Foo Loy Kue restaurant, more popularly known as the Duck Pond, when Ping refused to allow Akagi entrance into the establishment.67 Mexican immigrant communities throughout the Southwest formulated similar expatriate celebrations. Mexicans, both immigrants and U.S.-born, expressed their ethnic nationalism and sense of community in the veneration of “México Lindo” (Beautiful Mexico).68 This variegated community of Mexican residents — from multiple regions of Mexico and the United States, differentiated by gender, education, generation, and class — reinforced their ethnic and national identity in the self-recognition as a México de Afuera (Mexico Abroad) population.69 An early Mexican mutualista (mutual aid society) that was emblematic of this sentiment was the Mexican Junta of Oxnard. The Oxnard Courier detailed in 1901 the junta’s planning of a Mexican Independence Day celebration. The itinerary of the event included a parade from the junta’s headquarters at the Pomona Hotel to the downtown area. Parade organizers invited Mexican nationals to give bilingual public lectures on Mexico’s history to the larger Oxnard community. The festivities included music, bloodless bullfights, and salutes to the flags of Mexico and the United States. In 1906, Oxnard residents Maria Domínguez, Rosa Espinosa, Robert R. Davila, Ignacio A. Ramírez, and master of ceremonies José Cepeda presented individual speeches to the attending public during the festivities.70 Throughout the twentieth century, the community of Mexican nationals and compatriot U.S. citizens celebrated Mexican Independence Day as other mutualistas, such as La Unión Patriótica Benéfica Mexicana Independiente (Patriotic Union to Benefit Mexican Independence), La Alianza Hispano Americana (Hispanic American Alliance), and Las Guardianes de la Colonia (Guardians of La Colonia), advanced the tradition.71 Bloodless bullfights highlighted the commemoration of Mexican Independence Day in Oxnard. In September 1903, leaders of the Mexican community announced in the local newspaper that the organizers had imported bulls from Mexico and, until the day of the event, stabled them the (re)creation of community

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at the Donlon ranch. The leadership also scheduled an elaborate gala at the Pioneer Hall. This celebration evolved into a significant commercial venture, and the Oxnard Courier reported that the organizers “are going at this matter in business like manner.” The newspaper went on to list the price of admission for the bullfights at fifty cents for children, seventyfive cents for general admission, and one dollar for reserved seats.72 The newspaper also underscored the lucrative potential of this celebration to the larger community, noting that the event’s organizers “will be indirectly benefiting the businessmen of Oxnard and are entitled to our support.”73 The event apparently, however, antagonized individuals left out of the preparation and the revenues to be made. The Courier reported that “a rival organization has taken out a license for a show at the same time and place. They advertise their’s as a burlesque bull fight and we understand are going to dress men up in cowhides for bulls and take off the bul [sic] play of [the first organizers] Lujan and Muella.”74 Some five hundred residents from the Mexican community of Oxnard attended the Independence Day festivities in 1909. Organizational leaders of the Sociedad Patriótica Mexicana of La Colonia flew the colors of the United States alongside Mexico’s. A facet of the festival consisted of a “señorita” costumed as Lady Liberty waving the American flag. Next to her stood a younger child adorned in a costume representing Mexico.75 Children in such outfits evidenced the cultural negotiation of nationalist loyalties by way of public celebrations.76 Mary Navarro, a longtime resident of La Colonia, remembered, “For the sixteenth of September they [organizers] used to close Seventh Street and right in the middle they used to put a big truck with a flat bed. They had their entertainment of different bands [on the flat bed]. They had dancing for the sixteenth of September and I was the one chosen to sing the Mexican and the American national anthems to open up the celebration.” Navarro also commented on the fact that people from different groups enjoyed Mexican food, music, and the company of the community.77 Perhaps Mexican organizers — both nationals and U.S. citizens — accepted the fact that their children, in the acculturative process of becoming Mexican Americans (regardless of citizenship), served as a link between the ways 78

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and mores of México Lindo and those of their conquered homeland. The cultural celebrations of Mexican immigrants and U.S. citizens — adults and youths alike — can be viewed as a means by which they mediated, consciously or incidentally, their position as a community while negotiating its Mexican and American character.78 Circumstances in Mexico, however, tempered the nature of the celebration of Mexican Independence Day. Members of one of the varying Mexican mutualistas in the city that helped organize the annual event in 1912 did so in light of the grim realities of the Mexican Revolution. Organizers anticipated a smaller number in attendance at Maulhardt Hall. Some twenty “better financially fixed Mexicans” traveled to Los Angeles to celebrate Mexican Independence Day in Luna Park rather than stay in the city.79 The turmoil of revolutionary Mexico influenced how the larger population of whites in the United States viewed Mexicans as a people. Southern California newspapers reported the raids, counter-raids, and atrocities committed along the Texas-Mexico border. The Oxnard Daily Courier regularly headlined in large bold print the skirmishes between Mexican revolutionaries on the one side and U.S. law enforcement and soldiers on the other. Pancho Villa, especially, led the captions with his attack on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916. White residents already anxious about the revolution’s spread to the United States almost certainly looked upon Mexicans in their midst with increased wariness. After the Mexican Independence Day celebration of 1915, the Daily Courier revealingly reported that the “event was very orderly.”80 The reporter may have characterized the festivities in this manner in light of past ethnic celebrations having experienced incidents of public drunkenness, fistfights, or both. A second possibility may have been the reporter’s association of the brutality of the Mexican Revolution with that of the putative violent nature of Mexicans. The reporter expressed relief in concluding that “in all the celebration there was not a hint of the warlike attitude reported from the Texas border.”81 That same year, however, Mexican revolutionaries carried out a series of border raids in South Texas. In fact, El Plan de San Diego (a manifesto) in January 1915 in Texas called for an insurrection the (re)creation of community

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on both sides of the border in an effort to reconquer Mexico’s territory lost during the Mexican-American War.82 But the celebration of Mexican Independence Day was not supported by all Mexicans on the Oxnard Plain. In 1913 the anarchist newspaper Regeneración of El Partido Liberal Mexicano (Mexican Liberal Party), led by Ricardo Flores Magón, reported opposition to such patriotic celebrations. Mexican workers who had adopted a class consciousness, in the opinion of the reporter, scornfully ignored the advertisements of an unnamed mutual aid society inviting community members to assist in the planning and organization of Independence Day festivities of that year. Only five people attended a July planning meeting. The reporter held that class-conscious Mexican workers understood that such a celebration was a ploy on the part of business interests to exploit the patriotism of the naive masses. The newspaper encouraged its international readership to follow the example of enlightened Mexican workers in Oxnard and save their hard-earned wages to advance their own edification, or to buy food.83 Festive Unions Speeches at the 1915 celebration of Mexican Independence Day suggest an awareness of the larger community’s scrutiny of Mexican residents. The speakers attempted to broker relations with the larger Oxnard community by emphasizing peace and industry as the goal of Mexican residents. One speaker commented on his pleasure to witness “such a well dressed assemblage.” The Oxnard Daily Courier went on to state that one of the speakers recognized “that if they were residing in Mexico they would all be barefoot. He said they owed their well-being to the government of the U.S. under which they were living.”84 Another reflected upon the famine and despair in Mexico. Mexicans in the United States, in his opinion, were better off than most of their compatriots back home. The speeches also sought to assuage the trepidations of white residents. Mexican refugees of the revolution found support from mutual aid societies in Southern California. Members of mutualistas enjoyed a sense of fellowship in often alien and hostile social environments. They provided support to families confronted with illness, injury, or the loss of loved 80

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ones, particularly when the stricken was the breadwinner. The mutualistas also created for Mexicans — both nationals and U.S.-born — sites to create outposts of México de Afuera.85 La Unión Patriótica Benéfica Mexicana Independiente (upbmi , Patriotic Union to Benefit Mexican Independence) emerged in communities throughout Southern California in places such as Anaheim, Azusa, Chino, Corona, Pomona, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Santa Barbara. The Oxnard chapter of the upbmi appeared as early as 1916 and provided financial assistance to working-class members in cases of illness, injury, and death. The organization also promoted social interaction in the form of jamaicas (bazaars), fiestas, and the celebration of ethnic and national holidays such as Mexican Independence Day. And in 1921 Oxnard hosted a four-day biennial convention for the organization.86 The upbmi integrated itself into the social fabric of Oxnard. At the June 1921 biennial convention of the upbmi , chaired by C. D. Lozano, the delegates discussed the organization’s initiation of an extensive Fourth of July celebration in Oxnard, launched with an opening-day parade. Robert G. Beach, the absc ’s superintendent of labor, spoke on behalf of the upbmi at a city council meeting in its petition for a permit to organize and sponsor a three-day Fourth of July festival on the grounds of the absc on Fifth Street, just east of Oxnard Boulevard. Beach stated that the organization planned to establish a women’s auxiliary with the proceeds, which it did the following May. The auxiliary was formally named four years later the La Unión Femenil Mexicana (Union of Mexican Women). An intricate network of communication and support evidenced itself at the installation ceremonies of the officers of the women’s auxiliary in 1922. More than three hundred persons from throughout the Southern California region attended. Lozano, supreme secretary of San Bernardino upbmi Lodge no. 1, swore in Josefina Chávez as president, Maria Treviño as vice-president, and Lucy Levario as secretary.87 The upbmi acted independently and developed a collaborative relationship with city officials. It did not work closely with the Mexican consul in Los Angeles as did Southern California branches of the Comisión Honorífica Mexicana (Mexican Honorary Commission). The upbmi apparently did not rely on consular assistance or report on the activities of the Mexican the (re)creation of community

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community in Oxnard. This was particularly significant, as the Mexican consulate in the United States worked closely with the comisiónes and other mutualistas to serve and protect the interests of immigrant Mexican communities. The consul often hired U.S. attorneys to defend Mexican nationals and assess laws that affected Mexican communities of the region. The Mexican consul in Los Angeles also played a significant role in the repatriation of Mexicans during the Great Depression. It carried out the Mexican government’s interests in respect to the Great Depression, labor unionism, politics, and the promotion of mexicanismo within expatriate communities.88 The consul, for example, undermined the radical unionism of Mexican agricultural workers in the midst of Great Depression in Los Angeles County and the valleys of the Imperial and San Joaquin. The Mexican government sought to inoculate itself from an anticipated repatriation of radical opposition groups. So the consulate worked to generate popular support for the government of Mexico. This, however, was not one of the upbmi ’s primary goals, although it did promote transnational patriotism. upbmi committee members who planned the 1921 Fourth of July celebration involved the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, the American Legion, and the Legion’s Women’s Auxiliary of Ventura County as well as the Comisión Honorífica of Santa Barbara to promote the organization’s binational commitments to the United States and México Lindo. upbmi chapters from Santa Barbara, Santa Paula, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino not only sent members to join the festivities but also constructed their own floats to enter the parade. In the organization’s attempt to foster a culture of accommodation, organizers scheduled baseball games, boxing matches, band music of Mexico and the United States, and a gala at the Knights of Columbus. The Oxnard Daily Courier printed the schedule of the extravaganza on 2 July and announced the construction of a stage for the Fernandez Orchestra of Santa Paula, the Escalante Brass Band, and the F. R. Botts ensemble, also of Santa Paula. A crew constructed an outdoor hardwood dance floor for partygoers.89 The Fourth of July parade began at Magnolia Street and headed south on Oxnard Boulevard. At Fifth Street the floats turned west toward the 82

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plaza and circled it to return east on Fifth to its final destination at the absc grounds. The Hobson Brothers Cowboys, led by Alfredo Yanes, waved and smiled to the crowd as they rode their horses. The Oxnard Fire Department exhibited its latest firefighting equipment. Women, recognized as señoritas by an Oxnard Daily Courier reporter, rode on top of the patrol wagon of the Oxnard Police Department. Young Filipino men joined the march. Winning first prize for the parade competition, the “Spanish Lodge” of Los Angeles entered a float that portrayed Spain’s exploration with an individual dressed as Queen Isabella.90 upbmi organizers complemented the parade with events that embraced Oxnard’s cultural and ethnic diversity. On the grounds of the absc , fraternal and mutual aid lodges established booths representing various nations of the world. Outdoor boxing matches between pugilists of different ethnic origins entertained the participants. In one bout, local favorite “Chief ” Ortega of El Rio defeated Ben Meyer of San Fernando.91 It appears that the lead taken by the upbmi in the Fourth of July celebration attracted the attention of other groups. The American Legion headed the organization of the Fourth of July festivities for 1923 and invited the upbmi to participate and the Mexican consul Leandro Garza Leal of Los Angeles to speak on Americanization. George Kindred of the American Legion coordinated the schedule with Jesús N. Jiménez, a local furniture store owner and president of the Oxnard upbmi , and, curiously, a Mrs. Price, president of the upbmi Women’s Auxiliary. Further bridging the gap between the dominant white American community and Mexican residents, Isabel González directed a drama of Cinderella for which Mexican boys and girls performed the play in both English and Spanish.92 The upbmi ’s attempt to integrate the Mexican community into the larger social fabric of Oxnard allowed this population to refashion itself as both Mexican and American. Its members breached the boundaries of their barrios and work sites to interact with the larger community. Their children, in the process, experienced a bicultural indoctrination, albeit limited.93 The parades and theatrical performances of Cinderella maintained a connection to México Lindo and reinforced language fluency in both English and Spanish. The Fourth of July festivities promoted the the (re)creation of community

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acculturation of young boys and girls to the dominant mores of the United States, while they demonstrated their bilingual fluency in the Cinderella play. The goals of Americanization and Mexicanization were not only united but cultivated by Mexicans themselves. Just two months later, representatives of the Mexican community in Oxnard set their sights on Mexican Independence Day, this time without Robert G. Beach as its co-sponsor. A delegation led by Jesús N. Jiménez and Anastacio Martínez petitioned the city council for a permit and support in the sponsorship of a community-wide celebration of Mexican independence. Jiménez and David Herrera informed city officials that peace and order would be ensured by the upbmi ’s own security team. The council approved the permit with the imprimatur of Police Chief A. J. Murray. Jiménez and Martínez reserved the Community Center of Oxnard — outside the segregated barrios — as the event’s locus point. Jiménez, with Herrera’s assistance, traveled throughout the county by automobile to invite individuals and organizations to participate. Adolfo Camarillo, one of the remaining Californios, pledged one hundred dollars to the festival and promised to ride his white horse in the parade. The event attracted more than three thousand Mexican residents from throughout the county. The festivities began with a twenty-one-gun salute to both the Mexican and American flags, followed by the recitation of both national anthems, accompanied by an orchestra and bugle corps. And as promised, Camarillo rode his white horse in the parade along with absc factory manager Frederick Noble and prominent landowners such as J. D. McGrath, A. L. Hobson, Charles and James Donlon, and Roy Whitman. Floats from Oxnard, Camarillo, Moorpark, the Limoneira Ranch, and other parts of the county joined in the parade.94 Progressive Unity U.S. and Mexican Independence Day celebrations served as catalysts for the acculturation of both the Mexican community and the larger population of residents in the city. Other movements supported this cross-culturalism. In the mid-1920s an organization called Community Service (cs ) emerged in Oxnard to facilitate cooperation and social 84

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stability among civic groups. In May 1924 the cs assisted the Mexican Central Festival Committee ’s promotion of a gran jamaica (grand bazaar). Mexican leaders, in coordination with the Young Women’s Club of Oxnard, promoted the event. The proceeds would be used to establish a children’s playground, wading pool, and baseball diamond in the Meta Street barrio, east of Oxnard Boulevard on Seventh. Civic activism allowed middle-class women to broaden their public influence beyond the domestic sphere. Plans for the playground included colorful flowers, bushes, a fence along the perimeter, and the appointment of a recreation supervisor. The absc donated the land for the playground adjacent to the betabelero adobe residences as another means to advance the living conditions to attract and retain field workers vital to the sugar beet industry’s survival. The Mexican community, on the other hand, provided practically the only resources in its possession: labor and the will to advance their own position in the community. And local businesses contributed supplies and material. In close alliance with the cs , the city of Oxnard lent its machinery to grade the playground site. On the day of the gran jamaica, Mexican girls adorned with flowers greeted the guests and offered them refreshments. In its report the Oxnard Daily Courier deigned, “It is gratifying to know that there is a committee of Mexican men and women who are dedicated to the development of the recreational possibilities of the new Oxnard playground.”95 Other ethnic mutual aid and fraternal organizations in Oxnard consisted of people of Chinese, Filipino, German, Irish, Japanese, and Portuguese origins. The Knights of Columbus hall served as the meeting place for the Irish Order of the Redmen, the Loyal Sons of St. Patrick, the German Hermann Sohns, and the Japanese Association of America (jaa ), as well as the upbmi . The organizations addressed issues that affected their respective ethnic communities. As a statewide organization, the jaa , under the leadership of George Shima, sought to promote a general acceptance of the Japanese immigrant community within an environment of heightened anti-Japanese sentiment in California during the 1920s.96 The Loyal Sons of St. Patrick sponsored a St. Patrick’s Day banquet at the Knights of Columbus hall in 1913 that included speeches, music, the (re)creation of community

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song, and libations. The event was exclusive in that only one hundred members of the fraternal society were invited; women were excluded. The organizing committee justified the restriction because of the hall’s size. The committee was made up of ranchers: Thomas Donlon, Charles Rowe, Leslie Gisler, and Juan Camarillo. Juan Camarillo, brother of Adolfo, was educated at Santa Clara College in northern California and traveled frequently abroad. He expressed a special affinity for Gaelic culture based on his visits to Ireland. This interest in the culture and way of life of the Irish earned him the moniker Dennis as his middle name. Members of the Loyal Sons of St. Patrick addressed him as J. Dennis Camarillo.97 “Dennis” Camarillo’s wealth, education, and Californio pedigree apparently enabled him to straddle the ethnic boundaries of the period. He enjoyed this privilege as one of the region’s few remaining Mexican elites. It was not just established residents that sponsored celebrations. New migrants did too. Transplanted citizens of African American, Japanese, Portuguese, Mexican, and European origins from the Midwest who settled in Oxnard gathered regularly as distinct communities at weekend picnics and barbecues. Baseball games between married men and bachelors took place. Music, song, and dance started in the late afternoon and continued well into the evening. In 1923 the upbmi held such a barbecue that five hundred people attended. Even business interests of distinct economies, such as merchants, farmers, and the absc , gathered together to share their experiences as entrepreneurs and growers in order to create a sense of shared community based on ethnicity, occupation, and profession.98 Numerically smaller ethnic groups on the Oxnard Plain held similar community-building activities. They often centered on visits from academic or professional leaders. That, at least, seemed to be the case of the East Indian community in Oxnard in 1914. That year, Professor Bishen Singh of the Punjab region of India visited the city to speak on issues of sanitation and personal health. Rur Singh organized and presided over the meeting, which attracted two hundred East Indians from throughout the county.99 Japanese scholars and dignitaries also visited and addressed the membership of the local jaa and the greater Oxnard community

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at 632 A Street. K. Asano, president of the jaa , arranged for Japanese consul Chuich Ohashi to visit and speak in 1927. The Oxnard jaa also organized recreational activities for its youth. The jaa sponsored the fencing matches of its auxiliary organization, the Japanese Young Men’s Association, with opponents in Santa Barbara in 1926. And for Halloween the association sponsored activities at the Oxnard Community Center.100 The Japanese community in Oxnard also celebrated Japan’s national holidays. In 1915 the leadership of this group celebrated the coronation of Japan’s new emperor. But this event was not observed by them alone. The commemoration of the new emperor — much like the Fourth of July and Mexican Independence Day parades promoted by the upbmi — was an assertive claim over public space on the part of residents of Japanese origins. Organizers made sure to publicly affirm the Japanese community’s deference to both Japan and the United States when it decorated a threeblock stretch of Oxnard Boulevard, in the words of an Oxnard Daily Courier reporter, “with festoons of cherry blossoms . . . and paper lanterns and American flags.” The reporter went on to point out that at the conclusion of speeches by Japanese leaders and Methodist missionaries — attired in dress suitable for such an occasion in Japan — the audience responded with bold cheers of “banzai.”101 And like the costuming of Mexican children as Lady Liberty of the United States during the Mexican Independence Day parade, organizers made sure to provide Japanese children upon a float with American flags. The promotion of American patriotism during the celebration of the new emperor of Japan indicates the sensitivity of the Japanese leadership in Oxnard to anti-Japanese anxieties of the time.102 The Filipino Federation of America was also active on the Oxnard Plain in the early twentieth century. It was headquartered in Los Angeles, and Oxnard’s branch was headed by Andres S. Caliboso. The Filipino Brotherhood Association (fba ) of Ventura County memorialized the death of Dr. José Rizal, an independence leader of the Philippines, in 1927 and the following year brought in guest speakers to address the community. The fba invited residents and city leaders to address the audience. And the fba sponsored a lecture by two speakers from the University of California at

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Fig. 10. A Japanese Obon festival portrait, 1924. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County.

Los Angeles at the Oxnard Community Center as part of the celebration of Filipino Flag Day in October 1929. More than two hundred people from throughout the county attended.103 Two months later the fba sponsored a banquet at the Knights of Columbus in Oxnard in honor of Dr. Rizal. Leading city and county officials also attended this event. Organizers arranged to have R. V. Ubaldo, a ucla scholar, speak on the history of the Philippines. And like the efforts of Mexican and Japanese leaders of Oxnard who sought to formulate their own ethnic American identity while honoring their cultural heritage, George Doctolero made an appeal for mutual understanding and tolerance toward the Filipino community. Doctolero delivered this plea in response to the congressional restriction of Filipino immigration. The fba concluded the festivities with the singing of the nationalist songs “Philippines” and “America.”104 Cross-cultural accommodations, however, did not occur without limits. Spatial and social borders solidified with the agricultural-industrial complex’s consolidation of power in Oxnard. Prescriptions based on ethnicity and gender largely defined the occupational positions of individuals. The layout of the city’s residential tracts and institutions followed corollary patterns. Chapter 3 will analyze the emergence of enclaves where the large majority of Oxnard’s Mexican and non-white populations lived.

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3 SEGREGAT ED IN TE G R AT IO N

From the city’s inception, a divide developed between “respectable” districts west of Oxnard Boulevard and north of Fifth Street and “tougher elements” east of the boulevard. A polyglot of black, Chinese, Japanese, East Indian, and Mexican residents largely lived east of the boulevard and within the streets of A and B, south of Sixth Street to Eighth. They were the “tougher elements” of Oxnard. In the early decades of the twentieth century, a jim-town of tents and shanties arose on the grounds of the American Beet Sugar Company on the south side of Fifth Street, east of Oxnard Boulevard. By the mid-1920s the company built adobe structures for the betabelero families vital to the industry’s existence. White factory workers and their families resided in midwestern-style homes on the west side of town. White residents in general lived near or just northwest of the plaza as the city developed. Mexicans and other racial minorities found themselves segregated on the periphery at the south end of China Alley, the absc grounds, Meta Street, and La Colonia.1 This geographical segmentation, however, simultaneously existed in an agricultural-industrial economy that curiously negotiated the unification of a cross-cultural population. This chapter examines the geographical and social boundaries in the city of Oxnard shaped by an economy that dictated a hierarchically defined 91

workforce. The social layout of the city as a result congealed along ethnic, occupational, and class lines. The demographic examination of the city during the early twentieth century should be described in the context of the size of other municipalities in Southern California and as a community that developed a “rurban” milieu surrounded by agricultural space. Oxnard, like other communities, represented a small satellite in relation to the metropolis of Los Angeles. So to understand its existence as a municipality in Southern California during the early part of the twentieth century it needs to be contextually compared with other cities in the region. The 1910 U.S. census was the first in which Oxnard was listed as a city, with a population of 2,555; it was the county’s second-largest city, behind Ventura, which stood at 2,901. Los Angeles in 1910 comparatively held a population of 319,198 — nearly 125 times the size of Oxnard. In the 1930 census, Oxnard’s population had more than doubled, to 6,285; it was third behind Ventura and Santa Paula, which had populations of 11,605 and 7,452, respectively. Los Angeles had grown to more than 1.2 million.2 Amid Mexicans Mexicans, both U.S.-born and immigrant, for the most part resided in four areas of Oxnard. The first lay in a barrio enclave between A and B Streets, just west of Oxnard Boulevard, and Eighth and Ninth Streets. Mexican residents also lived on Meta Street just off Seventh, east of Oxnard Boulevard. A large number of betabeleros and their families, on the other hand, lived in the adobe homes built and owned by the absc . The Mexican community over time concentrated in the district of La Colonia.3 This barrio existed east of Oxnard Boulevard between Cooper Road and Third Street and was bordered on the east by McKinley Avenue for most of the first half of the century. The Mexican community lived within these residential sites along with blacks and various ethnic Asian residents, mainly Japanese and Filipinos. The dominant white population lived principally west of Oxnard Boulevard. With the early segregated development of Oxnard’s residential spaces emerged corollary institutions of education and religion, particularly the Catholic Church. These geographic cleavages that girded oppression within and outside the fields that surrounded the 92

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absc factory, however, were not absolute. Group interactions occurred and were influenced by economic necessity, length of residency, class, and the generational position of persons. Migrants and immigrants lived near the Southern Pacific Railway depot on Fifth Street and Saviers Road (now Oxnard Boulevard) upon their arrival at the emergent company town of Oxnard. As time passed this early cycle of migrants dispersed to the center of town near the plaza, west of C Street. During the early twentieth century, white residents resided near the depot due to a housing shortage, low rents, and the proximity of these residences to the city’s commercial district.4 The Southern Pacific spur railroad line — and the subsequent construction of ice, packing, and food-processing plants after World War II — buffered the town from the emergent Mexican barrio enclave that literally placed La Colonia residents on the other side of the tracks. Prior to the arrival of the sugar factory, white residents, particularly growers, created labor camps occupied by white, Chinese, East Indian, Japanese, and Mexican migrant workers. Temporary housing, often substandard, existed in close proximity to the resident population. Tent communities popped up adjacent to the homes of growers at the start of the harvest season of barley. As the region’s commercial economy unfolded so did the residential isolation of non-whites.5 The adobe homes provided by the absc served several purposes. First and foremost, they stabilized the pool of field hands to work the land of sugar beets. Company officials did not have to concern themselves with worker transportation. The homes on company property also separated the employees from the activities of union organizers. absc managers could also isolate their workers from freelance contractors who sought workers for other agricultural interests in the region. And by having the betabeleros in residence on company grounds the managers did not have to worry about the hostility of the dominant community of whites toward their presence. This residential template for betabelero families was borrowed from the absc ’s operations in Colorado and simultaneously allowed the company, as well as the city, to economically integrate, geographically segregate, and manage its central resource, labor.6 segregated integration

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China’s Alley At the heart of the city stood a red-light district known as China Alley. The name derived from the predominantly male Chinese community that lived there at the start of the twentieth century. But the quarter quickly became home to other non-white groups. The moniker, perhaps, was also linked to fantasies of the exotic — a strange, forbidden zone of vice that involved gaming, the sex trade, narcotics, and concomitant violence. White businessmen, city leaders, curious adolescents, and workers frequented China Alley for leisure of all sorts. Olen Adams remembered China Alley as an eleven-block strip that contained thirteen saloons. Another resident stated that after a workweek, farm laborers patronized China Alley and “shot up the place.”7 Single male migrant laborers attracted to the Oxnard Plain by the seasonal demands of agriculture found succor in China Alley. The more permanently established non-white family households, however, existed within the southern section of the district near A and B Streets detailed above, on Meta Street, at the adobe barracks of the absc , and in La Colonia. As the La Colonia district expanded, China Alley steadily transformed to a place where markets, boardinghouses, and pool halls largely existed.8 White men of different class status ventured into China Alley to patronize saloons, recruit laborers, and find entertainment. They also frequented sites in other parts of the community closed to Mexicans and other non-white groups. Racial minorities, however, did not look upon China Alley as a forbidden ghetto. Mexicans and Asians owned, operated, and patronized mom-and-pop grocery stores, tailor shops, restaurants, and other businesses alongside pool halls, saloons, and boardinghouses. Manuel M. López remembered the trips his family made from the neighboring community of El Rio to purchase the weekly provisions from the businesses in the China Alley district. Manuel Pérez stated in reference to his childhood in the district, “When I was growing up in Oxnard, this was an open town. Oxnard had gambling, all kinds of things, prostitution — all over the place. As a matter of fact, in our block we had two houses of prostitution. But, it didn’t bother the kids. It didn’t bother anyone.”9 94

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Fig. 11. China Alley. Courtesy of the City of Oxnard, Oxnard Public Library.

The pool halls, many run by Japanese proprietors, served as places where a cross-cultural community of workers intersected to escape the grind of their lives in the fields and orchards of the region. One billiards place was Yamaguchi’s pool room; another was popularly known as “Papa’s.” Men entered the pool halls in groups and socialized with other agricultural workers. They shared stories over friendly and not-so-friendly games of gambling. It was not unusual for knife fights and gunfire to break out after the consumption of alcohol, a few competitive shots of pool, and the lowering of inhibitions. Faim Ram, an East Indian, was hit with a cue ball and stabbed by a Mexican adversary in 1921.10 Proprietors operated blind pigs that illicitly sold liquor in a number of restaurants and grocery stores in the China Alley district. Other store owners sold narcotics. Chinese merchants often operated lotteries and opium dens that were under the regular surveillance of the Oxnard police. Along with the leisure and libations within the billiards rooms and saloons there were a significant segregated integration

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number of “female boarding houses,” as identified by the Sanborn map of 1906. Given China Alley’s reputation, it is not implausible that women of diverse origins lived in these “female boarding houses” as sex workers.11 A Curious Union: Residential Segregation The dominant population of whites that governed the city denied responsibility for the segregation of Mexicans in the barrios of La Colonia, Meta Street, the absc adobes, and shanties at the southern end of China Alley. And by so doing they divorced themselves from the “Mexican problem” defined largely by middle-class mores, racial discrimination, and municipal negligence. An example of this sort of rationalization was expressed by Elizabeth Fuller, an early-twentieth-century Southern California sociologist, who wrote that “Instinctively, the Mexicans huddled together in certain districts.” Such views subordinated, if not dehumanized, the Mexican community as it placed them at the same level as animals who acted out of instinct rather than reason.12 Reports within the pages of the Oxnard Daily Courier indicate, however, that the purported instinctive huddling of Mexicans into certain districts was no natural outcome. At a city council meeting in 1926, for instance, a Mr. Castillo requested a permit to open a pool hall in the Ramona Gardens section of La Colonia. Although the topic on the agenda did not pertain directly to the segregation of Mexicans in La Colonia, city officials openly verbalized this goal. The local newspaper quoted the chief of police, G. S. Wells, as saying that “If we could put a high fence around this section it would be a good place to attract this element. . . . It seems you have to have them [Mexicans] somewhere and this place would not be as prominent as elsewhere.”13 Prior to the construction of the adobe barracks on the grounds of the absc , betabeleros lived in tents and bare-wood shanties throughout the margins of the city. The absc did not build the adobes until after Frederick Noble’s arrival as factory manager in 1917. Although preferable to wood shanties in terms of cost, the material character of the adobe structures in which Mexicans lived in the early part of the century conveniently, perhaps, served as a psychological symbol of their putative inferior status. It also segregated them socially.14 Whites associated antiquated physical 96

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structures such as adobes, the crumbling Spanish missions, or municipally neglected neighborhoods in Southern California as characteristic of Mexican culture. This material association with Mexican culture soothed the psyche of whites as it portrayed them as exotic vestiges of an obsolescent past. This was especially true as a “Brown Scare” escalated throughout the Southwest as the Mexican Revolution ostensibly threatened to spill over to the U.S. side of the border. The substandard housing afforded to Mexican residents, in general, also underscored the new order of the American conquest since 1848.15 Such substandard structures affirmed the biases held against Mexicans while it indicated the apparent superiority of ethnic whites. A 1904 dedication pamphlet of the Santa Clara church articulated the iconography linked to the Mexican era with the perceived phoenix of an industrious white population of immigrants and migrants. The encyclical pronounced the Gothic-styled Catholic Church as an emblem of progress. Within the prologue existed a narrative that framed the past, present, and future for the residents of Oxnard: The new Church with its graceful spire towering heavenward will stand as a glorious monument to tell future generations of the Faith and Sacrifice of the sturdy pioneers who, more than a quarter of a century ago, came to this now beautiful and fertile valley, then but a barren wilderness covered with cactus and wild mustard. . . . Their honest industry has converted a barren waste into a veritable paradise. The adobe hut and thatched cottage of pioneer days have given way to palatial residences and comfortable homes which bespeak a thrift and prosperity unequaled, even in this favored land. God has indeed lavishly blest and prospered this people.16 Every signifier attributed to this new order implied the mirror opposite of the past. The word pioneer proclaims the arrival of white Americans destined to control the resources of Ventura County. It simultaneously erases the history of the Chumash, Spanish, and Mexicans who came before them. And whereas industrious “sturdy pioneers” transformed the land to a “veritable paradise,” effete Mexicans, the writer suggests, allowed the segregated integration

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gifts of God to be left a “barren waste.” The adobes curiously unified the non-white past with whites’ “palatial residences and comfortable homes”: evidence of linear progress. Remnant adobe structures also permitted the larger community to fantasize upon a pastoral past that was serene and less competitive. The dominant white population romantically gaped at Mexican adobes as neutered relics of the past, similar to the symbolic representation of the state’s Spanish missions — an important contrast to their own self-identity. The adobe structures paradoxically permitted the white population to scorn Mexicans and revere the supposed heritage of the Spanish. Carey McWilliams perceptively labeled this the “fantasy heritage.”17 Adobes Redux In 1917, upon his assumption of duties as the manager of the absc factory, Frederick Noble immediately embarked upon a project to construct adobe quarters as a means to recruit and stabilize the vital supply of betabeleros. He pointed to the successful example set in Colorado, where absc officials invested $8,000 for the initial construction of twenty four-room adobe barracks-style units. The estimated cost for each structure was $350 to $400 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2011 dollars). Noble initially envisioned each unit to accommodate one large or two small families. More than twenty-five families moved into the absc ’s adobe structures by early February 1918. The bisected, rectangular white-washed adobes allowed each barracks to shelter two families. The absc anticipated that local growers would construct additional adobes to augment the permanent residence of agricultural laborers, not only for the sugar beet industry but also for an expanding range of specialty crops on the plain. And they did. The Citrus Heights Company of Oxnard announced in 1920 its plans to build a housing camp of adobes for its Mexican employees.18 White employees of the absc factory lived in well-crafted homes made of lumber. Just as it was commonly believed that it was somehow natural for Mexicans to live in barracks-like adobes, ruling whites may have expected that white employees would live in detached, single-family residences. This was highlighted in the 1918 sugar beet season when the absc sister 98

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Fig. 12. A house at 523 Meta Street. Courtesy of the City of Oxnard, Oxnard Public Library.

Fig. 13. A house at 651 Meta Street. Courtesy of the City of Oxnard, Oxnard Public Library.

(Above) Fig. 14. absc adobe homes. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County. (Top right) Fig. 15. Employee homes on the factory grounds. Courtesy of the City of Oxnard, Oxnard Public Library. (Bottom right) Fig. 16. The superintendent’s house at the factory. Courtesy of the City of Oxnard, Oxnard Public Library.

factory in Chino did not operate because of a poor harvest. absc managers transferred many of them to the Oxnard refinery. This, however, raised the problem as to where to house these workers and their families. The Oxnard Daily Courier noted that Noble’s plan of transferring these white employees from Chino to Oxnard “did not solve all the factory troubles in this respect, because the higher class employees, like the Mexican labor, found it hard and often next to impossible, to find houses in which to live.” To assist these “higher class employees,” absc officials leased existing homes in the city rather than situate them in the adobes. The rental market of homes, however, did not accommodate all of these new residents. absc officials decided, as in the case of the betabeleros, to construct homes for them. But adobes they were not. The absc built bungalow-style homes at an approximate cost of $2,000 to $2,500 each on twenty-seven acres of purchased land on the west side of Oxnard Boulevard, between Sixth Street and Wooley Road. This expense did not include the price of the real estate, which was estimated at $1,000 per acre. Each lot was 55 by 150 feet. The tract also included forty-foot-wide paved streets and sidewalks, an amenity that the Mexicans at the adobes did not enjoy. The homes materially represented the superior value that the absc placed on its “higher class” white employees. The Oxnard Home Builders Company advertised two years later its decision to build six bungalow homes, to start, on Magnolia Avenue and Sixth Street. Each residence included five rooms and a bath. Restrictive real estate covenants precluded non-whites from purchasing these homes. The lack of adequate housing for Oxnard residents remained as the city’s industries and population expanded.19 City officials prevented white agricultural migrants, predominantly male and single, from residing anywhere within Oxnard. Popularly referred to as hoboes, white migrant workers camped out in the open air underneath the cover of eucalyptus windbreaks adjacent to the La Colonia barrio along Fifth Street and the railroad tracks. The “hobo” label signified a prejudice toward a lumpen proletariat similar to the pejorative terms “Okie” and “Arkie” used to describe Dust Bowl migrants in California. A 1913 article in the Oxnard Daily Courier detailed the successful campaign of the police to expel and exclude hoboes. It also recognized the growth in the number of 102

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Mexicans in the city. Other headlines of the local newspaper read “Hoboes Camp Due for Another Cleaning Up,” “Police Have Steady Job Keeping City Rid of Hoboes,” and “Police Have Their Eyes on All Hoboes and Strangers Here.” The use of such labels highlighted the subordination of certain groups at the same time they were economically integrated to support the demands of commercial agriculture on the Oxnard plain. The need for their labor, however, required that they, like the betabeleros, be readily accessible by area sugar beet growers. At the same time, however, growers viewed their presence with wariness as this lumpen proletariat was associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (iww ).20 Segregated Earthly Kingdoms As the community absorbed a stream of people, demand grew for additional religious institutions. The early segregation of churches paralleled that of neighborhoods. The red-brick, Gothic-style Santa Clara Catholic Church was built on the west side of town. The absc donated the land for this church, as Henry Oxnard and his wife were Catholics. Growers of German, Irish, Portuguese, Swiss, and at least one of Mexican ancestry pooled their capital to construct the church, which was completed in 1903 and formally dedicated the next year. The barons of agriculture dominated the building committee for the church, which consisted of Father John S. Laubacher, Justin Petit, Adolfo Camarillo, M. McLaughlin, J. E. Borchard, Charles Donlon, John Diedrich, F. J. Fredrich, and Louis Maulhardt. Henry Oxnard donated adjacent land for a Catholic school and a convent in 1901, which was known as St. Joseph’s Institute prior to the construction of the church. Five year later, the Catholic Church opened Our Lady of Guadalupe school on Fifth Street, near the Southern Pacific depot. Whereas the Santa Clara school was attended largely by the sons and daughters of the city’s white Catholic community, the Guadalupe school served Mexican children. But educational segregation was not complete. Whites and children of Mexican origins attended both schools. This would increasingly be the case as the community expanded. The Oxnard Courier reported in 1907 that “American” (that is, white) children received bilingual instruction at the Guadalupe school.21 segregated integration

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A spiritual and physical chasm between white and Mexican Catholics prevailed in the conduct of mass. Mexicans living on the city’s eastern and southern barrio enclaves attended the mission chapel of the Santa Clara parish named Our Lady of Guadalupe, on Meta and Seventh. A limited number of Mexicans born or raised in Oxnard and whose families achieved a level of social and economic upward mobility worshipped alternately at the Santa Clara and Guadalupe churches. More specifically, the children of early Mexican residents and their offspring increasingly attended church at Santa Clara and school at St. Joseph’s Institute. The Oxnard Daily Courier regularly reported the burial rites of mass for Mexicans at the Santa Clara church and recognized the deceased as longtime members of the community.22 So the social class and generation of Mexican residents played a part in their integration into the larger community. But not all felt welcomed. Ramona Ortega Uranga — a Californio descendant of the plain and 103 years of age at the time of her 1999 interview — confirmed the attendance of Mexicans at the Santa Clara church and expressed bitter memories of the less-than-respectful treatment Mexicans experienced, particularly by Father Laubacher: Santa Clara, this church is very beautiful, yes beautiful. . . . There was a priest named Mr. Laubacher. . . . No one liked him. A very horrible priest. He did not like me and did not want to confirm me because he said I did not know the Bible. . . . And he placed a sign outside stating that all Mexicans wash their faces before entering the church. . . . And so many poor Mexicans that went to this church would donate money. I would tell them, “Do not donate anything.” . . . The other priests would not treat us like he did. How unfortunate. When he died all the Mexicans were glad.23 The seating of people during mass at the Santa Clara church was segregated. Irish parishioners sat to the right of the center aisle, Germans on the left. The priests read the Gospel in both German and English because of the large number of German Catholics in attendance who worked in the absc factory. The sermon was given in English. The reading of the Gospel in German ended once the United States entered World 104

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War I. There also existed a matrix of social relations within ostensibly integrated institutions. White ethnics segregated themselves from each other to a noticeable degree, as did Mexican parishioners, around lines of birth, length of residency, and socioeconomic status. Where white ethnic Catholics internally segregated themselves based on national origin, both white and the more middle-class Mexican Catholics spatially segregated themselves apart from newly arrived Mexican immigrant Catholics at the Guadalupe church.24 It was not uncommon for native-born white ethnic groups in the United States to distance themselves from greenhorn immigrants of European origins. Old-stock Americans of northern and western European origins pulled away from working-class Russian Jews, Lithuanians, and Italians. Middle-class Mexicans in places such as Texas distanced themselves from Mexican immigrants in an effort to achieve a white racial status. One particular organization that excluded non-citizens and conducted its affairs in English in order to promote their own assimilation into white society was the League of United Latin America Citizens.25 This group, as well as other middle-class-oriented Mexican American organizations, emphasized their whiteness in order to achieve all the privileges and protections of their citizenship, at the expense of their immigrant brethren.26 Mexican “American” Schools In 1906 the Santa Clara church established a two-room school for the children of Mexican Catholics on the north side of Fifth Street near the Southern Pacific depot. Sister Octavia of the St. Joseph convent headed the site with the assistance of a lay teacher. Father Cabelleria of the plaza church in Los Angeles recognized at the dedication ceremonies the curious treatment that was segregation when he stated to the Mexican community of Oxnard that “It is the first school between Monterey and Los Angeles that has been erected for your special benefit.” In its first year the school enrolled thirty-five students of what the Oxnard Courier described as “Spanish-American” parentage. Instruction at all grade levels at the Guadalupe school was conducted in both English and Spanish. Three years later, enrollment had grown to ninety. The Guadalupe school segregated integration

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exemplified many of the characteristics of a segregated “Mexican school”: it was created specifically to serve them and was located adjacent to their community. But this was not a strictly segregated school; both Mexican and white schoolchildren, however, at least at the start, together received bilingual instruction. An Oxnard Courier reporter stated that “the [Mexican] youngsters are not embarrassed by the attendance of American [white] children and have the best opportunity to learn very rapidly.” The Mexican Catholic school was relocated in 1912 from its Fifth Street site to Meta and Seventh, next to the Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church.27 Despite segregation, integration and mobility within the Mexican community did take place over time. Robert “Quito” Valles, who lived in the Meta Street barrio, attended Our Lady of Guadalupe during the 1930s, as did Mary Navarro, who lived in La Colonia. Both became involved with the Santa Clara church. But for most of the first half of the twentieth century the world of the majority of Mexican children was restricted to the periphery of the city’s four barrio enclaves.28 More-privileged Mexican residents of the Oxnard Plain enrolled their children at St. Joseph’s Institute. The offspring of Adolfo Camarillo, considered one of the last of the Californios, attended and graduated from St. Joseph’s. Robert Hinostro, Oxnard’s first Mexican American police officer, protested to Monsignor Anthony Jacobs about the church’s practice of segregation, and he was able to enroll his children in the school. He also helped the children of his compadre (fellow godfather) to be admitted. For Hinostro the segregation of his children conflicted with his childhood experience in the city of Ventura. As one of only a few Mexican children in a Catholic elementary school in Ventura, Hinostro identified with his classmates of Irish origins. “I didn’t know I was a Mexican until I was 12 years old,” he said. “I thought I was an Irishman all the time. Because all we’d do is sing Irish songs. . . . In school puro Irish stuff.” So he sought the incorporation of his Mexican American children and those of his compadre into Oxnard’s Catholic school system based on his own integration into a predominantly white school.29 The integration of the children of a few Mexican families into largely white schools was the exception and did not challenge the overall saliency of segregation in the city. These curious yet exceptional 106

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unions in Catholic schools and churches illustrate that accommodations were made and that fissures existed in the systemic foundation of white supremacy. A permanent Mexican community allowed individuals such as Hinostro to challenge discrimination. Community roots eliminated the option of repatriation to escape social injustice and required them to seek redress to their grievances. Mexican communities throughout Southern California tired of the second-class status assigned to them by school officials and society at large. Challenges to such injustice served as one way to exercise their rights. Immigrant Mexicans first legally challenged school segregation in California in 1931 with the formation of El Comité de Vecinos de Lemon Grove (Neighborhood Committee of Lemon Grove), just outside San Diego. In Alvarez v. Lemon Grove School District, Mexicans of Lemon Grove defeated the segregationist policy of the local school board after the Mexican consul hired a lawyer to represent their case.30 Dionicio Morales detailed that although the effects of school segregation in the Ventura County community of Moorpark seared “the lessons of inequality” in him and his peers, they continued to view themselves as “anything other than American citizens.” So despite a system of school segregation that inflicted trauma, according to Morales, beyond the comprehension of many of their immigrant parents, Mexican schoolchildren internalized an identity of U.S. citizenship by way of the Americanization curriculum and rituals such as the daily flag salute.31 The public schools on the Oxnard Plain entailed a more nuanced character as integrated campuses evolved due to the limited finances and facilities of the Oxnard School District. At the start, there were no schools specially constructed for Mexican students. Elementary school children attended the Theodore Roosevelt School on A Street and Third. Richard Haydock Elementary was at the northwest corner of C Street and Wooley Road. Woodrow Wilson Junior High School was at C Street and Palm. For the first half of the century the Oxnard Unified High School lay in two different locations, first at C Street and Seventh and later at H Street and Fifth. A Mexican public school for schoolchildren of Mexican descent in a Mexican enclave was not constructed until 1941 in the La Colonia barrio.32 segregated integration

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The trustees of the Oxnard School District “obsessed” — as characterized in Judge Harry Pregerson’s U.S. Circuit Court for the Central District opinion thirty years later — over a range of plans to segregate white and Mexican grammar school children within classrooms and playgrounds.33 This obsession developed from the intense complaints of the parents of white schoolchildren who felt besieged by the presence of students of Mexican origins in the schools during the latter half of the 1930s. The school board and the superintendent met two to three times a week, and twice on the same day, to develop plans of segregation with the input of principals and teachers. One solution combined grade levels of white students that resulted in class sizes of forty to fifty pupils. Administrators and teachers also identified the “brightest and best” of the Mexican student population (the majority of whom were U.S. citizens) to integrate into “American” (white) classes when their numbers were low. The hygiene of students of Mexican origins became another criterion for them to join white classrooms. Once intra-school de jure segregation became unwieldy, due to the growth of migrant agricultural families in the city, the school district took “immediate steps” in 1938 to designate the Haydock School a quasi-Mexican school. This meant that all Mexican students in the city would attend the Haydock School along with white students who lived south of the Fifth Street corridor.34 This raised the ire of white residents in the south-side Acre Tract of Oxnard who “resented” this policy that — in the words of Alice Shaffer, who wrote the district — seized the architecturally majestic Haydock School “away from the use of American children and given bodily over to the use of Mexicans.” This was particularly irksome when no families of Mexican origins, according to Shaffer, lived in the Acre Tract vicinity. Shaffer urged the district to create a neighborhood school in La Colonia.35 White parents were not the only ones who objected to this policy. Louis Carballo, a Spanish immigrant whose family lived in the Meta Street barrio, hired attorney Edward C. Maxwell in September 1938 to protest the de jure segregation that affected his children. Maxwell, however, did not represent his client’s interests forcibly, as the district’s board minutes indicate that he conceded that segregation under certain circumstance was 108

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necessary. Carballo’s action was, nonetheless, taken seriously as the board met the next day to discuss the matter with the district attorney and the county superintendent of schools. Oxnard School District records do not indicate what eventually came of the Carballo threat to take the district to court, but Carballo’s children stated that they continued their elementary education at the Roosevelt School. Another Meta Street barrio parent, Quito Valles, successfully protested the transfer of his children to the Haydock School too. Subsequent minutes indicate that the board allowed white students residing south of the Fifth Street segregation corridor to attend the Roosevelt School on the north side.36 In June 1939 the Oxnard School District board passed a resolution to acquire a site east of Oxnard Boulevard “and to do all things necessary to provide a school building thereon.”37 This would become a Mexican school, Ramona Elementary, in 1941. The board cited population growth in La Colonia that contributed to overcrowded conditions at the Roosevelt School. Curiously, the minutes did not mention the protests of white parents opposed to the integration of Mexican schoolchildren. The safety of La Colonia students was another reason, as they had to cross the Southern Pacific spur line and busy boulevard to attend the Roosevelt School on the west side. Board members did not consider the employment of crossing guards.38 The public education system of Oxnard was ostensibly integrated in the grades of middle and high school, but it was a common practice to segregate students along racial lines within schools. Bedford Pinkard, whose African American family migrated to Southern California from Jacksonville, Texas, in 1941, detailed how administrators at Woodrow Wilson Junior High School segregated non-white students on the east side of the campus while their white classmates attended the west end. Teachers also divided classrooms, with white students seated at the front of the class and minority students in the back. A veil also existed on the school’s playground. Joe Mendoza recalled how when he and his peers of Mexican origins, both girls and boys, needed to use the restroom they had to do so behind trees, as the facilities for the schoolchildren existed on the white side of the playground. This variety of school segregation segregated integration

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pervaded the Southwest. School districts in Texas went so far as to segregate the names of students within the teachers’ roll books. Mexican students in some Texas school districts were not allowed to participate in sports, band, and theater. Teachers and administrators in many parts of the Southwest argued that Mexican students with limited ability to speak English required separate instruction to develop their language skills. This assertion ignored the segregation of students of Mexican origins who spoke English fluently within or on separate campuses, along with their segregated African American, Asian American, and Native American classmates.39 Segregationist policies of public and parochial school administrators in California and other parts of the Southwest did not develop in a vacuum. Schools reinforced a societal outlook that Mexicans, in general, threatened the health and morals of white students, despite the diverse character of the Mexican community based on place of birth, class, and generation. Prejudice toward Mexicans rationalized the practice of school segregation. This was not always admitted straightforwardly.40 Anthropologist Ruth Tuck recognized the complexity of this dilemma in the 1940s when she wrote the following about a San Bernardino, California, Mexican community: “There is a street . . . on which three families live side by side. The head of one family is a naturalized citizen, who arrived here eighteen years ago; the head of the second is an alien who came . . . in 1905; the head of the third is the descendant of people who came . . . in 1843. All of them, with their families, live in poor housing; earn approximately $150 a month as unskilled laborers; send their children to ‘Mexican’ schools; and encounter the same sort of discriminatory practices.”41 And as we will see, Mexicans, along with African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native American, experienced concomitant forms of discrimination within theaters, restaurants, stores, and other public spaces. Henry W. Cooke aptly described this situation in a 1948 article in School and Society: “To be sure, it is not necessarily true that policies of discrimination originate in the schools; they grow out of habits in community life. They are the result of the social process by which the majority group or groups seek to protect themselves, their culture, and their property values from all deteriorating influences from the outside.”42 110

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The “Mexican” American Community Despite the hydra of prejudice, (white) club women ventured into the barrios of Oxnard in an effort to expand their influence beyond the domestic realm. The Ladies Aid Society of the Santa Clara church, for example, practiced “civic altruism” as they sponsored a Christmas toy drive for underprivileged in the early twentieth century. Members then visited the barrios of Oxnard and El Rio to distribute presents to, in the words of the Oxnard Daily Courier, “Spanish children.” At the Catholic Guadalupe school, nuns received a box of toys, candy, and clothes to give to the largely Mexican student body. All in all, the Ladies Aid Society reached 125 families in the Oxnard and El Rio area. The transnational character of Southern California’s Mexican communities limited the outreach of women’s clubs. Oxnard chief of police A. J. Murray estimated that during the winter holiday season fifty to one hundred Mexican families (approximately six hundred people in all) left the city.43 The Santa Clara church sponsored a special mass for Mexican families that remained in Oxnard for the 1912 Christmas season. Mexican parishioners from the city’s barrio enclaves attended the standing-room-only service. Guadalupe elementary school students sang, and Father Sola blessed a portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And the Oxnard Daily Courier recognized the diversity of class, ethnicity, and residence within the Mexican community when it identified the students of Guadalupe as “Mexican” and “Spanish.” The newspaper announced in August 1912 the relocation of the Guadalupe school from its place on Fifth Street to the corner of Meta and Seventh. It also characterized the school as a place devoted to the education of “Spanish” children. The use of the “Spanish” label for what was largely a population of students of Mexican origins demonstrates the anxiety that whites held toward this community.44 Many Mexicans were U.S. citizens, and others were longtime or recent immigrants. Some were middle-class merchants, and more worked in agriculture. And they were of mixed race with a complexion that spanned the color spectrum. Mexicans further perplexed whites when they identified themselves as Spanish or español. On the other hand, lower-working-class Mexican segregated integration

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Americans, immigrants, and others with darker complexions were lumped together, often with pejorative English inflection, as “Mexican.” Collectively, however, individuals within barrio communities largely viewed themselves as Mexicanos.45 The vacillation in how to identify people of Mexican origins indicates how the larger white community within Oxnard acknowledged class and national distinctions within this group while it continued to segregate this population as a whole. In using the word “Spanish” to describe students in the Guadalupe school, the unidentified Oxnard Daily Courier reporter illustrates the uncertain manner in which some Mexicans were viewed. The dominant population in California often recognized U.S.-born and longtime resident Mexicans as “Spanish,” especially the socially privileged. Therefore the “Spanish” label illustrates that some Guadalupe elementary students may have come from families that were comparatively wellto-do economically and acculturated to the white mainstream. Another dimension to consider involves the consciousness of some journalists of the subordinate insinuation of the word “Mexican.” The reporter of the above article may have utilized the word “Spanish” so as not to offend the sensibilities of more-privileged Mexicans. To capitalize on the spending of Mexicans, the business community attended private and public Spanish-language courses. An Oxnard Union High School teacher gave private Spanish lessons in 1907, and the Oxnard Courier commented that “There seems to be a universal desire among the young men of town who are engaged in clerical and mercantile pursuits to learn the Spanish language. The increasing Mexican population of the state and the commercial relation with Spanish speaking nations has made the language a requisite to the training of the modern business man.” Growers on the Oxnard Plain also found it advantageous to be conversant in Spanish to better manage their operations. Japanese proprietors and merchants, especially, enjoyed a reputation as fluent Spanish speakers.46 Within the Meta Street barrio the church and school of Our Lady of Guadalupe represented more than just a place where Mexicans worshipped and sent their children to be educated. It served as the center point of the Mexican community, especially its permanent residents. Twenty-four 112

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Mexican women of varying ages gathered at the Guadalupe school in May 1918 to discuss the United States’ entrance into World War I and organize community events in support of the nation’s war effort. This activism stemmed from their desire, according to the Oxnard Daily Courier, “to show their patriotism and their desire to assist the country as the Mexican men are doing by enlisting in the army.”47 At the war’s end the global flu epidemic of 1918 reached Southern California. Worldwide estimates range from 20 million to 100 million fatalities. Five hundred thousand people died from the flu in the United States by September 1918. Oxnard city officials focused their attention on the public health needs of the Meta Street barrio. A makeshift hospital was opened at the Donlon and Stewart building, on Meta and Seventh, for persons stricken by the deadly flu. It also doubled as a homeless shelter. On the first night of its opening, five patients entered the improvised hospital. Members of the Mexican community also worked proactively with Charles Green, the Oxnard superintendent of streets, to improve the sanitation of their neighborhoods. On another occasion twenty Mexican residents volunteered to assist Police Chief Murray in cleanups throughout the city. The barrios, however, warranted special attention due to the negligence of municipal authorities. City officials mobilized crews with horse-drawn carts to haul trash and debris from the streets of La Colonia, the China Alley district, and the Meta Street barrio.48 There were exceptions to the isolation of the Mexican community to geographic space largely east of Oxnard Boulevard. The plaza of Oxnard, two streets west of the main boulevard on Fifth Street, with a pagoda at the center, served as a recreational site. Residents enjoyed the city’s temperate weather while lounging underneath the shade of towering conifers and palm trees. People strolled, browsed surrounding stores, or purchased tamales and ice cream from street vendors and shops. Music attracted people from all parts of the plain on weekends. Mexican bands performed for the enjoyment of the entire community. And political candidates stumped here. In October 1912. Nina Domínguez of Santa Monica, a socialist candidate for the California Senate, campaigned in Oxnard. A local reporter wrote, “From a small automobile in front of the plaza segregated integration

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she took up various working men’s and women’s problems of the state, from the socialistic standpoint and spoke of remedies. She mentioned unfair tactics of her opponents and appealed to voters. The talk was well received by the listeners, and afterward she was personally greeted by many of them.”49 That same year, absc labor supervisor Robert Beach spoke on the behalf of leaders of Mexican residents in their request for the financial support of the countywide Community Service (cs ) organization, headed by prominent Oxnard landowner Charles Donlon, for the formation of a Latin American band. Beach informed Donlon and the cs that the interested musicians had raised $127.11 (equivalent to $1,700 in 2011 dollars) for this project and said that “Nothing is being done for the Latin-Americans except to help them to help themselves.” The cs agreed to extend a $1,000 loan (equivalent to $13,400 in 2011 dollars) and created a special committee, chaired by Paul Lehmann, to solicit, with the help of the Oxnard Daily Courier, additional band instruments and funds. It also offered the facilities of the Oxnard Civic Center for the Latin American Band to use for practice.50 But the Latin American Band did more than entertain. It served as an agent for the greater integration, “Americanization,” and acceptance of Mexicans within the city. Like the Padua Institute in Claremont, California, the cs sponsorship of the band, in a paternalistic manner, fulfilled its objective, in the words of Donlon, in the “making of better citizens, or rearing men and women of higher character.”51 In direct reference to the Latin American Band two years later, the Daily Courier reported that the musical group existed in “regard to the matter of the civic development of the Mexican colony, which is now proceeding in a rapid rate as a result of the work which has been accomplished by the Community Service.”52 Beach’s wife was also involved in the Mexican community. And the couple served, respectively, as the best man and matron of honor in the marriage of Alfonso Terrasas, an absc factory employee, and Rafaela Castro at the Guadalupe church. The newlyweds were, according to the Oxnard Daily Courier, “well known Spanish residents of this city.” As city elites, the Beaches mediated relations between the white establishment and civic-minded Mexicans determined to advance the subordinated 114

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condition of their community. Robert Beach chaired the cs ’s playground project for the Mexican community, which included a center in a vacant lot across the street from the Guadalupe church at Meta and Seventh Streets. Antonio Natera presided over a cs subcommittee to organize a benefit baile (dance) for the playground.53 Local merchants Jesús N. Jiménez, Anastacio Martínez, and other Mexican community leaders regularly addressed the city council directly and without introduction after Beach’s initial assistance. They requested the city’s cooperation to hold fiestas and parades in celebration of Mexican Independence Day and the Fourth of July.54 This interplay helped attenuate mistrust between these two groups. Culture in the Mexican community was not an either/or phenomenon, nor was it divided along generational lines or national origin. The appeal of Mexican leaders to city officials to sponsor national celebrations of Mexico and the United States demonstrated cultural persistence in the promotion of Mexican Independence day fiestas as well as co-optation as lead organizers of the Fourth of July celebration. The Mexican community, consciously or unconsciously, experienced Americanization while simultaneously undergirding the Mexicanization of Oxnard’s immigrant and U.S.-born population at large.55 Other civic organizations joined in the promotion of Americanization activities as the cs developed its membership. The Women’s Auxiliary of the American Legion, the Catholic Women’s Club, and the school nurse of the Oxnard School District met at the cs office at the city’s community center on one occasion in 1923 to discuss Americanization programs and initiated playground activities for children. Accessible, safe recreational space for children was central to the playground movement. And club women envisioned the Americanization of immigrants through supervised “directed play” intended to instill civic virtue. The inculcation of the nation’s values and mores was another goal. cs leaders scheduled biweekly after-school activities in July 1923 under the coordination of Charles Weaver. Games and storytelling were designed to Americanize Mexican children.56 But Progressive Era civic leaders did not limit their focus to children. Beach, as chair of the cs ’s Latin American Committee, and Mexican leaders organized the construction of a rebote (handball) segregated integration

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court on the south side of Seventh Street, east of Oxnard Boulevard, to channel the energies of single, young Mexican men. An ulterior motive also existed. “The philosophy behind the efforts of Community Service of Oxnard,” Tam Deering expressed in Playground magazine, “is to assist the Mexicans” — that is, perhaps, to direct Mexican men from the city’s saloons and billiard halls. Another unstated goal, from the absc ’s perspective, was to make the overall living environment tolerable, if not desirable, so as to retain betabelero families. This was most obvious in the absc ’s construction of adobe residences. And Beach’s involvement as chair of the cs Meta Street playground committee also supported this end. The rebote courts project became so popular among Mexican men that sugar beet growers went to them to recruit betabeleros instead of going to labor agencies.57 Robert Beach resigned from the cs in November 1923 due to his family’s relocation to Los Angeles. This offered an opportunity for the Mexican membership of the organization to deal directly with the city’s leadership. Anastacio Martínez, in fact, replaced Beach on the cs board. He also chaired the Central Mexican Committee (formerly the Latin American Committee) of the cs . One of his accomplishments involved the construction of the playground for the children of the Mexican community on Meta and Seventh Streets, adjacent to the rebote courts. Martínez solicited the donation of absc land, obtained material from Oxnard businesses, worked with municipal officials, and organized the help of volunteers. The Oxnard Daily Courier reported that women were at the playground construction site to provide refreshments. This information complements historical research on the Southwest, which demonstrates the more central involvement of Mexican women in similar community projects.58 Mexican community leaders envisioned the playground as a safe haven where their segregated children could play and socialize. White cs members viewed the Mexican playground as a place to encourage the Americanization of children by way of games, drama lessons, and the instruction of arts and crafts. So the “Mexican playground,” as it was called by the white community, served a similar purpose as the Mexican schools. By placing the playground in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood, white cs leaders 116

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ensured that Mexican children would not use, at least to a large degree, the Oxnard Community Center on the west side at C and Seventh. Martínez proposed the employment of Spanish-speaking recreational attendants to supervise and promote a sense of civic responsibility among children at the site. The playground project was a vehicle in which Mexican community brokers increasingly asserted themselves before the cs and the city council. In April 1924 another delegation of Mexican civic activists petitioned the city council for the installation of restrooms at the playground. Regular appeals like this before the city’s elected leaders demonstrated the civic agency that the Mexican community leadership exercised.59 In the first half of the twentieth century, many motivating factors stood behind the activism of Mexican organizations such as the La Unión Patriótica Benéfica Mexicana Independiente (Patriotic Union to Benefit Mexican Independence), La Unión Femenil Mexicana (Mexican Women’s Union), and La Alianza Hispano Americana (Hispanic American Alliance), among others. These factors included the determination to address fundamental problems in their communities and to advance the developmental interests of their children. These organizations also sought to ally themselves with the white leadership to negotiate their influence. Leaders of the white establishment, on the other hand, welcomed this cooperation to exercise another dimension of its power over the largely disenfranchised Mexican community. The civic engagement of Mexican organizations also sought to neutralize negative portrayals attributed to Mexicans in relation to the violence that characterized migrant single, male districts throughout the Southwest. The further Mexican barrios were from the U.S.-Mexican border, the more susceptible individuals in these communities found themselves to arrest. One explanation is that the further Mexican males moved away from the border, the less likely they were to have institutions such as family to govern their actions. The Oxnard Daily Courier regularly reported the violence — which ranged from gunfire to brawls — that plagued Mexican quarters, especially within the China Alley district. Reporters detailed the illicit economies of sex workers, narcotics (especially marijuana on the part of Mexicans), and bootlegging. Highlighting the arrests of Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican segregated integration

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residents, the newspaper largely ignored the fact that white males also participated in these activities.60 Jesús N. Jiménez, an Oxnard resident and furniture retailer with stores in Oxnard and Fillmore, presided over the Independent Mexican Committee (imc ) in an effort to elevate the public stature of the Mexican community in Ventura County. The imc was an assembly of logias (lodges) from sites throughout the county, such as Camarillo, Saticoy, El Rio, and the Limoneira Ranch. Its mission was, in the words of Jiménez, to “uplift Mexicans and aid them in becoming better citizens.” More than 350 residents of the Mexican community attended an imc conference in 1924 and proclaimed its motto as “Protection and Instruction.”61 The larger overall population of Oxnard recognized the social and economic transformation of the Mexican community in May 1924 when the Oxnard Daily Courier reported the imc ’s activities and commented, “During the past few months there have been evidences of one kind or another showing that a better class of Mexicans were making Oxnard their home.” The newspaper further detailed that Jiménez and Antonio Natera, accompanied by an imc delegation, read a formal statement to the Oxnard City Council expressing the organization’s desire to help maintain order in the city.62 Similar organizations developed in the Southwest during this period. Headed largely by lower-middle-class Mexican Americans, many of whom were World War I veterans, El Orden Hijos de América (The Order of the Sons of America), El Orden Caballeros de América (The Order of the Knights of America), and the League of United Latin American Citizens in Texas challenged discrimination and worked to protect the interests of their communities. But unlike the imc and the upbmi , these organizations implemented bylaws that often excluded non-U.S. citizens and conducted their affairs in English in an effort to leverage their rights while at the same time distancing themselves from Mexican nationals. And like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s notion of a “talented tenth” leadership, the League of United Latin American Citizens viewed itself as an organization composed of educated elites for civil rights reform through judicial means.63

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Whitewashing Adobes Certain leaders of the white establishment held concerns of their own: high among them were control over the Mexican community and sanitation. The Oxnard City Council listened to the presentation of their fellow council member (a local grammar school principal) Richard B. Haydock in 1917. He called for the employment of a policewoman/nurse to serve the indigent. His address ignored the municipality’s failure to provide basic public health services in Mexican neighborhoods. Haydock, however, did point to the city’s protection of animals but not the needy when he stated: “We have laws to prevent the abuse of livestock . . . but the people are allowed to abuse themselves. The ignorant are allowed to live and breed under conditions that become a threat and a menace to the welfare of the community. . . . Many cases of filth and disease and contagion are found by us in the school work. We suggest to these Mexican people that they care for themselves but they do nothing. The personal health of the Mexican children in the grammar school affects every child in the school.”64 Haydock underscored the fragile nature of cross-culturalism when he expressed the anxieties of many in California, defined as the “Mexican problem.” People who shared Haydock’s fear considered the Mexican community not only inferior and mindless but also a population that lived in inhuman conditions. The white community, moreover, internalized the social Darwinist fear of race suicide: the putative failure of old-stock Americans to stay ahead of the natural population growth of new immigrants.65 Haydock’s appeal convinced the council. The city hired Eloise M. Thornton the next month with the title of policewoman/nurse and charged her with home-teaching families in sanitation and hygiene. The employment of Thornton as a home teacher under the curious designation of “policewoman/nurse” arose in an era that witnessed the California legislature instituting the Home Teacher Act of 1915. Under this act, home teachers instructed immigrant mothers in U.S. customs of hygiene, diet, and sanitation. Middle-class Progressive reformers of California believed that the

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Americanization of immigrant mothers would lead to the assimilation of their children to the norms of middle-class white culture. So the focus of the instruction was on child care and home economics. Progressives also trained immigrant women and their daughters to work in sex-segregated jobs outside the home as nannies and domestics.66 Thelma St. John, an instructor of adult education for the Oxnard Unified High School District and El Rio, created home-school Americanization courses. In addition to providing English-language instruction, she conducted lessons in sewing and the cooking of American (that is, nonMexican) meals. The absc converted one of its adobe units to serve as a classroom, and the Oxnard Union High School donated desks and chairs. Twenty-two women regularly attended the classes. St. John organized events for the Christmas season of 1928 at the adobe home of a Mrs. González. On one occasion more than one hundred mothers and their children gathered. Another celebration existed at the Colonia Gardens Americanization Adult Education Center in which the Oxnard Monday Club, the pta , the Rotary Club, the American Legion Auxiliary, and the Business and Professional Women’s Club participated. St. John went on to conduct Americanization classes at the Roosevelt School on A and Third Streets in 1929.67 In September 1919, officials of the Oxnard Union High School announced to the general public, and to the Mexican community in particular, a state mandate of compulsory education for individuals between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one living within a three-mile radius of a high school who could not read or write in English at a sixth-grade level. Oxnard High administrators also developed a curriculum of beginning and intermediate Spanish as part of the business program at its night school.68 At the county level there also emerged a movement to Americanize Mexican immigrant children through instruction in hygiene and English. At variance with Americanization programs in other cities, a Spanishsurnamed person chaired the Committee of Americanization under the auspices of the Ventura County Council of Defense. His name was Louis Ortega. One of the last of the county’s Californios, Ortega served as a 120

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justice of the peace in the city of Ventura and a court interpreter in his retirement. Oxnard residents sitting on this committee included Haydock, Thornton, Mrs. Henry Levy (the wife of the prominent Oxnard Jewish banker), and Mary Bevans. Thornton opposed the collaboration of school boards with the agricultural industry to access child labor and argued that Mexican students needed to be encouraged to stay in school. She also proposed improved housing standards for agricultural workers. At a club women assembly, Thornton urged the audience to address the needs of Mexican children and admonished them that the “women of a town determine the morals of that town.”69 Thornton itemized her Americanization efforts in a report to the Oxnard City Council in July 1918. She visited an unidentified school twenty-four times and made a total of 117 home visits that month. Nine referrals to a physician and four cases forwarded to a judge resulted from the home and school visits. She did not elaborate on the nature of these medical and legal matters. Thornton further reported that she distributed and loaned clothing, gave advice, and conducted some eighty home-teaching classes. The duties of a policewoman/nurse took its toll. Thornton resigned her post in October 1918, citing ill health and the job.70 Club women, as moral guardians, shared Thornton’s conviction to Americanize immigrants. In October 1919 the Oxnard Monday Club invited C. H. Urqhart of the California Federation of Women’s Clubs to discuss matters of Americanization. The first part of Urqhart’s talk defined the tenets of Americanization and extolled the success of the home-teaching program. That same month, the Senior Epworth League of the Methodist Episcopal Church sponsored a conference, led by Harriet Puntenney, to study the principles of Americanization and declared that “Americanization means making good citizens — not only of foreigners, but the native born American. A good citizen must be obedient, intelligent and economically independent.”71 This was extraordinary. Perhaps the Epworth League targeted the “native born” children of immigrants for Americanization reform. In the fall of 1919 the city council selected Mary Webb to replace Thornton as the new policewoman/nurse. Webb declared the improvement of segregated integration

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the sanitary conditions of the “poorer classes” as her immediate concern. And she, as a newly appointed at-will employee, audaciously faulted city officials for the lack of sanitation in the “poorer quarters” — a euphemism for the segregated neighborhoods of Mexicans, African Americans, and Asian Americans. This, in her opinion, put the city at risk of an outbreak of typhoid. Red Cross nurse F. C. McColloch reiterated Webb’s reproach in a 1920 address to the council. McColloch, however, commended Mexican residents for their cooperation with the Red Cross to address public health threats in their neighborhoods.72 McColloch then raised an issue that only a handful of the most progressive of Progressive reformers, such as the Epworth League, confronted. She targeted people of middle-class means for the neglect of barrio enclaves, stating, “Recently we have been hearing lots about Americanization work among the foreigners . . . but there is also lots to be done in Americanization with Americans, and that is where the work should start.” McColloch’s testimony was unusual in that she did not fault immigrant tenants, but instead reprimanded landlords for their refusal to maintain the tenements of Mexican families. Roofs that leaked, water-damaged ceilings, broken light fixtures, and faulty plumbing went unrepaired. Tenants did not make the most basic of maintenance requests, as landlords elevated their rent in retaliation. McColloch presented rent receipts that proved monthly hikes after such requests were made.73 Barrio residents did not, however, stand by and allow others to speak for them. Residents of La Colonia delivered a petition to the city council in June 1922 that demanded the city’s relocation of a solid-waste dump site just southeast of the area in which they lived. Mexican community leaders also pressured the council to provide basic services of piped water, paved streets, and cement sidewalks. In some cases, basic services were initiated and completed by those who could afford to pay for them from their own resources. Robert Hinostro and his neighbors of La Colonia organized Las Guardianes de la Colonia (Guardians of La Colonia) and persistently lobbied municipal officials from the late 1930s to the 1950s to develop and maintain La Colonia’s streets and sanitation services on par with the rest of the city.74 122

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Pastimes Popular amusements continued to undergird state and local Americanization programs. One form consisted of minstrel shows of blackface performers. Minstrel productions Americanized the immigrant as well as the native-born to mainstream prejudices, specifically toward African Americans. Minstrelsy defined the dominant standard of whiteness in contrast to the caricature of black culture.75 At the Oxnard Masonic Auditorium an audience of more than seven hundred viewed performances of Hi Henry’s minstrel company a year before the city’s incorporation in 1903. And the Elks Lodge minstrel show at the auditorium of the Oxnard Union High School brought in a record audience of fifteen hundred. The Santa Paula Young Men’s Christian Association’s production of a minstrel show was reviewed by the Oxnard Daily Courier in 1916. The show, staged at the neighboring town of Saticoy, was characterized by the reviewer as amusing. Minstrel shows purchased advertisements in the local newspaper with stereotypical images that transmitted a racial ideology. The Bertrand Vaudeville Road Show and Comedy Company, for example, advertised an engagement at the Oxnard New Victory Theater with a pictorial of a white performer in blackface makeup and an Al Jolson–like open-mouthed grin. The Sam Griffin’s Minstrels entered Oxnard later in 1920s. A caption accompanied a blackface caricature that announced, “30 All White, Comedians, Singers, Dancers.” Minstrel show promoters organized boisterous parades, accompanied by bands, to stir community interest in their premiere.76 The myth of an animated black South assuaged anxieties toward a commercial environment that eroded communal sensibilities. Minstrel shows, along with elegies for the mission era and Mexicans who lived in municipally neglected barrios and adobe structures, represented to the more privileged white community a psychological escape from the anomic influences within a society in economic transition. The portrayal of blacks, Mexicans, and Asians via minstrel-like shows, the Spanish fantasy heritage, or the mysterious China Alley allowed the dominant white community to nostalgically revert to a simpler rural past.77 segregated integration

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Motion picture theaters in Oxnard inculcated alternative lessons. This institution of popular culture, like the public schools, integrated people from diverse communities under one roof while it segregated them internally. People of African, Mexican, and Asian ancestry experienced segregation not only in movie houses but also in restaurants and other public facilities. Two sources in particular recounted tense contretemps of their youth. Nao Takasugi recalled one visit to the Oxnard Theater, at 525 A Street, in which a friend of Japanese ancestry refused to be seated in the non-white section and demanded the refund of his money if he was not allowed to sit where he wished. The owner agreed to the refund and walked the youth to the box office and threw the money to the floor. Takasugi’s friend, in defiance to the manager’s insult, told the manager that he would not pick up his money and walked away. Walter B. Moranda detailed how one of his friends of California Indian and European ancestry accompanied his white pals into the Victory Theater on the corner of C and Fifth. A “spotter” charged with the enforcement of the color line noticed the young boy with Native American (and Mexican) features. He forced Moranda’s friend to sit on the left side of the theater reserved for non-whites.78 Intriguingly, the enforcement of segregation in the second instance occurred when the minority youth accompanied his white friends. The accompaniment of a non-white youth with white youths, in other words, did not serve as an exemption from the segregationist practices in the city. The biraciality of the youth in question defined the color line. Moranda further implied that his singled-out friend accepted his position as a non-white and complied with the theater’s practice of segregation. This was a radically different response to that of Takasugi’s companion, who refused to patronize an establishment that did not recognize his equality. Other oral interviews of longtime Oxnard and Ventura County residents specify that racial segregation was revitalized by the influx of Dust Bowl migrants during the 1930s. Eloise Simmons recounted the racist remark of a white Arkansas migrant co-worker at the Seaboard lemon packinghouse when an African American man who sought employment entered the building through the front door.79 Bedford Pinkard detailed two similar incidents. In one instance, a white southern migrant co-worker indicated 124

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to Pinkard’s mother, Adela, that she suspected some blacks were passing as white within the packinghouse, not realizing that Adela was African American. In another instance, in 1945, Bedford Pinkard and his white schoolmates entered a popular malt shop in the plaza district. On this occasion a newly hired white soda jerk from the South refused to serve Pinkard. Pinkard recounted: When I got to place my order the person — he was a new person that worked the counter — told me he wouldn’t serve me. And, I thought it was because I was acting up coming in the door, . . . Ted Blackwell [a white friend], whose dad was on the police force, asked, “What do you mean you are not going to serve him?” He [the soda jerk] said, “It is because he is Negro.” So he [Blackwell] got upset and then he told all the other kids, because we were the big guys on campus in junior high school, “They are not going to serve Bedford because he ’s Negro!” So no one would be served, we all walked outside the door and then we stayed outside there and wouldn’t let no junior high school kids go in the malt shop. We ’d make them go down to another malt shop where the high school kids hung out called Peacocks. So we’d do that everyday’ . . . It was probably the first picket line, I guess you would call, for integration in the city of Oxnard. I am sure it was.80 In the environment of citrus packinghouses throughout Ventura County, white Dust Bowl migrants enjoyed preferential treatment in holding supervisory positions over Mexican employees who outranked them in seniority.81 Spaces did exist, however, where residents interacted more or less as equals. This was especially true in sports. Local semi-pro baseball teams competed with others from around Southern California. Mexicans, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, partook in the game of baseball as they were introduced to the sport by American miners and railway workers in Mexico and in the schools and playgrounds of the United States. Immigrants from different parts of Mexico and U.S.-born Mexicans solidified their shared culture and ethnicity on the diamond. The sport served, moreover, as a vehicle in the Americanization, as well as the Mexicanization, of all involved, players and spectators alike, by way of language and segregated integration

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interaction. This was manifested in many ways.82 To help pay for the cost of uniforms, equipment, and travel, teams sought out the sponsorship of local merchants. Many times they took on the name of the business that supported them. Robert Valles, whose father, Quito, was a founder of the Oxnard Aces, appreciatively remembered: An interesting thing, too, I was a little kid, about four or five years old, and I used to tag along with my dad when he used to sell ads . . . for his baseball uniforms. Every uniform had the sponsors on the back those days. The Jewish merchants were the first ones to come forward. You go to the Mexicano merchants [they would say], “Well Quito, I am really behind in my bills. I can’t right now.” They gave him all kinds of excuses. But surprisingly, I still remember, the Jewish merchants asked, “Quito how much you want?” [Quito answered,] “Well, it costs you $20 for a full uniform.” [The merchants responded,] “Okay, you got it. How about for baseballs and bats? Let me give you another $5 for baseball and bats.” . . . The Turf Liquor Store, Lehmann Brothers Department Store, Surfs Men’s Store, just to name a few. Then I used to hear my dad comment to his [ball club] members, “You know it is strange that the Jews are the ones that come forward anytime we need a helping hand.” So, I never forget that, that the Jewish people being so supportive.83 Much of Oxnard’s claim to fame stemmed from its Aces. This was a club of Mexican players who competed against teams from within and outside Ventura County as an affiliate of La Asociación Mexicana de Baseball del Sur de California (Southern California Mexican Baseball Association), formed in 1932. But the team was not ethnically exclusive, although it consisted of players largely of Mexican origins. Bobby Wiltfong and Joe Shinkle were the team’s star pitchers in 1946. The Aces also competed with semi-professional black teams. This same year the Aces rallied in the ninth inning to defeat the “Colored Athletics” of Los Angeles by a score of 10–9. And as early as 1911 a team known as the Mexican Giants faced off and defeated a team composed of white players called the Dirty Dozen by a score of 17–9. On other occasions, ball clubs from different Christian 126

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Fig. 17. The Oxnard Aces baseball team, circa 1930. In the front row, second from the right, is Quito Valles; the young boy standing is Richard Valles. Courtesy of the City of Oxnard, Oxnard Public Library.

denominations played one another. The day before Christmas Eve in 1919, for example, the Catholic school of St. Joseph’s Institute matched up against the Sunday-school team of the Oxnard Methodist Church (St. Joseph’s won by a score of 27–4). The significance of the Oxnard Aces ventures beyond baseball itself as the baseball circuit of La Asociación facilitated and expanded a shared ethnic and class consciousness on the part of the players and families of the Aces, not only in Southern California but also in other parts of the Southwest. This complemented networks that extended along the migrant route of Mexican agricultural laborers of the San Joaquin Valley and within the food-processing industry of the state. La Asociación scheduled games with teams as distant as Arizona.84 Many baseball teams emerged in the early twentieth century from the city’s diverse communities. The Japanese community, for example, segregated integration

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organized a team in 1915 called Notomi’s Giants. This team played against a club from the town of Somis that held the title of amateur champions of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. Unfortunately for Notomi’s Giants, the team was outclassed by the more experienced Somis. It was defeated by the lopsided score of 15–0. An itinerant club recognized as the Colored Giants visited Oxnard in 1913 to play a pickup team of the city’s star players. The local newspaper extolled the talent of the African American players of the Colored Giants when it stated that “except for color many of them would be eligible for places in the major leagues.” In the presentation of the home-team roster the Oxnard Daily Courier did not list any Spanish-surnamed players. The Oxnard team won on 3 February by the score of 5–2.85 An African American baseball team of the Civilian Conservation Corps (c c c ) Labor Camp 557 visited the city of Oxnard in 1933 and played another team of Oxnard’s best. The Oxnard All Stars found themselves victorious by a score of 4–0 over the “Colored Team” of c c c Labor Camp 557.86 Boxing was another pastime that brought together different groups under one roof, within and outside the ring. Before the advent of radio and television, boxing was an integral form of entertainment for men, women, and entire families in Southern California. Large crowds attended the el boxeo (the fights). Oxnard’s own Sam McVey, an African American light heavyweight, was a hometown favorite. McVey’s bouts dominated the headlines of local and county newspapers. He lost a twenty-round decision to the legendary Jack Johnson in 1903.87 Across racial and ethnic lines, working-class youth with restricted life chances dreamed of wealth and fame through boxing. A large number of these fights were held at the auditorium of Oxnard Union High School. The bouts paired local pugilists with opponents from throughout the region. Inter-ethnic fights headlined many of the boxing cards. Mexicans and ethnic whites fought each other, as well as Japanese and African Americans. The local newspaper sensationalized these cross-cultural matches. One advertisement introduced boxer Don Levy as the Hebrew Hurricane. Promoters purchased an advertisement in the Oxnard Daily 128

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Courier in 1927 that hyped the contest between “The Filipino Terror,” Benie Furrell, against Vernon Jackson at the El Rio Legion Stadium. On another card, the newspaper announced the bout of Blas Rodríguez, “The Mexican Thunderbolt,” versus Ray McIntyre, “The Fighting Little Irish Philippino [sic].”88 The popularity of boxing in the city may be attributed to the alienation that working-class men experienced in a regimented industrial environment and the dissipation of an artisanal economy that once buttressed their masculinity. Boxing arenas, baseball fields, and voluntary associations provided a sanctuary that allowed working-class males to reconstruct a sense of fellowship. And the bouts that paradoxically unified people under one roof while they encouraged ethnic rivalries may have symbolized beneath-the-surface or even overt conflicts between working-class groups. The attraction of large and diverse audiences to interracial bouts may have represented not only violent contests in the ring but also fierce competition among marginalized workers in a highly competitive economy.89 More important, perhaps, the phenomenon of boxing in Southern California signified the assertion of a Mexican presence in the region. Within a milieu that subordinated non-whites, Mexican boxers and spectators may have found a venue of cultural affirmation by way of this sport. A proclaimed prowess in sport, in boxing as well as in baseball, may have also allowed them to challenge the presumed supremacy of whites. And the intensity in the ring may have been matched by fans in the seats. Consequently, the spectacle and rituals of the matches masked intra-group cleavages of Mexicans in relation to ethnicity, class, and citizenship. The significant presence of women at boxing matches, moreover, correlates with their entrance into the wage economy and other commercial amusements. This was particularly highlighted by Lupe Vélez, a famous Mexican Hollywood actress of the 1930s, who frequented the boxing venues of the Hollywood Legion Stadium and the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles.90 In fact, “Many Women See Boxing Exhibition” was the subtitle of a headline of an August 1922 edition of the Oxnard Daily Courier that reported the attendance of sixty women at the fights at the El Rio arena. No attack was made on the character of these women spectators. It seems safe to segregated integration

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assume that they were the wives, sisters, and mothers of some of the male fans and fighters. Boxing promoters welcomed the attendance of women because it was believed that “ladies” had a civilizing effect on the brutal character of the sport.91 Boxing became so lucrative in Ventura County that in 1921 promoters constructed the fifteen-hundred-seat Legion Stadium in Oxnard’s neighboring community of El Rio. One reason for the selection of El Rio involved the opposition of Oxnard residents who feared a certain element of people that the sport was said to attract. Another factor was its proximity to a state highway. People of different ethnic and social backgrounds traveled in their cars and trucks with their children from Santa Paula, Moorpark, Ventura, and other Ventura County communities to watch boxing as well as lucha libre (professional wrestling). In this respect, boxing served as one institution among several — such as nationalistic celebrations, church attendance, and community projects — that mitigated, but far from eliminated, the saliency of racial segregation while it fostered a dynamic of curious unions between Mexican nationals and Mexican American citizens along with others.92 With this alloyed social environment in mind, chapter 4 will examine how the Mexican population protested perceived and actual acts of injustice involving the conduct of law enforcement and the will of the captains of the sugar beet industry in the establishment of working conditions. These responses were cross-cultural and involved groups from within and outside the community. These coalitions entailed a range of political viewpoints and took on many forms, ranging from ad hoc expressions of dissent by individuals and groups to more organized demands by unions for improvement in wages and working conditions.

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4 BIT T ER REPR E SSIO N , SWEET RESISTAN C E

The Mexican community lived in an environment that simultaneously restricted and compelled their integration into the mainstream of Oxnard’s political economy. Community organization was promoted by residents within barrio enclaves and their institutions of churches, mutual aid societies, and leisure. This cultural dynamic existed not only in Oxnard but also within the larger context of Ventura County and Southern California. Shared experiences in the realms of work and leisure generated a network of resistance to injustice. Individual and group struggle took many forms. People resisted with their feet to find better treatment and opportunities elsewhere; in extreme cases, violence occurred.1 This chapter focuses on acts of resistance and protest that ran the gamut from street demonstrations to strikes. It starts with the Mexican community’s inquiry into the unexplained deaths of two jail inmates in 1900 and moves on to the 1903 and 1933 sugar beet strikes. The latter two struggles encompassed alliances with groups outside the culture of Mexicans. Some Mexicans also allied themselves with elites who determined the conditions of labor in the economy of agriculture. In Oxnard, curious unions developed that complicate the understanding of cross-cultural perseverance. Plebeian Mexicans struggled against an interlocked political economy that consisted

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of the refinery and its managers, newspapers, financiers, growers, and law enforcement. So coordinated were the goals and actions of elites that an agricultural-industrial complex emerged. Demographic Growing Pains The development of the city of Oxnard, based on the industry of sugar beets, transformed an environment that was more or less a basic farming economy to one that was part of an emergent system of agribusiness. Divergent communities experienced tensions within this market-oriented economy. Social unrest and upheaval arose as people faced starvation. Others refused to accept the disappearance of a simpler era.2 This scenario existed on the Oxnard Plain with the commercial expansion initiated with the establishment of the American Beet Sugar Company factory in 1898 and the presence of Mexican immigrants, many of whom had already witnessed dramatic social change and a gory civil war known as the Mexican Revolution. Mexico’s peasantry, artisans, and craft workers had found themselves dislocated by the effects of foreign capital since the mid-nineteenth century. Thousands of rural shoemakers, leatherworkers, silversmiths, and other artisans and craftsmen were displaced by the entry of foreign goods by way of the newly constructed foreign-owned railroads. And indigenous people were driven from their ejidos (communal lands) as the Mexican government sought to modernize the nation’s agricultural production. From the 1880s onward the north-south construction of railroads in Mexico facilitated the diaspora of displaced Mexicans.3 Mexico’s population growth — from 10 million in 1885 to 15 million by 1910 — added to the stress caused by the forces of modernization. This affected the character and size of the Mexican population in the United States.4 A modest estimate places 375,000 Mexicans, both U.S.-born and immigrant, living in the Southwest in 1900. Another — perhaps more realistic — approximation stands at 552,000.5 During this same year a recorded 103,393 Mexican nationals entered the United States. An estimated one million crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, nonetheless, between 1900 and 1930. Mexican immigration during these thirty years dramatically affected Mexican barrios throughout the United States.6 132

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A Curious Jailhouse Fire: Accident or Arson? The experiences Mexicans brought with them to the Southwest influenced their integration in places such as Oxnard. This was particularly true when conflict with law enforcement was involved. Begnigno Gómez and José Baisia were arrested for public drunkenness and assault in July 1900. Both tragically died in a fire at the Oxnard jailhouse on the Fourth of July. City authorities attributed the deaths to a failed jailbreak as the men attempted to burn a hole through one of the cell walls. Guillermo Andrade, the Mexican consul to the United States in Los Angeles, arrived to investigate the deaths a week later. He interviewed Oxnard notary public J. A. Whitmore, eight Mexican community members (both U.S.-born and Mexican nationals) who witnessed the blaze, and friends of the victims. No white residents, with the exception of Whitmore, were questioned, the Oxnard Courier reported. The newspaper also held that the consul’s presence was due to “some ugly rumors in relation to the cause and where the fire originated.” The newspaper continued, “The matter, we judge, was largely perfunctory, but it is grand to see any government look after the lives and rights of its citizens residing in foreign countries.”7 An examination of the events related to the jailhouse fire raises many questions as to the perspective of at least some Mexicans in the community. Leaders within Oxnard’s Mexican community sensed official negligence if not foul play in the deaths of Gómez and Baisia and appealed to the Mexican consul to investigate the matter. The petition to Andrade illustrates the Mexican community’s skepticism in the ability of city officials to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation. And if we take the Courier’s report as a reflection of the viewpoint of white residents, the dominant population of the city appeared mystified by the emergence of “ugly rumors” of distrust among Mexican residents. Neither side, at least from the sole newspaper account, took into account the fact that the tragedy happened on the Fourth of July and that fireworks might have started the blaze. Or, perhaps, the Courier correctly interpreted the investigation of Consul Andrade as “perfunctory.” The consul’s inquiry served, nevertheless, at least two significant purposes: first, Mexican combitter repression, sweet resistance

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munity leaders placed city authorities on notice that abuses against them would not go unchallenged, and second, Consul Andrade also sought to reinforce the allegiances of Mexican residents (both Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens) to “México Lindo” (Beautiful Mexico) by his exhibition of concern for their welfare at a very minimum.8 A Curious Union of Labor Contractors and Betabeleros Strain between the Mexican community, on the one hand, and city and absc officials, on the other, arose three years later. The struggle resulted in a curious cross-cultural alliance between Japanese and Mexican labor contractors and betabeleros in the formation of the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association (jmla ) in February 1903. The jmla represents a rare instance in early-twentieth-century U.S. labor history when two non-white groups joined together to advance their common economic interests. And labor contractors (both Japanese and Mexican) — historically used by employers to undermine the efforts of organized labor and buffer themselves from any responsibility as far as wages and other conditions of employment are concerned — curiously led the union struggle. This labor fight began when a clique of city financiers and absc executives formed the Western Agricultural Contracting Company (wac c ) to relegate independent labor agents to subcontractors. Historian Richard Steven Street contends that the ability of keiyaku-nin (bilingual Japanese labor contractors) to aggressively contract work at a higher wage rate prompted the formation of the wac c . Before 1903, farmers on the Oxnard Plain paid $5.00 to $6.00 for each acre thinned. The new wac c schedule ranged from $4.25 to $3.75 for each acre thinned and dipped as low as $2.50. This, in turn, significantly reduced the commission that independent contractors deducted from the pay of betabeleros. Betabeleros were also required to pay a fee to the wac c as well as a commission to subcontractors dealing with the wac c . In addition to the cut in the wage scale, betabeleros opposed the wac c ’s use of scrip that compelled workers to buy from certain stores. The wac c then enjoyed a kickback.9 These actions on the part of the wac c instigated a unique cross-cultural alliance between contractors and betabeleros. 134

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The jmla consisted of approximately one thousand Japanese, two hundred Mexicans, and a smaller number of Chinese. jmla leaders organized democratically oriented discussions with the use of interpreters to deliberate on intelligence and strategize.10 The local newspaper titled a 7 March 1903 story “The Japs and Mexicans” and described how “Dusky skinned Japanese and Mexicans march through the streets headed by one or two minor contractors and beet laborers four abreast and several hundred strong.”11 After one jmla meeting, the Oxnard police targeted the Japanese leadership and arrested Y. Yamaguchi, secretary of the Japanese branch of the jmla , on the charge of “stirring up the crowd.” The police also arrested jmla members K. Obata and Y. Yoshinari for disorderly conduct when the two attempted to elicit the support of betabeleros who continued to thin the fields of sugar beets.12 The Oxnard Courier identified the race and ethnicity of the strikers but not that of the managers and growers of the sugar beet. And the newspaper characterized the managers and growers as “conservative” to emphasize the non-radical and rational character of the “business men.” A more neutral newspaper, the Ventura Free Press, saw it differently and reported that the majority of residents of Oxnard supported the jmla , especially merchants who profited from the patronage of the betabeleros.13 Frustrated by the impasse, growers, with the aid of law enforcement, coordinated the use of scabs. Violence erupted on 23 March when a wac c wagon arrived in the China Alley district in an attempt to transport a crew of strikebreakers to the sugar beet fields. wac c officials summoned newly deputized sheriff Charles Arnold and Al Hawkins to assist in the movement of the scab field laborers. Dissimilar reports detail how subsequent mortal violence broke out. The Oxnard Courier reported that a man armed with a shotgun walked up to the crew of strikebreakers and proceeded to place a jmla banner (detailed with the letters jmla , the rising sun, and a pair of clasped arms) on the wagon. The International Socialist Review, however, printed eyewitness accounts of how unarmed jmla members attempted to persuade the wagon load of scabs to join their struggle. There was a gunshot, nonetheless, followed by a “general fusillade.” The Ventura bitter repression, sweet resistance

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Fig. 18. Japanese sugar beet workers at Maulhardt Ranch, circa 1920. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County.

Independent estimated that two hundred shots were fired. At the conclusion of a twenty-minute melee, four people lay wounded: two Mexicans (one of them mortally) and two Japanese men.14 The jmla leadership, although resolute, faced a critical question: How to respond to such acts of violence without the loss of support in the community? Yamaguchi and J. M. Lizarras, secretary of the Mexican branch of the jmla , published a statement in the Oxnard Courier. They pointed out that nine-tenths of the members of the jmla did not demand an increase in the wage scale, only that it not be decreased. The two leaders emphasized that many jmla members were U.S. citizens and longtime community members of Oxnard, as opposed to migrant workers, when they stated, “Many of us have families, were born in this country and are lawfully seeking to protect the only property that we have — our labor.” They also held that jmla members were unarmed at the riot, whereas wac c workers carried guns. Yamaguchi and Lizarras concluded their statement with the demand that the police arrest the occupants of the wac c building from which the shots came.15 136

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Fig. 19. Betabeleros in Oxnard, circa 1920. Courtesy of Museum of Ventura County.

The night before the deadly riot, the Oxnard Courier reported, some fifty Mexicans raided wac c camps on the ranches of Charles Donlon and Al Hosiet. They severed the ropes of the tents of strikebreakers. Eighteen of the scabs left as a result. The raid on wac c camps symbolized the attempt of betabeleros to break the exploitive power of sugar beet interests as it related to their control over labor. Japanese members of the jmla attempted to seal off the importation of additional Japanese strikebreakers, recruited by the wac c in San Francisco, by meeting them at the Southern Pacific railroad station in Montalvo. Journalist John Murray Jr., on assignment for the International Socialist Review, arrived after the shootout, where the only casualties were jmla members. He witnessed a “little squad” of Japanese picketers that wore buttons with jmla letters above the symbol of a rising sun with two gripped hands as they attempted to convince the imported strikebreakers at the train station to support their cause. Once in Oxnard, Murray found the city full of people who wore jmla buttons in solidarity. Betabeleros sported plain red buttons to demonstrate their union membership after the jmla ran out of the original buttons. The jmla also solicited and obtained the cooperation of the Japanese consul bitter repression, sweet resistance

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in San Francisco to prevent the entrance of other Japanese immigrants to work as scabs.16 The wac c formed a company union called the Independent Agricultural Labor Union to undercut the work of the jmla , but this proved futile. The organizational efforts of the jmla , with the outbreak of violence against it, won the support of the majority of betabeleros, both Japanese and Mexicans. After the riot the wac c again attempted to transport a crew of workers from its headquarters in China Alley. The wagon driver waited without result; Japanese betabeleros refused to come out. This forced the wac c to negotiate with the jmla , and by 30 March the wac c agreed to the cancellation of virtually all of the contracts on the Oxnard Plain, with the exception of eighteen hundred acres owned by the absc . The jmla also obtained an agreement from a committee of growers to return to the pre-strike wage schedule.17 At the conclusion of the strike the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association renamed itself the Sugar Beet Farm Laborers Union (sbflu ). The sbflu effectively wielded its power as a result of a labor shortage caused by the diversification of agriculture in Ventura County. Growers in general offered higher wage rates to attract workers. This, ironically, made the sbflu less necessary. The life of the Japanese-Mexican union, moreover, was short lived for other reasons. Sugar beet growers bypassed the renamed union as the overall elevated wage rate in agriculture attracted an excessive labor pool. And contractors no longer saw a reason to work cooperatively with betabeleros with regard to wages, as the threat of the wac c disappeared. Cutthroat competition among labor contractors led to tension among contractors themselves. Many betabeleros, with good reason, viewed contractors indignantly as it was not uncommon for unscrupulous labor agents to abscond with the wages of crews. The American Federation of Labor (afl ), more importantly, under the leadership of Samuel Gompers, refused to extend a charter to a union that included Japanese members. Without afl affiliation the cross-cultural union could provide few benefits to its members. Lizarras formally denounced the afl ’s decision, stating on 8 June 1903:

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They [the Japanese] were not only just with us, but they were generous. When one of our men was murdered by hired assassins of the oppressors of labor, they gave expression to their sympathy in a very substantial form. In the past we have counseled, fought and lived on very short rations with our Japanese brothers, and toiled with them in the fields, and they have been uniformly kind and considerate. We would be false to them and to ourselves and to the cause of Unionism if we, now, accepted privileges for ourselves which are not accorded to them. We are going to stand by men who stood by us in the long, hard fight which ended in victory over the enemy. We therefore respectfully petition the A.F. of L. to grant us a charter under which we can unite all the Sugar Beet & Field Laborers of Oxnard, without regard to their color or race. We will refuse any other kind of charter, except one which will wipe out race prejudices and recognize our fellow workers as being as good as ourselves. I am ordered by the Mexican union to write this letter to you and they fully approve its words.18 Some betabeleros, frustrated by their inability to maintain a sustainable wage rate due to the influx of agricultural workers into the county, sought to settle old scores of the recent strike. This exacerbated latent animosities that prevented workers from building a base among others laborers and interests that would have enabled them to maintain a viable union.19 Soon after sugar beet strike of 1903, and perhaps encouraged by it, a significant labor dispute occurred in Los Angeles that, as in Oxnard, relied heavily upon community support. There, Mexican workers of the Pacific Electric Railroad Company demanded a wage increase from seventeen and a half cents an hour to twenty cents (equivalent to less than $4 in 2011). The traqueros (railroad workers), represented by the Unión Federal Mexicanos (ufm , Mexican Federal Union), demanded a wage rate of thirty cents an hour for the evening shift and forty cents for work done on Sunday. Henry E. Huntington, owner of the Pacific Electric,

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initially agreed to the ufm ’s demands but then recanted. ufm leaders, as a result, pulled eight hundred workers off Pacific Electric job sites. More than thirty Mexican women — maligned by a Los Angeles reporter as “Amazons”20 — descended upon a Pacific Electric work site in support of the ufm and seized the tools of Japanese, African American, and Mexican strikebreakers. “Santa” Teresa Urrea (La Niña de Cabora), a revered faith healer of the borderlands, days later convinced scab traqueros to lay down their tools. The strike marked the first major dispute between Mexican laborers and American employers in Los Angeles. The ufm strike, despite its ultimate failure, symbolized, as did the struggle of the betabeleros, the rise of organized labor protest among Mexicans in Southern California. The strike in Los Angeles also highlights the importance of cross-cultural alliances. Where unity between members of the jmla resulted in victory (albeit ephemeral), Pacific Electric’s success in dividing cultural groups against each other led to the ufm ’s failure.21 Repression and Resistance: Micro-conflict As part of the Progressive Era impulse of reform, Oxnard residents called for an aggressive campaign on the part of law enforcement to crack down on vice. Non-whites including — but not limited to — Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican residents and merchants were targets.22 One night in June 1903, police officers James Fulkerson and Charles Russell patrolled the China Alley district and arrested W. Jones, Joe Morales, Al Jordan, and I. Mitsee on charges for the violation of the city’s vagrancy laws. The Oxnard Courier characterized the arrests as all part of “a big night’s work toward the betterment of the conditions that have been prevailing for the past few months.”23 The next month, Fulkerson and Russell raided and arrested four Japanese men for playing cards. The brazen actions of Fulkerson and Russell, however, did not go unchallenged. The Courier reported on 11 July 1903 the ambush of Russell on a Saturday night after his arrest of Manuel Sepulveda, a betabelero, for disturbing the peace and public drunkenness. On his way to the city jail with Sepulveda in custody, Russell found himself, in the words of the newspaper, in a deadly fight “amid a crowd of a dozen crazed Mexicans.” The newspaper then praised 140

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the heroism of the police officer as it described how Russell fended off the attack of, now, six “Mexicans” and sustained only a single gunshot wound to his shoulder.24 This reported incident, however, demonstrates that Russell’s “crazed” attackers were well aware of his routine and ostensibly planned the ambush as an act of not only resistance but also protest. A similar episode occurred in 1906. Night watchman Andrew McNaughton was shot in the head while on duty in China Alley. The murder, in the words of the Oxnard Courier, “plunged the town into a furor of excitement and caused an energetic crusade against vice by the city and county officials.” Police Chief William Reno and his officers stormed the China Alley district and raided known opium dens and brothels. One couple, a Japanese woman and her male companion, found themselves arrested. The woman was fined $25 (equivalent to over $500 in 2011 dollars), while the man was sentenced to five months of hard labor. Rev. J. D. Hart urged “all good citizens” at McNaughton’s memorial service to purge Oxnard of the “element” that committed the crime.25 Shortly thereafter, Josephine Lillie, José Moreno, and R. Campos found themselves detained by the police in connection to the murder. The shots that killed McNaughton came from behind Lillie ’s home, said one informant. A steady barrage of gunshots fired by St. Patrick’s Day revelers that morning, however, complicated the investigation. Lillie and Campos were released, but Moreno was charged with the murder. Incriminating evidence came from a W. M. Nichols, who testified that Moreno stated to him that he “had it in” for McNaughton and planned to kill him given the opportunity. But Moreno was ultimately acquitted of the murder on the basis of his roommate’s testimony that Moreno returned home before the time of the murder.26 Oxnard leaders fostered concerns toward vice and the presence of poor white male migrants, commonly known as hoboes.27 Police officers A. D. Turbett and J. J. Dewitt expelled thirty-two persons identified as hoboes from the city in July 1908. The Oxnard Courier indicated that the city promised to take a zero-tolerance approach to the “riff raff ” that appeared at the sugar beet harvest.28 Hoboes did not take this treatment passively, though. Two months after the July banishment of white vagrants, they were said to have sabotaged the Southern Pacific railroad line two miles bitter repression, sweet resistance

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east of the city. They were accused of removing heavy wooden planks that anchored the rails.29 The Oxnard Daily Courier wrote in February 1912 that “Even as ranchers battle with the various insect and worm pest, so the police all over the south now have a human pest, which is rapidly growing to combat with.”30 These were white male migrant workers. They, however, were only a nuisance at a time when their labor was not needed. Chief of Police A. J. Murray tacitly expressed this notion when he stated, “At the present time there [are] too many bums in town. It is always the case about this time of the year. Many can not get work. Many of them wouldn’t work if they could get a job.”31 City officials and employers, especially, despised the presence of hoboes due to their putative association with radicalism, specifically with the Industrial Workers of the World (aka the Wobblies). Simon Berthold was one Mexican radical socialist who lived and worked on the Oxnard Plain. The Oxnard Courier described him as a betabelero who resided in El Rio. It commented that “Berthold looks more like an American than a Mexican. He has light complexion and light hair. His accent gives him away as Mexican or Spaniard, however.”32 Berthold had, in fact, been an insurgent of a movement devoted to the political cause of Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón, who led El Partido Liberal Mexicano (plm ).33 The early presence of radicals like Berthold and Japanese socialists established a tradition of resistance to the power of landowners on the Oxnard Plain and region. Berthold’s German origins made him appear “more like an American” than a Mexican. He was born in Sonora, but his German parents abandoned him as a child and he was adopted by a Mexican family. He worked as a truck driver after his arrival in Los Angeles in 1905 and became active in the Teamsters Union. Berthold was influenced by the iww and organized against the anti-union repression of Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the Los Angeles Times. Berthold’s fluency in both English and Spanish aided him as an organizer and leader of the rebellion in Baja California.34 The plm critique of transnational capitalism reached Mexican communities throughout the Southwest by way of Regeneración and other Spanish142

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language newspapers. The Oxnard Daily Courier reported the view of one resident identified as an observer of Mexicans in the city: “There are more Oxnard Mexicans reading now than at any other time. It has been found that practically every time there has been any disturbance, a copy of the insurrecto paper has been found in the pockets of those implicated. The paper is said to side with the revolutionists and the Mexican here after reading of the affairs desire to emulate those they read about.”35 The unidentified resident, and by extension the Courier, expressed a distrust of Mexicans in the city as potential insurgents. As early as 1910, Mexican residents of Oxnard sent donations of 50 cents or $1.00 to Regeneración to support the activities of the plm throughout the borderlands of the United States and Mexico. Individuals from places in Ventura County such as El Rio, Oxnard, and Santa Paula pooled their money to donate to the cause of the plm . Others, like Josefina Lille, sold buttons and copies of the newspaper in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Germany, and Puerto Rico. The surnames of these donors indicate that the plm enjoyed the support of people of diverse national and ethnic origins.36 The contributors were recognized by name and locale in the newspaper. In the winter of 1911, Asención Martinez of Oxnard requested that the newspaper print the names of S. Martinez, Andres Lima, Enrique Castro, Andres Moreno, Lazaro Cabrera, Juan N. Durán, and Angel Garcia for their total contribution of $9.50 to the newspaper that month.37 The year before, Salvador Medrano collected a total of $11.00 (equivalent to $251 in 2011 dollars) in contributions ranging from 15 cents to $1.00, from twenty women and men in Oxnard.38 The next year the newspaper recognized the effort of Josefina M. Lille in raising $10.00.39 And the 19 November 1910 edition of Regeneración announced that a group of individuals in Oxnard officially formed El Grupo Regeneración with the purpose of raising funds for the plm newspaper. The members of the group were Guadalupe Ascencio, Anastasia T. de Ascencio, A. Garcia, Salvador Medrano, A. Martinez, J. Martinez, A. Moreno, Manuel Ramirez, D. Ramos, T. Yañez, Santiago Delgado, Daniel Ascencio, Ezequiel Grajeda, Alberto Villegas, and others. The newspaper commended bitter repression, sweet resistance

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the group for its organizing and informing the Mexican community of the ideals of the plm .40 The next year Josefina Lillie headed El Grupo Regeneración “Simón Berthold,” which sponsored a literary and musical soiree to raise funds for the plm newspaper. The family-oriented event was punctuated with a dance at the Maulhardt Hall.41 Literate Mexicans of Oxnard, like those in Los Angeles, read aloud to their compatriots at the downtown placita. In September 1915, Blas Lara, Tomás Ferrell Cordero, and Alberto Téllez were warmly received as they spoke on behalf of the plm and read sections from Regeneración at the Oxnard plaza. To draw an audience, band music accompanied the three plm activists.42 For many who held anxieties toward the presence of Mexicans, the Spanish-language press represented a vehicle with the potential to transform the stereotyped obsequious peon into a murderous rebel.43 Regeneración, with a circulation exceeding ten thousand in the Los Angeles region alone, promoted a nationalist brand of class consciousness among Mexicans throughout the United States and in places such as England, Germany, and Puerto Rico. Flores Magón, leader of the newspaper, not only criticized the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz for all its corruption and indifference to the plight of the people in Mexico, but also implicated U.S. capitalism in this oppression. Regeneración revealed in eloquent prose how workers suffered on both sides of the border and detailed the culpability of the two governments. This message must have had significant resonance with many Mexican exiles, refugees, and immigrants in Southern California who had escaped the dislocation caused by Mexico’s modernization economic policies and the ravages of its revolution. The plm , through its newspaper, played an influential role in the politicization of working-class Mexicans in the United States for much of the first half of the twentieth century.44 Regeneración also provided supporters of the plm with the sense of being part of an international community. The newspaper ran an obituary section and expressed condolences for plm activists who had lost family members. It also had a section with birth notices that extended congratulations to parents. When plm activist Juan Sarabia was imprisoned in Mexico, the newspaper campaigned to raise funds to pay for his 144

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legal defense and the transportation and living expenses of his elderly mother, who lived in the United States. And people in the United States announced in the newspaper where family venturing from Mexico could reconnect with their loved ones.45 Other media piqued the social consciousness of Mexicans. Individuals and groups stood before audiences in the open air to challenge injustices. Like itinerant ministers, iww organizers delivered impassioned critiques of industrial capitalism up and down the California coast. To abate such activity, the Oxnard police routinely arrested Wobblies on misdemeanor charges and expelled others from the city, especially after the protracted San Diego Free Speech Fight of 1912 and the Wheatland Strike of 1913 south of Marysville, California.46 The Oxnard Daily Courier took special interest in the activities of the Wobblies based on reports from Los Angeles. It proclaimed in 1919 that an “iww element among the Mexicans and Russians in the walnut and citrus district were planning depredations in the way of stealing crops and damaging trees.”47 The newspaper mentioned that the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department had mobilized nightriders, led by deputies, to patrol the orchards of La Puente, El Monte, Pomona, Azuza, and Glendora. And it suggested that Ventura County do the same. This jingoism fed into the larger “Red Scare” of the period that created a Manichaean mise-en-scène of good versus evil: patriotic growers, on the one hand, combated dangerous Bolshevik labor organizers on the other.48 Ventura County growers and officials took heed. The Commercial Federation of California was founded in March 1920 with the mission “to overcome the radicalism, in various forms, which is threatening the very foundation of our government.” The federation’s leaders from the Oxnard Plain included Charles Donlon and Joseph Sailer of Oxnard and C. C. Perkins of Camarillo.49 Political repression meted out by law enforcement was closely linked to the private interests of growers, and their targets were not just Mexican and white labor organizers. Carlos Bulosan described the suppression of union activity in Oxnard in his autobiography, America Is in the Heart. Bulosan, a Filipino migrant laborer, witnessed the divide-and-conquer strategy used by employers up and down the West Coast. He also detailed bitter repression, sweet resistance

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persistent police arrests, harassment, physical intimidation, and the expulsion of union organizers. In places such as Oxnard, Bulosan stated, “it came to me that we were fighting against one enemy: Fascism. It was in every word and gesture, every thought.” Law enforcement kept close surveillance of the activities of agricultural workers. Police officers patrolled the plain and, especially, the Oxnard placita where workers congregated. When union organizers were identified, Ventura County law enforcement agencies, often with the assistance of deputized vigilantes that consisted of the employees of growers, expeditiously “floated” (expelled) them outside the boundaries of Ventura County.50 Unions of Community Resistance Other institutions contributed to the organization of the Mexican community. Mexican residents were active within civic groups and churches within and outside the segregated colonias in which they lived. In the celebration of the Fourth of July and Mexican Independence Day, La Unión Patriótica Benéfica Mexicana Independiente spearheaded the promotion of street parades and other civic festivities. For the Mexican Independence Day celebration, upbmi leaders solicited the support of Robert Beach, superintendent of labor of the absc , to obtain municipal permits. The city of Oxnard also sponsored an organization named Community Service (cs ), which recruited Mexican leaders to promote civic programs and events.51 At least three Spanish-language newspapers circulated in Ventura County between 1900 and 1950. The Oxnard Daily Courier reported in 1926 the suspension of the publication of the Mexico News, printed in Spanish by J. T. Díaz for a period of eight months. Two years earlier, Jesús N. Jiménez, coproprietor of Jiménez Brothers Furniture in Oxnard, leased the operations of Fillmore printer B. de Hoyos to put out the Ventura County weekly La Voz de la Colonia.52 La Voz circulated throughout Ventura County, Santa Barbara, and the Santa Fernando Valley. The title of Jiménez’s newspaper — in English, “The Voice of the Community” — suggests that the publication served as an instrument of organization, representation, and defense. Another function of the periodical was to encourage a continued allegiance among Mexicans, both national and U.S.-born, to their ancestral 146

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homeland. La Voz promoted the celebration of Mexican Independence Day in a September 1927 edition, admonishing its readers that “Mexican residents in the United States cannot forget the Mother Country, and should not .”53 The other Spanish-language periodical was the much larger La Opinión of Los Angeles, which served as the principal voice of the region’s Spanish-speaking community. Mexican residents also created networks of support in the Catholic churches of Guadalupe in the Meta Street barrio and Santa Clara. A significant portion of Mexican Americans worshipped at the architecturally gothic Santa Clara church. The more humble Guadalupe church mainly served parishioners who were Mexican nationals. A smaller number of Mexicans practiced their faith in Protestant churches in the city. Whatever the site, the religious institutions of Mexicans afforded them an added avenue of succor.54 Mexican workers and their families also found refuge from the harsh realities of life through recreation, particularly baseball. Mexican baseball players of the Oxnard Aces competed against teams from near and far as part of La Asociación Mexicana de Baseball del Sur de California (Southern California Mexican Baseball Association). The travels of league play paralleled the social networks along the migrant route of Mexican agricultural laborers in the San Joaquin Valley and within the food-processing industry of California. This augmented a shared sense of ethnic and class mutuality.55 The activities of mutual aid associations, churches, sports clubs, and newspapers need to be viewed as part of a foundational network that provided community assistance to workers in time of crisis. Workers accessed this arrangement when confronted with repression. This was especially true when the second major strike on the Oxnard Plain erupted thirty years after the first labor protest. The sugar beet strike of the Depression followed a similar pattern with that of 1903 as it responded to a drastic cut in the wage rate of betabeleros. It also highlighted the mobilization of regional community institutions to aid the struggle of betabeleros on the Oxnard Plain. Nuanced cross-cultural collaboration buttressed this support as the interlocked interests of the agricultural-industrial complex unleashed its fierce repression. bitter repression, sweet resistance

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Sugar Beet Strike II In July 1933 the absc disbursed over $2 million in payments to area sugar beet growers — a 17 percent increase from the previous year. Of this, an estimated $250,000 (12.5 percent) went to workers for the cultivation and harvest of sugar beets. The payment parceled out to area growers affected their profit margin and influenced their willingness to increase the wage schedule of betabeleros. The conditions of agricultural labor in general worsened as the Depression intensified. Thirty-seven agricultural strikes occurred in California between April and December of 1933. Merced, Salinas, Fresno, Tulare, and Santa Clara witnessed workers walk out from the orchards, vineyards, and cotton fields in August. Individual strikes involved from one to six thousand persons. Statewide some fifty thousand went on strike.56 Twelve hundred betabeleros of Oxnard were part of this number. Oxnard Plain betabeleros and the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (cawiu ), an affiliate of the Communist Trade Union Unity League, proclaimed their strike 7 August 1933. The two groups informed an audience of seven hundred at its headquarters that a representative of the Southern California Beet Growers Association (scbga ) of Oxnard had stated, “We have no time to speak with these Mexican peons.”57 Just as the strike began, Ben D. Laubacher, secretary of the scbga , unilaterally declared it over. Oxnard mayor Ed Gill, himself a sugar beet rancher, however, announced the agreement of the scbga to revert to the 1932 pay schedule and end the use of contractors, without the recognition of the union. This was a typical response to cawiu strikes.58 The Oxnard Daily Courier printed, in an expression of historical amnesia, “For the first time in local history Oxnard is experiencing a strike. And it isn’t a nice feeling.”59 La Opinión announced, “A large group of Mexican strikers embarked on a protest march in the streets of Oxnard, today, in an effort to garner the support of workers for the movement.”60 In an effort to discredit the agency of the betabeleros and their supporters, the Daily Courier, in lockstep with the interests of growers, blamed the strike on “outside agitators.” The newspaper also emphasized a schism between 148

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Mexican strikers and Filipino workers, who refused to join the protest, and indicated that two-thirds of the sugar beet toppers remained in the fields. County officials dispatched deputized, armed guards to shield them from strike protesters.61 The local newspaper printed reports that were contradictory. One stated that there was a small number of strikers and that two-thirds of the betabeleros remained in the fields. Yet sugar beet workers picketed at the adobe housing of the absc and — in the words of the Daily Courier — “every road leading out of Oxnard.” The cawiu and its supporters conducted systematic patrols to undermine the use of strikebreakers. Teams of six to eight persons patrolled unpaved neighborhoods to urge their brethren not to serve as scabs. The strikers understood that an outbreak of violence would only serve as a pretext for the authorities to retaliate with a vengeance, so they were disciplined in their practice of peaceful protest.62 Women and young girls played a central role in the strike. On 10 August 1933, for example, the local newspaper reported, “Reinforced by their women, the strike of Mexican field laborers today continued on its fourth successive day. . . . Groups of women and girls in addition to men picketed every entrance of the local a.b.s. factory, the adobe houses, and every exit from Oxnard.”63 Emma Cutler of the International Labor Defense (ild ) advised the strikers and supporters of their civil liberties and joined Mexican women on the picket lines. This, however, did not stop law officers, who arrested the women on charges of disturbing the peace. The Ventura County Sheriff ’s Department, the Oxnard Police, and the State Highway Patrol intensified their attention as the strike continued. To augment this sort of “fascist control” in support of the agriculturalindustrial complex, Sheriff Howard Durley swore in scores of growers as deputies to mobilize a countywide vigilante campaign.64 Eighty percent of the twelve hundred strikers were of Mexican origins in the 1933 strike, unlike the jmla affair, which was numerically dominated by Japanese contractors and workers. Early on, Filipino betabeleros made up the other 20 percent and were represented by the Filipino Protective League. Mayor Gill volunteered his efforts and the resources of his office to mediate the strike. The scbga offered, after initial negotiations to bitter repression, sweet resistance

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re-implement the undisclosed 1932 topping wage scale, a 12 percent increase of the 1933 rate. The association also proposed to eliminate the use of contractors. cawiu leaders accepted the 1932 wage scale but continued to demand union recognition. The scbga rejected the counterproposal.65 Growers intensified pressure on the union by having law enforcement exert its authority as Gill and others attempted to appease the strikers without union recognition. The growers tried to sabotage cross-cultural solidarity — a lesson learned, perhaps, from the 1903 strike. Ventura County law enforcement kept close surveillance on the cross-cultural activities of agricultural workers. Acts of intimidation and violence followed. Chief of Police Joe Kerrick, infamous in the eyes of many within Oxnard’s Mexican community, informed the public just prior to the strike of the presence of outside “Mexican agitators.” Kerrick also had knowledge of a meeting — infiltrated by Kerrick’s men — at the hall of the mutual aid organization upbmi , where so-called outside Mexican agitators spoke to an audience of seventy-five persons.66 In his autobiography, Carlos Bulosan wrote of how Ventura County law enforcement agencies pursued labor organizers. The sheriff and police chiefs regularly deputized vigilantes — usually growers or their hired hands — to persecute labor organizers. On one occasion, Bulosan and his colleagues clandestinely gathered in a barn at the outskirts of Oxnard. Once the meeting started, a spray of gunshots peppered the structure, and Bulosan narrowly escaped with his life. It was also common for police officers and sheriff deputies to arrest identified labor organizers and “float” them out of the county. These actions highlight the coordinated relationship of county and city officials with the interests of growers.67 Ventura County’s Charles C. Teague, a citrus magnate and president of the California Fruit Growers Exchange (cfge ), spearheaded the creation of the Associated Farmers (af ), whose main purpose was to break unions. In a congressional report published in 1942, the Committee on Education and Labor stated that the af ’s primary objective was to suppress strikes; rather than providing “remedy for acknowledged evils, it offered the repression of protests against them.”68 Kerrick and Durley, in conjunction with other local authorities, intensi150

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fied the web of surveillance in response to the activities of the cawiu in Oxnard. Kerrick correctly linked the union to labor disputes in El Monte, Santa Maria, and Norwalk. At the El Monte Berry Strike the Mexican consul in Los Angeles appealed to the Mexicanist sympathies of strikers and assisted in the formation of La Confederción de Uniones Campesinos y Obreros Mexicanos (cucom , Confederation of Mexican Farm Laborer and Worker Unions), which ultimately supplanted the cawiu .69 Kerrick and Durley ordered around-the-clock car patrols to intimidate cawiu members and their supporters.70 The Oxnard Daily Courier launched a propaganda campaign to assuage the fears of residents and garner support against the cawiu . Days before the strike, an edition of the newspaper reported that at the local chamber of commerce office seven hundred Mexicans had registered and expressed their desire to work. Jack C. Miller, spokesperson for the chamber, stated, “These Mexicans have homes in this city, have been receiving aid during the past winter and are still on the rolls.” He continued, “Places of the Mexicans who might strike can readily be filled. It is indicated as the surplus of laborers will take care of that factor.”71 The newspaper further reported, on 11 August, that most of the strikers abandoned the union and had returned to work. They were escorted by sheriffs and armed guards under the conditions of the 1932 harvest schedule. Other betabeleros, however, continued the struggle and urged their Filipino brethren not to return to the fields.72 Oxnard Plain growers formed a labor association named the Homeworkers Organization to further incapacitate the union. The organization’s name implied that betabeleros not involved in the strike were residents of Oxnard and that cawiu strikers were outside agitators. This also conveyed the impression that Mexicans of Oxnard were content with the status quo. Through the Homeworkers Organization, growers sought to negotiate with the betabeleros on an individual basis. Growers renamed the organization the Alianza De Trabajadores Mexicanos (Mexican Workers Alliance) in a shrewd attempt to co-opt the cultural symbolism of a Spanish-language title. The appointed leaders of this company union were Augustín González, president; Joe Ramírez, secretary; and Carlos Najera, treasurer. Oxnard growers recruited workers at the office of the chamber bitter repression, sweet resistance

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of commerce through the Alianza. The chamber, however, made it clear that the Alianza was not a union but an alliance of individual workers recognized by the city council, ranchers, and a segment of the Mexican community. And Mayor Gill once again announced the co-optation of the cawiu ’s salient demand of increasing the wage rate and eliminating the use of contractors to entice betabeleros still on strike.73 The plight of the migrant agricultural worker garnered national attention with the controversial portrayals of Dorothea Lange, Carey McWilliams, and John Steinbeck. The countenance of the Migrant Mother, the harsh efficiency of the factories in the field, and the odyssey of hardships encountered by the Joad family obliterated the myth of California as the Eden of the West. Journalism historian Peter Richardson describes how Factories in the Field prompted the af to tag McWilliams “Agricultural Pest No. 1, worse than pear blight or boll weevil.”74 Witnesses of Depression-era struggle documented the human consequences of the nation’s dispossessed via images, fiction, and journalism. From the sugar beet colonies of Colorado to the barrios of Los Angeles, events related to the Depression reshaped the identity of Mexicans.75 This was determined by circumstance, necessity, and choice that varied according to the level of oppression that Mexicans faced. The cawiu worked closely with the Filipino Protective League and implored absc factory workers, predominantly white employees, to join their struggle to counter the machinations of the scbga . The cawiu sought to create coalitions that transcended not only ethnicity but also a stratified labor system. Strike leaders chanted at a picket line in front of the factory, “Unity and solidarity of all workers must be our watchword.” They continued: “The Mexican workers especially appeal to the [white] American workers in the factory to unite with us in our union. Without organization we are helpless[;] together we are powerful and protect our own interests.”76 This effort, however, proved ineffective. Only a few Mexicans who worked in the factory walked out in support of their striking compatriots.77 This is an important point of contrast with the successful betabelero strike of the jmla in 1903. Why did solidarity between Mexican and Filipino labor contractors and betabeleros fail? The 152

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scbga did not infringe upon the interests of labor contractors: it cut the wage rate but did seek to create its own agency to contract labor, as in 1903. The growers association, as a result, deflected a vital component of cohesion that could have united Mexican and Filipino workers. The severity of the Depression, an economic condition absent in 1903, was also a crucial factor that undermined the formation of an interracial coalition of betabeleros within the cawiu . cawiu leaders warned members of the anti-union activities on the part of the Mexican consul on top of the intrigues of the grower-sponsored Alianza.78 The Mexican consul in El Monte sought to eliminate the presence of Communists within Mexican labor unions. As in the United States, the Mexican government abhorred the Communist critique of the capitalist system and the call for revolution. And the consul sought, in the words of historian Gilbert González, to “channel expatriate political activism onto conservative ground,” away from class-based politics.79 In a 28 August issue of the Western Worker, a newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party, the cawiu announced the exposure of the ineffective attempts of the Mexican consul to break up the strike in Oxnard and proclaimed that “Workers stand fast with cawiu representation irrespective of race or nationality.”80 Betabeleros organized at the hall of the upbmi . Union members and supporters from different parts of the state met here. Jean Rand — described as a twenty-five-year-old woman from El Monte in Los Angeles County — spoke in support of the betabeleros and railed against the National Recovery Administration of the New Deal.81 Rand’s appearance, along with that of Emma Cutler, highlights the cross-cultural as well as intra-regional network of support for the cause of the betabeleros. And being from El Monte, Rand most likely participated in the cawiu Berry Strike of that city in June.82 The complexity of cross-cultural collaboration grew in significance as law enforcement ratcheted up its repression. Police Chief Kerrick arrested a group of strikers on the charge of drug possession in early August. He tapped into the stereotype of Mexicans as predisposed to violence, especially in conjunction with narcotics and alcohol, and demonstrated his office’s support of the interests of the scbga when he opined in the Oxnard Daily Courier, “What would have happened bitter repression, sweet resistance

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had the tins of marihuana been distributed among 12 striking Mexicans was a matter of conjecture today.”83 Two days later, the police dispersed an assembly of strikers on the pretext of an incipient riot when rancher Elmer Johnson attempted to recruit laborers. At this event, Ezquiel Pantoja, whose husband had been jailed earlier in the week, urged striking betabeleros to continue the struggle. Pantoja then turned to Kerrick and declared, in the words of the Oxnard Daily Courier, that “‘this is a free country’ and she could talk if she wanted to.”84 In another instance, the cawiu accused Ventura County deputy sheriff William Suytar of forcing more than a dozen men to work at a ranch under the threat of arrest. The sheriff ’s department responded that Suytar simply obliged the desire of these men to work and offered them protection from union intimidation. The Western Worker also reported that the Oxnard police stormed the homes of twenty workers and assaulted them in an effort to force them to join the grower-conceived Alianza.85 The betabeleros of the cawiu responded to these acts of repression with nonviolent protest. In mid-August the union organized a crosscultural parade in the city. The demonstration drew from five hundred to a thousand strikers, their families, and supporters. They began their march from the barrio of La Colonia to the absc adobe housing complex, and from there along a major street to police headquarters. Upon their arrival, six men and women entered the police station and met with Don Holt, chief deputy district attorney, to discuss the matter of the police compelling strikers to work the sugar beet fields. After the meeting the marchers resumed the parade and disbanded at what served as the union’s headquarters, the upbmi hall.86 Since Ed Gill was both the mayor of the city and a sugar beet grower, seventy-five cawiu picketers targeted his ranch and exhorted scabs to join their cause. The police and “special officers” armed with sawed-off shotguns, in response, attacked the picketers with tear gas and arrested Jean Rand, Peter Salideo, Frank Salas, John Madrid, and Mike Flores on charges of disturbing the peace and destruction of property. Upon her arrest, Rand called to the others, “Well boys, the police are to put me in jail — it is up to you to carry on.”87 Bail was set at five hundred dollars. 154

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All entered not-guilty pleas and demanded a trial by jury.88 Subsequent to these arrests, Kerrick raided cawiu strike headquarters at the upbmi hall. The police confiscated the union’s treasury of sixteen dollars along with application cards and books. Kerrick arrested the occupants and charged them with vagrancy. Six were floated or escorted to the Ventura–Los Angeles County line. The Los Angeles Times reported that the arrests stemmed from the complaint of upbmi officials that the hall was rented as a meeting place, not lodging, for the union. The Oxnard Daily Courier also stated that the police chief acted on the call of the upbmi that the union be evicted for not paying rent. La Opinión, however, reported that the eviction was against the wishes of the upbmi . In an interview with a La Opinión reporter, an unnamed representative of the lodge declared that the police stormed the hall against their will and that they would happily renew the rental agreement with the cawiu but feared police reprisal.89 Union Advocates After the raid, A. L. Wirin of the American Civil Liberties Union (aclu ) met with Ventura County district attorney James C. Hollingsworth. Wirin demanded that the district attorney prosecute Kerrick on charges of police brutality against cawiu leaders José Montas, Jack Wright, and other striking betabeleros. Hollingsworth, however, refused. So Wirin filed a $25,000 lawsuit against Kerrick and his brother. But a problem existed; Montas was nowhere to be found. Days later, Wirin, accompanied by other lawyers and activists, turned in an affidavit on the part of Montas that testified to the brutality at the hands of the Kerricks and how they floated Montas and fellow organizers G. Alarcon, Joseph Alvarez, and Pablo de Santiago out of Ventura County.90 Meanwhile, the aclu , the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (ncdpp ), and the ild took a greater interest in the events in Oxnard. aclu Executive Committee member Ellis O. Jones, Ella Winter of the ncdpp (and wife of muckraker journalist Lincoln Steffens), and Cutler of the ild served as observers and provided support in the form of legal representation and publicity for the union’s cause. The three organizations dispatched a joint petition for an investigation of the events in Oxnard to Secretary of Labor bitter repression, sweet resistance

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Frances Perkins. The telegram pleaded, “Can you intervene immediately, investigate brutal mistreatment striking Mexican, Filipino workers in Oxnard, California. Provisions nra [National Recovery Administration] being violated. Police being used as strike breaking agency.”91 At this time, the local newspaper characterized a meeting in La Colonia barrio as a sensationalized affair attended by more than one hundred persons. Mexican leaders, the strikers, and Wirin and Jones addressed the audience and denounced the police as “brutal tools of the farmers and bosses and the beet growers [who] were using the police to break the strike.” And, in an effort to delegitimize the strike as the work of outside agitators — hence implying that the overwhelming majority of “our Mexicans” found conditions on the plain satisfactory if not pleasant — the Oxnard Daily Courier reported that “two-thirds of the Mexicans present were outside of the city Mexicans.”92 Nine cawiu members and supporters were jailed. They were charged with violations that ranged from disturbing the peace to vagrancy and the destruction of property from the commencement of the strike in early August to mid-September. The names of the persons jailed indicate a cross-cultural effort on the part of the union and its supporters: Jack Britton, Mike Flores, Ramón Flores, Leon Gonzales, John Madrid, José Montas, Jean Rand, Frank Salas, W. Scott, and Jack Wright. California governor James Rolph, Secretary of Labor Perkins, and an unidentified official of the National Recovery Administration sent telegrams to Oxnard officials to protest the prosecution of the defendants.93 Meanwhile, Mexican, Filipino, and white union supporters loyally appeared at the hearings and trials of the accused. Outside the courthouse, speakers addressed the crowd in English and Spanish, and at one point a person cheered, “Viva la partida comunista!”94 The ten were set free on 13 September. Judge Malvern Dominick dismissed the charges against seven of the ten defendants, while Salas, Flores, and Madrid were found guilty and sentenced to thirty days in jail. Judge Dominick, however, credited them with twenty-nine days for time served and suspended the last day. Immediately after their release, a motorcade paraded them in triumph through the streets of Oxnard and 156

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the neighboring community of Camarillo where a fiesta of two hundred celebrated. The next day, cawiu leaders declared in an announcement to La Opinión the release of the strikers and four English-speaking workers. It also proclaimed the vote of four hundred union members officially thanking Wirin and Cutler for their diligent legal defense.95 An Oxnard Daily Courier editorial, however, red-baited the activities of the cawiu and asserted that, “because of the backing of various groups with the Moscow reds the strikers had the benefit of the services of a very clever attorney.” It also refused to recognize the constitutionally protected liberties of association, assembly, and speech of the cawiu and concluded that, “Now that they [the charges] have been dropped there is more red activity in the Oxnard section and throughout the county wherever labor is employed than ever.”96 Despite its protests, arrests, legal defense, and public appeals, the cawiu failed to halt the topping of sugar beets or gain the recognition of the Oxnard scbga . The strike did achieve, however, an increase in salary for scab betabeleros. Collateral benefits also emerged. By the end of August the Los Angeles Times reported the decision of the Santa Paula Citrus Fruit Association, the Mupu Citrus Association, Rancho Sespe, the Teague-McKevett Company, the N. W. Blanchard Investment Company, and the Limoneira Company to increase the wage rate of all field and packinghouse workers by 10 percent.97 The Walnut Growers Association of Ventura County increased the wage rate of its employees by 10 percent — which translated to about 45 cents (equivalent to $7.83 in 2011 dollars) for each sack of walnuts.98 The agricultural-industrial complex preemptively increased the wage rate of their workers ostensibly to avoid the eruption of strikes within their orchards and packinghouses. Coda to the Strike Despite the sugar beet strike ’s failure to gain the industry’s recognition of the cawiu as its bargaining agent, labor continued to organize on the Oxnard Plain. Early one January morning in 1934, for example, Oxnard residents discovered on their porch steps circulars that informed the community of a cross-cultural assembly of workers at the upbmi hall. The bitter repression, sweet resistance

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cawiu newsletter promoted an ild lecture on wages and potential union demands. At another event the Oxnard police observed the presence of mostly Mexicans, with some “Americans.” The local newspaper described the attendance of veteran agitators of Oxnard with “those not known to local peace authorities.”99 That summer, cawiu organizers encouraged betabeleros to work at the current rate while the union negotiated with absc officials.100 The talks were fruitless, and no further mention of the union appeared in the local press. But in August 1935 the ild did organize a meeting in Oxnard’s plaza that attracted some two hundred Mexicans, Filipinos, ranchers, and businessmen. One of the speakers asserted that the wages on the plain were the lowest in California and that “Oxnard today is one of the blackest spots in the state.” One Mexican speaker from the Central Coast town of Guadalupe in Santa Barbara County directed his speech at Kerrick, urging him to cease the harassment of union organizers.101 The next month, pamphlets charged Kerrick and the Oxnard Police Department with terrorism, because the homes of workers were raided and cars that entered the city were searched.102 The ire of growers and employers on the Oxnard Plain increased as the union’s presence continued. In January 1934, absc factory manager John W. Rooney, Joe McGrath of the McGrath Estate Company, Henry C. Downs, and Walter Riley led a discussion at a Rotary Club meeting on the probability of another strike. The likelihood of such an action compelled growers to resurrect the Alianza De Trabajadores Mexicanos. City officials also instituted anti-picketing ordinances that abrogated constitutional guarantees of free speech and peacable assembly.103 The Oxnard Chamber of Commerce sponsored a series of anti-Communist lectures to augment the actions of growers and city officials. Speakers at one event identified the aclu as an arm of the Communist Party. The Oxnard Daily Courier reported, “The aim of the Communist Party is to permeate every learned society as it now exists.”104 The chamber invited, on the special request of the Ventura County branch of the Associated Farmers of California and the Ventura County Protective League, Los Angeles chief of police James Davis. Davis had gained national notoriety for the formation of a special unit known as the Red Squad, with the express 158

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purpose of intimidating, harassing, and busting labor unions. Davis was known to have stated openly that constitutional protections provided “no benefit to anybody except crooks and criminals.”105 One particular agricultural industrialist concerned about the statewide work of labor organizers was citrus magnate and head of the California Fruit Growers Exchange Charles C. Teague. He was disturbed by the havoc the wave of Depression strikes inflicted upon the time-sensitive schedules of agricultural production. In 1934 he initiated the formation of the Associated Farmers and solicited funds from the California Chamber of Commerce with the primary purpose of eliminating labor unions. The main source of monies for the af in Southern California flowed from an agricultural-industrial complex made up of the cfge , petroleum interests, railroad and utility companies, banks, packinghouses, canneries, and sugar refiners. They pooled their resources to subsidize the af ’s systematic repression of organized labor. Beyond the overt armed confrontation of labor unions, the af lobbied county boards and city councils throughout California to create anti-picketing ordinances and restrict federal relief for agricultural workers, particularly those involved in labor disputes; they also demanded the prosecution and deportation of labor organizers by way of the state ’s criminal syndicalism laws.106 Some individuals looked upon the events of the time more impartially amid polarized groups such as the af on the one hand and labor unions on the other. Father Charles E. Leahy of Loyola University, in an address before a capacity audience at the Oxnard Unified High School auditorium, pointed out that more than four thousand strikes took place in the nation in 1934 alone and argued that half of them were justified in the context of the magnitude of the Depression. To defend against the emergence of Communism, he said, the “evils of capitalism” needed to be abolished. Jack C. Miller, representative of the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce, curiously expanded on Leahy’s perspective, attributing the rash of strikes to employers’ failure to offer sustainable wages.107 A deliberative assessment of the Oxnard Plain’s role in the market economy of the nation, however, did not go much further. Anti-Communist paranoia persisted. Law enforcement closely monitored any assembly bitter repression, sweet resistance

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attended by individuals not recognized as local residents. Leon Gonzales, Joe Valdez, and Joe Sarturnarno held meetings in Ventura and Oxnard in June 1934 to organize a protest of the county welfare department’s denial of assistance to families — just one way county government agencies colluded with growers to funnel people into agricultural work. The Oxnard Daily Courier dismissed the purpose of the protest and highlighted an alleged plot of another strike. The newspaper cited Chief Kerrick as its source — which exposed the police department’s infiltration of the group. And, again, it held that local Mexicans were not only content with their station but also incapable of such an act of agency on their own. It pointed to the assistance of “Los Angeles [that is, white] Americans.”108 Surveillance, infiltration, and red-baiting shifted to outright intimidation. The following month, Oxnard police officers raided homes in La Colonia and on absc property under the pretext of an immigrant sweep. The police arrested and later released eight individuals and claimed to have confiscated Communist literature.109 Local growers subsequently organized a convoy of 120 automobiles, with at least two passengers in each, through the unpaved streets of La Colonia. The motorcade at one point stopped in the barrio and a person stood atop a table to proclaim that the growers and businessmen of Oxnard were the friends of the Mexican. After the speech the growers drove to the local community center to announce the formation of the Ventura County Protective Association, patterned after the af .110 Clinton J. Taft, regional director of the aclu , wrote Kerrick to inform him of his knowledge of the Oxnard Police Department’s use of “terror” to eradicate the presence of union organizers. Taft insisted that Kerrick protect the rights of all citizens.111 But Taft’s letter had little impact. In September 1934 the Oxnard police arrested Mike Shantzek of Ventura on charges of vagrancy and trespassing, but they actually arrested him for his distribution of literature and solicitation of money for the Communist Party. Kerrick arrested labor organizer Bill Silva three months later on the pretext of a warrant for his arrest in the Imperial Valley.112 Tactics resembling those of the Red Squad exacerbated tensions between the Mexican community and the police, and regular acts of abuse on the part of individual police officers toward Mexicans strained relations fur160

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ther. The basis for this police misconduct stemmed from Mexicans being profiled as inclined to criminal activity. The escalation of conflict between the Mexican community and the police erupted into a general melee on a Christmas Day. It began when police officer Cecil Kellogg attempted to arrest two Mexicans for public drunkenness in the China Alley district. When the two men fled, Kellogg fired his gun to stop them. One suspect was apprehended, and the other escaped. In the process, however, one bullet from Kellogg’s weapon ripped through a bystander’s thigh. The use of excessive force incensed a throng of 150 to 300 Mexicans in the vicinity that required the mobilization of city and county law enforcement with riot gear to restore order and protect Kellogg.113 The event highlighted the continued antagonism between a significant portion of the Mexican community and law enforcement in the Oxnard Plain before, during, and after the sugar beet strike of 1933. The betabelero strikes situate the historical position of the Mexican population and other groups on the Oxnard Plain. The resistance of Mexican workers and their families challenged the popular perception of them as tractable workers. With the support of community institutions in Southern California like the upbmi , the Catholic Church, and unions like the cawiu behind them, Mexicans boldly stood up to the iron heal of the agricultural-industrial complex. Chapter 5 will examine another labor struggle of the Mexican community that closed the Depression era at the start of the 1940s. Unlike the strikes of 1903 and 1933, it was a county-wide struggle of established residents who worked in the citrus industry. And as the nation entered World War II, the identity of Mexicans would be further influenced by the coming-of-age of the children of immigrants and the entrance of a male population of federally subsidized contracted workers from Mexico known as braceros.

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5 THE EM E R G IN G MEXICAN (AM E R IC AN )

Throughout the sugar beet strikes of 1903 and 1933, bitter labor strife and repression alloyed the Mexican community with a cross-cultural spectrum of supporters from the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association and the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union. Some Mexicans, on the other hand, sided with the interests of agribusiness in the industry’s establishment of its own company unions to defeat its opposition. After these two disputes, the agricultural-industrial complex of Oxnard, and of Ventura County, made sure to make life as difficult as possible for any remnant cells of dissent that existed on the plain. And as the 1930s came to a close and the inception of the World War II era approached, the Oxnard Plain, like the rest of the western United States, experienced dramatic change.1 Defense industries in Southern California and the people it drew affected social relations. A generation of Americans of immigrant parentage came of age that aspired to realize the nation’s wartime promise of liberty and equality.2 Emblematic of what the war years meant for many non-whites, when shown an Oxnard Press-Courier report that announced his draft into military service in 1945, Manuel Pérez poignantly stated, “This was the beginning of our Bill of Rights.”3 All the while, however, the transformations that occurred instigated latent anxieties toward people on the margins of society. Anomic concerns 163

of Oxnard residents intensified with the region’s economic expansion, continued residential segregation in the face of rising population growth, internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese origins, crackdown on zoot-suiters, and the role of agricultural workers. Citrus production began to overshadow sugar beet farming on the plain by the end of the 1930s. Growers associations throughout Ventura County promoted the production, distribution, and consumption of oranges and lemons. County growers shipped 163,000 railroad cars of lemons and oranges and expected to ship another 310,000 by the end of 1939. To yield this volume of fruit, growers devoted nearly 40,000 acres to citrus products, which generated an estimated $40 million in revenue. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce issued a report in May 1941 which indicated that in the prior year agricultural income, as a whole, in Southern California increased 10 percent. The orange industry alone reaped $62 million.4 Bitter Lemons and Oranges In 1939, Democratic California governor Culbert Olson championed the interests of farmworkers and unions in the midst of the state’s citrus boon and appointed Dewey Anderson as head of the State Relief Administration (sra ). Olson also reversed the policy of his predecessor, Frank Merriam, which had enabled county administrators to cancel the economic relief of agricultural workers who refused to work at the wage schedule set by agribusiness. With the establishment of a statewide “fair wage policy,” workers could refuse wage work below the sra rate and remain eligible for relief. This infuriated growers, whose leverage was undermined by this policy change.5 The Ventura County Farm Bureau issued a declaration in June 1939 which resolved that “the Ventura County Farm Bureau is opposed to the fixing wages for agriculture by the State Relief Administration. We are not opposed to the amount set, but we are opposed to any government agency setting any agricultural wage. The cost of production is not reflected in the selling price of our agricultural commodities; therefore, any wage fixing will work a hardship on the farm population.”6 The Associated Farmers of Ventura County (afvc ), an 164

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organization representing some nine hundred farmers, also denounced the Olson administration for interfering in the local affairs of counties.7 In 1939, Charles Collins Teague, known as the “father of agribusiness” and president of the Agricultural Council of California, worked to oppose any and all in Sacramento who provided rights and protections of farmworkers. The organization also lobbied against bills that established old-age pensions and workers’ compensation for agricultural workers. In addition, the Agricultural Council vigorously opposed the state’s creation of an agricultural labor board, viewing such an agency as an obstacle to the industry’s control over a fluid labor supply.8 In March 1940, representatives of the Mexican community, specifically longtime residents with families that came to dominate the citrus industry’s labor force, met with the leaders of Oxnard’s Chamber of Commerce and the afvc to state their displeasure with how growers managed labor relations. They particularly opposed the continued use of labor contractors and how workers were charged ninety cents (equivalent to more than fourteen dollars in 2011) a day for board even if they lived in their own residences. Citrus workers also sought to end the deduction of ten cents from their daily wages for transportation — again, regardless of whether workers found their own means of transportation to a job site. This total of one dollar a day for board and transportation translated to about thirty dollars a month.9 In May 1940, before the advent of the bracero program, George Bronner, secretary of the Central Labor Council of Ventura County, publicly criticized the Camarillo Sunkist packinghouse for employing imported workers instead of local residents: “The influx of outside workers not only will throw many county workers out of work — many of whom live here for the purpose of doing seasonal employment — but will take the money paid out of the county.”10 Particularly significant is the emergence of a public distinction, and tension, within the Mexican community between longtime residents and more recent migrant workers. At this point, however, no mention was made of Oklahoma or Missouri migrant workers. Growers in the county and around the state — through the Farm Bureau and the Associated Farmers — recruited a surplus labor pool in the region the emerging mexican (american)

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to curtail the power of labor. In May 1940, Texas, Florida, and California citrus growers lobbied Congress for the exemption of packinghouse workers from the federal wage-hour act. They specifically stated that they were not opposed to the minimum wage of thirty cents an hour, but only the time-and-a-half requirement for work over a forty-two-hour week.11 Growers also viewed any attempt of workers to form a union as a threat. The af spoke boldly of its intention to combat labor unions prior to the outbreak of the Ventura County citrus strike in January 1941. At a state conference in Fresno in December 1940, Donald A. Stevning, president of the af , which was founded by Ventura County resident Charles Teague, stated, “I know the only way to win a battle [against unions] is to go on the offensive, and that is what we ’re going to do.”12 Coordinating their efforts with public officials, the af and the larger agricultural-industrial complex employed tactics that included espionage, anti-Communist propaganda, harassment, and violence. In rural counties the af lobbied elected officials to enact anti-picketing laws and “emergency-disaster” ordinances designed to combat strikes.13 Stevning sent out forty thousand letters to members and supporters of the af after the walkout of citrus workers. He urged California farmers to furnish labor if needed in Ventura County to defeat the strike.14 Teague addressed a mass meeting of Ventura County growers in February 1941 and characterized the strike as an unprecedented crisis. He pointed out that the National Labor Relations Act did not apply to agricultural field workers. He added, however, that both union and non-union workers were welcomed. Teague also denied that union elections took place except in two companies: the Limoneira and Teague McKevett. In Teague ’s mind, the Agricultural and Citrus Workers Union (acwu , Local 22342 of the American Federation of Labor) promoted racial strife to advance its interests. Production costs and a glut in the citrus market made it impossible for growers to raise the wage of workers. But there was a larger principle involved: the collective power of the citrus associations to unilaterally determine the wage of packinghouse workers and pickers: If labor organizers can move in when we are losing money and by inciting workers to strike and by other threats exact higher wages which 166

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we cannot afford to pay, where will it end? If these organizers can demonstrate to these easy-going kindly Mexican people that all that they have to do, regardless of the condition of the industry, is to make a demand for more pay and get it by striking, the control of our business is gone and we might as well deed our properties to the county in the beginning and have it over — quick death is better than slow torture. . . . We are fighting for the future not only of the citrus industry but for all of agriculture and the prosperity of all of the communities of this county and the other agricultural producing counties of California.15 Events in other industries around the state contributed to the reactionary posture on the part of citrus growers and their cooperative associations. At an afvc meeting in May 1940, five hundred farmers listened to Henry “Hank” Strobel, treasurer and public-relations chair of the organization’s state office, as he expounded upon the activities of Harry Bridges of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union. Strobel stated that Bridges was a Communist Party operative. Max Henderson, president of the afvc , added that the afvc continuously battled a fifth column of Communist agitators.16 Talk of a fifth column laced much of the Red Scare rhetoric of the time. The Oxnard City Council acted upon this language when it considered an ordinance that fined persons three hundred dollars or more for loitering or trespassing at posted sites within city limits. The council stated that the ordinance was to strike a blow against the fifth column.17 The strike on the part of Mexican citrus workers took them by surprise despite the boasts of growers and the ordinances considered by city and county officials. Strike! In the last week of January 1941, one of the worst fears of the citrus industry arose: a strike. The city of Oxnard was dumbfounded. The Oxnard Press-Courier wrote, “A mysterious citrus workers strike today threatened to paralyze the citrus industry in Ventura County.”18 Lemon pickers picketed the Seaboard Lemon Association plant in Oxnard and the Oxnard Citrus Association in Hueneme. Organizers appealed to packers — the the emerging mexican (american)

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vast majority of them Mexican women — of the county’s citrus plants for their support. The packers met with organizers to decide whether or not to support the strike, which called for improved wages, working conditions, and benefits. Some refused to join the strike for fear of losing their jobs. Others decided to honor the picket lines of the acwu . As one of the younger packers at the Seaboard Association plant who decided not to join the strike, Eloise Simmons remembered bitter relations between the women who did not strike and those who did: “They [the striking women] would not even speak to us. They would throw us palabritas [execrations].”19 Determined to surmount a packinghouse shutdown, the afvc obtained strikebreakers. Picket lines quickly formed at the Saticoy Citrus Association, and an estimated nine hundred acwu packers and pickers went on strike in the Oxnard district. And due to the refusal of the citrus associations to negotiate with the union, by the first week of February picket lines emerged throughout Ventura County at the Santa Paula packinghouses of the Briggs Lemon Association, the flagship Limoneira Company of Charles Teague, the Santa Paula Citrus Association, Teague-McKevett, the Culberson Packing Association at Saticoy, and the Mutual Orange Distributors plant in Montalvo. acwu officials claimed to have had 3,500 to 4,000 members on strike. The packinghouse associations, on the other hand, low-balled the number at 2,200 — many of whom, they claimed, had been replaced by non-union workers.20 Ed Achstetter, Jesús Sánchez, Antonio Sánchez, and Rómulo Campos spearheaded the citrus worker campaign and approached the afl for support. The acwu sought a negotiated resolution to the workers’ grievances to avoid a strike. According to George Meany, who would become the afl ’s president in 1952, “The Lemon pickers wanted recognition of their union. They asked [for] the right of collective bargaining. They sought a little better pay. That was all.”21 But the citrus associations refused to negotiate. After the strike began, afl president William Green sent A. H. “Pedro” Pete Peterson to assist in the conduct of the strike. The acwu specifically demanded union recognition, a ten-cent raise in the hourly minimum (from thirty cents to forty cents) for packers and pickers, and a 168

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three-cent-per-box bonus for pickers; they also wanted compensation for “wet time,” the period that citrus pickers waited idly by in the orchards after their arrival at six in the morning, at times, until one in the afternoon or whenever the morning dew on the fruit evaporated. If the citrus was picked and loaded while still wet, mold set in and ruined the crop.22 Packinghouse managers publicly expressed bewilderment as to the cause of the strike. Clint Hutchins, president of the Seaboard Association, admitted, however, that negotiations between the acwu had broken off a few of weeks prior to the strike. But the union had given no indication of a strike. A group called El Comité Mexicano Pro-Huelga (Mexican ProStrike Committee), headed by Santa Paula Comisión Honorífica president Benito de León, met with staff reporters of La Opinión and appealed to agricultural workers of California not to accept work as scabs. El Comité also visited and gained the assurance of Mexican consul Rodolfo Salazar in Los Angeles to intervene on the strikers’ behalf. This, however, proved to be an empty promise.23 In late February, José de Jesús Luján, also a Santa Paula Comisión Honorífica member, implored the Mexican consul to come to the aid of the strikers in stating to La Opinión: “Among us exists the belief that the consul of Mexico should intervene decisively in one form or another in this conflict, which appears to be widening and severely harming us. The Ventura County media is maliciously attacking us, and not one protest has arisen for it.”24 No such help came. The U.S. Department of Labor dispatched Captain Edward P. Fitzgerald, commissioner of conciliation, to mediate the strike, but his efforts proved futile. Fitzgerald left the county in frustration and returned subsequently only to face the same impasse. Henderson indicated that the afvc ’s refusal to talk with the acwu stemmed from the union’s abandonment of the initial negotiations. Henderson then admitted the willingness of the associations to deal with the pickers — but without union representation. In mid-March the citrus industry even turned down the offers of Mayors Angelo J. Rossi of San Francisco and Fletcher Bowron of Los Angeles to mediate the strike. Virtually all of the packinghouses of Ventura County were being picketed at this point while non-union crews continued to operate the plants.25 the emerging mexican (american)

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Mobilization of Conflict Meanwhile, Peterson spoke with Teamsters officials in Los Angeles and gained the union’s support not to transport the “hot cargo” of area packinghouses. The fact that the citrus associations continued to refuse to bargain with the acwu appears to indicate that the Teamsters did not fully honor its pledge to the acwu not to receive or deliver “hot cargo.” This was not unprecedented. Teamsters trucks had crossed picket lines to pick up cargo two years earlier after making a similar promise of support to the cause of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America in their strike of the California Sanitary Canning Company in Los Angeles. During the citrus strike, Ed Achstetter traveled to Los Angeles to speak with the Council of Labor to gain any support it could offer, specifically a secondary boycott (the picketing of stores that carried “hot cargo”) similar to the one implemented at the California Fruit Growers Exchange distribution plant on Alameda Street in Los Angeles. The acwu then held intra-county rallies at the Oxnard Mexican playground at Seventh and Meta and at Santa Paula’s Azteca Park.26 After the refusal of the citrus industry to negotiate with the union, Peterson called on an “impartial group” of Ventura County leaders to mediate the conflict.27 In late February, C. P. Foster, identified as a chairperson of the lemon growers committee, declared to Republican state senator John Phillips of Banning (and joint Senate-Assembly chairman of the relief investigation committee) that “The growers couldn’t farm their farms or pay their costs any better if an arbitration board raised the wages than they could if the union raised them. . . . The point is they cannot and will not raise wages so there is absolutely nothing to negotiate.”28 And Robert M. Wright, president of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, and C. F. Burson, afvc president, asked the mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as several public and private entities, for their assistance in counteracting the Teamsters’ “hot cargo” pledge. Elected officials expressed their sympathies and extended assurances to outlaw such union actions. Organizations that represented the interests of business took more public stances. Joseph A. Hartley, president of 170

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the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, for example, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as stating, “We appreciate the necessity of maintaining free movement of citrus fruits and other fruit products to this market and their distribution throughout the city and metropolitan area without violence and intimidation. We are collaborating with other agencies to this end.” Mimicking Hartley’s perspective, Almon F. Roth, president of the San Francisco Employers’ Council, declared, “Hot cargo and secondary boycott is [sic] an indefensible labor practice which should be outlawed in California as it is in a majority of the States.”29 Conflict intensified between citrus strikers and replacement workers as the standoff continued. Growers association managers complained of strikers’ threats and acts of intimidation on their workers. Oxnard PressCourier editor James P. Felton, in a 19 February piece, likened these alleged acts to a “reign of terror.” Carrie Comstock, an employee of the Mutual Orange Distributors packinghouse, accused strikers of intimidating packers in an attempt to keep them from reporting to their jobs. With the support of law enforcement, the citrus industry attempted to cower strikers with arrests. County sheriff deputies in Fillmore, for example, took into custody thirteen Mexican women and three Mexican men on disturbing the peace charges for heckling scabs. And in Oxnard, Natalio Molina was arrested for an alleged threat made against a scab picker. In one instance, however, acwu picket-line captain Frank Torres of Moorpark filed a complaint with District Attorney Arthur Waite against one farmer who threatened him. In most cases, charges against the strikers resulted in fines of five to ten dollars with a year of probation.30 The intensity of the strike escalated when the leadership and rank and file of the acwu decided to extend the protest beyond the orchards and the packinghouses. Toward the end of March the acwu implemented a savvy tactic. It encouraged all agricultural workers to walk off farms that paid less than forty cents an hour. By widening the scope of the strike, the union sought to make capital out of the frustration of all growers in the county to pressure a recalcitrant citrus industry to negotiate. Strikers, meanwhile, received sra relief due to the union’s placement of all ranches on the “hot” or “unfair” list. This precluded the California Employment the emerging mexican (american)

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Services agency from dispatching unemployed workers to these sites. The acwu scored a minor victory when George H. Todd, owner of the Todd Ranch in Saticoy, agreed to recognize and hire only union pickers at a rate of fifteen cents a box.31 Throughout the dispute, both sides embarked on a public-relations campaign within the pages of Southern California newspapers. The acwu claimed that the strike left lemons and oranges to rot, while the citrus industry reported no such disruption. The union also charged that the associations of Ventura County denied the existence of a strike to effectively enlist replacement workers. But from the start, growers hired Ventura Junior College students to pick. They also recruited an influx of migrants from Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma — colloquially referred to by many Mexicans as los missouris or, more pejoratively, Okies. Ninety percent of these workers had traveled from the San Joaquin Valley to take jobs as scabs.32 acwu leaders issued diplomatic appeals to replacement pickers not to work as scabs. Within the pages of La Opinión and the Ventura County Union Labor News, acwu leaders argued that replacement workers had been imported under false pretenses and without knowledge of the strike.33 When asked if he and his family planned to leave the county after the realization that they were employed as scabs, an Oklahoma migrant replied in a mid-April edition of the Ventura County Union Labor News, “Hell yes. . . . We just found out we ’re ratting on the lemon strikers. Everyday I worked in that place I felt meaner to myself.”34 But not all replacement workers packed up and left. To quarter them, by mid-February citrus associations and farmers began the legal process of evicting those on strike and their families from camp residences. Some six hundred to seven hundred notices were served, estimated to affect twenty-five hundred persons. Growers pressed the evictions through the courts, and the acwu obtained lawyers to fight them. The citrus industry viewed the strikers’ refusal to leave their homes as the implementation of a sit-down strike on the part of the union. Grower and association managers shut off gas and electricity to pressure the strikers and their families to leave. The Oxnard Press-Courier charged families that ignored the eviction papers as having been duped by the acwu . Farmers also claimed that 172

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strikers surreptitiously visited families in the early hours of the morning to intimidate them not to leave and to continue the sit-down strike.35 As the eviction process began, “Pedro Pete” Peterson of the acwu announced to the strikers that the sra would provide assistance for their utilities, food, and other costs. Peterson instructed them to follow the procedure of first applying for work at the California Employment Services office, then at the sra . Every fifteen days the sra dispensed anywhere from ten to fifty dollars in relief. Not all applicants were eligible, however; only those with a residency of three years qualified for state relief. Farmers loathed the idea of public assistance for any of the strikers and demanded a legislative investigation. By late March the sra set up a distribution center in Oxnard at the hall of the mutual aid society La Alianza Hispano Americana on Seventh and Meta.36 Founded in 1894 in Tucson, the organization attracted civic-minded Mexicans and Mexican Americans of Oxnard. It frequently held fund-raisers and served as a site of succor for farmworkers.37 The acwu ’s relief committee, meanwhile, appealed to the Mexican community for support and set up a distribution center at 158 C.N. Garfield Avenue in Oxnard’s La Colonia barrio. Mexican honorary commissions throughout the region responded to the call with donations of food, clothing, and money. Mutual aid societies and other labor unions of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara Counties sponsored benefit dances and carnivals.38 Evictions Ventura County sheriff L. Howard Durley began to remove families from their homes by late April. With the evictions, however, came the question of where the majority of these families would live. Record-setting torrential rains of that year made this more urgent and presented county officials with a dilemma. Durley and Jesús Sánchez of the acwu , separately, appealed to the Farm Securities Administration (fsa ) for assistance. The citrus strikers packed Ventura County Board of Supervisor meetings to demand some type of remedy in response to the lack of action on the part of county officials. Achstetter and homeless strikers set up a tent colony at Steckel county park near the city of Santa Paula. The Ventura the emerging mexican (american)

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Fig. 20. El Rio Farm Security Administration camp for evicted citrus worker families of the Ventura County strike of 1941. afc 1985/001:p 1. The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Fig. 21. Three men and two women seated behind a table with a microphone in front of it at the El Rio Farm Security Administration camp for evicted citrus worker families of the Ventura County strike of 1941. afc 1985/001:p 12. The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Fig. 22. Children of citrus worker families at the El Rio Farm Security Administration camp during the Ventura County strike of 1941. afc 1985/001:p 13. The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Fig. 23. Charles Todd conducting ethnographic research at a recording machine surrounded by boys and men at the El Rio Farm Security Administration camp during the Ventura County strike of 1941. afc 1985/001:p 16. The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Fig. 24. Unidentified men providing entertainment at the El Rio Farm Security Administration camp during the Ventura County strike of 1941. afc 1985/001:p 15. The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Fig. 25. Children of evicted citrus workers posing at the El Rio Farm Security Administration camp during the Ventura County strike of 1941 as part of the ethnographic research of Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin. afc 1985/001:p 14. The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Fig. 26. Frank V. Barajas, an orchard and citrus packinghouse worker whose family was evicted from the Rancho Sespe labor camp during the Ventura County strike of 1941. From the author’s personal collection.

County Board of Supervisors determined to establish a county run camp at el rodeo grounds in Santa Paula and an fsa Vineyard Avenue camp at the northeastern edge of Oxnard, near El Rio. The administration of Governor Olson interceded to temporarily suspend the evictions while the Vineyard Avenue camp was completed. Oxnard’s mandarins did not welcome the establishment of an fsa campsite in their backyard and sent letters of protest to county officials.39 Evicted families did not favor the plan either, as their first choice was to stay in the citrus camps, where they had lived for several generations.40 Many took pride in their rose and vegetable gardens. Former Rancho Sespe resident Josephine Hernandez Barajas remembered with anguish how “The ranchers brought in a lot of people from Missouri. They brought these people to the houses where the Mexicans used to live. Whoo! You should have seen what they did to those houses. The beautiful gardens that the Mexicans had planted, the people from Missouri and the Okies destroyed them.”41 An unidentified person expressed a similar sentiment at a Ventura County Board of Supervisors meeting in late June within an appeal for aid to the evicted families, stating, “By God its time something was done for us — our people. We are thrown out of our homes like dirty dogs. We are suffering plenty. You should do something for us.”42 Approximately forty evicted families from Santa Paula, Saticoy, and Ventura moved into the Vineyard Avenue camp by late May. The Oxnard Press-Courier wrote that the camp’s manager, Don Bess, stated in amazement that “it was the first time in an fsa camp that families moved in with so much permanent furniture and belongings.”43 At the Vineyard and el rodeo camps the acwu set up tents of its own and continued to hold large meetings at which the pickers and their families listened to union reports on the progress of the strike.44 But an unfavorable shift in the union’s momentum arose with the end of sra assistance. Peterson wrote Paul Shoup, president of the Los Angeles Merchants and Manufacturing Association, to relay to Ventura County growers and citrus associations of the acwu ’s elimination of the demand for a wage increase. The union now desired only the recognition of the acwu as the workers’ collective bargaining agent. Peterson also proposed a “peace conference” to the the emerging mexican (american)

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citrus associations. But the citrus industry continued to refuse recognition of the union.45 In light of the hardship and deprivation that the strikers and their families endured, why did not the lemon pickers accept to deal with the citrus industry, even when they made overtures of accepting the monetary demands of workers without the union? Citrus pickers, apparently, did not trust the growers and understood that they had very little recourse as individuals. In an investigative report by José Garduño of La Opinión, the strikers said that on many occasions a representative delegation of lemon pickers met with growers to address their grievances, which were peremptorily dismissed. Garduño quoted one striker who stated: “Now that we are on strike, he added, they have desired to enter negotiations with us, only if we separate ourselves from the union, but since we have had bitter experiences in the past, we do not want to repeat the same mistakes. We need protections and a guarantee that our demands will be respected indefinitely.”46 As growers continued to import strikebreakers, Salvador González, president of the Rancho Sespe Comisión Honorífica, on behalf of the strikers pleaded for the assistance of Consul Salazar. González informed the consul office that if the strike failed, many Mexican nationals would be forced to leave the county or seek the aid of the consul to be repatriated to Mexico. Salazar responded that he could not offer any support as long as Mexican citrus workers were affiliated with the acwu . His refusal to aid the strikers demonstrated the consul office’s conservative temperament and disdain for working-class protests on the part of its nationals. Salazar also said that their repatriation would be difficult in light of the dire economic conditions in Mexico.47 Salazar’s suggestion that Mexican lemon pickers quit the acwu in exchange for the support of the Mexican consul raised the ire of Jesús Sánchez. In a statement in La Opinión, Sánchez advised Consul Salazar that since his office would not help the strikers, it should not intervene in the labor dispute. Sánchez also suggested that the presidents of the honorary commissions not undermine the efforts of the citrus strikers.48

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The Coups de Grâce The survival of the strike ultimately depended on the state legislature. Governor Olson vetoed a bill that placed control over state relief in the hands of county officials. The sra could continue to provide food and clothes to striking families as long as the agency was under the jurisdiction of the state; under the aegis of the counties, however, as proposed by the legislature, the agricultural-industrial complex would be able tap into its integrated power to pressure local elected officials to dump strikers off the relief rolls. This would force citrus workers to accept a wage rate collectively set by growers. Although a “county-control-of-relief bill” sponsored by state senator John Phillips failed, the legislature was able to end appropriations to the sra .49 In a late-June Ventura County Board of Supervisors meeting, several hundred acwu strikers jammed the county courthouse in anticipation of the end of sra funds. They demanded that the board disclose its plans for relief. Intimidated and offended by the boldness of the Mexicans, one supervisor bawled, “We don’t have to sit here and listen to this,” and the meeting was adjourned.50 The coup de grâce of the Ventura County citrus strike of 1941 arrived with the final distribution of sra funds at the end of June. The acwu , to save face, petitioned and received National Labor Relations Board (nlrb ) certification on the grounds that union lemon pickers were, in fact, hired and fired by a citrus industry, dominated by the associations that engaged in interstate commerce. The nlrb determined that since the majority of the strikers consisted of pickers or “agricultural workers,” the acwu was restricted from collectively bargaining not only on their behalf but also for packinghouse employees who did not fall under this definition as outlined in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. So instead of assistance to the union to convince the citrus industry to reach a settlement, the nlrb recommended to the strikers that they end the strike due to the right of the growers and packinghouses to replace them. The combined effects of the termination of state relief payments, the continued importation of

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scabs, the six-month duration of the strike, the leveling off of donations from mutual aid societies and other unions, the federal government’s favoring the interest of the citrus associations, and the demoralizing effect of a steady number of strike families leaving the area all contributed to the union’s capitulation. Evicted from the company housing of the citrus ranches, many of the strikers and their families went on to live with relatives and friends. Others migrated to northern California to work in the orchards of places such as San Jose, never to return.51 If this were not enough to debilitate the strike, president William Green of the afl international provided ineffectual support to the efforts of the acwu . The afl international also transferred jurisdiction over the acwu and other West Coast unions to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.52 acwu leaders should have concentrated on the organization of packinghouse workers to solidify the union’s foothold in the county before addressing the needs of pickers. By mid-July the acwu claimed victory to save face and ended the strike as Ventura County growers pledged to employ the strikers without discrimination.53 Citrus growers blamed the strike on outside opportunists who took advantage of “naive” workers. “It wasn’t their fault,” stated one grower. “They have been honest, peace-loving citizens heretofore. They were just misled by Achstetter and his ring leaders.” In a memoir published three years after the strike, Charles Teague similarly faulted outside “professional organizers” in the intimidation of two-thousand-plus citrus workers to strike.54 Mexican and American At the height of the strike, the Oxnard Press-Courier printed an exchange of opinion essays. Armando Cisneros, E. B. Pacheco, Anselmo López, and Manuel Hinojosa submitted separate letters to the editor in response to a series of articles favorable toward the citrus industry. The four highlighted the top-down relationship that existed between growers and their managers with the citrus workers. Pacheco compared the totalitarianism that existed in Hitler’s Germany with the domination that Mexicans endured in Ventura County at the hands of agribusiness. For them the circumstance of citrus workers contradicted the nation’s democratic 184

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ideals. Pacheco articulated this sentiment when he espoused that “‘All men are created equal.’ Hope some day we can say ‘All men are treated equal.’ Most foreigners come to this good old usa because they hear so much of freedom and sweet liberty. Isn’t it a shame that they don’t find much of either?”55 Cisneros contended that those antagonistic toward the presence of Mexicans pronounced “Mexicans” with a pejorative affect. As “American citizens of Mexican parentage,” however, López dared adversaries “to call us ‘Mexicans’ all they want to.”56 And in response to the stereotype that Mexicans benefited from the social services provided by county agencies, he retorted: In their last article by the “Ventura County lemon growers,” entitled “Our Contribution,” they point out some [of] them [social services], for instance the public schools of which we Mexicans are beneficiaries, that’s the truth — and from these grammar and high schools we have graduated to lemon pickers, beet fields, carrot harvesting, etc., etc. And again the lemon growers have contributed to the building of the county hospitals of which the majority of us Mexicans are beneficiaries. That is correct — especially with the tb ward, which is full of Mexican youths, patients that have contracted that disease after years and years of lemon picking.57 Meanwhile, a group of Mexican American young adults who resided at the Oxnard fsa camp organized a twelve-seat council, each member to represent a ward of forty tent families, and passed regulations for the camp’s maintenance, sanitation, and recreation. Seven men and five women made up the council. José Flores, age twenty-one, headed the council as president, and Lupe Vargas, age nineteen, served as vice-president. Joaquín Pérez won the job of police chief. The camp even had its own library run by Gilbert Ruiz.58 The city of Oxnard as a community, however, was not prepared to elect racial minorities to such posts. A Mexican American bid for an elected seat arose in the spring of 1942 when three positions on the council opened up. One of the five candidates was Victor A. Martínez, a U.S. citizen and resident of Oxnard since 1917. Martínez owned the Farmers and Workingmen’s Bargain Store on Oxnard Boulevard and the the emerging mexican (american)

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Independent Oxnard Theater. In a brief profile and statement afforded to each candidate by the Oxnard Press-Courier, Martínez proclaimed, “I’m not one of those so-called ‘big shots.’. . . I merely want to see Oxnard have a representative form of government, serving all the people, all the time.”59 In a political advertisement paid for by La Alianza Hispano Americana, Martínez also highlighted his good citizenship, honesty, and skill as a businessman. The ad reminded readers that a significant portion of Oxnard’s population consisted of Latin Americans and that in accordance with the Good Neighbor policy it behooved voters to have the community’s demographic makeup be reflected on the council. But Martínez faced an uphill fight. The Press-Courier refused to endorse his candidacy, and out of 975 ballots cast he received a mere 143 votes.60 Martínez’s civic activism, however, did not end with his electoral defeat. Martínez continued to participate in community affairs, helped organize dances for Mexican American youth, and served as a leader of La Alianza Hispano Americana. Martínez and Robert Hinostro organized fund-raisers to help establish a local United Service Organization (uso ) during World War II. With the efforts of other civic and ethnic organizations, Oxnard’s first uso opened its doors in December 1942 at 137 West Fifth Street.61 Hinostro represents a curious Mexican American identity, alloyed from the influences of native citizens and immigrants who lived their formative years in the United States. As an adult he was civically engaged. Hinostro supervised the Mexican playground at Seventh Street and Meta, coordinated functions of the mutual aid organization Las Guardianes de la Colonia, and was appointed an Oxnard Police Department auxiliary officer. He also served as a scoutmaster and a chief air-raid warden during the war. From this civic engagement, Hinostro earned the respect and recognition of not only his cohort but also city officials; this led to his appointment as an interpreter for Oxnard’s justice court and a regular officer of the Oxnard Police Department in October 1943.62 Two months after his appointment as police officer, the Oxnard Press-Courier allowed Hinostro to write a weekly Spanish-language column titled Saludos Amigos! (Greetings, friends!). The column informed readers of the health and well-being of Mexican residents, the return of Mexican American gi s, and 186

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Fig. 27. Oxnard Police Department Interim Chief Robert Hinostro with police officers Leola Ecton Chronister (left) and Ruby Robbins (right), 1950. Courtesy of Tom Chronister, Commander of the Oxnard Police Department.

the activities of Oxnard’s mutual aid societies. Hinostro promoted the culture of Mexicans when he printed the lyrics of popular songs such as “Asi Se Quierre En Jalisco” (This is how we love in Jalisco), “Mil Veces Dios” (A thousand times Lord), “Venganza” (Vengeance), and “Que Voy A Hacer Sin Ti” (What am I going to do without you). His column also informed the Mexican community on how to access the services of public agencies. In one edition of the newspaper he instructed residents of La Colonia on how to petition city officials to construct sidewalks in front of their homes.63 Once he was on the police force as a regular officer, Hinostro worked to get other Mexican Americans, both men and women, on the force. One of his first recruits was his compadre (fellow godparent) and president of Las Guardianes de la Colonia, Rodolfo Ruiz. After Ruiz was sworn in as an auxiliary officer, Hinostro discovered, to his astonishment, that his longtime friend was not a U.S. citizen. To keep him on the police force, Hinostro encouraged his compadre to enroll in the citizenship class that he conducted. Ruiz resisted, as he did not want to betray his “México Lindo” (Beautiful Mexico). Hinostro implored his compadre to become a citizen and stated to him, “Rudy you got to take my [citizenship] class. God damn it, you got to be an American. He [Ruiz] says, ‘Pero, dicen [they say] when you become an American citizen you got to stomp on the Mexican flag.’ I said that’s a bunch of crap. That’s not true. You just have to piss on it, that’s all.” Convinced by his compadre to become a citizen, Ruiz eventually became a regular officer and went on to be a voluntary firefighter in La Colonia barrio.64 Additional evidence of an emergent cross-cultural identity of persons of immigrant parentage of the Depression era is found in the 1939 valedictory speech of one of the city’s Nisei, Nao Takasugi. Takasugi spoke to the obligations and responsibilities of his classmates as citizens of America in his address. He emphasized how non-white minorities were forced to live in segregated enclaves that lacked clean streets, adequate lighting, a sewer system, and inspectors to monitor the public-health conditions of all residents. And Takasugi prophetically warned against the isolationist sentiment that existed in the nation. To avoid future conflict and to advance economic trade relations, he admonished listeners to appreciate 188

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the manners, history, traditions, and policies of other countries. He then stated: “We must appreciate and glorify the true American ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, in the Constitution, in Washington’s Farewell Address, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech. I think that the nature of this Americanism can be clearly expressed in the words spoken by Daniel Webster in one of his famous speeches: ‘I was born an American, I live an American, and I shall die an American.’”65 One month after Takasugi’s graduation, the local elementary school board decided to construct a new elementary school in La Colonia that isolated a large part of the city’s non-white students from the west side. The board offered two justifications for the establishment of the school in the middle of La Colonia: the growth in the city’s population (specifically that of Mexicans), which necessitated the construction of a new elementary school, and the danger that more than four hundred children faced in having to cross the busy Oxnard Boulevard to go to schools on the west side of town. The latter was no empty excuse. In 1939 alone, three accidents involved children of La Colonia trying to cross the boulevard on their way to school.66 But the decision of school board officials was not made without discriminatory purpose. Dating back to the 1930s, school board minutes of the Oxnard School District documented, in the words of Ninth District federal judge Harry Pregerson, “the explicit intent to racially segregate its elementary school children.”67 School superintendent C. A. Brittell put up for a public vote the name of the new elementary school to be constructed in La Colonia in June 1940. The proposed names voted on were Lincoln, Washington, and Ramona. The early favorite won for its perceived representation of the state’s “Spanish” heritage — Ramona. The steady increase in the number of Mexican schoolchildren required the construction of additional buildings on the new campus after the completion of Ramona Elementary.68 Wartime Growth and (Dis)Unity Oxnard’s general population expanded with the nation’s mobilization at the start of World War II. The federal government developed a deep-water harbor at Port Hueneme in 1939. The next year it located a Maritime Commission School at the site, which attracted prospective merchant marines the emerging mexican (american)

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and their families. An acute housing shortage arose months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, caused largely by the establishment of the Cal-Aero Academy, which provided ten weeks of primary training to Army Air Corps cadets, as well as the location of a state mental hospital in the adjacent community of Camarillo. The hospital alone employed 425 persons, and the Maritime Commission School brought in 150 officers and their families. Oxnard’s population stood at 8,519 by 1940, a 37 percent increase from 1930. By 1943 the city’s population had climbed to 15,000 — an increase of 57 percent since 1940 — and was expected to grow to 17,500 by 1945.69 With the city’s growth, in April 1941 the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce estimated a need of at least one hundred additional housing units that year and another three hundred in 1942. In April 1942 the Federal Housing Authority (fha ) appropriated twenty-five thousand dollars for a housing project to accommodate employees of the local air corps. By December, the fha approved an additional, undisclosed amount of funds for homes to accommodate 117 families near the Oxnard Harbor.70 It was at this point that Oxnard’s residential development expanded southward. A project was designated between F and G Streets south of Seventh after the fha approved funds for an additional 180 new homes for the families of defense workers. Another thousand homes were constructed in the southwest section of the city by the mid-1940s. All of these units existed between Fifth Street and Wooley Road, bounded by F Street and Ventura Road. As government officials ordered the removal of the temporary Quonset huts originally constructed for defense workers, migrants continued to enter the plain.71 A public controversy arose with the construction of affordable housing. Robert Beardsley, chairman of the Oxnard Housing Authority, applied for a $2.4 million federal grant, ultimately approved, for six hundred low-income units, specifically designated for “non-white” families. As the fha planned and financed the construction of homes in Southern California, white homeowners opposed the integration of non-white minorities into their neighborhoods. Mary L. Randolph, spokesperson for white residents in Los Angeles, protested the integration of African American defense workers in an unnamed housing 190

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project. This policy of integration, Randolph predicted, would create racial strife.72 White residents of Oxnard voiced similar opposition to racial integration at an October 1945 city council meeting when developer W. H. Lathrop planned a low-income subdivision south of Wooley Road. William Ure, a resident of south Oxnard, stated to the city council, “What protection do taxpayers get? We don’t want a bunch of Colonia Gardens [that is, Mexicans and other non-white minorities] down there. If this thing goes through the only thing we can do is to move away. The city will lose tax revenue because property values will fall.”73 The council empathized with Ure ’s complaint and with others who shared his perspective but stated that the matter was out of its control. The subdivider was the only one that could establish restrictions on the units.74 Ure and his supporters would have to pressure Lathrop to include within the deeds of the new homes restrictive covenants prohibiting their purchase by non-whites. White homeowners protected their property values for much of the twentieth century through restrictive covenants that barred groups deemed “detrimental.” Municipalities, real estate developers, financial institutions, and the federal government colluded to create segregated residential tracts. Since the fha ’s founding in 1934, the federal government had consciously funded suburban projects that excluded minorities.75 Two years after the conclusion of World War II, one Oxnard developer set aside twelve homes within a subdivision on E Street, between Seventh and Ninth Streets, for officers of the Oxnard Police Department. Each officer was eligible to purchase two units for a total of twelve thousand dollars. At this time the Hinostro family outgrew their La Colonia home. Hinostro decided to take advantage of the opportunity and buy two units, one for his family to live in and the other to have as an income rental. But he discovered in a conversation with the developer that Mexicans, African Americans, and Asians could not purchase these homes. A new subdivision for nonwhite groups existed near the city’s sewer plant.76 When released from the internment camp in Arizona, the Takasugi family lived in quarters at the rear of their reclaimed Asahi market. After a few years the family decided to purchase a lot to build a home in south Oxnard. Resembling a scene in the movie A Raisin in the Sun, representatives of a residents’ committee the emerging mexican (american)

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paid a visit to Nao to inform him that his family was not welcome in the neighborhood. The Takasugis discussed the matter as a family and decided not to move into an area where they were not wanted. After a continued effort to find an appropriate lot to build their new home, the Takasugis found a space at the north end of the city.77 A year after the end of the war, U.S. Army veteran William Soo Hoo also attempted to purchase a home on the north side of town. Upon making inquiries on a home on Deodor Street, the Soo Hoos discovered that a restrictive covenant existed within the deed of the property. Ed Carty, a real estate entrepreneur and mayor of Oxnard, informed Soo Hoo that only the subdivider could alter the deed restrictions. This infuriated Soo Hoo to the point that one of the reasons why he entered local politics — he was eventually elevated to the council and mayoral seat — was to eliminate such blatant practices of institutionalized discrimination.78 But this took time. Bedford Pinkard, who grew up in La Colonia during the 1940s, stated that “the freedom to buy [in Oxnard] anywhere that you could afford probably didn’t really take place until the late sixties.”79 Segregation took on a different dynamic as black servicemen and their families entered the plain by 1943. This came to the public’s awareness with the question of the use of the Oxnard uso by black Naval Construction Battalion sailors (Seabees) stationed at Port Hueneme. Officials of the Navy and uso segregated black service personnel away from their white counterparts and women. Two years after the opening of the first uso on Fifth Street, Jack T. Nash, director of the center, declared the opening of a second facility for black servicemen, sponsored by the National Council of Catholic Services. Caswell Johnson, an African American social worker, was appointed director of the segregated uso . Nash announced that a survey conducted by Navy officials indicated the need for a separate uso . Nash, however, did not mention who was polled. The Oxnard Press-Courier reported in late March 1944 that the leadership of the “Spanish-speaking” community offered to rent community center hall no. 2 on Seventh Street to serve as an African American uso . Robert Valles, whose father served as a ranking member of La Alianza Hispano Americana, remembered that, actually, the War Department took over the building to establish 192

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the African American uso . Either way, more than four hundred African American servicemen and civilians passed through the doors of the former Mexican community center on its opening day in April 1944.80 Johnson utilized his authority as the uso ’s director to challenge racism on the Oxnard Plain. In an address to the city’s Rotary Club he publicly denounced the segregated uso and stated, “We cannot educate the Negro and encourage him in a better way of life on one hand and then continue to hold [him] back with racial discrimination on the other.”81 Walter B. Mitchell, president of the Negro Citizens Committee, addressed the Oxnard City Council on behalf of eighty-three African American families that faced eviction as part of a redevelopment project at the south end of the China Alley district. “Most of the residents are families of base workers but have been unable to obtain federal [housing] units for some reason or another,” Mitchell stated.82 At the conclusion of his comments he stated that the governor of California had been informed of the situation in Oxnard and read a letter written by state authorities promising to investigate the problem. The council replied that it would ask the fha to address the matter. It also proclaimed its intention to donate city property in La Colonia for the construction of additional homes for the black community.83 Imported Nationals and Resident Mexican (Americans) As migrants from throughout the country filtered into the West Coast throughout the war years, so did a new wave of Mexican immigrants known as braceros. Months before the United States entered the war, the agricultural-industrial complex clamored for an increase in the supply of farm labor. At a meeting sponsored by Governor Olson in September 1941, growers implored government officials for the importation of thirty thousand Mexican nationals. The agricultural-industrial complex contended that higher pay in defense industries siphoned off Oklahoma and Missouri migrants from the orchards and fields of California. They also argued that a labor shortage ensued as a significant number of available men were drafted or enlisted in the armed forces. In addition, approximately 500,000 to 1 million Mexicans and their U.S.-born children were repatriated or deported to their homeland during the years of the Depression. the emerging mexican (american)

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The Associated Farmers of Ventura County, along with the California Farm Bureau Federation, however, claimed that no such shortage existed in Ventura County. In fact, P. M. “Max” Hendrickson, secretary of the afvc , suggested that citrus pickers involved in the recent citrus strike be transported to work in places where their labor was needed.84 The afvc ’s tune shifted, however, after the United States entered World War II in December 1941. County growers became frantic, so much so that Beardsley, president of the Farm Bureau of Ventura County, and C. F. Bulson, president of the afvc , in a scantily veiled attempt to tap into the supply of high school students, petitioned the Oxnard Unified High School board for advice on how to solve the labor problem. And as in the citrus strike, growers also recruited Ventura Junior College students. The county Farm Bureau later urged all growers to pressure county draft boards to grant deferments to their employees. An indication of the desperate circumstance of growers lay in the afvc ’s offer to “bury the hatchet” with organized labor in February 1942. The afvc even sent letters to the Ventura County Labor Council and all affiliated unions to express their willingness to work with unions in order to obtain workers.85 In support of the rhetoric of “We have to win the war” and “Doing our part for the war effort,” county school officials complied with the request of growers and pledged their cooperation. They announced their willingness to delay the start of the school year to allow students to participate in the summer harvest. Individual school districts modified their schedules to allow students to work before or after school. The Santa Clara parochial school, for example, implemented a half-day schedule for high school students. Brittell Elementary instituted a policy that excused the absences of pupils who worked the fields. The evidence does not specify who these students would be, but as most agricultural laborers at this time were Mexicans, it would be safe to assume that they were predominantly children of Mexican descent.86 Ventura County district attorney and Civilian Defense coordinator M. Arthur Waite obtained a work card and was assigned to a lima bean farm in a token demonstration of support for the efforts made to alleviate the labor shortage. And Boy Scout Troop 204 of La Colonia, led by scoutmaster Hinostro, conducted a door-to-door 194

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“Food for Victory” labor-recruitment campaign in the neighborhood. The troop signed up 250 individuals to work as cutters, pickers, and packers.87 These disparate and desperate attempts to overcome labor shortages in agriculture proved futile, and the situation worsened by June 1942. As a result, discussions of the systematic importation of Mexican nationals intensified. Perhaps, with the Depression and the controversy over the deportation and repatriation of Mexican immigrants still fresh in the memory of many, federal officials such as Ralph J. Wadsworth of the U.S. Employment Service avoided the public mention of the use of imported Mexican nationals. Governor Olson pressed Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard, Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull for the importation of braceros.88 Agricultural interests, state and federal officials, and organized labor in Washington dc haggled over the terms and conditions under which Mexican nationals would be imported. Growers favored an open border to avoid government regulation. The Mexican government, disillusioned with the abuse and exploitation of many of the 150,000 braceros who had ventured to the United States during World War I, particularly in Texas, held strong reservations about the program’s resurrection. Mexican government officials, however, also considered the infusion of revenue to its economy from the earnings of braceros. The U.S. government did not wish to jeopardize the Good Neighbor policy. Growers infamously reneged on wage agreements and threatened nationals with deportation to quell complaints. The two governments, however, worked out their concerns and reached a bilateral agreement on 4 April 1942.89 The bracero program, as it came to be known, stipulated various provisions to appease the concerns of special interests on both sides of the border. Instead of using private labor agents, for example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with the U.S. Employment Service, recruited workers imported into the country, and the Mexican government was responsible for the selection of persons who would come to work in the United States. The U.S. government also promised braceros exemption from the military draft, transportation to work sites and repatriation to Mexico, and a daily subsistence wage during periods of unemployment. the emerging mexican (american)

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The agreement further promised that braceros could elect representatives to file and settle complaints on their behalf. From 1943 to 1947 the Mexican government denied the requests of Texas employers for braceros due to the historical oppression of Mexicans in that state. And the U.S. government guaranteed that braceros would not be used in occupations where a readily available supply of domestic workers existed or to depress wages to garner the tacit support of organized labor.90 The United States’ war mobilization combined with government efforts to keep knowledge of the imported labor plan from the public stifled any opposition. As braceros appeared, however, opposition surfaced on the part of Mexican American organizations.91 This occurred at a time when a generation of Mexican Americans and longtime Mexican residents identified with the United States and were striving for greater acceptance in mainstream U.S. society. Moreover, progressive organizations that championed the cause of immigrant labor — such as the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers Association and El Congreso de los Pueblos Que Hablan Español (the Spanish-speaking Congress) — feared that employers would use this new cycle of Mexican immigrants as a cheaper source of labor, undercutting the economic position of agricultural workers already in the country. The League of United Latin American Citizens and the Mexican American Movement took a more strident stance against the importation of braceros.92 Although the importation of braceros raised concerns among Mexican American organizations throughout the Southwest, evidence within the local Oxnard newspaper during the war and the oral testimonies of several longtime residents do not indicate such a coordinated opposition to their presence.93 Robert Valles, however, recalled: The braceros were seen as semi-slaves. There were a lot of Mexicanos in the forties that made money out of the braceros with the restaurants and selling them clothes. . . . Some Mexicanos made money, a lot of money out of the braceros. As far as discrimination, I never did notice any put down. There was no competition. . . . When they [World War II veterans] came back they got federal jobs, so they were able to get better jobs so they did not have to compete with the braceros. I know at the sugar beet factory there was a little bit of that [tension] because we

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had a couple of foremen, Mexicanos at the lower end that were bringing in braceros, because the braceros would pay them to get a job. They would bribe them. . . . That was the only incident where I remembered noticing any discomfort with the bracero.94 The braceros lived in labor camps stationed throughout Ventura County. One of the nation’s largest bracero camps would be created in the 1950s in the city of Oxnard adjacent to Fifth Street and Rose Avenue. Hinostro, after working a full shift at the police department, conducted civics classes lasting six to eight hours to aid braceros in their adjustment to living in the United States. He claimed that out of his many years of working with Mexican nationals, 173 ultimately became citizens.95 But the significant presence of braceros also caused many longtime Mexican residents of Oxnard to rethink their own identity and citizenship. Similar to the experience of Mexican American gi s, who returned home after World War II with a Mexican American identity, braceros led U.S. citizens of Mexican origins and longtime Mexican residents in the county to reflect upon the meaning of their own citizenship. This can be partly attributed to the interaction of longtime residents with los recién llegados (greenhorns) who were less adept at the customs in the United States. Another factor that widened this cultural gap stemmed from the relative economic and social mobility experienced by longtime Mexican and Mexican American residents during the wartime period.96 The first five hundred braceros arrived in Stockton, California, in September 1942 after the signature of the bilateral agreement. A mere 4,203 braceros entered the country that year. The number of braceros expanded to 62,170 in 1944. These numbers, however, do not take into account undocumented immigrants who first entered the United States as contracted braceros and later became freelance workers.97 An estimated 27,058 braceros were working in California as of June 1945. The issue of braceros labor became even more problematic as Mexican nationals skipped out of their contracts, most often to work for employers that paid higher wages. W. J. Williams, a Ventura County farm placement manager, held that statewide 6,200 braceros were reported missing from the emerging mexican (american)

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their contracts. The desertion rate of braceros from contracted work sites in 1945 averaged 200 a month.98 Braceros made their appearance on the Oxnard Plain in December 1942. They were transported to various ranches or packing associations after completing their original work assignment. Soon after their arrival, Dr. César Martino, director general of the Mexico City National Bank for Agriculture, visited Oxnard, along with his aides and the Mexican consul, to investigate the treatment and condition of braceros in Ventura County. Martino learned that some braceros left the county after the sugar beet harvest because local citrus growers paid only twenty-five cents an hour plus twelve cents for every a crate of lemons — apparently a wage scale less than they were willing to work for. M. R. Howard, area director of the fsa , stated during Martino’s visit that Southern California citrus growers contracted with the fsa to receive 1,500 additional braceros to augment the 1,200 already in the state.99 Braceros worked not only in the various crops of agriculture in the country but also as railroad workers. And only a limited number of braceros actually filtered into Ventura County during the war. Just 1,434 braceros worked in the county in 1944, and that number modestly increased to 1,851 the next year.100 It was estimated in 1945 that roughly 2,500 foreign agricultural laborers — Mexican nationals, Jamaicans, and German prisoners of war — would reside in the county.101 Local newspaper accounts throughout the war period indicate that the demand for agricultural workers continued to outstrip their availability. In February 1943 it was estimated that Ventura County growers required two thousand additional workers for the citrus harvest, and the afvc continued to lobby school officials for a modified schedule to tap into the student population. The next month, Charles Teague, one of the owners of the Limoneira Ranch in Santa Paula and president of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, traveled to Washington dc as a representative of California governor Earl Warren to urge Secretary of Agriculture Wickard and War Manpower Commission administrator Paul McNutt for the increased importation of braceros. In June 1943 the commission designated the Ventura-Oxnard zone a Group II area — a region in severe need of labor or anticipating such a situation within six months.102 198

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On the Home Front While growers lobbied state and federal officials for an ever-increasing number of imported workers, the U.S. Navy experienced a similar labor shortage. By August 1943 the Navy found itself in desperate need of personnel to fill supply, construction, clerical, longshoremen, and warehouse positions. J. W. McLean, director of area no. 4 of the War Manpower Commission, estimated that 22,000 vacancies existed in fourteen industrial areas and five military projects in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, including the Pacific Naval Air Base Project at Port Hueneme. Civilians also served as support personnel to the U.S. Naval Advance Base Depot. By August 1942 the depot consisted of three full battalions totaling 20,000 sailors. Three years later the base trained 30,000 sailors and employed 10,000 civilians.103 Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor created a climate of fear, and Oxnard officials immediately implemented blackout drills. Three siren calls signaled a blackout. Local volunteer organizations policed the area to make sure that all residents turned off their lights. On one occasion, a mob ventured into the city’s business district seeking to shatter the windows of stores whose proprietors had left the lights on. To prevent similar episodes from reoccurring, the Ventura Defense Council, in conjunction with a local chapter in Oxnard, urged business owners to observe the 6 p.m. closing hour. Hinostro along with other Defense Council air-raid wardens of La Colonia patrolled the streets to ensure that all households complied with the blackouts when the sirens sounded.104 Manuel Pérez reminisced, “It was very exciting. Being young when the war started, I think I was fourteen or fifteen. They had the blackouts. Everything would go dark and my uncle, who couldn’t speak English too well, was a warden. He had his hat and billy stick and he walked the streets and made people turn off the lights of the houses.”105 Japanese and Japanese Americans quickly came under suspicion after the attack on Pearl Harbor. On 8 December 1941 the Ventura County Sheriff ’s Department declared its surveillance of all aliens, specifically Japanese residents. The Oxnard Harbor Commission, in turn, expelled the emerging mexican (american)

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Japanese crewmen from the harbor tug. The actions of county officials foretold more drastic measures directed toward Japanese residents, who were urged to take measures to protect their financial interests. For example, by 13 December county agricultural officials advised Japanese truck farmers to market their products as soon as possible in the face of an imminent freeze on their assets. Officials also ordered Japanese farmers to report their intended use of pesticides to protect consumers from acts of sabotage. And the Oxnard Police Department confiscated the cameras and radios of Japanese residents.106 Subsequently, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, compiled a list of individuals and ordered their arrest on charges of them being military threats. By early January, on orders of the fbi , the Oxnard police arrested Watura Kawata. The fbi also ordered the county sheriff to arrest other Japanese residents. The next month, the Oxnard police, under a presidential warrant executed by the fbi , arrested Manuel Inadomi, a local merchant considered to be one of the wealthiest and best-known Japanese residents in the county. Before the disbandment of the Japanese American Citizen’s League of Oxnard, Inadomi served as the organization’s treasurer and was a member of the Oxnard Rotary Club. The Oxnard Press-Courier did not make matters any easier for Japanese residents in its use of the pejorative term “Jap” to describe them, especially in the newspaper’s headlines.107 The drumbeat for the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans, however, did not arise until the issuance of a report by Supreme Court justice Owen J. Roberts in January 1942. Despite lacking evidence to substantiate his findings, Roberts asserted that Japanese agents and Japanese Americans had abetted the attack on Pearl Harbor. Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command, informed State Department officials soon afterward that Japanese submarines attacked ships leaving the Columbia River with the help of radio operators on the mainland. Without evidence to substantiate this accusation, DeWitt held that the very fact that no incidents of sabotage at the hands of Japanese residents and Japanese Americans occurred was proof that such a conspiracy was in the making. In February, nationally syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann informed the American public that military leaders discovered 200

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radio communications between the Japanese government and Japanese residents in the United States. This, too, was unfounded. A technician of the Federal Communications Commission characterized such reports, originally leaked by DeWitt, as “hogwash.”108 The equivocations of government officials and latent Yellow Peril hysteria combined to set the stage for the evacuation of Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent. Farmers who viewed the Japanese as economic competitors joined in the outcry for their internment in order to eliminate them as competitors and to acquire their land.109 The Ventura County Board of Supervisors sent President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the California congressional delegation a unanimous resolution in early February 1942 calling for the removal of all Japanese aliens and Americans of Japanese descent from the Pacific Coast. During the deliberation of the resolution it was mentioned that the majority of the Japanese in the county lived in the Oxnard district, where the Army Air Corps base (later known as the Mira Loma Flight Academy), the harbor, and a strategic highway existed. Days later the Ventura County grand jury dispatched its own resolution urging the evacuation of all “enemy aliens” from the coastal region.110 The Oxnard Chamber of Commerce unanimously passed its own resolution calling for the immediate evacuation “of all enemy aliens, and all members of the Japanese race whether alien or American citizens.”111 In the heat of the Yellow Peril frenzy, the Oxnard Press-Courier demonstrated initial restraint and took a courageous stance against scapegoating the Japanese community. An editorial specifically criticized the county Defense Council and supervisors for raising a specter of delirium in their targeting of the Japanese community: “We do not believe the mere fact that a person has parents or grandparents who were born in Japan necessarily requires that this person be evicted from Ventura County. The action of the Board of Supervisors in urging such drastic action does not indicate depth of thought nor breadth of vision.” The newspaper went on to conclude that “The Press-Courier believes the time has come to disperse hysteria, to show some confidence in our own Federal officers, to stop publicizing the so-called ‘alien menace,’ and to show some common sense and tolerance.”112 In a backhanded manner, Beardsley, as president the emerging mexican (american)

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of the afvc , bemoaned the evacuation of Japanese residents in a March 1942 edition of the Press-Courier. Considering that Japanese farmers in the Oxnard district produced up to 10 percent of the truck vegetables, Beardsley voiced a concern that such an evacuation could cost the agricultural industry $750,000 in revenue. Beardsley, however, found himself having to retract this ostensibly empathetic yet unpopular position in the next edition of the local paper by stating that white landowners would move in as their Japanese counterparts were relocated.113 Ultimately, political pressure swayed the Roosevelt administration to issue on the basis of military necessity Executive Order 9066 on 19 February 1942. With an understanding that people of Japanese ancestry were the target, the order directed the War Department to exclude “any and all persons” from military areas. The California legislature with only one no vote endorsed Roosevelt’s order, which affected 120,000 residents of Japanese ancestry, approximately 60 percent of whom were U.S. citizens.114 The internment represented society’s refusal to accept Japanese Americans as both people of Japanese ancestry and loyal American citizens. Before the implementation of Executive Order 9066, Nao Takasugi found himself subject to a curfew from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. while a student of business at the University of California at Los Angeles. Moreover, as a member of a suspect class, Takasugi withdrew from college because of a restriction prohibiting both Japanese and Japanese American residents from venturing more than five miles from their family’s residence.115 After the executive order was issued, Nao, his parents, and four sisters packed all the belongings they could carry. Local officials assigned Oxnard residents to transport the evacuated to the Ventura Control Station for processing. Nels Elmelund, manager of the Bank of America branch where the Takasugis did business, drove Nao’s family. On the way, Elmelund said, “Gee, I am driving you people. I can’t believe I am doing this.”116 From the Ventura station, the Takasugis and other families were taken by train to the Tulare County Fairgrounds, which served as an assembly center while the ten permanent centers were being prepared. At the Tulare assembly center, families lived in hastily paved horse stalls. After several months, the Takasugis, along with other evacuees from the counties of 202

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Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, left Tulare in August 1942 for the Gila River internment camp in Arizona.117 As Japanese residents packed for their evacuation, they made arrangements for the homes, sundry belongings, and businesses they would leave behind. A couple of days before leaving the plain, Nao’s father, Shingoro, met with longtime family friend Ignacio Carmona, who offered to rent the family’s Asahi Market while they were gone. Shingoro shook Carmona’s hand and stated, “You own the store. Whatever you make is yours, you keep.” After the Takasugi’s were released from their internment and returned to Oxnard, Carmona handed back the keys to the store and thanked the family.118 Similar custodial agreements took place up and down the West Coast. In the conduct of formulating the terms of these contracts, real estate agents or trusted friends served as mediators. The more distressed evacuees sold their property and possessions at firesale prices. Therefore, the tragic misfortune of the evacuees served as an opportunity for those who took control of their businesses and farms. This turned out to be very lucrative for these individuals, as grocery stores, hotels, pool halls, and other businesses reaped significant profits from the consumerism of the growing number of servicemen, braceros, and newcomers during the war.119 The Power against the Zoot Soon after the removal of Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent from Washington, Oregon, and California, newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, La Opinión, and the Oxnard Press-Courier focused their attention on Mexican American youths.120 Then the Sleepy Lagoon case in Los Angeles ignited a campaign against zoot-suiters, also referred to as pachucos. A law enforcement dragnet led to the arrest of hundreds of male youths identified as pachucos. Ultimately, the Los Angeles grand jury indicted twenty-four alleged members of the Thirty-Eighth Street gang for the murder of José Díaz, found dead at the Sleepy Lagoon gravel pit on 2 August 1942. On 13 January 1943 a jury convicted nine of the defendants of second-degree murder and assault and found the others guilty of lesser offenses. In the end, however, these convictions were reversed and the the emerging mexican (american)

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sentences set aside by the Second District Court of Appeals of the State of California on 4 October 1944.121 Six months prior to the death of Díaz, Mexican American youths of Oxnard danced outside one Saturday afternoon on Meta Street and Sixth. As couples jitterbugged to big band music, fascinated onlookers gathered around. Suddenly, Oxnard police chief George Pryor and two of his officers drove up and discharged tear-gas canisters at the crowd. Men and women fled. Witnesses stated that nothing took place to justify such gratuitous repression. Charles Peverly, described as a pioneer businessman by the Oxnard Press-Courier, stated that “Out in front along East Sixth Street, there were quite a few Mexicans having a good time. There was no trouble, no violence. If there had been I would have called the police.” Other residents charged that before tear gas was to be used, an order to disperse peacefully must be given. An unidentified witness opined that the police used tear gas because they lacked the courage to handle the situation without it. When protesting residents stated that tear gas ought to be used only in extreme cases of violence, Police Chief Pryor responded, “No, that’s what I got it for,” and detailed its previous use to break up a dance attended by Mexican American youths a week before at the Knights of Columbus hall. “The tear gas wasn’t much good, anyway,” Pryor brazenly stated. “We had it for a long time, and it gets weaker as it gets older. Why, it didn’t even make ’em cry very much. The officers had to come back to headquarters and get some more men, and then they waded into the crowd with their night sticks to disperse them.”122 First public mention of the zoot-suit phenomenon in Oxnard appeared in a 25 August 1942 report in the Oxnard Press-Courier titled “Pachuco Boys Ranks Thinning.” The piece stated, “In case you may not be acquainted with the Pachucos, they are a re-appearance of the wild western ruffians of early days, a sort of throw-back to the gay banditos who roamed the western states when men were men, etc., only the new version comes complete with zoot suit and flowing hair.”123 The article went on to describe in detail the oversized coats with padded shoulders, draping pleated trousers banded at the ankles, and pomaded duck-tailed hair. The outfit of the zootsuiter included double-soled shoes, a long chain hanging down one leg, 204

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and a wide-brimmed feathered hat. Equally vilified, pachucas (or Black Widows, as they were often called) wore black fishnet stockings, short and conforming skirts, sweaters, heavy makeup, and pompadour coiffeurs known to conceal razor blades. And they spoke caló, a hybrid idiom of English and Spanish, an accoutrement to their sartorial expression.124 With the anti-pachuco hysteria of the 1940s in full swing, adults spanning varying backgrounds and races looked upon zoot-suiters with trepidation. By way of their oppositional dress, pachucas transgressed the limiting stereotypes imposed upon Mexican Americans. Hence, men and women who donned the zoot suit challenged normative notions of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, as well as nationalism. In their interrogation of the discursive representation of the zoot suit, historians Luis Alvarez and Catherine Ramirez demonstrate the humanizing power underlying the hybridity of this youth phenomenon that overtly refused to defer to hackney imaginaries regarding an obsequious Mexican. The mainstream, as a result, came to understand any congregation of Mexican American youths as criminally inclined.125 An official document produced by Los Angeles County sheriff Captain Edward Ayres, titled “Report on Mexicans,” officially sanctioned this stereotype a few weeks after the arrest of the Sleepy Lagoon defendants. For example, as descendants of Indians and the Spanish, Ayres purported that an “inborn characteristic” or biological predisposition existed among Mexican American youths to use a knife or other deadly weapons when fighting.126 In Oxnard, Police Chief Glenn Waggener associated pachucos with theft, misdemeanors, and assault. As a result, the Oxnard police detained and arrested Mexican American youths until they were “induced to shorten their waving locks to a crewstyle length.”127 In fact, a zero-tolerance policy toward pachucos existed throughout Ventura County. After the arrest of three youths for fighting in Saticoy, undersheriff Bill Suytar informed the Oxnard Press-Courier that sheriff officers cropped the ducktails of the suspects.128 The widespread perception of pachucos — and of the majority of Mexican American youths, for that matter — as public menaces gained traction as rumbles between rivals, often deadly, disrupted dances. In September 1942, for example, Victor A. Martínez organized a youth dance at community center no. 2 the emerging mexican (american)

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in commemoration of Mexican Independence Day. During the evening a fight erupted. Before the police arrived and broke up the disturbance with tear gas, fifteen Mexican American youths were knifed, one of them stabbed as many as twelve times.129 In connection to the community center melee, Superior Court judge Louis C. Drapeau sentenced Albert Soliz (seventeen) of Oxnard to four years at the Preston School of Industry for fighting, disturbing the peace, and terrorizing barrios throughout the county. Drapeau also sentenced Santos Marillo (nineteen), Erminio Pillado (twenty), and Manuel J. Pillado (twenty-three) to ninety days in the city jail for their participation.130 During the course of the sentencing of the four defendants, Drapeau characterized pachucos, as did many law enforcement officials in Southern California as well as advocates for Mexican American youth, as an internal enemy organized by pro-Axis factions in the United States.131 Unnerved by the violence associated with pachucos, Drapeau declared: This Pachuco gang is a subversive organization. It is my belief that it has been organized and is designed by fifth columnists to interfere with the war effort in the United States. Membership in the organization is dangerous and I call on every patriotic citizen, of age, or otherwise, to cease supporting it in any way. Let us extricate it. Any member of this gang under 17 years of age brought into Juvenile Court for assault or any felony, will be committed to [the] Preston School of Industry until he has reached 21 years of age. If he is over 18 years of age and is guilty of a felony, he may be committed to the state penitentiary for a long period of years. If murder results, all concerned will be prosecuted and may be executed ! This is war-time and there will be no temporizing with a dangerous situation.132 Months later, after another episode that involved pachucos, Drapeau reiterated his draconian philosophy, stating, “We plan to drag them out and

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send them away for a long, long time. . . . We ’ll stamp this out all right, but it will take time.”133 When asked by M. B. O’Brien, president of the Santa Maria Union High School District in Santa Barbara County, how Ventura County officials addressed the zoot-suit phenomenon, Drapeau answered that a coordinated effort of ridicule, publicity, and the harsh sentencing of emerging leaders worked to curtail pachuco activity. Drapeau also declared that in the campaign to eliminate pachucos from the county “we got the active support of every good Mexican in the county and they have enthusiastically helped us to stamp it out.” The “good Mexican,” in this case, was anyone who opposed the pachucos.134 In remembering not only Mexican American but also African American youths wearing zoot suits in Oxnard, Bedford Pinkard recalled the systematic harassment that the police exercised against such individuals. “The Oxnard Police department would actually cut the zoot suit off you,” Pinkard stated. “With a knife or a pair of scissors they would cut your pants, actually make shorts out of them on the streets. Right here in Oxnard. . . . When they would arrest you and take you in, the first thing they did was shave your head. It was against the law to wear double-soled shoes. . . . And, they would actually take the soles off your shoes or take your shoes, because they [the police] considered them weapons.”135 Similarly, as a former Oxnard police officer, Robert Hinostro confirmed that “We did not permit them [pachucos]. We would arrest them and then we would just hold them until they fixed their pants. We took care of the problem because we would arrest them — pick them up, take them to the police station and give them some scissors and tell them to fix their pants. Oxnard was not going to be a pachuco town, like Los Angeles was.”136 As a civically engaged citizen in the Oxnard community, especially with organizations such as La Alianza Hispano Americana and Las Guardianes de la Colonia, Hinostro articulated the sentiments of many within his cohort regarding pachucos. When asked in an August 2000 interview why some in the Mexican community opposed the pachucos, Hinostro replied, “The people that were friendly with me, they did not care for the zoot-suiters. The zoot-suiters were something extra that nobody cared so much for. . . . [At] All the meetings that I would have with the Mexican people, I the emerging mexican (american)

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would tell them that the zoot-suiters, or the pachucos I’d call them, would be hurting what we were trying to build up and that they weren’t doing anybody any good.”137 Therefore, Mexican American civic leaders, who worked closely with the young and old in an effort to advance the standing and influence of Mexicans as a community, considered the pachuco phenomenon an impediment to their goal of general acceptance. Indeed, the Oxnard Press-Courier published an editorial that conflated law enforcement’s crackdown on pachucos and the contempt for these youths on the part of many Mexican American civic leaders. The piece also explained reasons, popular throughout the nation, for the appearance of pachuco gangs and the rise in juvenile delinquency, one of them being that older siblings and parents were in the armed forces or away working in the region’s defense industries. The absence of older siblings, according to the editorial, removed an essential mechanism of social control that reined in the actions of younger boys and girls. What was needed, the article stated, were community programs to channel their energies in a positive direction. Another view, reminiscent of the belief of farmers who blamed outside agitators for the labor strikes in 1933 and 1941, attributed the zootsuit phenomenon to newcomers from El Paso, Texas.138 In line with the analysis of the renowned Mexican cultural critic Octavio Paz, Stephan J. Keating, assistant director of the Los Angeles Coordinating Council, held that pachucos consisted of a subgroup of Mexican Americans detached from the culture of their immigrant parents. At a convention of school administrators in Los Angeles, Keating stated, “Adult Mexicans come here with one way of life, their children get other ideas in school, and a cleavage results until parental authority breaks down.”139 Within the interstice of this cultural “cleavage,” Keating shared Paz’s view that “The pachuco does not want to become a Mexican again; at the same time he does not want to blend into the life of North America.”140 Both Keating and Paz failed to recognize that this generation of Mexican Americans consisted of a curious union of multiple cultural influences. Moreover, an intolerant and hostile environment toward ethnic minorities galvanized this cultural synthesis into an oppositional assertion of pride and dignity. In other words, the zoot-suit phenomenon rejected the society that scorned 208

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them. The woman and man of the zoot suit refused to be subordinated as they believed their parents had been.141 Interviewees some ten to twenty years the junior of Hinostro and his cohort held distinctive perspectives toward pachucos and pachucas of the 1940s. As a young girl, Lilly Robles admired the manner in which her older brothers carried themselves as they proudly wore their zoot suits. Raised in a family that owned a restaurant in Oxnard, Robles remembered that “the zoot suit was not necessarily the pachuco, the homeboy gang style, but they were the homeboys with the cars, the Chevy Fleetline. So they had the car. They had the clothes. I don’t recall any violence in my neighborhood. And we were down smack right down in downtown Oxnard. . . . There wasn’t any of that violence. Colonia, now, could be another story that I didn’t see. The guys were great. . . . Then came the war and they took off.”142 In like manner, Manuel Pérez admired the pachucos as determined and dignified individuals. Although persecuted, the pachucos “never retreated when they got drafted. None of those guys ever got shot in the back in war. They wouldn’t retreat. They were tough soldiers. . . . They were tough guys here. . . . They would take on the cops.”143 As historians Luis Alvarez and Catherine Ramirez have incisively demonstrated, for many people of Mexican descent pachucos and pachucas discursively symbolized resistance against abusive authority as well as the dignity of a people often treated with indignation.144 Views of the zoot-suit culture, however, did not align so neatly along the ranks of one generation of Mexican Americans versus another. Andy Russell (a Boyle Heights crooner of the 1940s and 1950s, whose actual name was Andrés Rábago Pérez) expressed an aversion toward pachucos: I was embarrassed for that era, with that zoot suit stuff. I was really embarrassed. I think it was horrible, you know? Just terrible. . . . In fact, I hated the word. . . . It’s terrible to say. . . . I’ll probably make some enemies, but I’m gonna be frank and out in front. I hated the “Chicano” at that time, ’cause at that time it was that, “He’s nothing but a Chicano, you know?” That was a terrible word at that time. Yeah, “Pachuco” or “Chicano,” you know? That’s a horrible word. the emerging mexican (american)

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I says, “I’m not Chicano. I’m Mexican American. First I’m Mexican because my mother and dad are Mexican and I’m Mexican, and I’m American ’cause I was born here. I’m a Mexican American, I’m not a Chicano, you know?” I just didn’t like that word. It stuck with me. I don’t like it even today.145 As one of the overwhelming majority of persons who dressed and went out to dances in pachuca attire without a conscious sense of rebellion or group affiliation to the zoot-suit culture, Eloise Simmons further complicates the analysis of the pachuco phenomenon.146 As a young woman she worked at the Seaboard Packing House, and, in her words, “loved it. But you know what I loved most, money. I loved what money bought.” Attracted to pachuca fashion, Simmons purchased makeup and clothes with the money she earned. Simmons stated, “We also used to copy them [pachucas]. We wanted to be like them, but we couldn’t carry knives. We wouldn’t dare! . . . But we like the style.” To avoid the wrath of her Mexican immigrant parents, who closely monitored what their children wore, especially daughters, Simmons said, “I would buy the clothes and I would go over to my comadre Sophie’s. . . . I would leave my clothes over her place . . . get dressed with the real short skirts and real tight clothes. We used to think we used to look real cool. And we used to wear those nets, like redes. Like a nido, like a nest and my daddy would hate it. Oh, he would hate that! But we managed to wear things like that.”147 As the companions of zoot-suiters, pachucas were characterized by Southern California newspapers as not only delinquents but also as drugabusing prostitutes, carriers of venereal disease. The Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión disparaged these women as las malinches (betrayers) or cultural jezebels because they attended dances unchaperoned. Aware that the public at large made little or no distinction between themselves and pachucas, eighteen Mexican American women wrote a letter published only in Al Waxman’s Eastside Journal rebutting the negative stereotype and declared their academic excellence, contributions to the war effort, and the patriotism of their families to the United States.148 As a popular dance venue, the Green Mill in the city of Ventura attracted 210

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youths from all over the county. Dances were also held at the Ventura Civic Auditorium, the Old Ventura Bath House, the Oxnard community center no. 2, and the Knights of Columbus hall. Simmons recalled “vicious fights” between pachucos from different cities and towns. Access to automobiles made these violent encounters possible. Pachucos, with wartime jobs or the money given to them by their parents, purchased automobiles and set the trend of cruising.149 Despite the fights, leaders of the Mexican American community continued to promote youth dances. At a dance sponsored by La Alianza Hispano Americana in February 1943, another fight broke out. In defense of his organization’s reputation and the right to hold dances in the future, A. Martínez informed the city council that the incident did not involve pachucos. Martínez faulted the actions of braceros. This tension heightened as braceros and longtime residents of Mexican origins competed for the companionship of women. Judge Frank A. Colston expressed his fear that the continuation of the dances jeopardized not only the lives of those in attendance but also of police officers called into quell such disturbances.150 To avoid the abolition of their dances at community center no. 2, La Alianza Hispano Americana, the International Lodge, and Club Artistico promised to prohibit the entrance of individuals who sported the zoot suits or duck-tailed their hair. Despite this assurance, city officials refused to sanction any more youth dances.151 But with the coming of Mexican Independence Day, civic leaders of the Mexican American community expressed their wish to hold a celebration that included a dance. To make the event possible, Hinostro, who at this time served as an Oxnard Police Department auxiliary officer, persuaded Police Chief Jack Ryan to allow a street dance on Meta and Seventh Streets by promising that he and other air-raid wardens of La Colonia would provide security. After the event concluded without incident, Ryan publicly commended Hinostro and the air-raid wardens for maintaining the peace.152 The high-profile coverage of pachucos reached a new level as conflicts arose with servicemen. Stationed at Port Hueneme and other parts of Ventura County, sailors and soldiers frequented dances at the Green Mill and the Ventura Civic Auditorium. Competition for the companionship the emerging mexican (american)

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of pachucas and other young women sparked clashes between pachucos and servicemen.153 At times, servicemen made advances toward Mexican American women in front of their boyfriends. Fights became so frequent that law enforcement called in the support of the Navy Shore Patrol and Army Military Police. On other occasions, zoot-suiters fought sailors, in particular on Oxnard Boulevard. In April 1943, for example, the Oxnard Press-Courier reported how “four long-haired, zoot-suited youths” lured into an automobile two sailors and a civilian worker at Port Hueneme with the promise that they knew of women who wished to meet them. The zoot-suiters drove the three men to the outskirts of the plain, where they allegedly robbed and beat them and stripped them of their clothes. Interestingly, when servicemen rampaged through the streets of Los Angeles in their persecution of zoot-suiters in June 1943, the Press-Courier published only two reports.154 In reference to the zoot-suit riots in Los Angeles, Sheriff Durley proclaimed, “One reason for the lack of uprisings on the part of the zoot-suiter was the attitude of servicemen in the county.”155 In other words, prior acts of intimidation — and perhaps violence — on the part of servicemen against zoot-suiters in Ventura County preempted similar disorder from occurring, according to Durley. Pachucos, however, were not the only ones who experienced conflict with servicemen. More clashes occurred between servicemen and the general civilian population in Southern California than between servicemen and pachucos. Uncouth servicemen instigated confrontations when they solicited and assaulted women.156 On one occasion, Natalia Colmenero, who worked at an Oxnard theater, decided to watch the end of one of her favorite movies. While she was sitting down, a soldier tried to force her to leave with him. When Colmenero resisted, the soldier assaulted her. Another incident involved a drugstore clerk who defended herself with a soda bottle when a sailor attempted to force himself into her car.157 No subsequent newspaper reports indicate whether or not the servicemen were charged or convicted of assault. The curious unions between labor organizers and community leaders throughout the citrus strike and after the attack on Pearl Harbor high212

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lighted how the Mexican community (which consisted of U.S. citizens and longtime immigrant residents) continued to adopt a Mexican American identity. This was particularly true for the youths who donned pachuco and pachuca attire. Other longtime Mexican residents became increasingly sensitive to the growing presence of braceros. And the enhanced sense of entitlement of war veterans coupled with episodic clashes with law enforcement forced them to reconsider their own status. The contrast between Ventura County Mexican Americans and braceros grew as the agricultural-industrial complex in Ventura County favored the employment of the latter. Chapter 6 will detail why César Chávez returned to Oxnard in 1958 and how he organized residents of La Colonia and other barrio communities of Ventura County to challenge the agricultural-industrial complex’s exploitation of the bracero program.

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6 CREATIN G C É SAR

Mexican children of Oxnard who witnessed or listened to the cuentos (stories) of the sugar beet and citrus strikes of the first half of the twentieth century reached their early adulthood in the 1950s. Whether they were U.S. citizens or born in Mexico, this generation’s identity emerged within a hierarchically defined cross-cultural environment. Although they viewed themselves as Mexicanos, the increasing number of braceros in Oxnard forced this generation to reflect on their existence as Mexican Americans. One such person was John Soria.1 Soria’s family consisted of betabeleros. His parents were migrant workers who married and settled in Oxnard. And his bilingual mother had been a strike leader in the Ventura County Citrus Strike of 1941. Growing up in La Colonia, Soria listened to the stories of émigrés of the Mexican Revolution, read Spanish-language newspapers, and studied the works of Ernesto Galarza. This education made him historically conscious of the circumstances of Mexican farmworkers in the Southwest. Hence, for Soria the increasing presence of braceros was just another cycle of Mexican immigrants being exploited by the agricultural-industrial complex. Although they were Mexicanos like his parents, the braceros were male workers separated from their families in Mexico. They also lived largely apart in grower-created labor camps away from established Mexican 215

families that lived in La Colonia, Meta Street, and other barrios within and outside Oxnard. So for many people of Soria’s generation, the bracero was familiar yet different.2 Meanwhile, the Mexican community’s relationship with the Oxnard Police Department continued to be riddled with conflict. In the summer of 1956 a riot erupted when the police reacted to a disturbance at a bazaar at the Cristo Rey Catholic Church in La Colonia. Police officers launched tear gas bombs and stormed the crowd at the event. The leaders of La Colonia were outraged, as were their cross-cultural allies, by what they viewed as law enforcement’s continued use of excessive force. To address these challenges, leaders of La Colonia formed the Oxnard Civic Improvement Association. Two years later, César Chávez returned to Oxnard and tapped into the association’s social capital to take on the collective might of the agricultural-industrial complex.3 One early morning in April 1959, Ventura County grower Robert Jones arrived at the Community Service Organization (cso ) office in La Colonia barrio. Standing before César Chávez, he humbly requested domestic workers to pull tomato seedlings at his ranch. Chávez feigned ignorance, even though he had battled the agricultural industrial complex of Ventura County for months to have domestic workers hired. Before Jones’s arrival another grower asked for five domestic workers, initially offering 95 cents an hour (equivalent to $7.30 an hour in 2011 dollars). Chávez rebuffed the bid and negotiated a wage rate of $1.00 an hour. The notion of growers paying this amount beyond the existing prevailing wage of 85 cents astonished Jones; but without argument, he, too, accepted the new rate.4 Up until this moment, growers did not obtain agricultural workers from freelance contractors or organizations such as the cso . Nor did they bargain with individual workers directly. Growers largely, if not solely, acquired workers from labor associations they collectively created and controlled. The Ventura County Farm Labor Association (vcfla ) served this purpose in the acquisition, control, and distribution of bracero contract guest workers. So when Jones and other growers bypassed the vcfla , the cso achieved two monumental, albeit ephemeral, victories. 216

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First, it undermined the agricultural-industrial complex’s ability to supply itself with labor without controversy or public scrutiny. Second, it forced local growers to abandon the use of braceros, which were comparably inexpensive, more tractable, and isolated. Up until this moment braceros dominated virtually every aspect of labor associated with the agriculturalindustrial complex whether as fruit pickers, cooks, field workers, machine operators, or drivers, to name just a few.5 The cso of Ventura County, headquartered in Oxnard, thus created yet another curious union. It transformed an organization that had traditionally been committed to the empowerment of Mexican communities by way of voter-registration campaigns, the sponsorship of residency and citizenship courses, economic relief, addressing police brutality, and helping residents navigate government agencies to obtain basic public services, among many other issues, to one that effectively protested labor conditions usually taken up by labor unions. This is the unique story of how a small but mobilized Mexican (American) community scored a shortlived victory against the goliath-like might of an agricultural-industrial complex that enjoyed a collusive relationship with the state apparatus charged with administrating the bracero program.6 Chávez tapped into a tradition of dogged resistance based on longtime community networks that dated back to the early part of the century. This experience served as the source of inspiration for Chávez, who ultimately separated from his beloved cso in 1962 to found a very curious national union of farmworkers in Delano, California. The Bracero Desideratum: Public Law 78 After the United States entered into World War II in December 1941, a secondary crisis emerged on the home front as the wartime draft and employment opportunities in the nation’s defense industries purportedly siphoned a surplus pool of men and women from the nation’s agricultural factories. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Employment Service, and the Works Progress Administration contradicted such reports when they declared that no emergency labor shortage in agriculture creating ce´ sar

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existed in the Southwest. To maintain a fluid and steady oversupply of farmworkers, the agricultural-industrial complex and its congressional representatives pressured the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to immediately enter into negotiations with Mexico to recruit and contract its nationals, or braceros, to work in the United States. To the pleasure of the Mexican government, the Farm Security Administration initially held the responsibility to uphold the regulations of the bi-national agreement. It also created recreational and educational programs for a male population of imported workers separated from communal systems of support. But the fsa ’s efforts to safeguard the physical and fiscal interests of braceros raised the ire of growers. Because the fsa , as a New Deal agency, was sensitive to the condition of migrant workers — Mexicans and dust bowlers of the Depression alike — the agricultural-industrial complex worked to undermine its authority over the bracero program. Charles Collins Teague of the Limoneira Ranch in Ventura County in particular used his political influence to pressure Congress to assign the bracero program to an agency that would be more friendly to the agricultural-industrial complex. Teague wondered, “Either the Farm Security Administration was incompetent to do the job or it did not want to do it — perhaps both.”7 And on 1 July 1943 he got his wish: the War Manpower Administration assumed control of the bracero program, a transfer that Carey McWilliams characterized as “tantamount to turning the whole program over to the farm associations.”8 Between 1942 and 1962 approximately five million braceros entered the nation to work in twenty-four states within and outside the Southwest. Because this federal subsidy in labor depressed the prevailing wage rate of domestic agriculture workers, the agricultural-industrial complex increasingly found itself addicted to this abundant, cost-effective supply of helots. As a result, at the conclusion of World War II the satraps of agribusiness lobbied the federal government to continue the bracero program. As part of their justification for the continuation of the program, growers argued that domestic workers were disinclined to perform stoop labor, resulting in labor shortages. At the same time, the industry pressured the Immigration and Naturalization Service to instantly legalize, or “dry out,” 218

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undocumented Mexican workers by having them cross the U.S.-Mexico border to reenter legally. President Harry S. Truman’s own five-member Commission on Migratory Labor discovered systemic problems with the bracero program, such as the displacement of domestic labor and growers associations that utilized both bracero and undocumented workers to set and depress the industry’s prevailing wage. The commission also discovered that rampant corruption and exploitation characterized the bracero program in both the United States and Mexico. Despite the commission’s report, the Truman administration extended the life of the bracero program in 1951 with Public Law 78.9 Public Law 78 mandated the protection of domestic agricultural workers from the adverse effects of imported braceros. In order for growers associations to obtain braceros, the Department of Labor first needed to certify that “sufficient domestic workers . . . able, willing, and qualified” did not exist at the “time and place” in which they were needed. Growers manipulated this language to their advantage to lock out domestic workers as a whole by the unilateral determination that domestic workers were unable, disinclined, and unqualified to perform available work. The managers of agricultural employment associations also held that domestic workers did not exist in a place or at a specific time when required. Furthermore, Public Law 78 stated that when braceros were employed the wages paid would not adversely affect the prevailing wage and labor conditions of domestic workers as determined by the Department of Labor. With great contradiction, Public Law 78 sought to protect the prevailing wage rate of domestic workers while also stipulating that growers would make “reasonable efforts” to recruit resident workers at a wage rate and hours “comparable” to that afforded to braceros. In the end, the intent of such restrictions within Public Law 78 was to ensure that the use of braceros supplemented the existing labor pool of domestic agricultural workers but did not supplant it. If a representative of the Department of Labor found that a domestic workforce existed in an area to meet the employment demands of growers, the official was bound by the law to immediately contact the local Mexican consul and employers to notify creating ce´ sar

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them that certification for the use of braceros would be voided and existing contracts terminated.10 Public Law 78 defined agricultural work and detailed restrictions for the use of braceros. Braceros were only allowed to perform agricultural work related to the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of farm products. They were also permitted to perform general agricultural maintenance encompassing the repair of irrigation systems, machinery, tools, and equipment. Public Law 78 allowed braceros to perform nearly all forms of work in the fields and orchards of the nation, except operate machinery, but it did not allow them to commercially can, pack, process, or freeze products off a farm site. This was a key detail, and one that growers sought to circumvent by relocating citrus-packing operations from packinghouses to the orchards. This would be similarly attempted in the sorting and packing of carrots and tomatoes on the Oxnard Plain.11 As the bracero program expanded throughout the 1950s, organized labor pressured the Department of Labor to address the systematic violation of Public Law 78. Two central grievances consisted of the displacement of domestic workers and compensation below the prevailing wage rate prior to the entrance of braceros into the labor market. Another breach of Public Law 78 involved the industry’s expanded use of braceros beyond field work as growers steadily employed them as fruit pickers (a gray area of “agricultural work”), equipment operators, and packers.12 As secretary of the National Agricultural Workers Union of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (cio ), Ernesto Galarza — a Columbia University–trained PhD — worked tirelessly throughout the 1950s muckraking the bracero program. He pressured federal and state agencies to investigate and remedy flagrant violations of Public Law 78, which ranged from dubious deductions from the paychecks of braceros for non-occupational insurance and board to the methodical displacement of domestic agricultural workers. Galarza not only condemned growers for depressing the wage rate with the use of braceros but also detailed how they exploited this “captive” helotry by making a fortune from insuring, boarding, and housing them in deplorably substandard facilities. Through his muckraker writings, Galarza exposed the curiously collusive relationship between federal and state functionaries and the agricultural-industrial complex.13 220

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A Curious Labor Market To rationalize the contracting and distribution of braceros, growers associations throughout California created vertically organized labor associations that recruited, imported, housed, and boarded them. By 1959 virtually all the 12,000 agricultural employers in the state that relied on braceros belonged to such associations. As early as the mid-1950s, Ventura County led the state in the employment of braceros. To supervise the thousands of imported braceros, the vcfla created 165 labor camps: the largest in the nation, putatively, was the Buena Vista labor camp in Oxnard. In 1958 this facility alone quartered 2,000 braceros (some sources estimate as many as 5,000) and served the labor needs of 185 local growers.14 John Maulhardt of C and M Properties owned the land where the camp existed, and Fidel Villaseñor owned and operated the facility. Each bracero paid $1.75 per day (equivalent to $13.00 in 2011 dollars) for board and, interestingly, four cents for every hour worked for a room. This camp enjoyed a reputation for having one of the better dining hall facilities and recreation centers in the nation. At this time, José T. Delgado, minister counselor of the Mexican Embassy in Washington dc , found the Buena Vista labor camp to be a model example for other camps to pattern themselves after. A Department of Labor compliance officer, Dionicio Morales, also found the Buena Vista labor camp to be among the finest camp facilities he inspected, with superior room-and-board services in comparison to others that were often overcrowded and provided food clinically deficient of nutritional value.15 In addition to providing room and board, the Buena Vista labor camp dispatched braceros and domestic workers to job sites. But unlike braceros, domestic workers first needed to obtain referral cards from the Farm Placement Service (fps ). Hector Zamora served as the manager of the vcfla at the Buena Vista camp. Before joining the vcfla he had worked for the U.S. Employment Service and was one of the first government officials sent to Mexico in 1942 to recruit braceros. While holding the managerial post of the vcfla , Zamora also represented the interests of growers on the fps ’s Regional Farm Labor Operations Advisory Committee. The influence of Ventura creating ce´ sar

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County growers was solidly positioned within the governing agencies of Public Law 78, as growers such as Frank X. Hovley of the vcfla served on the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Security Foreign Operation Advisory Committee. Also on this committee was William H. Tolbert of the Ventura County Citrus Growers Committee, who was also secretary of the notorious anti-union organization the Associated Farmers. John V. Newman of the city of Ventura served on the Special Farm Labor Committee.16 As early as 1943, Teague used his Washington connections to have Simi Valley citrus ranch owner Thomas Robertson appointed to the Food Administration as an official in charge of the recruitment of Mexican nationals. This was a perfect post for Robertson, who was born in Mexico and was fluent in Spanish.17 In collusion with state and federal officials charged with the enforcement of Public Law 78, Zamora, Hovley, and Newman ensured that state and federal functionaries facilitated a liberal supply of braceros. Just as importantly, they had much to say in the determination of the prevailing wage rate established by these government agencies. Following an industry tradition, the vcfla also policed the wages paid by individual growers to enforce the prevailing wage scale collectively determined by the agricultural-industrial complex. Labor associations then presented the terms of employment to braceros, in Galarza’s words, “for acceptance, not for discussion.”18 The standardization of the wage rate precluded competitive bidding among employers. As associations such as the vcfla contracted an increasing number of braceros, the wage rate spiraled to the detriment not only of Mexican nationals but also to that of domestic workers, who found themselves progressively displaced from the agricultural labor market. The enormous collective power and influence of the growers, in the words of Dionicio Morales, a former compliance officer for the War Food Administration of the Department of Agriculture, relegated braceros to virtual “wage slaves or peons in the middle of the twentieth century in the ‘land of the free!’”19 To ensure that braceros did not displace domestic workers as mandated by Public Law 78, the Department of Labor and the California Department of Employment Services required labor associations to give priority 222

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to domestic workers who obtained referral cards. In practice, however, this stipulation enabled labor association managers to systematically discriminate against the hiring of this labor pool by creating a bureaucratic labyrinth that domestic workers had to navigate, often unsuccessfully, but which braceros did not.20 The grower-run labor associations colluded with Department of Labor and fps functionaries in the certification of shortages in the domestic labor pool. This allowed the labor associations to contract braceros. Moreover, the growers associations informed — if not outright set — the government’s determination of the prevailing wage. And as growers steadily depressed the prevailing wage, domestic workers refused to take, or even apply for, positions filled by braceros. This vicious cycle buttressed the claim of labor associations that a shortage of domestic workers existed, justifying the certification of more braceros and leading to the bracero domination of the agricultural labor pool throughout California. In 1950, for example, 64 percent of all agricultural work in Ventura County was done by domestic labor. Eight years later, 64 percent of the positions were filled by braceros. In sixteen counties of the state, bracero domination ranged from 55 to 95 percent.21 By the mid-1950s, Ventura County led the state in the employment of braceros. The region largely utilized agricultural workers for the cultivation and harvest of citrus, but a range of specialty crops were just as significant to the local economy. And whereas under the terms of Public Law 78 braceros were only to be used for agricultural field work within basic food and fiber crops, their employment expanded into other industries, such as dairies and poultry farms, as well as operating machinery on ranches and farms in Ventura County, further augmenting the displacement of domestic workers.22 The First Challenge to Goliath Disillusioned by the systematic exploitation of braceros and the displacement of domestic workers, in 1947 Galarza and the National Farm Labor Union (nflu ) challenged the labor practices of the San Joaquin Valley agricultural goliath that was the Di Giorgio Fruit Company. Grievances revolved around the use of braceros to displace domestic workers, the creating ce´ sar

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concomitant depression of the prevailing wage formulated by the growers, the need to create a complaint procedure, a worker seniority system, and the establishment of a union contract. The nflu abandoned the strike after three years in the face of bitter opposition by growers and the failure of federal officials to enforce extant labor laws. The union also struggled against the industry’s use of not only braceros but also “wetback” undocumented workers: these two sides of the same coin were utilized to break strikes. In fact, the “wetback” epithet was used in a matter-of-fact manner by many Mexican Americans within organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American Council of Spanish-Speaking People, by academics such as George I. Sánchez, and by Galarza, who himself immigrated to the United States from Mexico during the early twentieth century. This indicated a clear distinction that many longtime immigrant Mexican residents and U.S. citizens made between themselves and braceros and more recent undocumented immigrants of the 1950s. The nflu conducted its work in the face of vigilante tactics employed by growers and the collusive repression by law enforcement — a defining characteristic of the agricultural-industrial complex. An energetic twenty-one-year-old César Chávez cut his union activist teeth in this struggle at the picket line.23 In 1955 the National Farm Labor Union changed its name to the National Agricultural Workers Union (nawu ), and Galarza continued his Sisyphean fight against the agricultural-industrial complex. He documented corruption of the bracero program that entailed worker abuse and a myriad of scandals associated with the bracero program at the hands of growers and the complicity of the Department of Labor and the California Department of Employment Services.24 As concern mounted over how the bracero program undermined the status of domestic workers, Galarza lobbied the federal government to end the entrance of undocumented Mexican immigrants, or “wetbacks.” In 1954, Galarza implored the Eisenhower administration to investigate the border patrol’s actual recruitment of “wetback” immigrants to fill vacancies within the agricultural industry.25 In 1957, Anthony Rios, the cso ’s national president, invited Galarza to be a part of a conference panel in Los Angeles with Father Donald 224

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McDonnell and Bud Simonson of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (upwa ) to discuss the dire condition of agricultural labor. Subsequently, Galarza accepted Rios’s invitation to become a member of the cso and chair the organization’s Economic Policy Committee. That July, Galarza sent twenty-four copies of his 1956 publication Strangers in Our Fields to Rios to distribute among the cso leadership, which included César Chávez. This book exposed the nefarious character of the bracero program and Public Law 78. Galarza also suggested that the cso , the upwa , and the nawu cooperate in taking “immediate action” to improve the living standards of agricultural field and processing workers. Galarza felt that the cso was in a unique position to challenge the bracero program to “expedite the economic program of the unions on behalf of the workers.”26 Before and throughout the bracero controversy that would ignite in Oxnard the next year, Galarza, as secretary for the nawu , pressed Edward F. Hayes, chief of the fps of the California Department of Employment Services, for data regarding the number of braceros in the state, where they lived, and the growers who employed them. Galarza also petitioned California governor Goodwin J. Knight and his successor Pat Brown for this information when Hayes failed to respond to his requests.27 Galarza informed state attorney general Pat Brown in 1958 that Hayes perfunctorily certified grower requests for braceros in Yolo County prior to conducting investigations to verify the non-availability of a domestic farm labor pool in the area.28 Rios also petitioned Hayes for information regarding the bracero domination of employment in certain crops, with similar results.29 North Meets South For much of the 1950s, reports circulated throughout California describing the displacement of domestic workers within and outside the agricultural industry. The upwa filed a complaint with the Department of Labor against the Marvin R. Paige Poultry Processing Company in the Ventura County community of Moorpark for terminating employees who were organizing on behalf of the union and then replacing them with braceros obtained from the Somis Labor Association. Although the Paige Company paid creating ce´ sar

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the same wage rate of $1.25 an hour to braceros as previously extended to the fired union employees, the braceros received only 80 cents as the Somis Labor Association deducted 45 cents from their hourly wages.30 As employers hired braceros in positions outside the fields and orchards of agriculture, the cso , nawu , and upwa concentrated on the injurious consequences of bracero labor on the interests of domestic workers. The upwa , in particular, sought to organize agricultural field workers as part of a strategy to shore up its stagnating unionization in meatpacking.31 And as growers transferred packing operations from offsite sheds to fields and orchards in order to further circumvent Public Law 78 restrictions that prohibited the employment of braceros at the expense of unionized domestic workers, the upwa became interested in combating the bracero question. The union, moreover, recognized that the struggle against the exploitation of braceros at the expense of domestic workers would have to be fought at the grassroots as well as in the halls of Washington dc and Sacramento, particularly with the heads of the Department of Labor and the California Department of Employment Services, as these public agencies kowtowed to the demands of the agricultural-industrial complex.32 The upwa viewed its interest as directly threatened by the escalating adoption of braceros as a union of thirty-six thousand workers in sugar refineries, food-processing plants, poultry houses, dairies, canneries, and fruit and vegetable crops. The relocation of agricultural packing operations from shed facilities to the fields specifically concerned the union. Headquartered in Los Angeles, upwa Local 78 of the California-Arizona region represented ten thousand members. In an statement of interest, the upwa recognized that “the advance of union organization among agricultural workers, whether in processing or fields, depends on stabilizing those who are presently organized and expanding organization to those who remain unorganized.”33 To contest the escalating use of braceros in the vertically integrated operations of agriculture, the upwa assumed the responsibility of bargaining agent for citrus packinghouse workers in the vicinity of Oxnard. In 1953 the National Labor Relations Board (nlrb ) certified the transfer of union certification from the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Growers (uffvg ) of cio Local 78 to the upwa , 226

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also a cio affiliate. The Santa Clara Lemon Association, Oxnard Citrus Association, Seaboard Lemon Association, and Somis Lemon Association legally contended that this transfer from the uffvg union to the upwa nullified its certification. The citrus associations also argued that they had employee petitions that repudiated both the uffvg and the upwa as their bargaining agent. The nlrb found that the board of the upwa consisted of the same persons on the uffvg board, making the transfer legal. The nlrb also declared that the union had a one-year guarantee to represent employees after certification to protect it from employer obstructionist tactics to undermine the effectiveness of bargaining agents. After their unsuccessful challenge, the citrus associations appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the nlrb decision was upheld in 1956. Determined to eliminate the union efforts of the upwa , the association appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1957, where review of the case was denied.34 The determined effort of the citrus associations of Ventura County to undermine and eliminate an effective bargaining agent to represent packinghouse workers illustrates the historically overwrought relationship between labor and growers. The Helstein Plan Galarza recognized the potential of the cso as an “effective force” to serve as a recruitment arm for the upwa .35 In 1958, nawu president H. L. Mitchell, upwa president Ralph Helstein, and the leadership of the afl-cio and the United Auto Workers considered a strategy to advance the unionization of agricultural and food-processing workers in California.36 At one joint meeting, A. Philip Randolph of the upwa , a longtime leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, commented that a favorable climate existed toward the plight of farmworkers and defined this situation as “the great moral issue of the day.” Although growers did siphon work from upwa shed workers by hiring braceros, Helstein also wanted the union to become involved in a movement for human justice. This was especially significant to him as a board member of Saul Alinsky’s Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation and as an active participant in Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement. George Meany, president creating ce´ sar

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Fig. 28. cso members of the San Jose (California) Chapter, Founding Convention, 1954. Top row, third from right: Helen Chávez. Middle row, far left: Saul Alinsky. Middle row, second from right: César Chávez. Front row, center: Fred Ross. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.

of the afl-cio , referenced his participation in the valiant yet unsuccessful Ventura County Citrus Strike of 1941 in an expression of support for this strategy.37 Indeed, the upwa had won elections to unionize workers earlier but suffered repeated defeats in gaining contracts from the packinghouses in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. The union steadily declined in membership as a result. Alinsky and Helstein believed that the mobilization of the community in Ventura County would assist the upwa in winning contracts from recalcitrant citrus packinghouses. In August 1958 the two met in San Francisco with Fred Ross of the cso , Rios, and Chávez and proposed this idea. Chávez, however, was incredulous. In response to Chávez’s skepticism, Helstein replied, “Oh well. . . . You organize the cso . We ’re interested in organizing farm workers. Maybe it will help there. If it doesn’t help there, hell, it’s helping the community anyway.”38 Helstein selected Oxnard as the site for this pilot project because of its sizable farmworker population and because it had a upwa local already in place. The union’s headquarters was literally across the street from the Oxnard lemon packinghouse in La Colonia barrio. The plan envisioned the cso creating the foundation for the unionization of agricultural workers, after which Chávez would recuse himself so that the upwa could take over in the development of a national farmworkers union. To persuade an unconvinced Chávez, who had a reputation as a dynamic community organizer, Helstein offered the cso $20,000 (equivalent to approximately $156,000 in 2011 dollars) if he, specifically, assumed the project. Chávez agreed. And from the beginning, the cso in Oxnard integrated fundamental community services entailing unemployment relief, immigration and naturalization support, and English-Spanish translation assistance into its labor component by way of a Farm Worker Employment Committee.39 But the Ventura County cso differed from other chapters around the state in that its central concern rested on the employment needs of its members. Although Chávez participated in the 1947 fight between San Joaquin Valley’s nflu and the Di Giorgio Fruit Company, he failed to fully comprehend the impact of the use of braceros on domestic agricultural workers. For him this was not the issue to base his organizational work on; he imagined the safety of La Colonia schoolchildren crossing the creating ce´ sar

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railroad tracks as such a community concern. “At every house meeting, they hit me with the bracero problem,” Chávez expressed, “but I would dodge it. I just didn’t fathom how big that problem was.”40 Prior to Chávez’s arrival in August 1958, Oxnard’s Mexican American community continued its long tradition of creating curious unions through the engagement of allies and opponents. In this “rurban” community, youths found themselves constrained by segregationist customs. A survey of twenty-three hundred local students conducted by the Soroptimist Club described Oxnard as a “nothing to do” place. Segregation in public facilities, particularly in recreation, exacerbated the frustrations of Mexican American youth, who demanded its end.41 The Mexican American community and other non-white groups suffered daily indignities in public life, from separate water fountains to segregated theaters, within a curiously and ostensibly integrated cross-cultural setting. Oxnard campuses such as Theodore Roosevelt Elementary and Woodrow Wilson Intermediate were integrated, while classrooms and playgrounds segregated white and non-white students. This also applied to the Santa Clara Catholic Church, in which Mexicans sat in the last two rows of pews. Even when establishments such as bars served Mexicans, it was done in an indignant manner. Robert Hinostro recounted bars charging Mexican patrons extra for drinks. This was because bartenders dramatically destroyed the glasses from which Mexicans drank rather than having them washed for their possible reuse by white customers.42 In the spring of 1958 the upwa involved itself in a charged public debate regarding segregation in Oxnard’s recreational parks, its high school, and public facilities. A upwa official stated adamantly, “In Ventura County, Mexican Americans are discriminated in every possible way.”43 The discussion of discrimination in the city escalated to the point that Tony Del Buono, president of the Oxnard Civic Improvement Association, with the assistance of the Ventura County Human Relations Committee, organized a town hall discussion on the controversy at the Juanita (Mexican) school in the heart of the La Colonia barrio. The problem revolved around not only segregated recreational facilities but also the refusal of a significant number of white students at Oxnard High to associate with Mexican Americans. 230

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With approximately three hundred persons in attendance, the conversation ranged from school discrimination to the virtual impossibility of African American armed services personnel to find housing in the county.44 “You don’t cure cancer,” stated Neal Busby of the upwa , “by pretending that it isn’t there!”45 This was the environment that Chávez reentered. Don’t Pass the Buck Upon Chávez’s arrival to Oxnard in the summer of 1958, the Oxnard Civic Improvement Association unanimously voted to become a cso chapter. Chávez immediately recruited an assistant to begin his organizing campaign. The position required that the candidate understand the philosophy of the cso , have experience in community organizing, and believe in the cso ’s ability to bring about positive change among Spanishspeaking residents. The position paid $5,600 plus expenses (equivalent to approximately $43,000 in 2011 dollars). Ultimately, Chávez hired John Soria for the position. With his new assistant, Chávez, Del Buono (the cso ’s president-elect), and Vera Gonzales (the chapter secretary) conducted house meetings throughout Ventura County.46 Chávez asked households to invite family and friends in the community to learn about the cso . These meetings also gave him the opportunity to listen to the concerns of residents. At the conclusion of each meeting he obtained commitments from attendees to host house meetings of their own. Chávez then scheduled a general assembly at the Juanita school that drew some six hundred persons. From this point onward, general assembly meetings were held twice a month for thirteen months, never failing to attract less than four hundred people. And there were times when over a thousand cso members attended.47 After the creation of the cso ’s organizational base, Chávez guided a voter-registration drive that drew upon a network of community institutions such as El Cristo Rey Catholic Church, the Sociedad Internacional de Beneficios Mutuos, the Latin American Veterans Club, and the Construction Laborers Union of Ventura County. To gauge the number of eligible voters in La Colonia, Chávez obtained the barrio’s precinct list from the county clerk’s office and discovered 1,348 eligible voters for the 4 creating ce´ sar

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November 1958 election. For two months, cso members knocked on the doors of homes in La Colonia to register voters and gather information on three-by-five index cards to use for the election-day get-out-the-vote campaign. As the election approached, cso volunteers pounded the pavement of streets (at least those that were paved) with a megaphone urging residents to vote. Meanwhile, a decommissioned Quonset hut, doubling as the headquarters for the Latin American Veterans Club and the cso , was plastered with get-out-the-vote slogans. One stated, “Don’t Pass the Buck.” The cso also obtained the assistance of Spanish-language radio stations to run voter-campaign promotions twenty times a day for ten days prior to the election.48 When confronted with skepticism, Chávez responded that the mere act of going to the polls placed elected officials on notice. If a significant block of La Colonia residents voted, Chávez argued, elected municipal officials would think twice about continuing to neglect the needs of Mexican Americans. At dimly lit doorsteps, trained cso registrars used the following line not only to register voters but also to create a network of potential hosts for house meetings: Hello, I’m from the cso . We’re out here registering everyone in the neighborhood to vote. . . . By registering, you can do a lot to help out our people move forward. See, when you register, your name goes down on a list of Colonia voters at the Courthouse. The longer the list is, the more pressure we will be able to put on the politicians to get what we need in the Colonia. By registering, you will help us get those chuck-holed roads fixed up. You will help us get more streetlights so the women won’t be afraid to step out of the house at night. More traffic signals so that our kids won’t get run over so often. . . . Jobs for the unemployed farm workers. How about it wouldn’t you like to register? Great! Maybe we’d better go inside the house where it’s light.49 The political offensive reached a climax on the day of the election. For twelve hours, cso precinct captains and volunteers scoured through each of the barrio’s fifty blocks to get registered voters to the polls. They also made a persistent “rash of calls” to those who had yet to vote. cso 232

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Fig. 29. cso members during the Oxnard general election of 1958. Tony Del Buono stands in the center, with Carmen Yslas and César Chávez at the right. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.

members brought polling officials hot coffee to obtain their cooperation in discovering who had not yet cast their ballots. Weary volunteers might have quit the campaign after midday if it were not for women blocking the exit. To reenergize the volunteers, Chávez provided tacos and coffee in order that they “drag out” some two hundred outstanding registered voters before the polls closed at 6 p.m. In the end, 1,108 out of 1,348 registered La Colonia residents cast their ballots — approximately three times the number in the previous election.50 The get-out-the-vote campaign caught the attention of the Oxnard Press-Courier. In a 26 November editorial the newspaper commended the cso for electorally mobilizing the community. It also recognized the cso ’s ability to marshal volunteers to conduct citizenship classes for prospective voters as well as addressing the recreational needs of youths. After the kudos, however, the editorial then stated, “but it is the political effect of its activities that concerns us today. For the cso is working primarily with persons of Mexican origin or ancestry. Their voting habits are well established.”51 What concerned the newspaper, specifically, was that the precinct of La Colonia favored the candidacy of Leo Ramírez for a seat on a nine-member Oxnard Harbor District Commission over other candidates not of Mexican ancestry. After examining the distribution of votes for the Harbor District Commission, the paper found it necessary to highlight the fact that “without his heavy plurality in Colonia, he [Ramírez] would not have been elected.”52 The editorial also focused its attention on the Thirteenth Congressional District race between Republican incumbent Charles M. Teague and Democrat William K. Stewart. Although Teague overwhelmingly won reelection, the Press-Courier detailed how Stewart won 839 votes compared to Teague ’s 127 in La Colonia precinct. The partisan and ethnic nature of La Colonia voters — favoring a Democratic candidate and one of Mexican origins, respectively — disturbed the newspaper, although it failed to comment on comparable demographic trends outside the community. The newspaper, nonetheless, characterized La Colonia voters as stooges for the putatively partisan and ethnically based designs of the cso . The Press-Courier, moreover, contemptuously accused 234

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the cso of creating a boss machine that exploited, in its view, politically naive residents rather than promoting “good citizenship” that did not elect candidates solely on their ethnic origins and partisan affiliation. The paper concluded its lengthy editorial by suggesting: “Perhaps the Community Service Organization could tell these new voters that their votes are valuable, and not be used blindly. It could tell them that a good citizen is quick to stand up for his rights but keeps in mind the rights of his fellows, too, and resists efforts of others to use him for their own purposes.”53 If the newspaper represented the outlook of the dominant community, many viewed Mexican Americans as people who did not weigh their interests independently from those of the cso . The Press-Courier also assumed that the Mexican American community was incapable of voicing its own opinions — an assumption that would soon be found to be false. Voices of the People Within a letters-to-the-editor section of the Oxnard Press-Courier titled Voice of the People, Edmundo Estrada Márquez responded to the newspaper’s editorial by challenging the notion that the cso was dictating the actions of a mindless La Colonia electorate. Márquez also reiterated the services, “too numerous to mention,” that the cso provided the people, “free, without any charges.” He then characterized the work of the cso as first working toward the “emancipation of the people northeast of the town.” Regarding the newspaper’s suggestion that the cso discriminated against people of non-Mexican ancestry, Márquez detailed how everyone was welcome to the meetings and services of the cso . In relation to the Oxnard Harbor District Commission election, Márquez pointed out that Leo Ramírez, who was also the mayor of Port Hueneme, gained substantial support from voters in the district of Port Hueneme, which did not have a large constituency of people of Mexican origins, and highlighted that it was neither strange nor inappropriate for voters to favor candidates of their own heritage who sought office “for the good of the people, not for worse.” Márquez stated that no organization could force persons to vote one way or another. He admitted that the reason why Stewart, a presumed outside agitator in the eyes of the Oxnard Press-Courier, received more creating ce´ sar

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votes than Teague was probably his partisan affiliation, not the dictates of the cso leadership.54 While the Oxnard Press-Courier may have largely expressed the views of the community’s elder statesmen, it also served as a forum for Mexican Americans to articulate their sentiments on a broad range of issues, from public discrimination to the industrial safety of braceros. Prior to joining the cso , for example, John Soria castigated growers in the Press-Courier for the unsafe transportation of braceros from the labor camps to work sites. The subject had risen to such a point of concern that Oxnard city manager Paul E. Wolven urged the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in 1958 to pass a transportation law to protect braceros.55 As was the case in many areas that utilized bracero labor, tragic vehicle accidents occurred in the county. Fourteen braceros lost their lives in a fiery bus accident in the northern California community of Soledad the following year. The enormity of this accident compelled the Mexican consul to file a $1.4 million suit against the bus driver, company, and farm labor association.56 That same year, twenty-one braceros were injured while being transported from a field in El Rio, just north of Oxnard, to the Del Norte camp when their truck lost a wheel.57 The public discussion of bracero safety expanded to work sites. In September 1958, bracero betabelero Pedro Nares Adame of the Buena Vista labor camp lost his life at the R. H. McGrath Ranch when a harvester backed over him. In response to Adame’s death, a person under the signature of Mrs. M. M. wrote the Oxnard Press-Courier, rhetorically asking, “How many more nationals have to die before precautions to protect them are taken?” As the wife of a Mexican national, Mrs. M. M. testified that braceros labored at “top speed” in the fields for ten to twelve hours a day with no breaks for water. Mrs. M. M. went as far as to ask if Adame’s death was actually an “accident or a justified murder caused by negligence?”58 Domestic agricultural workers protested the agricultural-industrial complex’s favoritism in the employment of these guest workers. Soria wrote the Oxnard Press-Courier describing the bifurcated character of the economy in Oxnard: a civil service sector largely based on the facilities of 236

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the Navy, Air Force, and the Camarillo state mental hospital, on the one hand, and agriculture on the other. Soria described the agricultural industry’s reliance upon braceros as an “internal illness” caused by “corruption and mismanagement.” Not only did braceros displace domestic workers, but the agricultural-industrial complex extracted payment from the meager wages they earned at every opportunity. While Mexican nationals received eighty-five cents an hour, labor associations deducted ten cents of that as “tribute.” But Soria did not wish for the elimination of Mexican immigrant labor. He desired only a labor system that allowed Mexican nationals to establish U.S. residency as a path toward becoming citizens. Soria also argued that displaced domestic farm laborers in Southern California would be willing to work in agriculture if they were justly paid seventytwo dollars a week. Albeit this was a meager sum, Soria contended that unemployed domestic farmworkers would willingly work for such a wage as long as it was steady work. Soria then detailed the exploitive nature of the bracero program as administered by the grower-established labor associations. Soria called upon the agricultural industry to employ “local help” at a $1.20 an hour for a day’s work of ten hours, six days a week.59 The following week, John C. Elac, identified as a labor economist at the University of California at Los Angeles, responded to Soria’s letter within the Oxnard Press-Courier. Elac admitted that the basis for the agricultural industry’s continued use of braceros after World War II existed in the relatively low wages paid to them compared to those of domestic workers, “pure and simple.” Otherwise, higher wages paid to domestic workers would result in higher food prices. Elac also pointed out to Soria and the newspaper’s readership that in general, “When a housewife sees some Mexican Nationals she ought to remember that she can buy fruits and vegetables at low prices because these poor people are willing to work for wages that most American would consider ridiculously low, because in Mexico they would get even lower wages for the same work, if they can find work, that is.”60 The debate between the two continued as Soria wrote a rebuttal and questioned, particularly, what Elac meant by stating that braceros remained in the United States for a “specified amount of time.” Did that mean one month or eighteen months? Soria urged Elac creating ce´ sar

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and readers of the Press-Courier to contact Ernesto Galarza for “the real facts and figures on the hiring of contract laborers.”61 The next year, the Press-Courier published an editorial praising imported Japanese agricultural workers in the area who were scheduled to return to their homeland after completing a three-year contract. The newspaper opined that the only complaint that the sojourner workers expressed was the physical strain of agricultural labor; parenthetically, it suggested that “Many of them incidentally, performed that type of ‘stoop labor’ which the growers find more sophisticated American workers refusing to perform.” It also detailed that the average monthly income of these Japanese braceros, as they were called, was two hundred dollars. The Press-Courier also reported the results of a questionnaire it administered to these Japanese braceros. The newspaper asserted that 80 percent of these workers found the farm program of benefit to Japanese youth and wanted it to be extended. Interestingly, only 28 percent of the respondents expressed a desire to return to California as temporary workers if allowed.62 The favorable editorial for imported agricultural labor drew a quick response from Frank X. Hovley, manager of the Oxnard Plains Labor Association, on behalf of area growers. He commended the Press-Courier “for the fine publicity” regarding “our Japanese Nationals.” Hovley, and the growers he represented, took this opportunity to counter the criticisms toward the industry’s use of Mexican braceros. He specifically referenced people “who have a very superficial knowledge, or no knowledge at all of the economic facts of agriculture,” and argued that the broad range of employment opportunities available at higher wages and less physically demanding limited the pool of domestic workers to the “chronically” unemployable or those who are temporarily unemployed to work in vegetable crops. Perishable crops forced growers to recruit more pliable imported workers.63 The Press-Courier printed a rebuttal titled “Reading the Funnies,” signed by “A Citizen.” The woman who wrote the article contested the positive responses in the survey conducted by the Press-Courier. “A Citizen” detailed how imported Japanese youths worked up to thirteen hours a day, seven days a week and how some Japanese nationals were required to harvest citrus while the orchards were fumigated with pesticides. The 238

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writer then stated: “When I heard of this, I prayed too. Yet the situation persisted I thought of going up and standing in the fields with them, a woman among managers and workers in the fields, and not leaving as long as the spraying continued. But my weight is small and easily pushed aside. Also, this would seem ‘sensational,’ ‘out of character,’ and would seem to be injurious to my own personal health, so of course I did not go.”64 “A Citizen” compared the exposure of Japanese braceros to toxic chemicals to the nuclear fallout that contaminated the Earth’s atmosphere from the U.S. testing in the Pacific. The next day the newspaper printed another rebuttal, by Eddie Pérez of the upwa , pointing out how Hovley himself stated that in some cases the use of nationals was “impeachable.” Pérez also referenced a Press-Courier report on the Department of Labor’s closure of the Somis Farm Labor Association and the Campo Blanco Association labor camps due to the “slip-shod” treatment of braceros. The report went on to detail how 144 bracero camps in the state had been closed for similar reasons. Glenn E. Brockway of the Department of Labor stated that 1,000 labor camps in the state, of some 4,704, had been cited or issued official warnings to address substandard living conditions.65 The Press-Courier, however, did not center all its bracero reports on controversy. In December 1958, for example, the newspaper reported on a candlelight procession of some thirty-five hundred Ventura County braceros through the streets of Oxnard in honor of the La Virgen de Guadalupe. A pageant of flagbearers and a band accompanied a flatbed trailer with a bracero kneeling before an altar of La Virgen. The marchers visited bracero labor camps and concluded the march at the Buena Vista facility. It was here that braceros attended a service, attended by the Mexican consul, before an “especially” created stained-glass window of La Virgen.66 But the report made no mention of the organizers of the procession, the role of Catholic Church administrators, the participation of residents, or the role of labor camp managers. The report left readers outside the Mexican community to think, perhaps, that braceros planned and conducted the procession in a manner disconnected from the larger Mexican community in Ventura County. creating ce´ sar

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Locals, Winos, and Bums Need Not Apply Chávez addressed the displacement of domestic workers by the agricultural-industrial complex’s use of braceros head-on after accepting it as the central crisis facing the community. He first needed to establish the cso ’s base of community organization in Ventura County. So Chávez initiated the community’s mobilization by addressing bread-and-butter needs. The cso assisted families in their application for welfare aid for dependent children at a time when the sugar beet factory permanently shuttered its operations and the nation was in the midst of the severest economic recession since the Depression. And he helped La Colonia residents navigate the bureaucratic processes and linguistic barriers to obtain unemployment benefits from the State Department of Industrial Relations. Success in these areas jump-started the cso ’s ability to recruit members, as it required reciprocal support from the people it helped. To challenge the collusive relationship between the Farm Placement Service and the labor associations, Chávez and two cars of domestic workers drove every day to the fps office in Ventura to obtain referral cards and then traveled to the Buena Vista labor camp in Oxnard to apply for work. He characterized this exercise as the daily “Rat Race.” After ignoring the admonitions of domestic workers on the futility of using referral cards to gain employment, Chávez began to understand how this process — one that braceros were not required to perform — was a systematic means by which labor associations discriminated against domestic farmworkers. He learned this from Hector Zamora, manager of the Buena Vista labor camp and a former bracero program compliance officer for the Department of Labor. Zamora stonewalled Chávez’s efforts several days in a row by demanding that the domestic workers obtain referral cards and contending that no work was available after they had returned to the camp with them that same morning. Chávez and the cso then utilized the network of contact information compiled during the recent voter-registration campaign to implement a registration drive for unemployed farmworkers. This strategy documented the existence of an available source of domestic workers which

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the agricultural-industrial complex (consisting of the labor associations and state and federal agencies) denied existed.67 The immediate objective of Chávez and the cso entailed the elimination of the referral card system of the fps and the reestablishment of a system of gate hiring where people showed up at sites for employment. But first Chávez and cso members met with regional heads of the California Department of Employment Services and Department of Labor. Approximately six hundred resident farmworkers and community members packed the cafeteria of the Juanita (Mexican) School to witness a contentious conversation between Chávez and fps officials on 8 January 1959.68 In response to the accusation of collusion between state and federal government employees with representatives of the farm labor associations, William N. Cunningham, assistant chief of the fps , declared that those who were unemployed were a “bunch of bums and winos who don’t want to work, never will work, and couldn’t hold a job more’n five minutes if they ever did accidentally go to work!”69 This did little to ingratiate Cunningham or the fps with the audience. Aware that Cunningham’s superior, Edward F. Hayes, chief of the fps , was scheduled to speak at the Buena Vista camp six days later to address the annual meeting of the vcfla , the cso utilized the artistic talents of one of its members to limn a flyer that illustrated a help wanted sign that stated, “Braceros only. Locals, Winos, and Bums need not apply.” It also caricatured Zamora as a puppetmaster who manipulated the strings attached to Hayes, who flogged a ragged domestic farmworker who begged, “But I gotta get a job, Mr. Hayes. We have no food. The rent is due. The kids are sick.” The cso distributed five thousand copies of this leaflet throughout the county and made sure that Hayes, the 124 growers, and other attendees at the Buena Vista meeting received them. Hayes took time to inform the group of the contents of the leaflet and characterized it as a “dastardly thing” and “a vicious little paper put out by a group that calls itself the Community Service Organization. Well, ‘Disservice’ would be closer to the truth. This the kind of outfit which seeks to sow discord among our loyal farm workers.”70

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Although Hayes did not accuse Ventura County growers who utilized braceros specifically, he warned the audience that the “abuse” of the bracero program could lead to its demise. Hayes, moreover, tacitly admitted to the employment of braceros “while available domestic help stands idle.” Despite the leaflet that indicated otherwise and his own admission that his office was under constant attack by domestic farmworkers who claimed employment discrimination, the Press-Courier reported that Hayes stated that not one case of discrimination against domestic workers had been reported in Ventura County.71 While Hayes spoke to the vcfla , the cso organized a meeting of its own in which about fifteen hundred attended and a local Spanish-language radio station provided a live broadcast to the community. The leaflet, which was distributed throughout the county, also demanded that Hayes speak to them that night. Hayes refused.72 Hayes did meet with Chávez and the cso , however, on 15 January at the Oxnard recreation hall. The discussion began with a tense exchange over the priority domestic workers had for jobs under Public Law 78. Hayes, accompanied by Cunningham, retorted, “I will guarantee you that they will be referred to a job and will be hired. If the people are qualified I will guarantee you a job. I will not guarantee that I will hold the job for you, this is up to the person but I will guarantee the job.” Val Lucero of the cso ’s Employment Committee questioned Hayes on what he meant by “qualified” and stated, “The braceros are not experienced workers. We have gone in the fields and we can perform the work just as well as they can. Why do they have the jobs?” Hayes replied: “A qualified man is a man who has the physical appearance to do the job and he has to be obviously sober and he doesn’t have to know how to do the work. He has to indicate a desire to take the job, he is then a qualified worker and will be referred to a job.” Hayes then admitted that 80 percent of agricultural workers consisted of braceros, whereas in 1950 domestic workers had made up 88 percent of the agricultural workforce. As of 1959 only 10 percent were domestic workers.73 After Hayes instructed the committee to have cso members apply for referral cards at the fps , Lucero responded: “We only want two things. First we want jobs. People including myself have lost faith in going to the [fps ] office. I as an American citizen do not 242

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want to work with braceros because they are mistreated terrible. I have worked as a field foreman and everybody knows how they get treated and locals do not last. They won’t take what the poor bracero has to take, and the foremen do not like locals and they have told me so personally.”74 Lucero’s retort to Hayes is complex in that he distinguishes himself from braceros as a U.S. citizen while simultaneously expressing sympathy for Mexican nationals as oppressed workers. Lucero also highlights how the exploitation of braceros was a means by which other Mexican American or longtime resident Mexican national supervisors culled domestic workers from work sites. After a discussion on the vulnerable position of braceros in relation to pay, hours, conditions, and the ever-constant threat of deportation if they complained, Chávez asked Hayes how his office certified a labor shortage in an area that authorized the importation of braceros. He also queried Hayes on scenarios regarding the availability of domestic workers vis-àvis braceros and tied the question to the issue of wages. Chávez pointed out that the prevailing wage rate of 85 cents an hour existed because of the adverse effect of braceros. Domestic workers deserved a $1.00-an-hour wage. Hayes admitted to the “adverse effects” of bracero labor on the status of domestic workers but said that the current labor laws under the National Labor Relation Act exempted agricultural workers from protections and recourse. Hayes held that his office, according to Public Law 78, established a prevailing wage to be paid to all workers based on surveys taken from workers. In actuality, however, the grower-controlled labor associations determined a Department of Labor–approved prevailing wage based on a labor force dominated by braceros and undocumented workers.75 Chávez emphasized two grievances domestic agricultural workers of Ventura County held: first, the inability to obtain employment, and second, a depressed wage rate determined by the labor associations based upon a labor pool dominated by braceros. Chávez charged Hayes’s office of collusion with the labor associations. Before the domination of braceros in agriculture the wage rate was $1.00 per hour, and that was the rate domestic workers now demanded. Hayes responded that he could not do creating ce´ sar

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anything about the wage rate; his office could only help domestic workers by displacing braceros.76 Eddie Flores, chair of the Ventura County cso Employment Committee, then raised the issue of the growing dominance of braceros beyond field work, such as operating farm machinery, working within poultry plants and restaurants, as musicians, and packing produce in the fields. These were significant points, as Public Law 78 prohibited the employment of braceros to operate farm equipment. By moving the packing of produce to the fields, growers further undermined the position of domestic workers in the sheds. Hayes parried the points made by Chávez and Flores by referring to an ongoing investigation conducted by his office; the complaints of domestic workers could not be addressed until its completion. He also defended the actions of the labor associations with bureaucratic legalese. This only added to Chávez’s frustration. Toward the end of the meeting, Chávez concluded his remarks by stating that all domestic workers and the cso demanded was a $1.00-an-hour wage.77 The contentious discussion took place as four-hundred-plus unemployed local farmworkers stood outside the recreation hall listening to a play-byplay Spanish translation. To further publicize the controversy, another leaflet circulated the county that illustrated a “husky” cso member facing a cowered Hayes. Chávez now realized that the cso needed to document each instance of the systematic displacement of domestic workers by labor associations’ employment of braceros. Chávez used the bureaucracy of the bracero program against itself. This strategy encompassed the documentation of the vcfla ’s discrimination against domestic workers, particularly by way of the required referral card that only domestic workers needed to obtain. He also had displaced workers file formal complaints to prove the availability of a pool of unemployed domestic agricultural workers. These objectives paralleled the tactics carried out during the voter-registration campaign for the November 1958 election.78 The Barflies Committee The subterfuge of the Farm Placement Service and the obstructionist tactics employed by Hector Zamora and labor contractors in the hiring and summary terminations of domestic workers did not discourage Chávez and 244

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the cso . They employed the strategy of a veteran citrus worker named Enclan and his crew that involved the steadfast refusal to capitulate to their displacement at the hands of growers who favored braceros. Chávez accumulated as much bureaucratic evidence as possible and organized a committed “little army” of 120 domestic workers to amass referral cards from the fps office. The plan now was to expose the corruption of the bracero program.79 The cso pressured Zamora to employ domestic workers and witnessed long-term Ventura County farmworkers repeatedly hired and fired by contractors for reasons that ranged from negligence to incompetence. Chávez then decided to bypass the grower-controlled labor associations and dependent contractors to demand work directly from individual ranch owners. To think matters over, Chávez enjoyed a beer at the Coconito Bar in Oxnard crowded with braceros. Waitress Nellie Gutiérrez agreed to obtain information as to where the braceros worked as well as their contract numbers. Having observed the ease with which Gutiérrez was able to obtain this information, Chávez recruited Gutiérrez and other waitresses into the cso struggle to compile intelligence as to where farmwork existed. The cso later created the Oxnard Barflies Committee, headed by Gutiérrez, to work with the cso Employment Committee. And on one particular occasion, the Barflies Committee informed the Employment Committee of the use of braceros in the harvest of tomato seedlings at the Jones ranch.80 Chávez and his “little army” of domestic men and women went to demand employment after the Barflies Committee gathered information of a nursery and tomato grower that employed braceros. But they were employed only briefly due to the completion of the work or being fired on the pretext of negligence. The workers allegedly packed water grass into the small boxes of tomato seedlings. The cso group subsequently became aware of work at the Jones ranch in El Rio. Jones initially refused to hire the cso crew but relented. Zamora immediately pressured Jones to fire them and rehire the braceros of the Buena Vista labor camp. The hiring and firing of domestic workers occurred repeatedly. Chávez, however, creating ce´ sar

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was determined to make a stand at the Jones ranch. The cso Employment Committee organized a sit-in demanding work packing the Jones tomato seedlings in April 1959. Twenty-seven domestic workers replaced the braceros after a federal agent arrived. They worked that morning and were fired by Zamora at 4 p.m. The next morning the braceros were back at the Jones ranch site. Chávez called Hayes’s boss, John E. Carr, director of the Employment Services Department, and obtained the jobs again. Then they were not only fired once more but also blacklisted.81 In an oral history conducted by Chávez’s mentor and friend Fred Ross, Chávez details tension between upwa organizer Rachel Guajardo and himself throughout this campaign. From the start of the oral history, Chávez expressed a condescension toward the work of the upwa in Ventura County, if not Guajardo and Eddie Pérez specifically. On more than one occasion in the oral interview Chávez held that Guajardo and Pérez did not understand the realities of domestic workers in Ventura County. Chávez believed they first needed to create a strong foundation of community organization followed by a clear and practical plan. While at the Jones ranch, Guajardo, Pérez, and even Chávez’s assistant Soria impulsively, according to Chávez, wanted to implement a picket line and demand the elevation of the prevailing wage. Chávez, however, recognized that the upwa did not have the human or financial resources to carry out a strike. A strike was senseless if domestic workers did not have jobs in the first place. The challenge at hand was jobs for domestic workers. The wage rate would be addressed once domestic workers held positions in the agricultural industry. Nonetheless, after their latest round of terminations at the Jones ranch, Chávez and the group reconvened at the cso office to strategize their next move. Chávez suggested an unconventional approach because a traditional strike more often than not ended in demoralizing failure. He argued that before any strike or picketing could occur the cso needed to prove that a movement could succeed that challenged the might of the agricultural-industrial complex’s use of braceros. Otherwise, growers could interlock their power to further demoralize lumpen domestic workers.82 Chávez met with Dionicio Morales, a person raised in the Ventura 246

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Fig. 30. Dionicio Morales at the microphone at a candlelight vigil at the Oxnard Buena Vista bracero camp, circa 1958. The Dionicio Morales Papers, ucla Chicano Studies Research Center Library and Archive, University of California, Los Angeles. Courtesy of the ucla Chicano Studies Research Center Library and Archive.

County community of Moorpark who served as a bracero program compliance officer for the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Employment Security, as domestic workers were repeatedly hired and fired. Chávez wanted Morales to do more to about the exploitation of braceros at the expense of domestic workers. Much to Chávez’s consternation, Morales expressed that even though he morally supported the efforts of the cso , his authority as compliance officer was limited and he could not help. At one point, however, Morales stated to Chávez: “You know, these people [the growers] don’t want any investigations. They don’t want anything public because this thing is a time bomb. They don’t want any publicity on it, and you’ve got everybody shook up.”83 Blowing the Lid Off With the knowledge of the sensitivity of the bracero controversy to the ruling elite of the county, if not the state and nation, Chávez decided to publicly expose the cso struggle to, in his words, “get a lot of other people worried about this thing. And I mean a lot!” cso member James Flores alerted the media, one being the regional affiliate of cbs television news. The next morning, on 21 April 1959, approximately seventy local residents of the cso marched to the fps trailer at the unincorporated community of El Rio. They were joined by women and children along with a motorcade of approximately forty automobiles. The procession drew the attention of the local police, which assigned six squad cars to follow the procession.84 The marchers proceeded from the end of Oxnard Boulevard to the fps trailer in El Rio, then to the Jones ranch. The protesters sung the revolutionary song of Pancho Villa, “La Adelita,” as they marched. The demonstration developed spontaneously, and Chávez wrestled with what the climax would be. He understood, however, that the growers used the referral cards as a means to systematically discriminate against the employment of domestic workers. Chávez instructed the protestors to obtain referral cards from the fps trailer to dramatically destroy by fire, individually, while having each person vow never again to apply for them — an action that the media devoured. Morales attended the demonstra248

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tion, and when an Oxnard Press-Courier reporter asked him to comment on the protest, he and California labor officials deflected questions to their respective superiors in Sacramento and San Francisco.85 The next morning, according to Chávez, at the cso Quonset hut domestic workers relived events of the march. Then three trucks arrived from the Jones ranch to pick them up for work. The workers stood by, and a person referred to as Campos stated to the drivers, “You tell Jones if he wants us to go to work, he better come down here and talk to us.”86 With Jones, the cso had achieved what it sought — the direct employment of workers by individual growers by gate-hiring and eliminating the labor association’s role as agents for the industry. In the month that followed, Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell flew to Oxnard to address the Ventura Lions Club and tour the region. This visit was coordinated by the Republican Federated Women’s Club of Southern California. Guajardo and approximately one thousand demonstrators met Mitchell at the airport. They charged the vcfla , the Oxnard Plains Labor Association, the Somis Labor Association, and the Summerland Plant Growers with discrimination against domestic farmworkers. Picket signs stated to Mitchell, “Stop Imported Labor,” “We Want Jobs,” and “Can You Live on 85 Cents a Day?” In a brief statement, Mitchell stated that he favored a wage of $1.00 an hour for farm labor as a remedy. Del Buono unsuccessfully petitioned Mitchell to meet with domestic farmworkers. The protesters followed Mitchell to the Pierpont Inn and obtained an audience. Due to unknown conditions that Mitchell refused to agree to, Chávez did not attend the meeting with the workers and the upwa representatives. And instead of holding its regular cso meeting that night, Chávez decided that the members conduct a candlelight protest march in the La Colonia. Two hundred people started the demonstration while singing. In an oral history conducted with Jacques Levy, Chávez made the fanciful claim that at its peak more than ten thousand people followed a banner of La Virgen de Guadalupe as police squad cars monitored the spectacle and attempted to end it. In an oral history conducted with Jacques Levy, Chávez proclaimed, “That’s when I discovered the power of the march.”87 Chávez continued to pressure Hayes. He sent steady samples of referral creating ce´ sar

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cards that documented the systematic discrimination against the employment of domestic workers. Carr also pressured Hayes to resolve the controversy. Growers then began to visit the cso office to obtain domestic workers at a rate of 90 cents an hour. The cso office became a hiring hall, and the trucks sent to transport domestic workers blocked traffic in La Colonia. To relieve the traffic congestion, the Oxnard Police Department attempted to hamper the employment services of the cso . This only led the march-happy Chávez to organize a protest from La Colonia to the Oxnard police station.88 And by June 1959 Carr informed Governor Pat Brown of his department’s investigation to accurately gauge a prevailing wage that would not only attract domestic workers but also retain them at work sites. Carr proposed that the retention of domestic workers would be a requirement if the growers wanted to continue their use of braceros. He also promised Brown that the certification to employ braceros would be instituted to supplement the domestic labor pool and protect them from any adverse effects. As the cso movement had demanded, gate and day-haul hiring would be the central means by which growers would obtain agricultural workers. Carr also stated that his department would work closely with state and federal agencies to improve the sanitation, housing, and work conditions in agriculture to attract domestic workers. To ensure that growers and their labor associations could not claim ignorance, the Department of Employment sent a policy statement that they too would be held accountable. Finally, Carr detailed to Governor Brown that his department would invite labor unions, public groups, and other bracero-program stakeholders, such as the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of the afl-cio , to maximize the employment of California’s domestic workers.89 In late May 1959, Secretary Mitchell announced the embarkation of a study investigating the bracero program. Mitchell appointed to the consultant panel former Minnesota senator Edward J. Thye; Monsignor George G. Higgins of the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Office in Washington dc ; Glenn E. Garrett, chair of the Texas Council on Migrant Labor and executive director of the Good Neighbor Commission; and Dr. Rufus B. von Kleinsmid, chancellor of 250

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the University of Southern California. The foremost question put to the panel was whether Public Law 78 adversely affected domestic agricultural labor, both local and migratory, in relation to employment, wages, and working conditions. The panel was also asked to investigate if braceros should be limited to certain crops and restricted in use, the views of the Mexican government, and if the bracero program should be extended or made permanent.90 The consultants found evidence that Public Law 78 was adversely affecting the prevailing wage and displacing domestic workers. The panel, however, couched their findings in a manner designed not to offend the agricultural-industrial complex. The panel pointed out that Section 503 of Public Law 78 stipulated that the interests of domestic labor were to be protected by the Department of Labor in conjunction with state agencies. The consultants’ report called for tighter control of Public Law 78 in October 1959 and recognized that the agricultural-industrial complex’s use of braceros did drive down wages and displace domestic workers willing to work in the fields and orchards of the nation. The report went so far as to admit that the mere knowledge of the availability of braceros undermined the leverage of domestic workers and contributed to the depression of the wage rate in an area. The panel also found that growers did in fact displace domestic workers by having braceros pack and sort vegetables in the fields with the aid of machines. Only greater enforcement on the part of the Department of Labor would ensure that domestic workers did not suffer adverse effects as a result of the industry’s preference for braceros. The consultants recognized that “wages paid to foreign workers should correspond with those paid to domestic workers similarly employed.” However, the depressed wage rate of braceros became the prevailing wage. The consultants tentatively admitted this to the point of being apologetic. In the crops of citrus, sugar beets, and tomatoes, as existed on the Oxnard Plain, the issue of prevailing wage rates was pointless due to bracero domination in such areas.91 Despite these core problems with the bracero program, the consultants recommended its continuation by way of Public Law 78 even when “it could be contended” that there existed no real labor emergency except creating ce´ sar

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with certain crops and areas. Toward the goal of protecting the interests of domestic workers, the consultants recommended that braceros be prohibited from year-round agricultural work and the operation of machinery related to the packing and sorting of crops. The panel encouraged the secretary of labor to create quotas that stipulated the ratio of braceros to domestic workers at work sites. Toward this end, an amended Public Law 78 should hold employers responsible for recruiting domestic workers. The consultants held, moreover, that in order for employers to effectively recruit domestic workers, they, too, should provide domestic workers — particularly migrant workers — with transportation, housing, insurance, and subsistence, among other benefits. The labor secretary should be provided with the authority to establish the wage rate of braceros no less and equal to the prevailing wage of domestic workers. In disarming language, the consultants pointed to “a serious danger” of local state agencies, such as the fps , compromising the “original intent of the program.”92 Directed to either Mitchell or the agricultural-industrial complex, the consultants tacitly accused state agencies of turning Public Law 78’s regulations to protect domestic workers on their head. This was publicly borne out before the publication of their report by Chávez’s cso work in Oxnard, Ernesto Galarza’s indefatigable muckraking of the bracero program, and contemporary newspaper reports. With Prejudice The controversy over the bracero program expanded with Assistant State Attorney General Charles O’Brien’s investigation of the allegation that the labor associations defrauded braceros. This forced Carr to conduct his own inquiry. Mitchell held hearings on Public Law 78 in July 1959, and Attorney General William Rogers upheld Mitchell’s right to bar uncooperative agricultural employers from using U.S. Employment Service Officers to recruit out-of-state farmhands. Congressional members throughout the Southwest protested Mitchell’s proposal that growers provide housing facilities that met state and local codes, adhere to a prevailing wage rate, and transport workers to and from job sites.93 Later that month Carr fired William N. Cunningham, who faced charges of “dishonesty” and the 252

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“misuse of state property.” Reports indicated that Cunningham ordered fps employees to file false travel reports as well as deliver agricultural products, such as cherries and apricots, to his residence. The Hemet Growers Association provided the cherries, and state employees transported them to Cunningham’s home in Bakersfield, California, some two hundred miles away. Cunningham also accepted, free of charge, crates of oranges from the San Fernando Orange Association, one hundred miles away.94 The abuse of power at the hands of fps officials such as Cunningham went far beyond the acceptance of in-kind gifts. Carr went on record that Cunningham’s actions “went to the point of regular, traditional, longtime abuse of power and authority. It went into a shakedown racket.” Carr admitted that the fps favored the referral of braceros over domestic workers, in violation of Public Law 78, and went on to state: “There are many domestic farm workers who are ready, willing, and able to comply with conditions that give them a prior right to jobs that are being held by Mexican nationals in the state, and who never get a chance to exercise it. They are deliberately horned off by people in our department whose obligation it is to assure them that prior right.”95 Cunningham carried this out by falsifying documents and covering up discriminatory employment practices against domestic workers on the part of growers and their labor associations. Reassigned to advisory duties of planning and program development within the fps , Hayes publicly denied Carr’s accusations. And growers defended their employment practices, arguing that domestic farmworkers consisted of, at best, “transients; at worst drunkards. A man can’t do business with that sort of help.”96 However, the scandal within the fps hemorrhaged as functionaries within Hayes’s department were not only investigated and removed but also left voluntarily under similar clouds of controversy. San Diego fps representative Edwin A. Bird, for example, who made $550 a month (equivalent to $4,343 in 2011 dollars), resigned in August 1959, citing health reasons. The resignation, however, was accepted “with prejudice” — a bureaucratic term indicating that the former employee would not be rehired by the state. But it did not affect the person’s pension benefits. Bird’s immediate superior, Don E. Park, who also worked for Cunningham as his assistant for the region creating ce´ sar

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of Southern California, also resigned that month with prejudice. These individuals worked under Hayes, who ultimately resigned from the fps with prejudice.97 In August 1959 the Copley News Service ran a five-part series that added to the bracero program controversy. Joe Brown launched a muckraking exposé that illustrated how from the start of their trek to the United States from Mexico, the braceros found themselves exploited by Mexican municipal officials who charged a bribe (mordida) of approximately ten dollars to be placed on a list of eligible men. The bracero then traveled to the migratory station in Monterey to be transported to El Centro. The third installment discussed the dangerous nature of transporting braceros to and from work sites. Brown pointed to the fiery death of sixteen braceros and thirty-one others in Phoenix that June. Robert C. Goodwin of the Department Bureau of Employment Security ordered a survey of 148 bracero camps near the U.S.-Mexico border that discovered rampant substandard conditions. The survey and the Brown series highlighted an across-the-board public airing of the alleged abuses of the bracero program. Other reports investigated the dubious deductions drawn from the paychecks of braceros for medical insurance, housing, and board. The Imperial Valley Farmers Association, particularly, denied these allegations and challenged critics to provide proof. Keith Mets and Rev. James L. Yizzard, S.J., who represented the National Rural Life conference, described the bracero program as a “none-too-subtle substitute for slavery.” And Monsignor Higgins implored Catholic farmers not to participate in the exploitation of braceros.98 Adiós, César The media portrayed the bracero program as a modern-day form of slavery as it exposed the endemic corruption of Public Law 78 at the hands of government officials in collusion with the camp managers of the agricultural industry.99 United Press International reports within the Oxnard Press-Courier detailed substandard conditions in the housing and board of braceros in camps throughout the state. Government agents shut down such camps and transferred braceros. But the Ventura County Farm 254

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Bureau continued to contend that a shortage of farmworkers existed in the county. The agricultural-industrial complex also held that domestic laborers who were available refused to work for sustainable wage rates.100 The cso , meanwhile, continued its activities of culturally based community building. It promoted festivals and a beauty contest in the summer of 1959. The Chávez-led cso also carried on the political mobilization of the Mexican American community in Ventura County. It provided assistance to immigrants in relation to their residency and desire to become U.S. citizens. And cso members doggedly visited barrio homes, one door at a time, continuing to register eligible voters for the next electoral campaign.101 But Chávez’s new heart’s desire remained in organizing agricultural workers. He appealed to the cso national headquarters to carry on the work he started in Ventura County, but the upwa refused. The union replaced him with two of its own organizers. So Chávez relented and was transferred to Los Angeles to serve as the cso ’s national director. Six months after his departure, Chávez returned to Oxnard to find the work of the cso Employment Committee in disarray. upwa organizers, according to Chávez, failed to develop the relationship with the growers that hired domestic farmworkers. The union also needlessly resumed the fight with the fps over the issue of referral cards. Chávez also discovered the rise of discord among members of the cso Employment Committee.102 The leadership void left by Chávez was more important than the emergence of factions within the Ventura County cso headquartered in Oxnard. The cso office no longer opened at 4:30 a.m. to start a day’s work and meet with people in need of help. Attention to the chapter’s finances dropped off, as did the performance of its mundane duties of community organizing. Chávez recognized, however, that this was partly due to the organization’s focus on the bracero problem. But even the organization’s ability to recruit, deliver, and keep domestic workers employed evaporated after Chávez’s departure. The board of the Ventura County cso also left the labor organizing to the upwa — as originally decided under the Helstein Plan — which did not have the capacity to preserve the gains achieved.103 Department of Labor agents and those of the California fps recommenced their curious union with the agricultural-industrial complex creating ce´ sar

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and resumed the facilitation of the employment of braceros. The fps made the employment process even more burdensome for domestic workers by lengthening the application form requirements to obtain referral cards reinstituted after it established an office in Oxnard. By 1961 domestic workers were also issued registration cards to be presented to the growers’ labor associations in order to be considered for employment, only after being first fingerprinted by the fps . The fps also refused to issue cards to domestic workers who had applied for them two or more times under the pretext that they were unemployable. So all the growers associations needed to do was contend that domestic workers were unqualified or unreliable to cull them from the workforce in order to continue to employ braceros. Irving H. Perluss, director of employment at the California Department of Employment, conceived a plan to fingerprint, and eventually photograph, referral card applicants to implement a statewide process for the agricultural-industrial complex to blacklist domestic workers by way of this disqualification process.104 Chávez met with his nemesis Zamora in 1961 to find out why the Oxnard labor struggle had lapsed into failure. Zamora declared, ironically, that Oxnard was the location to embark upon the unionization of farmworkers. But not without first being faced with stiff opposition from the agriculturalindustrial complex. With time, however, the growers would recognize the economic advantage in working with such a union. Zamora mentioned the work of Ernesto Galarza as a model to avoid. Galarza, in Zamora’s opinion, did not focus on the foundational organizing of farmworkers to win protracted disputes. Zamora characterized Galarza’s work as one-shot win-or-lose efforts. An effective labor movement needed to be highly organized and capable of regrouping from defeats to outlast the will of growers faced with the proposition of economic ruin, as the Ventura County cso had done. Chávez also wanted to know why the Oxnard cso struggle ultimately failed. Zamora, who was unaware of the Helstein Plan agreement, answered that the cso and upwa ’s failure to continue documenting the violation of Public Law 78 by way of the referral cards let the growers off the hook. What the two organizations should have done was continue this strategy, as it compelled state and federal agen256

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cies to place enormous pressure on growers. The movement in Oxnard was particularly hamstrung after Chávez’s departure due to the failure of Guajardo, Pérez, and Soria to continue the disciplined organization of domestic workers. Nor did they have an effective strategy. Zamora, according to Chávez, blamed the three for becoming complacent and failing to continue the everyday grind of organizing and opposing the agricultural-industrial complex. During a subsequent Oxnard strike on the farm of Lester Katsuda, the three failed to implement a calculated plan of resistance. Protesters trespassed on private property and were arrested. The growers threatened to press charges if the arrestees did not promise to boycott the upwa . The issue of trespassing was one that Chávez had been able to avoid in 1959, and he probably was convinced, if he had not been already, of the importance of maintaining a disciplined nonviolent strategy. Zamora contended that the Ventura County growers associations were successful for so long in fending off the protests of farmworkers and undermining the function of state and federal agents due to his experience as a former compliance officer for the Department of Labor. This allowed the growers to give him virtual free rein in managing braceros and stifling any threats.105 Chávez’s concern for farmworkers continued to grow. He pursued the creation of a minimum wage and pension plan for field workers by January 1962. These modest yet essential goals were attainable, based on his Oxnard experience, through the mobilization of an effective “crusade” that pressured the political establishment. The cso ’s mission of organizing community-controlled chapters could be preserved by creating labor committees, as was done in the Oxnard. And, “With some money and good planning,” Chávez envisioned, this could be achieved. Chávez, by this time, felt suffocated working within the office of the Los Angeles cso and thought about separating from the organization in order realize his new passion: organizing farmworkers. In a letter, Chávez invited Ross to join him, stating, “What I need is an accomplice to go along with me.”106 Despondent about the lost opportunity to create a viable farmworkers union in 1959, Chávez appealed to the cso board to support his dream of a cso -based labor union. But at the March 1962 cso National creating ce´ sar

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Convention the leadership rejected Chávez’s proposal. He replied with his resignation, and six months later, with the support of his wife (Helen), Dolores Huerta (the accomplice he needed), and many others, he led a convention in the formation of the National Farm Workers Association.107 But even after Chávez’s separation from the cso , Oxnard community activists John Soria, Val Lucero, and Joe Rivera visited Chávez in Delano in an attempt to convince him to return to head the Oxnard Farm Labor Center (oflc ), which they had established. Soria offered Chávez a Farm Labor Center charter in Delano so he could continue the work he had begun in the San Joaquin Valley. Chávez refused the offer based on the fact that the oflc would depend on external funds. But he expressed his readiness to reconsider his decision if the organization relied on funding from farmworkers themselves.108 The oflc refused to relinquish its project money, and Chávez remained in Delano to march forward in the development of his curious union of cross-cultural supporters of women, men, students, clergy, and people from all walks of life. The bracero program controversy in Oxnard highlights the crafty nature of the interlocked power of the agricultural-industrial complex, particularly in how federal and state agencies turned a blind eye to the systematic corruption of Public Law 78. Chávez’s implementation of the Helstein Plan, however, relied heavily upon a tradition of community resistance. The importance to this narrative lay in how he harnessed the coraje (frustrations) of the Mexican community by way of the cso . This was no small feat as it required dogged perseverance in the face of the goliath influence of agribusiness. The fight against the bracero program also demonstrates how Mexican Americans and longtime Mexican residents distinguished themselves from bracero greenhorns. These two groups were bound by shared cultural origins but were pitted against each other by the agricultural industry. So another curious, albeit tense, union emerged within barrio communities throughout the Southwest among longtime residents of Mexican origins with their greenhorn counterparts. A commingling occurred in a multi-

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tude of ways, ranging from marriage, the transplantation of families from Mexico to the United States, and their extended residency in the country. Over time, the braceros who settled in Oxnard would not be looked upon as outsiders, particularly as they would establish families and many of their children would continue a tradition of resistance during the Chicano movement of the next two decades.

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CON C L U SIO N

The importance of the development of the Oxnard Mexican community is wide ranging. Unlike other California community narratives of the twentieth century, this one is ballasted in the production of beet sugar — one of the region’s first capital-intensive specialty crops — that later came to be entwined with the citrus industry just as in other communities within and outside Ventura County. As Mexican workers trekked to the Oxnard Plain for employment in the emergent industries of agriculture, they brought with them and cultivated families among an ethnically heterogeneous population with origins in Africa, America (south of the U.S.-Mexico border), Asia, and Europe. Along the way these groups formed networks, facilitated by technological developments in travel and communication serving as the infrastructure of resistant community building grounded in cross-culturalism. Throughout the twentieth century, men, women, and children of Asian, European, and Latin American origins not only formed alliances but also lined up against each other. One of the early examples of this dramatically arose in the 1903 betabelero strike. This strike and its unsuccessful sequel in 1933 demonstrated not only the crossculturalism among Mexicans, Japanese, Chinese, and white agents but also the interlocked power of financiers, growers, the media, and law enforcement against them. 261

But a clear dichotomy of opposition was complicated when civically engaged residents strategically allied themselves with the political and economic leadership of the city to broker concessions. This usually, and most effectively, occurred when mutual aid societies such as La Unión Patriótica Benéfica Mexicana Independiente, Las Guardianes de la Colonia, and the Alianza Hispano Americana represented the interests of the Mexican and increasingly Mexican American community in public and private discussions with Oxnard’s leadership. This was shown in the desire to promote the observance of the national holidays of both Mexico and the United States or to create safe recreational spaces for the city’s Mexican American youth. The attempt to negotiate concessions from the city’s elite fostered the emergence of a Mexican American mentality not limited by place of birth or residency. And this is not to say that tensions were erased, but that the dominant population of white residents recognized the importance of making accommodations with the Mexican community’s civic representatives, at least to a point. Since the 1990s, a cadre of academics, often mentored by veteran professors of Chicana/Chicana history, have researched the continuities and differences of communities outside Los Angeles and California. In the process, a more nuanced understanding has developed regarding how Mexican communities were imagined and viewed as a people, by others and themselves. A dynamic interplay also existed among groups of varying national origins, residency, generational periods, and class. These stories have revealed not only untold episodes of conflict but also collaboration in the midst of unscripted struggles. And as students and academic investigate the histories of lesser-known working-class communities, and reexamine those already performed, new discoveries will reveal stories of additional curious unions. Coda The foundation of Curious Unions lay in the stories passed along casually in conversation with friends and family as well as formally in the form of oral-history interviews. The lessons drawn from these narratives often complemented and complicated the accounts documented in newspapers, 262

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government documents, and academic literature. But what stood out from all this, and from my own upbringing in the city of Oxnard, were the mundane curious unions that often, but not always, compromised fissures based on race and ethnicity. These associations were neither completely harmonious nor completely contentious. It was a mixed bag that compelled individuals and groups to make concessions. These accommodations were often painful, and scarred the memory of individuals. Others downplayed or did not question their knowledge of de facto and de jure discrimination. But they recognized and recalled their existence nonetheless. Therefore, this book was inspired by stories of my community. Darlene Serros related the story of having to comfort her young son Jerry each day after his return from school due to his experience of overt acts of discrimination by teachers. Other accounts passed down from my paternal grandmother, Josephine Hernandez Barajas, detailed growing up within the Rancho Sespe citrus labor camp, where she met my grandfather, Frank Vargas Barajas, and from where they were ultimately evicted, with their five children, during the 1941 Ventura County Citrus Strike. Stories such as these were wrenching to listen to but were also inspiring. They conveyed acts of agency toward the barriers they confronted. For example, Darlene, whose son Jerry experienced less-than-nurturing support in the classroom, decided to obtain her college degree and ultimately became an elementary school teacher and marched with César Chávez in his union campaigns in Ventura County.1

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NOTES

introduction 1. McWilliams, North from Mexico, 166. 2. Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker. 3. Balderrama and Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal; Menchaca, The Mexican Outsiders; G. J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American. 4. Calavita, Inside the State; Galarza, Merchants of Labor; González, Guest Workers or Colonized Labor? 5. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 123–29; Griswold del Castillo and Garcia, César Chávez, 29–30, 51. 6. Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 90–93. 7. “Celebration Follows Big Spanish Wedding,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 January 1923; “Latin American Dept. of Community Service Making Great Progress,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 March 1923. 8. MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution. 9. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 1981. 10. U.S. Senate, Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor. 1. early curious unions 1. Cuevas, “The Oxnard Area,” 11; “Gruesome Find by Ranchers of Kelly Farm,” Oxnard Courier, 24 February 1911; “Old Burying Ground Found at Pt. Mugu,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 October 1923; Garber, “Hueneme,” 11–13; Greenwood and Browne, “Rise and Fall of Shisholop,” 2–5; C. King, “Names and Locations of Historic Chumash Villages,” 175. 2. C. King, “Chumash Inter-Village Economic Exchange,” 289–91; Arnold, Craft Specialization, 6. 3. C. King, “Names and Locations of Historic Chumash Villages,” 175; Martz, “Social Dimensions of Chumash Mortuary Populations,” 146, 154; Holliman, “Division of Labor and Gender Roles,” 94. 4. C. King, “Chumash Inter-Village Economic Exchange,” 291–94; Landberg, The Chumash Indians, 62–64; Gamble, “The Organization of Artifacts.” 5. C. King, “Chumash Inter-Village Economic Exchange,” 297–300; Arnold, Craft Specialization, 11.

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6. C. King, “Chumash Inter-Village Economic Exchange,” 301–8; C. King, “Names and Locations of Historic Chumash Villages,” 175; Rice, Bullough, and Orsi, The Elusive Eden, 34–35. 7. J. T. Davis, “Trade Routes and Economic Exchange,” 32; C. D. King, “Evolution of Chumash Society,” 96. 8. Triem, Ventura County, 17; Hollimon, “Division of Labor and Gender Roles,” 28–33, 177; Brooks, “‘This Evil Extends,’” 98–99. 9. C. D. King, “Evolution of Chumash Society,” 95–98; Arnold, Craft Specialization, 9; Hollimon, “Division of Labor and Gender Roles,” 28, 153. 10. The large majority of the Simo’mo mortuary excavations, however, some 63 percent, exhibited an accompaniment of artifacts of some sort. Martz, “Social Dimensions of Chumash Mortuary Populations,” 219. 11. Hollimon, “Division of Labor and Gender Roles,” 13–14, 94–97. 12. Monroy, Thrown among Strangers, 15. 13. Hollimon, “Division of Labor and Gender Roles,” 60–61, 73; Hurtado, Intimate Frontiers, 4. 14. Kelsey, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, 145–48; for an anthropological description of Chumash living structures and sweatlodges see Gamble, “Chumash Architecture,” 54–92. 15. Kelsey, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, 145–48; Bolton, Fray Juan Crespi, 160–61; Greenland, Port Hueneme, 13–14. 16. J. R. Johnson and McLendon, “Cultural Affiliation,” 150; Castañeda, “Sexual Violence,” 17–19. 17. J. R. Johnson and McLendon, “Cultural Affiliation and Lineal Descent,” 119–24; Resnick, “Subsistence Patterns,” 21; Love and Resnick, “Mission Made Pottery,” 9; Lara-Cea, “Notes,” 131–42. 18. S. N. Sheridan, History of Ventura County, 71–73; J. R. Johnson, The Chumash Indians, 2; Sandos, “Levantamiento!” 120–21. 19. S. N. Sheridan, History of Ventura County, 73; Sandos, “Levantamiento!” 121; Englehardt, Missions and Missionaries, 31–33. 20. J. R. Johnson and McLendon, “Cultural Affiliation and Lineal Descent,” 483; Almaguer, “Class, Race, and Capitalist Development,” 95; Menchaca, The Mexican Outsiders, 10. 21. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 33–36, 40. Douglas Monroy provides an insightful perspective on the spiritual impact of the emergence of an accumulationist agricultural economy on the psyche of Southern California Indians, specifically in relation to the Spanish objectification of animal life and the natural environment. Monroy, Thrown among Strangers, 10, 16. 22. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 35.

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23. J. R. Johnson, The Chumash Indians, 3–7; Monroy, Thrown among Strangers, 185–94; A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 9–13. In his examination of census records, Gregor found that in 1860 officials counted only ninety-nine Chumash Indians within Santa Barbara County. See “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 42–43. 24. J. R. Johnson, The Chumash Indians, 8; quote from Rios-Bustamante and Castillo, Illustrated History of Mexican Los Angeles, 51–53. People from Sonora and Sinaloa continued to enter Southern California after the American conquest with the discovery of gold in the region and the gold rush of northern California. See Pitt, The Decline of the Californios, 54; Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 32–34; Monroy, Thrown among Strangers, 135. 25. Shumway, California Ranchos, 114–16; Cowan, Ranchos of California, 37, 63, 9–94; Robinson, The Story of Ventura County, map; Almaguer, “Class, Race, and Capitalist Development,” 145. One square league (sitio) consists of 4,438.56 acres. Gregor estimates the size of Rancho Santa Paula y Saticoy at 30,000 acres and of Rancho Santa Clara del Norte at 13,989 acres. Bowman, “Prominent Women of Provincial California,” 153–54; Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 41–43. 26. Ruiz, “Introduction,” 1–3; Hasse, “Early Ventura County Marks and Brands,” 22; Haas, “Barrios of Santa Ana,” 83; Monroy, Thrown among Strangers, 101; Bowman, “Prominent Women of Provincial California,” 153. 27. Shumway, California Ranchos, 115; Cowan, Ranchos of California, 92; Almaguer, “Class, Race, and Capitalist Development,” 145; Greenland, Port Hueneme, 17. 28. U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States: 1850. 29. Quote from the Ventura Democrat, 17 January 1884, in Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 46. 30. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns.” 31. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 47–48; Haydock, “Reminiscent It Will Be,” 21. 32. Ruiz, “Introduction,” 14. 33. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 49–50; McWilliams, Southern California, 62. 34. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 61; E. M. Sheridan, “Narrative of Jefferson Crane,” 2. 35. Triem, Ventura County, 41, 62; Blew, “Rancho Calleguas,” 228; Greenland, “Rancho El Rio,” 163; Monroy, Thrown among Strangers, 145–46; Hoffman, “Horses, Roosters, Bears, and Bulls,” 109–10; Rice, Bullough, and Orsi, The Elusive Eden, 133. Matanzas also took place at Montecito, a town north of Ventura and south of Santa Barbara; see S. N. Sheridan, History of Ventura County, 12. notes to pages 20–25

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36. Monroy, Thrown among Strangers, 204; A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 34–36; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 66. 37. Rice, Bullough, and Orsi, The Elusive Eden, 137; Haydock, “Reminiscent It Will Be,” 30–31. 38. Blew, “Rancho Calleguas,” 225–28. 39. Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 77; Nicholson, “The Last of the Dons,” 3–5. 40. Barrera, “Are Latinos a Racialized Minority?” As social scientist Mario Barrera persuasively argues, Mexicans and other non-European groups experienced discrimination largely based on cultural markers of national origins, language, religion, class status, and physical appearance. Therefore, when examined carefully, the basis of discrimination in Ventura, with few exceptions, was not based on biological or assumed innate differences. For this reason, I use the concept of discrimination based on ethnicity rather than on race. 41. Almaguer, “Class, Race, and Capitalist Development,” 149; Dowd, interview by Mary Johnston and Johanna Overby; A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 69–70; Ruiz, “Introduction,” 1–3; D. J. González, Refusing the Favor, 39–49, 76–78; Padilla, My History, Not Yours, 77–90; R. Sánchez, Telling Identities, 270–84. Juan E. Camarillo details this interaction of the Camarillos with both Euro-Americans and Mexicanos in “A Book.” 42. Almaguer, “Class, Race, and Capitalist Development,” 110, 119. 43. Casas, “‘In Consideration,’” chaps. 2 and 3 passim, 64–74; Rice, Bullough, and Orsi, The Elusive Eden, 129, 145. 44. Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 85; Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 54–55. 45. A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 31, 129; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 85–86; Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 55–59; Triem, Ventura County, 44. 46. Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 66, 80; Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 46, 56–57. 47. Blew, “Rancho Calleguas,” 231–32. 48. Haydock, “Reminiscent It Will Be,” 36; Triem, Ventura County, 48; Tomás Almaguer argues, “A good deal of Ventura County ranch land was lost through indebtedness to local merchants, who often preyed on the rancheros’ extravagance and fiscal ineptitude. The Californio elite were notoriously prone to make their debts to local merchants. As a result, large portions of rancho estates were either sold to these merchants or taken in payment for outstanding debts.” Racial Fault Lines, 81. 49. Almaguer, “Class, Race, and Capitalist Development,” 185–96; Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 58; Rice, Bullough, and Orsi, The Elusive Eden, 335.

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notes to pages 25–29

50. Pfeiler; Bloom, “Oxnard . . . A Social History,” 19; M. Davis, City of Quartz, 56; Walter B. Moranda, interview by Frank Barajas, 18 February 1999; Marie Lockwood Whatley, interview by Frank Barajas, 13 August 1998; Krouser, History of Oxnard, 1; Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color; and Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness. For insightful interpretations on the historical processes of Irish immigrants and others from southern and eastern Europe acquiring a white identity in the United States, see Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines. 51. Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 83; Hutchinson, Oil, Land, and Politics, 70–71. The papers of Thomas R. Bard provide a detailed sense of the complex and difficult legal claims made on these lands. Thomas R. Bard Collection at the Huntington Library. 52. Hutchinson, Oil, Land, and Politics, 129, 154. 53. “The 1860s,” 1; Miedema, “Hueneme as a Grain Port, pt. II,” 15; Haydock, “Reminiscent It Will Be,” 20. 54. “Dr. and Olive Mann Isbel, Pioneers of 1846,” 3–5; Fairbanks, “Bardsdale,” 9; E. M. Sheridan, “Narrative of Jefferson Crane,” 2; Warring, “Early Days at Buckhorn Ranch,” 14; Haydock, “Reminiscent It Will Be,” 18; Rice, Bullough, and Orsi, The Elusive Eden, 192–93. 55. Miedema, “Hueneme as a Grain Port, pt. II,” 14; Faulkner, “Farm Life in 1882,” 14; Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 70–74. 56. Triem, Ventura County, 52, 63–64; Morrison, “Springville,” 18; Jessie Gill, interview by Mary Johnston, 2 September 1986; Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 67; Menchaca, The Mexican Outsiders, 16; Sackman, Orange Empire, 42–43. 57. Outland, “Early Promotional Publications,” 19–20. 58. A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 39; Triem, Ventura County, 76; Rice, Bullough, and Orsi, The Elusive Eden, 9. 59. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 160–61; Mitchell, The Lie of the Land, 113. 60. Percentages and numbers were calculated from census data in Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 169. 61. For the purposes of this chapter I discuss only five different census enumerations, although data provided by Gregor continue up to 1940. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 168. 62. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 168. 63. U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Tenth Census of the United States: 1880; U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Twelfth Census of the United States: 1900; U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910. 64. Triem, Ventura County, 65–67; Kramer, “From Beans to Bullion.” 18. notes to pages 29–34

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65. Triem, Ventura County, 67; “A Roll Over the Ranchos,” 6; Morrison, “Springville,” 17–18. For a detailed discussion of the early European and Euro-American farmers of the Oxnard Plain see Maulhardt, First Farmers. 66. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 64–65, 140; Alamillo, Making Lemonade Out of Lemons; Sackman, Orange Empire. 67. Dennis, “History of the Beet-Sugar Industry,” 22–32; Magnuson, “History of the Beet Sugar Industry,” 74, 76; Osborne, “Claus Spreckels and the Oxnard Brothers,” 117–19; Shaw, The California Sugar Industry, 24; Carmichael, Lucas, and Matters, Guide to the Records of the American Crystal Sugar Company, 3. 68. “The Sugar Beet,” Hueneme Herald, 21 March 1889; “Sugar Beets,” Hueneme Herald, 2 May 1889; “Sugar Beets,” Hueneme Herald, 2 May 1889; entry for 29 March 1899, Folder California Undated, Box 2, Series 3, Gutleben Historical Scrapbook, 145.i .14.8f , American Crystal Sugar Company Records, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. 69. Shaw, The California Sugar Industry, 37; Morrison, “Springville,” 17. 70. Entry for 26 September 1894, Folder The Oxnard’s Undated, Box 2, Series 3, Gutleben Historical Scrapbook, 145.i .14.8f , American Crystal Sugar Company Records; Arrington, “Science, Government, and Enterprise,” 6–9; Hoad, “The american oxnards ,” 24–26. 71. Reciprocity with Cuba document, Folder The Oxnard’s Undated, Box 2, Series 3, Gutleben Historical Scrapbook, 145.i .14.8f , American Crystal Sugar Company Records; Arrington, “Science, Government, and Enterprise,” 6–9. 72. Arrington, “Science, Government, and Enterprise,” 11–12. 73. Tariff Hearings before the House Committee on Ways and Means. 74. Special Report on the Beet-Sugar Industry in the United States, 218. 75. Magnuson, “History of the Beet Sugar Industry,” 74; McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 82–83; McWilliams, North from Mexico, 166. 76. Arrington, “Science, Government, and Enterprise,” 16. 77. McWilliams, North from Mexico, 166; Clark, Mexican Labor, 483; Schwartz, Seasonal Farm Labor, 45, 103–9; A Graphic Summary of Farm Labor and Population, 2; E. S. Johnson, Welfare of Families of Sugar-Beet Laborers, 2–11. 78. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 84. 79. Clark, Mexican Labor, 483–85; Swartz, Seasonal Farm Labor in the United States, 104–10; Valdes, Mexicans in Minnesota, 10; “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 25 November 1897, 13. 80. Gregor, “Changing Agricultural Patterns,” 75–77, 105, 112. 81. “Beet-sugar Industry Attracting Wide Attention,” Los Angeles Times, 28 December 1896, 9; “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 1 January 1897, 34. 82. “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 1 January 1897, 34.

270

notes to pages 34–44

83. “The Sugar Trust and California Beet Sugar,” Los Angeles Times, 8 May 1897, 6. 84. Entry for 22 October 1897, Folder Miscellaneous Scrapbook Materials Undated Stapled, Box 2, Series 3, Gutleben Historical Scrapbook, 145.i .14.8f , American Crystal Sugar Company Records; “Beet-Sugar Boom,” Los Angeles Times, 4 November 1897, 6; Osborne, “Claus Spreckels and the Oxnard Brothers,” 121; Bloom, “Oxnard . . . A Social History,” 14–15; Haydock, “By All Means, Reminiscent,” 18; Heil, “Free Press,” 2. 85. “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 23 November 1897, 11. 86. Osborne, “Claus Spreckels and the Oxnard Brothers,” 121; Bloom, “Oxnard . . . A Social History,” 14–15; Haydock, “By All Means, Reminiscent,” 18; Heil, “Free Press,” 2. 87. Haydock, “By All Means, Reminiscent,” 18; Greenland, Port Hueneme, 57–60; “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 23 November 1897, 11; “Ventura County,” 3 December 1897, 13; “New Elementary School Will Get Name ‘Driffill’,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 April 1946, 1; entries for pp. 1021–48, Folder Historical Scrapbook: Oxnard, Box 2, Series 3, Gutleben Historical Scrapbook, 145.i .14.8f , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 88. “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 31 December 1897, 11; “New Elementary School Will Get Name ‘Driffill,’” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 April 1946, 1. 89. The eight plants consisted of two factories in Santa Ana, one in Huntington Beach, Anaheim, Los Alamitos, another in Santa María, and one in Chino and Oxnard. Magnuson, “History of the Beet Sugar Industry,” 77–79; Shaw, The California Sugar Industry, 38; entries for pp. 1021–48, Folder Historical Scrapbook: Oxnard, Box 2, Series 3, Gutleben Historical Scrapbook, 145.i .14.8f , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 90. Enderlein, “Sugar Beets at Oxnard,” 114–17.

2. the (re)creation of community 1. “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 14 January 1898, 15; “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 22 January 1898, 13; “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 23 January 1898; “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 15 February 1898, 11. 2. “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 14 January 1898, 15; “Ventura County,” Los Angeles Times, 23 January 1898, B9; Bloom, “Oxnard . . . A Social History,” 17–18; Haydock, “By All Means, Reminiscent,” 19. 3. “Oxnard’s Opportunities,” Oxnard Courier, 15 August 1899; “Town Company Will Plot More Land,” Oxnard Courier, 15 August 1899. For a listing and characterization of early-twentieth-century Oxnard boosters see Dutton, “Boosters,” 46–49. 4. Olen Adams, interview by Barbara Heron, 22 April 1982; Martha Wucherpfennig Furrer, interview by Mary Johnston and Johanna Overby, 23 June 1981; Marie notes to pages 44–53

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Lockwood Whatley, interview by Frank Barajas, 13 August 1998; Walter B. Moranda, interview by Frank Barajas, 18 February 1999; Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. 5. “Thinning of Beets Just Beginning Know [sic],” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 March 1922. The Courier changed its name to the Daily Courier in 1918. 6. Leonard, Making Ethnic Choices, 24–25; Olen Adams interview by Barbara Heron, 22 April 1982. 7. Chan, Asian Americans, 105–7; Robert Pfeiler, interview by Lynn Potter, 30 October 1980. 8. “City Trustee Sees Hoboes Vanish in Air,” Oxnard Courier, 9 January 1914; “Overflow of Bums Hits Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 September 1922; “Police Have Their Eyes on All Hoboes and Strangers Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 February 1925; “Police Have Steady Job Keeping City Rid of Hoboes; ‘Strangers,’” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 September 1925; “Many Hoboes Ordered Out of Town as Soon as They Enter,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 February 1926; McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 126 (quote). 9. Adams, Education for Extinction, 156–63; “Labor Camp Is Big Problem for City Fathers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 September 1926; Robert Pfeiler, interview by Lynn Potter, 30 October 1980; Terry, “Mechanization of Lima Bean Threshing,” 5; McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 55; Dawley, Struggles for Justice, 118–19. 10. Wolfson, “People Who Go to Beets,” 219–20; Schwartz, Seasonal Farm Labor, 103–4. In 1903, rail lines connecting the outlying areas of the Oxnard Plain allowed a locomotive to transport beets to the factory. Stan Gisler, interview by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999. 11. “Tractors Come for War Work,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 August 1918; “Two Days Tractor School in County,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 February 1921; advertisement, “Attention John Deere Tractor Owners,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 January 1927. 12. Coletha Lehmann, interview by Mr. Heil, n.d.; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 6; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 188–89; and Street, Beasts of the Field, 442. For a detailed examination of the occupational segmentation of Mexicans consult Romo, East Los Angeles, 119–25. During the Oxnard sugar beet strike of 1933, the California Agricultural Industrial Workers Union appealed to (Euro-) “American” absc factory employees to support their cause by joining the strike. “Movement to End Strike Peacefully Gains Force,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 August 1933. 13. Street, Beasts of the Field, 442. 14. Fukuyama, “The Japanese in Oxnard, California,” 3–7. 15. “Japanese Are Making Most Money in Beet Thinning,” Oxnard Daily Courier,

272

notes to pages 53–56

20 April 1912; “Beet Thinning in Section Is about Finished,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 June 1912; Chan, This Bitter-Sweet Soil, 283–84. 16. “Why the Japs,” Oxnard Courier, 10 August 1906. 17. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 203; Matsumoto, in Farming the Home Place, details not only the social and cultural milieu under which Japanese immigrants lived in northern California but also the cleaveages and bonds that defined this community. 18. “Japanese Are Making Most Money in Beet Thinning,” Daily Oxnard Courier, 20 April 1912; “Hindoo as Farmer Trying His Skill,” Daily Oxnard Courier, 13 May 1912; Chan, Asian Americans, 46–47; Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 203; Matsumoto, Farming the Home Place, 25–31; Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999. 19. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 203–8. A groundbreaking work analyzing the early manifestation of the anti-Asian movement directed toward the Chinese in the late nineteenth century consist of Saxton’s The Indispensable Enemy. Other works examining the expressed tension of the dominant population with the economic mobility of non-whites are Ronald Takaki, Iron Cages; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines; Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities; Foley, The White Scourge; Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness. 20. “Labor Is in Great Demand,” Oxnard Courier, 11 October 1902; “Labor Is in Great Demand,” Oxnard Courier, 5 April 1902; minutes for 28 July 1919, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, 1919, Box 147, 145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records; Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker; Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans. 21. Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 January 2000 (quote); Avelina (Avie) Guerra, interview by Frank Barajas, 13 June 2006; M. T. García, Desert Immigrants, 59, 248 n. 59; Wolfson, “People Who Go to Beets,” 218, 222; “Settling District Labor Problems,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 31 August 1918; McWilliams, North from Mexico, 168; Clark, Mexican Labor, 483; Schwartz, Seasonal Farm Labor, 108–10. For a detailed account of the absc practice of labor recruitment in the Midwest see Norris, North for the Harvest. 22. “Better Harvest Labor Assumed Next Year,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 November 1917; “Labor Supervisor Brought by abs ,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 11 December 1917; “To Enlist Labor Reserve to Harvest Country’s Crops,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 March 1918; minutes, 3 December 1917 meeting, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147, 145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records; Schwartz, Seasonal Farm Labor, 110. 23. Minutes, 3 December 1917 meeting, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, 145.i 20.11b , Box 147, American Crystal Sugar Company Records. notes to pages 57–62

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24. “Labor Employment Office to Be Opened to Aid Beet Farmers of This Locality,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 February 1913; minutes, 9 November 1917 meeting, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147, 145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 25. “Sugar Beet Outlook Is Hopeful,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 March 1918; “Labor Office Is Officially Opened, “ Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 May 1918; “Attention Farmers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 September 1918; “Ranchers United to Secure Labor, Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 September 1918; “Americanization at Mexican Border,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 November 1918; minutes, 11 November 1917 meeting, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147, 145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 26. U.S. Department of Commerce, Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920; Bedford Pinkard, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; “Pastor Establishes Free Labor Exchange,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 February 1919. 27. “Harvest Wages at $3 Day,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 August 1918; “Apricot Growers Set Labor Scale, “Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 June 1923. Adjusted for inflation, $3 in 1918 is equivalent to $45 in 2011. 28. “No Permit for Joseph for Boxing,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 October 1919; “No Longer Object to Mexican Circuses,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 July 1920; “Thinning of Beets Just Beginning Know,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 March 1922; “Ex-Mayor Sailer Has His Sixtieth Birthday,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 11 January 1927; Kanellos, Mexican American Theater, 81; entries for pp. 1022 and 1036, Folder Historical Scrapbooks: Oxnard, Box 2, Series 3, Gutleben Historical Scrapbook, 145.i .14.8f , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 29. Quote from “Chief Murray to Demand Law and Order,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 April 1921. The supply of labor in Oxnard, as elsewhere in the economy of agriculture, fluctuated between being scarce and readily abundant. See “Surplus of Labor in California General,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 November 1923. For an analysis of the role of Los Angeles Police Department in protecting the interests of business from the activities of Mexican workers see Escobar, Race, Police, chaps. 4 and 5 passim. 30. Bloom, “Oxnard . . . A Social History,” 19; Haydock, “By All Means, Reminiscent,” 20; Dagodag, “A Social Geography of La Colonia,” 1. 31. Garcilazo, “Traqueros,” 53, 72. 32. Manuel M. López, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 December 1999. 33. Ignacio Carmona, interview by Frank Barajas, 9 August 2000. 34. Antonia Di Liello, interview by Frank Barajas, 24 March 2006. 35. Coletha Lehmann, interview by a Mr. Heil, n.d.; A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 97; Wolfson, “People Who Go to Beets,” 227. The following

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notes to pages 63–67

informants indicated that the Southern Pacific aided the migration of their family members, in one manner or another, during the early and mid-twentieth century: Walter B. Moranda, interview by Frank Barajas, 18 February 1999; Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Bedford Pinkard, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Antonia Di Liello, interview by Frank Barajas, 24 March 2006. 36. Alfred “Frenchie” Nicolas, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; John and Mary Acosta, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 April 1999; Coletha Lehmann, interview by Mr. Heil, n.d.; McWilliams, Southern California, 12–13. 37. Krouser, History of Oxnard, 1. 38. Quote from “Business Men Learning Spanish,” Oxnard Courier, 22 March 1907; “Evening Classes at High School,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 July 1918. 39. Almaguer, “Racial Domination and Class Conflict,” 201; “Beet Thinning Is Nicely Started Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 February 1921; “Over 1000 Men Work in Oxnard Beet Fields,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 April 1931; minutes of 9 November 1917–5 August 1918 meetings, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147, 145. i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 40. Ramona Ortega Uranga, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999. 41. “Women Take Man’s Place at Weighing,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 30 August 1918; “Farmers Are Pleased with Work,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 26 September 1918; Mitchell, The Lie of the Land, 84; Bedford Pinkard, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. For a detailed analysis of the work culture of women in the Southern California food-processing industry, see Ruiz, Cannery Women/Cannery Lives. 42. G. G. González, Chicano Education, 13. In examining the education Mexican students received in Orange County, California, historian Gilbert González aptly described a system found throughout the Southwest: “Beyond learning English, educators perceived a narrow range of educational possibilities for Mexican children. They were not given to abstract theoretical work, or ‘book learning,’ but, on the other hand, were highly capable of artistic, artisanal, or other forms of manual work. In emphasizing higher-than-average handwork ability, schooling added another dimension to the curriculum for Mexican children. In so doing, Mexican schools not only emphasized language transition but industrial and vocational subjects as well, training children for menial, physically demanding, and low-paying work. Few educators strayed from the prevalent approach to teaching Mexican children, yet some differentiation within the ranks surfaced.” G. G. González, Labor and Community, 101–2; see also San Miguel, “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 17–25. 43. “El Rio School Pupils to Work in Orchards,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 September 1922; “Rio School Closes for Walnut Picking,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 September 1926; “Children Whose Parents Move about Receive Poor Schooling,” notes to pages 67–69

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Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 January 1929; “School Need More Nurses to Aid Health: Rio School Has Best Attendance Figure of Any School,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 October 1929; minutes for 5 May 1919, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147, 145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 44. “Employers Violating Child Labor Laws Now,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 November 1930. In a 1929–30 report, Heffernan estimated that 5,221 non-Englishspeaking children lived in Ventura County. Lilian B. Hill of the California Bureau of Attendance and Migratory Schools counted 102,405 children of Mexican parents, a large number of whom were migrant laborers. State of California Biennial Report of the State Department of Education. 45. Eloise Simmons, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999. 46. Mary Navarro, interview by Frank Barajas, 6 January 2000; Manuel M. López, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 December 1999. For an insightful narrative on the routine and character of family migrant life in California see Mary Helen Ponce’s autobiography, Hoyt Street. 47. G. G. González, Chicano Education, 103–5. 48. Quote from “Children Whose Parents Move about Receive Poor Schooling,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 January 1929; “Employers Violating Child Labor Laws Now,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 November 1930. 49. “School Boys Hired for Hoeing Beets,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 26 April 1917; “Mexicans in Fear of Slavery,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 June 1917; “Mexicans Leave to Get Free Land,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 January 1918; “Labor Supply Topic for Ranchers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 February 1918; M. C. Meyer and Sherman, The Course of Mexican History, 544–45. For a discussion of the development of a mutual sense of distrust and suspicion between Mexicans and Euro-Americans during the early twentieth century see Escobar, Race, Police, 76. 50. “Dynamite Found Hidden in Strange Mexican’s House,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 March 1915; “Dynamite for Stumps,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 March 1915; “Road Worker Is Blown Up by Dynamite,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 July 1921; “Work on New Scenic Highway Oxnard to San Juan Capistrano to Begin at Once by Day Labor,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 October 1921; “Man Blown to Bits Felt His Time Coming,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 June 1926. As was the case in the tilling of the soil, construction of the Coast Highway uncovered many prehistoric Chumash sites. See “Old Burying Ground Found at Pt. Magu,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 October 1923. During the Great Depression, Robert Hinostro worked with dynamite in his service within the Civilian Conservation Corp of the New Deal. Robert Hinostro interview by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999. 51. Mary Navarro, interview by Frank Barajas, 6 January 2000; Alfred “Frenchie” Nicolas, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999.

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notes to pages 70–72

52. Marie Lockwood Whatley, interview by Frank Barajas, 13 August 1998. 53. “Two Women Fined for Illicit Liquor Sales,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 July 1915; “Saticoy Places Raided by Sheriff,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 December 1916; “Stops Trouble by Abatement Act,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 August 1918; “Sheriff Raid Nets 7 Arrests,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 30 March 1920; “Five People Arrested by Federal Men,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 November 1922; “Woman Is Jailed for Selling Booze Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 February 1923; “Sheriff Nabs Two in Raid on Bootleg Joints,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 October 1923; “Heavy Fines Levied, Several Booze Cases,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 May 1924; “Arrillas Arrested for Operating Still,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 August 1925. Unscrupulous police officers targeted women working as waitresses under the pretext of prostitution to extort sexual favors from them. See Escobar, Race, Police, 153 and 173. 54. Manuel M. López, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 December 1999. 55. “Asserted Bootleggers Fined in Police Court,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 December 1928. 56. “Booze Seller on Probation,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 December 1914; “Mexican Drug Cache Unearthed,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 November 1917; “C. Ledesma and Booze Landed in City Jail,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 April 1921; “Chief Murray Is Out to Clean Up Town,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 July 1921; “‘Jazz Weed’ Source of Much Mexican Crime,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 October 1921; “Raids Result in Arrest of Three on Two Charges,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 August 1924; “Dope Peddlers Caught in Raid by Federal Men,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 August 1925; “Lack of Work Forced Him to Bootlegging Says Ocean View Man,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 November 1926. High-powered speedboats clandestinely imported liquor onto the shores of Oxnard during the years of Prohibition. Rice, Bullough, and Orsi, The Elusive Eden, 417. 57. Avelina (Avie) Guerra, interview by Frank Barajas, 13 June 2006; Rosales, ¡Pobre Raza! 3–4. 58. “Beet Thinning in Section Is about Finished,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 June 1912. 59. “Mexicans Swamp Stores with Trade,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 November 1917; “Mexicans Begin Homeward Journey,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 December 1930; quote from advertisement, Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 July 1920. 60. “Carload of Lemon Trees Come for Patterson Ranch,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 February 1912; “Biggest Lemon Deal in California Is Here Made This Afternoon,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 April 1912; “A. Camarillo to Plant Walnuts,” Daily Oxnard Courier, 18 February 1913; “Lemon Men to Hold Meeting in Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 July 1918; Lemon Growers to Form Exchange,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 July 1918; “Lemon Growers Elect Directors,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 August 1918; the association became incorporated in the month of August of 1918, “Lemon Growers notes to pages 72–75

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File Incorporation,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 August 1918; “Oxnard Lemons Top Mark at $9.50,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 October 1919; Profits of Vegetable Growing Shown Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 February 1925; “1925 Spring Lettuce Shipments Heavier Than Last Year,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 May 1925; “Oxnard Grown Vegetables in Demand in East,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 June 1925; “Citrus Crop in 1925 Worth Nearly Million,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 June 1925; “Vegetable Shipments This Year Promise to Break Local Records,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 March 1926; quote from Sackman, Orange Empire, 93. 61. McBane, “Role of Gender in Citrus Employment,” 74–76; McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 55. 62. Kurashige, Japanese American Celebration and Conflict, 41. 63. “Chinese New Year Came to End Last Night,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 March 1912. 64. “Chinese Celebrate Their Big Festival,” Oxnard Courier, 15 February 1907; “Local Chinese Make Merry Today, First Day of Chinese New Yr.,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 January 1925; “Chinese New Year Brilliantly Observed,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 February 1929. For an illuminating study of the political and social networking of Chinese women during this period in San Francisco see Yung’s Unbound Feet. 65. “Chinese Did Well in Celebration,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 July 1913. 66. “New Chinese Flag Floats over Chinatown,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 January 1912; “With Fireworks Chinese Welcome New Republic,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 January 1912; “Local Chinese Will Aid ‘10,000,000 Movement,’” Oxnard Daily Courier, 26 June 1912; “Big Chinaman Will Lecture Here Friday,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 January 1914; “Chinese Entertain Fellow Countrymen, Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 January 1914; Yung, Unbound Feet, 95–105. 67. “Some Oxnard Chinese Boycott Japanese,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 March 1915; “Chinese in Oxnard Believe War Best,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 May 1915; “Assault Charge Is Climax of Japanese-Chinese Boycott,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 August 1915; “Chino-Japanese Local War Case Dismissed,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 31 August 1915. For an insightful narrative on ethnic conflict between Asian immigrant communities in northern California see Azuma, “Racial Struggle.” 68. Rosales, ¡Pobre Raza! 5. 69. Monroy, Rebirth, 38–45. 70. “Mexican Independence Day Celebration,” Oxnard Courier, 7 September 1901; “Mexico’s Independence Suitably Celebrated Oxnard Courier, 28 September 1901; “Mexicans Celebrate Independence Day,” Oxnard Courier, 21 September 1906. 71. Jiménez, El Calvario De Mi Madre, 123–33. 72. “Grand Celebration of Mexican Independence,” Oxnard Courier, 4 September 1903.

278

notes to pages 75–78

73. “Many Mexican Patiotic [sic] Doin’s,” Oxnard Courier, 11 September 1903. 74. “Many Mexican Patiotic [sic] Doin’s,” Oxnard Courier, 11 September 1903. 75. “Mexicans Celebrate Independence Day,” Oxnard Courier, 17 September 1909. Thomas E. Sheridan interpreted similar expressions of patriotism by mutualistas in Tucson, Arizona, during the era of the Mexican Revolution and World War I and contends that “Patriotic displays of pro-U.S. sentiment, combined with successful drives to raise money for such institutions as the Red Cross, allayed the fears of most Anglos. This strategy of support for the U.S. war effort [during World War I] also gave the Liga [Protectora Mexicana] and its supporters the opportunity to speak out against other manifestations of institutionalized discrimination without being accused of disloyalty to the United States.” Los Tucsonenses, 172. 76. Margaret D. Jacobs astutely suggests that Indians of rancho Chico in northern California adopted and manipulated Euro-American rituals and inconography as a means to preserve their cultural identity. Jacobs, “Resistance to Rescue.” 77. Mary Navarro, interview by Frank Barajas, 6 January 2000. 78. “Mexicans Celebrate Independence Day,” Oxnard Courier, 17 September 1909; M. T. García, Mexican Americans; Rosales, ¡Pobre Raza!; G. J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American; Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker; Arredondo, Mexican Chicagos. For an in-depth analysis of the process of acculturation in the United States and the complexities of ethnic and generational identities within the Mexican community in the Southwest see Ruiz, “Star Struck.” 79. “Mexicans Plan an Independence Day Affair,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 11 September 1912; “Mexican Fourth-of-July Being Celebrated Today,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 September 1912. 80. “Mexican Residents Celebrate Holidays,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 September 1915. 81. “Mexican Speakers Gave Counsel for Peace,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 September 1915. 82. Martínez, Fragments of the Mexican Revolution, 137–38; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, chap. 2. 83. I am grateful to Devra Weber for informing me of the existence of an online archive of Regeneración. “En Defensa de los Mexicanos,” Regeneración, 30 August 1913. 84. “Mexican Speakers Gave Counsel for Peace,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 September 1915. 85. Monroy, Rebirth, 61. 86. Ventura County Directory, 1916–17; A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 151–52; Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection, Old Sacramento and Downtown, 74. The upbmi was noted as being in existence dating back to 1897 in “Mexican Convention Convening in Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 April 1921. notes to pages 78–81

279

87. “Mexican Convention Convening in Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 April 1921; “upbmi Has New Lodge for Ladies Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 May 1922; A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 152. Historian Cynthia E. Orozco posits that the increase number of Mexicana auxilliaries can be attributed to the entrance of Mexicanas into the wage laboring economy and public education. “Beyond Machismo,” 50. 88. Balderrama, In Defense of La Raza, 9–10, 25–26; G. G. González, Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing, 2–10. 89. “4th of July Program Is Developing,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 June 1921. The committee members were Alijio Jiménez, A. Martínez, Robert G. Beach, and Concepción Ruiz. Miguel Villegas and Noe Duarte, “All of Oxnard Awaits Glorious 4th of July with Flags Waving and Bombs Bursting, Here Is Program,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 July 1921. 90. “4th of July Celebration Brings Hundreds to Oxnard — Parade Carnival — Other Attractions,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 July 1921; “Committee Thanks All Participants,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 July 1921. 91. “Mexican Lodge to Stage Big Fourth of July Celebration with Home Talent Carnival,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 June 1921; “Committee Thanks All Participants,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 July 1921. 92. “Mexicans to Have Own Speaker Here on Fourth of July,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 June 1923; “Spanish Lodge to Aid in 4th July Program; Are Planning Big Time,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 June 1923; “Interests in Fourth of July on Increase,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 June 1923; “Mexican Girls Will Stage Plays on 4th,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 30 June 1923. 93. This was similar to the Americanization activities of the Rose Houchen Settlement House in El Paso, Texas, detailed by Vicki L. Ruiz in From Out of the Shadows, 37. 94. “Mexican Independence Day to Be Celebrated with Big Program Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 July 1923; “County Wide Celebration Mexican Independence Day to Be Staged Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 August 1923; “Mexicans Making Great Progress toward Their September Celebration,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 August 1923; “Celebration by Mexicans Great Success,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 September 1923. 95. “Gran Jamaica to Be Held Here on May 24th and 25th,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 May 1924; “Gran Jamaica to Draw Many Here on Saturday Sunday; Big Program,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 May 1924; “Mexicans from All Parts Attend Gran Jamaica Held Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 26 May 1924 (quote); “Campaign Underway to Raise Funds for Community Service,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 June 1924; “Community Playground Opens Mon. June 28,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 June 1926; “Dedication of New Church Makes for Great Day in Oxnard,” Oxnard Courier, 19 August 1904; minutes for 24 March 1919, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147,

280

notes to pages 81–85

145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Beet Company Records; Gullett, Becoming Citizens, 107–9, 139. For an insightful analysis of the role of community centers in relation to Americanization efforts in the Southwest see Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 41–50. 96. “Redmen Will Install New Officers Soon,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 July 1912; “St. Patrick Sons Preparing to Celebrate,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 March 1912; “Japanese Association Will Receive Donations for Quake Sufferers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 September 1923; “Japanese Association Sends $6000 to Japan,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 October 1923; Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 208–12. 97. “St. Patrick’s Day Will Be Celebrated by His Loyal Sons Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 January 1913. 98. “Japanese of Section Will Picnic Tomorrow,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 July 1912; “upbmi Lodge has Barbecue for Members,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 26 June 1923; “Second Merchants-Farmers Get Together Dinner Attended by 200, Declared a Success,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 June 1923; “Iowa Picnic February 22,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 11 February 1930; Bedford Pinkard, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Eloise Simmons, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. For a discussion of picnic gatherings on the part of Iowa migrants in Los Angeles County see McWilliams, Southern California, 167–69. 99. “Hindoo Leader Visits Local Countrymen,” Oxnard Courier, 29 May 1914. 100. “Local Residents Laud Japanese Residents Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 April 1926; “Fencing Bout between Oxnard and Santa Barbara Planned,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 October 1926; “Tokio Man to Speak before Japanese Assn,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 January 1927; “Japanese Plan Officials Visit,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 March 1927. 101. “Local Japanese Celebrate Coronation in Ancient Style,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 November 1915. A similar celebration was reported fifteen years later in “50 Japanese Misses to Parade in Honor of New Buddha Church,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 May 1930. 102. “Local Japanese Celebrate Coronation in Ancient Style,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 November 1915. 103. “Filipinos of County Gather to Honor Hero,” Oxnard Daily Courier, December 30, 1927; “Local Filipino Office to Close for National Convention of Society,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 December 1928; “Filipinos Will Honor Rizal,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 26 December 1928; “Anniversary of Rizal’s Death Observed with Ceremony in Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 31 December 1928; “Filipino Brotherhood Celebrates Flag Day,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 31 October 1929. 104. “Filipino Plea for Better Understanding in U.S. Press,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 January 1930; “Filipinos Menace to Pacific Coast, Claim,” Oxnard Daily Courier, notes to pages 85–90

281

10 April 1930; “Filipinos Protest Exclusion Measure,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 April 1930; “Filipinos in Drive for Liberty,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 March 1931. In 1934, Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act, restricting, to the point of virtual total exclusion, the entrance of Filipino immigrants into the United States, Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 331–32.

3. segregated integration 1. Bloom, “Oxnard . . . A Social History,” 18–19; Coletha Lehmann, interview by Mr. Heil, n.d. Two geography theses of Oxnard are Cuevas’s “The Oxnard Area” and Dagodag’s “A Social Geography of La Colonia.” 2. U.S. Department of the Interior, Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910; U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930; Soja, Postmodern Geographies, 190–91. 3. For much of the twentieth century this barrio was known as Colonia Gardens. 4. Alfred “Frenchie” Nicolas, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Walter B. Moranda, interview by Frank Barajas, 18 February 1999. Saviers Road was renamed Oxnard Boulevard in April 1924. “Road Soon to Be Known Oxnard Boulevard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 April 1924. 5. Alfred “Frenchie” Nicolas, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Robert Pfeiler, interview by Lynn Potter, 30 October 1980; A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 146. For an insightful examination of the role of railroad companies in the barriozation of Mexicanos see Garcilazo, “Traqueros,” chap. 5 passim. For a discussion on this phenomenon of segregation in Texas see Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, part 3. 6. Dagodag, “A Social Geography of La Colonia,” 24; Bloom, “Oxnard . . . A Social History,” 19; Deutsch, No Separate Refuge, 1987, 116; minutes for 3 December 1917, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147, 145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 7. “Man Gives Himself Up to Police after Shooting Friend,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 October 1922; Olen Adams, interview by Barbara Heron, 22 April 1982; Coletha Lehmann, interview by Mr. Heil, n.d.; Robert Pfeiler, interview by Lynn Potter, 30 October 1980; Alfred “Frenchie” Nicolas, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999. 8. Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Fukuyama, “The Japanese in Oxnard, California,” 14. 9. Mary Navarro, interview by Frank Barajas, 6 January 2000; Manuel M. López, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 December 1999; Manuel Pérez, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 August 2000.

282

notes to pages 91–94

10. Fukuyama, “The Japanese in Oxnard, California,” 14–15; “Mexican Is Shot Down on Street by Campaigner and Dies Minutes Afterward,” Oxnard Courier, 17 September 1909; “Hindu and Mexican in Free for All Fight,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 September 1921; “Community Playground Development in Oxnard Receives Publicity,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 February 1924. Matt García found that the existence of a myriad of racial minorities concerned Euro-American residents in the San Gabriel Valley. “Colonies, Colonias, and Culture,” chap. 1. 11. Oxnard, California, Sanborn Map Company 1906; “Blind Pig Raided in Alley,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 December 1914; “Chinese Blind Pig Cleverly Caught,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 May 1916; “Soo Hoo Yow Arraigned on Lottery Charge,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 August 1915; “Chief Murray Raids Local Lottery Dens,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 October 1922; “Raid Made on Lower Oxnard for Narcotics,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 January 1923; “Sheriff Raids Local Chinese Joint; Dope and Orientals Nabbed,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 February 1923. Linda Bendt has studied the Chinatowns of Ventura County and has found “female boarding houses” in these areas. Another euphemism that newspapers utilized to describe brothels was “keeping house.” Linda Bendt, telephone interview by Frank Barajas, 24 February 2000. 12. Fuller, Mexican Housing Problem, 2, 6. 13. “Trustees Consider New Policy When Granting New Pool License,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 March 1926. 14. Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities, 173; minutes for 9 November 1917–22 July 1918, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147, 145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 15. Deverell, “Privileging the Mission,” 242–48. Ricardo Romo conceived the concept of the “Brown Scare” in special relation not only to the Mexican Revolution but also to the political radicalism of El Partido Liberal Mexicano (plm ) in Los Angeles led by Ricardo Flores Magón. Romo, East Los Angeles, chap. 5 passim. 16. Souvenir of the Dedication of the Santa Clara Church, 14 August 1904, Ventura County Museum of History and Art. 17. McWilliams, North from Mexico, 43–53 (quote); “Old Land Mark Being Remodeled,” Oxnard Courier, 25 August 1990; “Best Mexican Families Only to Be Brought Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 February 1918; Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 123. 18. “Major Driffil Meets End,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 March 1917; “Adobe Houses for Mexican Laborers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 December 1917; “Free Houses Bring Mexican Families,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 February 1918; “Sugar Beet Outlook Is Hopeful,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 March 1918; “Citrus Heights Company Will Built [sic] Houses,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 January 1920; minutes notes to pages 95–98

283

for 11 November 1917–22 July 1918, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147, 145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. The absc also encouraged the construction of adobe dwellings on the ranches of Springville, Hendry, and Round Mountain. “Homes for Workers Solve Labor Need,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 February 1918; 19. “Factory Bring Many Families Here from Chino,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 30 April 1918; “abs Company Will Build Twenty Houses for Employees,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 May 1918; quote from “Will Cost $2000 or More Each; Land Already Bought,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 May 1918; “New Street for New abs Houses,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 May 1918; “Big Whistle Sounds Sugar Making Season,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 August 1918; “Will Build 6 Bungalows at Once,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 January 1920; “Need for More Houses to Rent in Oxnard Is Becoming More Acute,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 December 1921; William Soo Hoo, interview by Mary Johnston and Hazel Clymer, 27 October 1982; M. García, “Colonies, Colonias, and Culture,” 52. Regarding restrictive real estate covenants, see “Indenture,” Ventura County Clerk and Recorder, Book 134, 23 January 1913, 547; “Indenture,” Ventura County Clerk and Recorder, Book 134, 24 February 1913, 550; and “Reservations, Restrictions, and Protective Covenants Applicable to the Eugene H. Agee Subdivision lot 132 of Patterson Ranch Subdivision of Ventura County,” Ventura County Clerk and Recorder, Book 1005, 18 June 1951, 36. I am grateful to David G. Garcia and Tara J. Yosso for sharing with me these deed covenants of residential properties in Oxnard. The first two have the exact following language: “. . . and said premises shall not, at any time, be sold or conveyed to any person of Negro, Japanese or Chinese race, nor to any Mexican or Indian.” The third has the following restriction: “No person of any race other than the White or Caucasian race, nor any Mexican, Indian or East Indian, nor any person who is a lineal descendant of the first or second degree of a person born in the Republic of Mexico shall use or occupy any building, or any parcel, except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy of by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.” 20. “Hoboes Camp Due for Another Cleaning Up,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 November 1921; “Colored Men Up on Charge of Vagrancy,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 September 1911; “Man Badly Beaten and Many Taken,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 September 1911; “Negro Shack Is Destroyed by Flames Today,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 November 1911; “Officer Has Fight to Arrest Two Mexicans,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 December 1911; “Police Force to Remain at 4,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 January 1913; “Overflow of Bums Hits Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 September 1922; “Police Have Steady Job Keeping City Rid of Hoboes; ‘Strangers,’” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 September 1925; “Police Have Their Eyes on All Hoboes and

284

notes to pages 102–103

Strangers Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 February 1925; “Many Hoboes Ordered Out of Town as Soon as They Enter,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 February 1926. Richard Steven Street details the history of hoboes in Beasts of the Field, chapter 21. 21. Bloom, “Oxnard . . . A Social History,” 18–19; Triem, Ventura County, 97; Mervyn, A Tower in the Valley, 52; “Dedication of New Church Makes for Great Day in Oxnard,” Oxnard Courier, 19 August 1904; “Two Catholic Schools to Open,” Oxnard Courier, 30 August 1906; “School for Mexicans,” Oxnard Courier, 31 August 1906; “Schools Opened Last Thursday,” Oxnard Courier, 7 September 1906; “Oxnard — The Hub of Ventura County,” Oxnard Courier, 18 January 1909. 22. Mervyn, A Tower in the Valley, 95; Stan Gisler, interview by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999; Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999; Mary Navarro, interview by Frank Barajas, 6 January 2000; Alfred “Frenchie” Nicolas, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Ramona Ortega Uranga, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; “Mrs. Josefa Ortez Is Dead at Age of 95 Yrs.,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 March 1926. 23. Ramona Ortega Uranga, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999. 24. Bloom, “Oxnard . . . A Social History,” 18–19; Alfred “Frenchie” Nicolas, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Ramona Ortega Uranga, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999; Gamio, Mexican Immigration, 117; A. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 105. For an analysis of the historical tension between Mexican Americans and Mexicano immigrants see Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, chap. 3 passim. 25. Foley, The White Scourge, 208–9. 26. Foley, “Becoming Hispanic,” 55–57. 27. “School for Mexicans, Oxnard Courier, 31 August 1906; “Schools Opened Last Tuesday,” Oxnard Courier, 7 September 1906; “Two Catholic Schools to Open,” Oxnard Courier, 30 August 1907; “Oxnard — The Hub of Ventura County,” Oxnard Courier, 18 January 1909; “Spanish School Will Change Site,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 August 1912. 28. “Spanish School to Give Program,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 May 1917; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Mary Navarro, interview by Frank Barajas, 6 January 2000. 29. Martha Wucherpfennig Furrer, interview by Mary Johnston and Johanna Overby, 23 June 1981; Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999. 30. M. T. García, Mexican Americans, 85; Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 88–89. 31. Morales, Dionicio Morales, 53. 32. “Grammar School Pupils of Perfect Attendance,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 November 1917; “These Students Were Neither Tardy nor Absent for Month,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 11 December 1919; “Many Pupils with Perfect Attendance,” notes to pages 103–107

285

Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 January 1921; “Names for New School Suggested,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 June 1940; “School Vote Favors Name of Ramona,” Oxnard PressCourier, 10 July 1940; “School Enrollment Mark Shows Population Gains,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 September 1941; Coletha Lehmann, interview by Mr. Heil, n.d.; John and Mary Acosta, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 April 1999; Manuel M. López, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 December 1999. 33. United States District Court for the Central District of California, Debbie and Doreen Soria et al., Plaintiffs, v. Oxnard School District Boart of Trustees, Defendant. Civ. No. 70-396-hp . 386 F. Supp. 539; 1974 U.S. Dist. lexis 11661. 34. Oxnard School Board Minutes 9.13.38, noon meeting; Oxnard School Board Minutes 9.13.38, 5 p.m. meeting; Oxnard School Board Minutes 9.16.38, Tape 530; Oxnard School Board Minutes 11.8.37 Tape 530; Oxnard School Board Minutes 12.12.38. 35. Alice Shaffer to Harland Burfeind, 21 April 1938, Oxnard School District file Tape 530. 36. Oxnard School Board Minutes 9.23.37; Oxnard School Board Minutes 9.21.38 Tape 530; Oxnard School Board Minutes 9.22.38 Tape 530; Oxnard School Board Minutes 9.23.38 Tape 530. 37. Oxnard School Board Minutes 6.27.39. 38. Oxnard School Board Minutes 6.27.39; Oxnard School Board Minutes 1.10.39. 39. Bedford Pinkard, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Thomas Reeve, interview by Frank Barajas, 14 September 1994; Coletha Lehmann, interview by Mr. Heil, n.d.; Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed, 23; Ruiz, “Tapestries of Resistance,” 47–49; San Miguel, “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 17–25, 54–56; Joe Mendoza, interview by Frank Barajas, 28 April 2006. 40. Jensen, “Mexican-American in an Orange County Community,” 42; G. G. González, “Racism, Education, and the Mexican Community,” 289; Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 6–7; Foley, The White Scourge, 41–42. 41. Quoted in Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 6–7. 42. Cooke, “Segregation of Mexican-American Children,” 418. 43. Gullett, Becoming Citizens, 107; quote from “Santa Claus Visits the Needy,” Oxnard Courier, 2 January 1914 (this edition of the Courier was a weekly and covered countywide news; hence, the periodical was titled differently from the Oxnard Daily Courier of the same date); “Attendance Light at Grammar School,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 January 1918; “Mexicans Leave to Get Free land,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 January 1918. For an excellent historical discussion on the transnational migration of Mexicans see Gutiérrez, introduction, xi–xxvii. 44. “Feast of Our Lady of the Guadalupe,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 11 December 1912; “Services in Commemoration of Our Lady of Guadalupe,” Oxnard Daily Cou-

286

notes to pages 108–111

rier, 12 December 1912; “Spanish School Will Change Site,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 August 1912. 45. Foley, “Becoming Hispanic,” 56; Tuck, Not with the Fist, 131–39. 46. Advertisement, Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 July 1920; quote from “Business Men Learning Spanish,” Oxnard Courier, 22 March 1907; Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. 47. “Stir Loyalty of Foreign Speaking,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 May 1918. 48. “Temporary Hospital Opened,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 November 1918; “Reverend Fr. Laubacher Victim of Dread Spanish Flu,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 November 1918; “Mexican Assist City Officials,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 November 1918; Kolata, Flu, 4–7. The city fire department also sought to fight the flu epidemic by regularly hosing down the streets in an effort to disinfect the town. “Influenza Condition Favorable,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 December 1918. 49. “Miss Dominguez to Address Socialists,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 October 1912; quote from “Mrs. Dominguez Is Convincing Speaker,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 October 1912. 50. “Mexican Band Wants Subsidy from City,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 June 1915; “Mexican Band Would Come Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 July 1916; quote from “New Mexican Band Now Being Formed,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 August 1922; “Latin American Band Organized with Success,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 November 1922. 51. Quote from “Community Service, What Is It,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 February 1923; Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, xvi; M. García, “Colonies, Colonias, and Culture,” 215–16. 52. “Want to Reorganize Mexican Band Here; Talk of Co. Payment,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 May 1924. 53. G. J. Sánchez, “The ‘New Nationalism’”; quote from “Celebration Follows Big Spanish Wedding,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 January 1923; “Latin American Dept. of Community Service Making Great Progress,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 March 1923. 54. “Trustee Grant Permit to Hold Mexican Fiesta,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 July 1924; “Mexicans Get Permit to Stage Four Day Independence Show,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 July 1924; Jiménez, El Calvario De Mi Madre, 123. 55. G. J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 5–11. 56. Gullett, Becoming Citizens, 139; Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 37; “Community Service Organizes Section in Americanization,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 May 1923; “Americanization Group of Community Service to Meet This Evening,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 May 1923. 57. “Community Playground Development in Oxnard Receives Publicity,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 February 1924; “City’s Guests Cleaning 7th Street Playground,” notes to pages 112–116

287

Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 June 1927; “To Include Mexicans in Playground Work,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 July 1923; “Former Secretary of Community Service Writes about Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 August 1923; Deering, “Music as Welder of Races in California”; minutes, 9 December 1918–28 July 1919, Folder Concerning Sugar 1910s–1930s, Box 147, 145.i 20.11b , American Crystal Sugar Company Records. 58. “Martinez Take Place of Beach on Board of Directors Com. Service,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 December 1923; “New Saviers Road Playground Presents Busy Scene Today,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 30 January 1924. For example, in February 1924 Mary Ramirez requested the use of the cs dining room at the Oxnard Community Center for the Mexican Girls chorus. See “Paul Lehmann Resigns Head of Music Department,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 February 1924. Historian Vicki L. Ruiz aptly comments on the difficulty of historians to learn about the role of Mexicanas because of their omission within institutional records such as newspapers. See From Out of the Shadows, 41. For an examination of the role of Mexicanas within mutualistas see Orozco, “Beyond Machismo,” 37–77. 59. “Children Show Great Interest in Community Playground Activities,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 June 1924. 60. Rosales, ¡Pobre Raza! 24, 51–53; “Mexican Is Shot Down on Street by Campaigner and Dies Minutes Afterward,” Oxnard Courier, 17 September 1909; “Four Gunmen Taken by Police in Night,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 November 1914; “Blind Pig Raided in Alley: Robbery Gives Officer Clew,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 December 1914; “Drinking Cause of a Bad Mexican Shooting Scrape,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 October 1926; “Raid Made on Lower Oxnard for Narcotics,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 January 1923; “Local Dope Peddler Nabbed by Sheriff,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 August 1923; “Dope Transported as Macaroni Is Suspicious,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 February 1929; “Officers and Federal Agents Search 22 Dens,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 November 1929. 61. “Mexicans from Many Colonies Organize; Out for Instruction,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 May 1924. 62. “Mexicans Offer Aid in Making City Law Abiding,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 May 1924. Jiménez authored an autobiography detailing his family’s travails in Mexico during the revolution and their migration and life in the United States, El Calvario De Mi Madre. 63. M. García, “Colonies, Colonias, and Culture,” 31, 77; Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 74; Márquez, LU LA C , 9–16, 30. 64. “Policewoman Graduate Nurse for City Health,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 31 January 1917. 65. Foley, The White Scourge, 5.

288

notes to pages 116–119

66. “Experienced Policewoman Is Chosen,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 31 February 1917; G. J. Sánchez, “‘Go After the Women,’” 254–59. 67. “Americanization Work of Two Counties Expanded,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 October 1928; “Plea Made by Welfare Worker for Goods for Houses in Gardens,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 30 October 1928; “Kris Kringle Brings Christmas Cheer to Many Mexicans in Adult Education Department Parties,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 December 1928; “Americanization Classes at Grammar School,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 31 October 1929. 68. “New Americanization Law Very Important,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 September 1919; “Night School Work Begins Here Tonight,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 August 1921; “Night Classes to Start Tonight at High School,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 August 1922. 69. “To Make Americans of Foreign-Born,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 January 1918; quote from “Policewoman Tells Club Women of Health Conditions,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 March 1918; “Stir Loyalty of Foreign Speaking,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 May 1918; “Judge Ortega, Old Native Son, Dies,” Ventura Free Press, 5 January 1927; “Ortega Funeral Held at Mission, Ventura Free Press, 6 January 1927. 70. “Teaching Foreign Children Our Ways,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 August 1918. The report to the city trustees served to be one of Thornton’s last major duties. “Oxnard Woman Police to Resign,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 October 1918. 71. Raftery, Land of Fair Promise; Society section, Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 October 1919; quote from Society section, Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 October 1919. The wife of absc manager C. H. Weaver chaired the Monday Club committee on Americanization. Society section, Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 October 1919. 72. “Policewoman’s Work Missed by Trustees,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 September 1919; “Says Flies Are Bad in This City,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 October 1919; “Red Cross Make Move for Better Housing Conditions,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 October 1920. 73. Quote from “Red Cross Make Move for Better Housing Conditions,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 October 1920. In the inspection of the absc adobe homes, Red Cross inspectors discovered nearby a fly-infested, open garbage pit and found that of the twenty-four units visited only three had toilets in good working condition. In one unit, a dead man was found. “Red Cross Make Move for Better Housing Conditions,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 October 1920. That same day, the Daily Courier printed an appeal to landlords by the Red Cross Investigating Committee urging them to service and repair their rentals. “Notice to the Public,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 October 1920. Similar to Eloise Thornton, McColloch resigned as the city’s Red Cross nurse, citing health reasons. “Mrs. McColloch Quits Account of Her Health,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 February 1921. notes to pages 120–122

289

74. “Colonia Garden Folk Petition City Dads to Change City Dump,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 June 1922; “Colonia Home Gardens Being Piped for Water,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 December 1922; “Los Guardianes de la Colonia Is Active in Red Cross Drive,” Oxnard Press-Courier, March 7, 1946; “City Council Will Get Plea to Pave Colonia,” Oxnard Press-Courier, March 26, 1946; “Hinostro Urged to Get Petition,” Oxnard Press-Courier, March 27, 1946, 1; “Colonia Needs Paving,” Oxnard Press-Courier, May 7, 1946, 6; Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999. This type of activism predates the successful protests of the Mothers of East Los Angeles against the establishment of a hazardous waste incinerator. See Pardo, Mexican American Women Activists. 75. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness, 115–16. 76. “Sunday Nights Minstrel Show,” Oxnard Courier, 11 January 1902; “Santa Paula Minstrels Give Amusing Show in Saticoy,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 April 1916; advertisement of Bertrand’s Vaudeville Road Show and Comedy Company, Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 August 1916; advertisement of Sam Griffin’s Minstrels, Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 September 1920; advertisement of The Famous Georgia Minstrels, Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 October 1920; “Elks Minstrels Make Great Hit with Oxnarders,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 April 1924; “Nearly 1500 People See Elks Minstrels Over $1000 Cleared,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 April 1924; Ewen and Ewen, Channels of Desire, 42. 77. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness, 119–20. For an analysis of the cultural production of racism in the United States during the nineteenth century, see Lott, Love and Theft, and Saxton, Rise and Fall of the White Republic. 78. Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Walter B. Moranda, interview by Frank Barajas, 18 February 1999; Ventura County Directory, 1934. 79. Eloise Simmons, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999. 80. Bedford Pinkard, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. 81. Josephine Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 16 March 1994. Dionicio Morales also details the racial segregation of audiences within the Ventura County community of Moorpark. Dionicio Morales, 103. For a discussion of the prejudice of Dust Bowl migrants during the World War II era, see Archibald, Wartime Shipyards, and M. S. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush. 82. Alamillo, Making Lemonade Out of Lemons, 107. For a historical discussion on the introduction of baseball in Latin America see Regalado, Viva Baseball! chap. 2 passim, and Monroy, Rebirth, 46–47. 83. Robert Valles, interviews by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999 and 8 January 2000. 84. “Ball Club for Oxnard,” Oxnard Courier, 19 April 1902; “Sugar Beets Win Baseball Game,” Oxnard Courier, 11 May 1906; “Mexican Giants Too Much for

290

notes to pages 122–127

the Dirty Dozen,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 August 1911; “Institute Team Beats Methodists,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 December 1919; “Colored Athletics to Challenge Aces,” Oxnard Press-Courier, June 22, 1946, 2; “Aces Rally in Final Inning to Win, 10–9,” Oxnard Press-Courier, June 24, 1946, 6; Walter B. Moranda, interview by Frank Barajas, 18 February 1999; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; “Oxnard Aces to Face Ventura Merchants,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 September 1933; “Juegos De La Asn. Mexicana,” La Opinión, 21 July 1933; “Juegos De La Asn. Mexicana,” La Opinión, 24 June 1933; “Juegos De La Asn. Mexicana,” La Opinión, 1 July 1933; “Los ‘Aces’ Ganan a Los Arriola,” La Opinión, 23 September 1933; Alamillo, Making Lemonade Out of Lemons, 107; Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 91–92, 203–5; Ruiz, Cannery Women/Cannery Lives, 31–39, 69–71. For a discussion on how the Nisei of Cortez, California, cultivated ethnic solidarity while mainstreaming into the dominant culture by way of sports see Matsumoto, Farming the Home Place, 78–83. 85. “Jap Giants to Meet Somis Champions,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 July 1915; “Somis Outclasses Jap Giants Team,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 July 1915; quote from “Colored Giants Play Here Next Sunday,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 30 January 1913; “Oxnard Boys Outclass Giants,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 February 1913. In 1920 Oxnard hosted tournament play of the southern California Semi-Pro League. “Oxnard Will Be Mecca for Hundreds of Ball Fans Tomorrow,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 January 1920. During the mid-1930s the Japanese community of Oxnard formed a team called the Taiyos and played other teams of the county, one of which, consisting of Filipinos, was called the Filipino All-Stars. “Taiyos Win from Filipino All-Stars in Sunday Baseball Game,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 May 1934. 86. “c c c Colored Ball Club Arouses Interest of Fans,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 August 1933; “c c c Colored Team Loses to All Stars in Exciting Tilt,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 August 1933. 87. “Another Glove Contest,” Oxnard Courier, 5 April 1902; “Johnson Is Still Champion,” Oxnard Courier, 28 February 1903. 88. “Field-McClosky Boxing Contest,” Oxnard Courier, 7 December 1901; “Another Glove Contest” Oxnard Courier,” 5 April 1902; “The Boxing Contests,” Oxnard Courier 8 February 1902; “Many Women See Boxing Exhibition,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 August 1922; “Boxing Card at El Rio Incites Much Interest,’ Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 November 1925; “Vernon Jackson Mixes in Main Go at El Rio,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 January 1927; “Benny Marks Installed Favorite Over M. Erno,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 February 1927; “Fire Works on Tap for Ventura Boxing Show,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 May 1929. 89. Gorn, The Manly Art, 131–37. 90. Rodríguez, “‘Palaces of Pain,’” 63–68, 77–86. notes to pages 128–129

291

91. “Many Women See Boxing Exhibition,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 August 1922; Rodríguez, “‘Palaces of Pain,’” 86. 92. “1,500 Seat Boxing Arena at El Rio Is Plan of Local Men Work Already Started on Project,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 August 1921; advertisement, Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 September 1921.

4. bitter repression, sweet resistance 1. Kelley, Race Rebels, 25; Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker, 66. 2. Hobsbawm, Bandits, 23. 3. Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 49–50. 4. M. C. Meyer and Sherman. The Course of Mexican History, 378; Griswold del Castillo and De León, North to Aztlán, 40; Gómez-Quiñones, “The First Steps,” 16–18. 5. Martínez, “On the Size of the Chicano Population,” 55–56. 6. M. T. García, “La Frontera,” 90–91. 7. “Benino Gomez and Jose Baisc Attempted to Burn Their Way Out of Jail,” Oxnard Courier, 7 July 1900 (the names are spelled as printed in the local newspaper); quotes from “Mexican Consul Investigates,” Oxnard Courier, 14 July 1900; Balderrama, In Defense of La Raza, 4. 8. “Mexican Consul Investigates,” Oxnard Courier, 14 July 1900; Kelly, Race Rebels, 8. Rosales details the use of the concept of “México Lindo” by consular officials in ¡Pobre Raza! chap. 3 passim. For a discussion of the historiography of the role of Mexican consuls in the Southwest see G. G. González, Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing, 4–8. 9. Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 187–92; Almaguer, “Racial Domination and Class Conflict,” 183–207; Street, Beasts of the Field, 448; “Oxnard Has Labor Troubles,” Ventura Independent, 5 March 1903; “Beet Thinners Organize,” Ventura Free Press, 6 March 1903. 10. Murray, “A Foretaste of the Orient,” 75. 11. Street, Beasts of the Field, 454; “The Japs and Mexicans,” Oxnard Courier, 7 March 1903. 12. “Trouble with the Laborers,” Oxnard Courier, 14 March 1903; Murray, “A Foretaste of the Orient,” 74. 13. “Beet Thinners Organize,” Ventura Free Press, 6 March 1903. 14. “Labor Riot at Oxnard Ends Fatally,” Ventura Independent, 26 March 1903; “Peace and Harmony Reign after Bloody Affair at Oxnard,” Ventura Free Press, 27 March 1903; “Riot Monday in Chinatown, Oxnard Courier, 28 March 1903; Murray, “A Foretaste of the Orient,” 74. 15. “Communication from the Union,” Oxnard Courier, 28 March 1903; Street, Beasts of the Field, 454.

292

notes to pages 130–136

16. “Riot Monday in Chinatown, Oxnard Courier, 28 March 1903; Murray, “A Foretaste of the Orient,” 72; Deutsch, No Separate Refuge, 24–26. 17. “Peace and Harmony Reign after Bloody Affair at Oxnard, “ Ventura Free Press, 27 March 1903; “Oxnard Troubles to Be Compromised,” Ventura Independent, 2 April 1903; “Peace and Work Once More,” Oxnard Courier, 4 April 1903; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 197–99; Street, Beasts of the Field, 461–62. 18. Murray, “A Foretaste of the Orient,” 78. 19. Street, “The 1903 Oxnard Sugar Beet Strike,” 195. 20. Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 74. 21. Stimson, Rise of the Labor Movement, 267; Wollenberg, “Working on El Traque,” 96–97; Escobar, Race, Police, 39; Monroy, Rebirth, 8. For an early discussion on Teresa Urrea’s significance in the Southwest see McWilliams, North from Mexico, 181–82. 22. “Chinese and Japs Captured by Sheriff,” Oxnard Courier, 17 July 1908; “People Are Pleased with Clean-Up Idea,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 July 1911; “Still More Gamblers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 July 1911; “Berry Raids Gone and Gets Five More,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 July 1911. 23. “Saturday Night Officers’ Raid,” Oxnard Courier, 27 June 1903. 24. “Japanese Gambling Joint Raided,” Oxnard Courier, 4 July 1903; “Deputy Sheriff Russell’s Terrible Fight for Life, Oxnard Courier, 11 July 1903. 25. “Shocking Murder of Brave Night Watchman,” Oxnard Courier, 23 March 1906. 26. “Three Held for Trial,” Oxnard Courier, 30 March 1906; “Jose Moreno Cleared,” Oxnard Courier, 13 April 1906; “No Verdict in McNaughton Case,” Oxnard Courier, 3 August 1906. 27. “‘Mugging’ System Is Kicking ‘Boes’ from City,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 February 1912; “Many ‘Hoboes’ Beating Rides on Local Trains,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 August 1921; “Hoboes Camp Due for Another Cleaning Up,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 November 1921. 28. “Hoboes Hoisted Out in Large Numbers,” Oxnard Courier, 31 July 1908. 29. “Hoboes Attempt Wreck of Train Near Here,” Oxnard Courier, 11 September 1908. 30. “Sixteen Hoboes Are Nabbed, Mugged and Floated,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 February 1912. 31. “Police to Run Idlers Out of Town; Result of Two Burglaries,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 May 1923. 32. Quote from “Former Oxnarder Is Leader of Mexican Insurgent Band,” Oxnard Courier, 3 February 1911; “August Gratz Tells of Mexican Insurrection,” Oxnard Courier, 29 June 1911. 33. Blaisdell, The Desert Revolution, 39; McWilliams, North from Mexico, 185. 34. Blaisdell, The Desert Revolution, 48. notes to pages 138–142

293

35. Quote from “Mexican Papers Are Cause of Much Trouble,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 October 1912; “Many Out-of-Town Agitators Address Local Workers at Communist Organization Meeting,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 August 1935. While in Oxnard, Carlos Bulosan details his efforts, those of his friend José, along with the help of Mexicanos, to organize sugar beet workers. Bulosan states that it was at the Oxnard placita that he and his fellow organizers discussed the possibility of a Mexicano-Pilipino sugar beet workers alliance to demand higher wages. At one meeting, Ventura County sheriff deputies broke up a lawful assembly. See America Is in the Heart, 196. 36. “En Favor De La Madre Juan Sarabia,” Regeneración, 1 October 1910; “Para la Madre de Juan Sarabia,” Regeneración, 8 October 1910; Para la Madre de Juan Sarabia,” Regeneración, 22 October 1910; “En Pro de una Madre,” Regeneración, 17 December 1910; “En Memoria de Ferrer,” Regeneración, September 19, 1911; “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 19 August 1911; “Comite de Heridos,” Regeneración, 23 September 1911; “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 25 November 1911; “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 16 December 1911; “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 24 February 1912; “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 2 March 1912; “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 23 March 1912; “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 24 February 1912; “Fondo de Defesna,” Regeneración, 27 April 1912. 37. “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, August 26, 1911; “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 4 November 1911. 38. “En Pro de una Madre,” Regeneración, 15 October 1910. 39. Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 7 October 1911. 40. Another Grupo Regeneración was formed in the Southern California community of Riverside. See “En Pro de Regeneración,” Regeneración, 19 November 1910. 41. “Administracion Ingresos,” Regeneración, 4 November 1911; “Movimiento de Solidridad,” Regeneración, 18 November 1911. Santa Paula supporters of the plm also raised funds for the newspaper in 1915 by sponsoring a dance. See “Pro Regeneración,” Regeneración, 2 October 1915. 42. “Pro Regeneración,” Regeneración, 2 October 1915. 43. “Mexican Papers Are Cause of Much Trouble,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 October 1912; Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza, 155–57. 44. For a historiographic discussion of the character of the Mexican Revolution see G. G. González’s Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing, 13–14. Prominent Chicano labor activists such as Bert Corona and Josephine Fierro de Bright were influenced by the involvement of their parents with the plm . See Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 96, and M. T. García, Memories of Chicano History, 39. 45. “defuncion ,” Regeneración, 4 November 1911; “nacimientos ,” Regener-

294

notes to pages 143–145

ación, 15 April 1916; “En Favor De La Madre Juan Sarabia,” Regeneración, 1 October 1910; “Para la Madre de Juan Sarabia,” Regeneración, 8 October 1910; “En Pro de una Madre,” Regeneración, 15 October 1911; “En Pro de una Madre,” Regeneración, 15 October 1910; “indagatorias ,” Regeneración, 31 August 1912; “una carta ,” Regeneración, 14 September 1912. 46. “Army of iww ’s Is Headed Down Coast,” Oxnard Courier, 23 January 1914; “iww Gangsters Break Cells, Fight Officers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 December 1916; “iww Prisoners in Jail Are Quick,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 December 1916; Jamieson, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, 11–12; “Loafers Keep Far Away from Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 October 1918; Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 191–97. 47. “Night Riders Will Guard Fruit Groves,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 October 1919. 48. “Night Riders Will Guard Fruit Groves,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 October 1919. At an iww local in Los Angeles, six hundred Wobblies attended a meeting denouncing the lynching of members in the state of Washington. “iww Boast Control of Southland,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 November 1919; “Whole Pacific Coast to War on iww and Government Enemies,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 November 1919; “iww ’s Thwarted in Making Jail Delivery at Spokane,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 November 1919; “Los Angeles Ready for Red Gunmen,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 November 1919. 49. Quote from “Will Fight Radicalism in County,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 March 1920; “Whole Pacific Coast to War on iww and Government Enemies,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 November 1919; “iww ’s Thwarted in Making Jail Delivery at Spokane,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 November 1919; “Los Angeles Ready for Red Gunmen,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 November 1919. 50. Bulosan, America Is in the Heart, 195, 311–13, quote on 311. 51. “Mexican Lodge to Stage Big Fourth of July Celebration with Home Talent Carnival,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 June 1921; “Committee Thanks All Participants,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 July 1921; “Mexicans to Have Own Speaker Here on Fourth of July,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 June 1923; “Interests in Fourth of July on Increase,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 June 1923; “Mexican Girls Will Stage Plays on 4th,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 30 June 1923; “Mexican Independence Day to Be Celebrated with Big Program Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 July 1923; “County Wide Celebration Mexican Independence Day to Be Staged Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 August 1923; “Gran Jamaica to Be Held Here on May 24th and 25th,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 May 1924; “Gran Jamaica to Draw Many Here on Saturday Sunday; Big Program,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 May 1924; “Campaign Underway to Raise Funds for Community Service,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 June 1924; “Community Playground Opens Mon. June 28,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 June 1926. notes to pages 145–146

295

52. “Mexican Newspaper Suspends Publication,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 June 1926; “Jesus N. Jimenez Is Now Newspaper Editor,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 July 1926; “Former Oxnard Man Sued for $10,000 Libel,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 June 1927; “Cumpliendo Nuestro Deber,” La Voz de la Colonia, 29 September 1927. 53. “Fiestas Patrias En El Condado De Ventura,” La Voz de la Colonia, 29 September 1927. 54. “Dedication of New Church Makes for Great Day in Oxnard,” Oxnard Courier, 19 August 1904; “All Mexican Program Featured at Meeting of Guadalupe Church,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 September 1929; “Spanish School to Give Program,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 May 1917; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Mary Navarro, interview by Frank Barajas, 6 January 2000; Martha Wucherpfennig Furrer, interview by Mary Johnston and Johanna Overby, 23 June 1981; Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999. 55. “Oxnard Aces to Face Ventura Merchants,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 September 1933; “Juegos De La Asn. Mexicana,” La Opinión, 21 July 1933; “Juegos De La Asn. Mexicana,” La Opinión, 24 June 1933; “Juegos De La Asn. Mexicana,” La Opinión, 1 July 1933; “Los ‘Aces’ Ganan a Los Arriola,” La Opinión, 23 September 1933; Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 91–92, 203–5; Ruiz, Cannery Women/Cannery Lives, 31–39, 69–71; Alamillo, “Peloteros in Paradise,” 196–200. 56. “Plowing Beets for Campaign Now Underway,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 July 1933; “17 Per Cent Jump in Beet Payment to Ranchers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 29 July 1933; “The Citrus Industry,” Los Angeles Times, 6 August 1933; “La Mayoria De Ellos Son Mexicanos,” La Opinión, 16 August 1933; Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 80. 57. Jamieson, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, 80, 96; “1200 Out at Oxnard,” Western Worker, 21 August 1933. 58. “Local Strike Is Ended States Ben D. Laubacher,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 August 1933; “Gas Quells Beet Riot,” Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1933; “Vuelven Al Trabajo Los Pizcadores,” La Opinión, 22 August 1933; Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 102. 59. “Mexican Workers Strike, Filipinos Stick,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 August 1933. 60. “La Mayoria De Ellos Son Mexicanos,” La Opinión, 16 August 1933. 61. “Mexican Workers Strike, Filipinos Stick,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 August 1933; “Strikers Orderly Is Report of Officers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 August 1933. The inability of Mexicans and Filipinos to form a lasting and successful alliance, like that between Japanese and Mexican betabeleros in 1903, is significant. This warrants further research especially when one considers that Filipinos and Mexicans held common cultural attributes in relation to religion and being once colonized peoples of Spain. 62. “Strikers Still Picket abs Adobe Houses,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 August 1933. 63. “Police Make First Arrest in Strike,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 August 1933.

296

notes to pages 146–149

64. “Police Make First Arrest in Strike,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 August 1933; “Strikers Still Picket abs Adobe Houses,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 August 1933; “Beet Workers Strike in Chino,” Los Angeles Times, 9 August 1933; quote from McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 9, 238. 65. “Strikers Orderly Is Report of Officers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 August 1933; “Beet Workers Strike in Chino,” Los Angeles Times, 9 August 1933; “Strikers in Oxnard Area Spurn Employers’ Offer,” Los Angeles Times, 10 August 1933; Jamieson, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, 96. 66. “Labor Strike on Ranches Looms,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 July 1933; “Authorities Seize Labor Documents,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 27 July 1933; “Movement to End Strike Peacefully Gains Force,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 August 1933. 67. “Y En Oxnard La Policia Es Acusada,” 27 August 1933, and “Seis Floated out,” 27 August 1933, La Opinión; “3000 Oxnard Workers Protest Police Attack,” Western Worker, 28 August 1933; “Labor Situation Here Misrepresented by Clinton J. Taft,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 August 1934; “Placing Men on Ranches,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 15 September 1934; Bulosan, America Is in the Heart, 196. 68. U.S. Senate, Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor, 549, 573. The use of violence to combat cawiu and the efforts of other labor unions were common in California. In a discussion of the coordinated efforts of growers and law enforcement to defeat the San Joaquin Valley Cotton Strike of that same year, historian Vicki L. Ruiz states: “Violence marred the labor dispute. Farmers killed three people, including one Mexicana. The cawiu , however, did not advocate bloodshed. Law enforcement officials, as well as the local press, threatened the strikers with deportation. Along with grower and police harassment and outright terror, a denial of federal relief proved an effective strike-breaking method. . . . In 1934 a new organization, the Associated Farmers (af ), began a concerted campaign against the cawiu . From 1934 to 1940, the Associated Farmers specialized in union busting through violent means . . . . Law enforcement generally encouraged the group’s participation by deputizing its members. This vigilante brigade not only wielded pickaxes, rifles, and clubs, but also built stockades to incarcerate strikers.” Cannery Women/Cannery Lives, 49–50. For an in depth discussion on the origins and scope of purpose of the af see McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 231–39. 69. Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 76; G. G. González, Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing, 111. 70. “Labor Strike on Ranches Looms,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 July 1933; “All Quiet along Beet Labor Front,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 August 1933. 71. “Plenty of Labor Should Beet Men Strike in Fields in Oxnard District,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 August 1933. notes to pages 149–151

297

72. “Believe Backbone of Mexican Strike Broken,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 11 August 1933. 73. “Local Mexicans Form Workers Alliance,” Los Angeles Times, 15 August 1933; “50 New Mexicans Join Alliance,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 August 1933; “3000 Oxnard Workers Protest Police Attack,” Western Worker, 28 August 1933. 74. Loftis, Witness to the Struggle; Richardson, American Prophet, ix. 75. Deutsch, No Separate Refuge; Ruiz, Cannery Women/Cannery Lives; G. J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American. 76. “Movement to End Strike Peacefully Gains Force,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 August 1933. 77. Jamieson, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, 96. 78. “1200 Out at Oxnard,” Western Worker, 21 August 1933. 79. G. G. González, Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing, 85–87. 80. “3000 Oxnard Workers Protest Police Attack,” Western Worker, 28 August 1933. 81. “Movement to End Strike Peacefully Gains Force,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 August 1933; “Five Arrested in Beet Strike Held Under Bail,” Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1933. 82. Lopez, “El Monte Berry Strike.” 83. “Movement to End Strike Peacefully Gains Force,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 August 1933. 84. “One Third More Workers Return,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 August 1933. 85. “Would Stop Parading,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 August 1933; “Se Cree Que Terminara El Conflicto,” La Opinión, 18 August 1933; “1200 Out at Oxnard,” Western Worker, 21 August 1933; “3000 Oxnard Workers Protest Police Attack,” Western Worker, 28 August 1933. 86. “Would Stop Parading,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 August 1933; “Se Cree Que Terminara El Conflicto,” La Opinión, 18 August 1933. 87. “Toward No Violence Ultimatum to Agitators,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 August 1933. 88. “Gas Quells Beet Riot,” Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1933; “Una Bomba Lacrimosa Metio Paz,” La Opinión, 19 August 1933; “Five Arrested in Beet Strike Held under Bail,” Los Angeles Times, 20 August 1933. 89. “Officers Uncover Further Plans of Strikers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 August 1933; “Beet Field Strike Ends,” Los Angeles Times, 22 August 1933; “Judge Rodgers Waits for Formal Charges,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 August 1933; “Y En Oxnard La Policia Es Acusada,” La Opinión, 27 August 1933; “Seis Floated Out,” La Opinión, 27 August 1933; “3000 Oxnard Workers Protest Police Attack,” Western Worker, 28 August 1933. 90. “Chief and Brother Deny Charges of Arrested Worker,” Oxnard Daily Cou-

298

notes to pages 151–155

rier, 26 August 1933; “Refuses Criminal Complaint against Kerrick,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 August 1933; “Prosecution of Oxnard Police Chief Refused,” Los Angeles Times, 29 August 1933; “Council Refuses Dismissal Demand,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 30 August 1933. 91. “Organizations Investigate Beet Labor Strike Conditions in Oxnard District,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 23 August 1933. 92. “About 100 Mexicans Attend Colonia Gardens Meet,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 August 1933. 93. “Change of Venue for Oxnard Strike Leaders,” Western Worker, 4 September 1933; “Verbal Battle Marks Strike Hearing,” Los Angeles Times, 3 September 1933. The aclu received a letter from the Department of Justice promising an investigation. See “Trial of Oxnard Strike Leaders on Sept. 13 and 19,” Western Worker, 11 September 1933. 94. “500 at Oxnard Cheer Communists; Fakers Exposed,” Western Worker, 18 September 1933. 95. “Wirrin Reveals Hearing Plans,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 September 1933; “Strike Trial to Consume Several Weeks,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 11 September 1933; “May Settle Strike Case Out of Court,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 September 1933; “Three Workers Tried before Judge Dominick,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 September 1933; “Present Strike Trouble Ends and Prisoners Freed,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 14 September; “Communist Paper Comments on Trial,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 September 1933; “Huelguistas Libertados En Oxnard, Calif.,” La Opinión, 23 September 1933; “Ventura Parley Irons Out Strike Situation,” Los Angeles Times, 14 September 1933. 96. “Reds in the Saddle,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 September 1933. 97. “Citrus Firms Boost Wages,” Los Angeles Times, 26 August 1933; “Cargos A La Policia De Oxnard,” La Opinión, 25 August 1933; “Minimum Wage Adopted by Packing House,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 31 August 1933. 98. “Walnut Growers Assn. Increases Wages of Orchard Pickers,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 31 August 1933. 99. “Communist Agitators Organizing in City,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 July 1934. 100. “Urge Mexicans Whites Attend Hall Session,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 January 1934; “Mass Meeting Advertised,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 July 1934; “Strike Agitators Tell Men to Go to Work in Oxnard Area,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 July 1934. 101. “Many Out-of-Town Agitators Address Local Workers at Communist Organization Meeting,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 August 1935. 102. “Communist Distribute Circular Decrying Chief Kerrick to County Supervisoral Board,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 September 1935; “Mexicans Meet Quiet, Orderly,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 February 1936. notes to pages 156–158

299

103. “Labor Talks Feature at City Rotary Club,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 17 January 1934; “Mexican Worker’s Alliance Holds Meeting,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 18 January 1934; “Propose County Anti-Picketing Ordinance,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 January 1934; “Table Anti-Picketing Ordinance for County,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 January 1934; “Anti-Picketing Ordinance Read,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 January 1934; “Council Adopts Anti-Loitering Ordinance,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 7 February 1934; “Supervisors Adopt New Anti-Picketing Measure,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 March 1934 . 104. “Communist Scored in Strand Theater Rally,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 February 1934; quote in “American Civil Liberties Union Linked with Communist Party,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 21 February 1934. 105. Letter to Oxnard Chamber of Commerce inc ., 6 October 1934, Ventura County Museum of History and Art; “Communism Must Be Thwarted Gill Says at Red Men Meeting,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 24 February 1934; “Communism Real Menace in U.S.,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 March 1934; “Communists in Our Government Fabric Says Rotary Speaker,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 5 July 1934; “Chief James Davis Will Talk at Anti-Communist Meeting on Wednesday,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 6 October 1934 (no subsequent news report indicated whether or not Davis actually spoke); Escobar, Race, Police, 98–101; Davis quoted in Starr, Material Dreams, 172. 106. U.S. Senate, Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor, 549, 573; Lillard, “Agricultural Statesman,” 7, 13–14. 107. “Abolish Capitalism Evils, Prevent Communism — Leahy,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 22 March 1935. 108. “Three Former Agitators in This Section,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 8 June 1934; “Authorities Recognize Well Known Communists in Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 28 June 1934. 109. “Immigration Officers Nab Communists Here,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 25 July 1934. 110. “Farmers Form County-Wide Protective Association,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 1 August 1934. 111. “Labor Situation Here Misrepresented by Clinton J. Taft,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 August 1934. 112. “Four Arrested by City Police,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 13 September 1934; “Arrest Resident from Imperial in Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 December 1934. Taft was active throughout Southern California in defending the civil liberties of labor organizers. See Escobar, Race, Police, 83, 100. 113. “Sheriff Stops Christmas Riot at City Jail,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 26 December 1934.

300

notes to pages 158–161

5. the emerging mexican (american) 1. M. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush, 2–5; Nash, The American West Transformed, chap. 1 passim. For an opposing perspective arguing that the economic transformation of California was ephemeral as well as conservative see Lotchin, “California Cities.” 2. For an in-depth discussion of the definition and forces shaping a political generation of people, see M. T. García, Mexican Americans, 2–6; G. J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 254; M. T. García, “La Frontera,” 97; Takaki, Double Victory, 5. 3. “Oxnarder,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 August 1946; quote from Manuel Pérez to Frank Barajas, e-mail, 5 October 2000. 4. “Seek Increased Sale of Lemon, Orange Juice,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 19 April 1939; “Citrus Industry Related at Men’s Fellowship Event,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 10 May 1939; “Outlook for Ventura County during 1940,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 20 January 1940; “Local Lemon Demand Good Over Nation,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 November 1940; “Citrus Crop Marketing Sets Record, Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 November 1940; “Farmer Income Has Increase,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 May 1941. 5. Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 177; Burke, Olson’s New Deal for California, 79. 6. “Farm Bureau Committees Rap Wage Setting,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 16 June 1939. 7. “Associated Farmers Detail Stand in Statement to Various County Organizations,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 August 1939; “Olson Fights Relief Bill,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 May 1941. 8. McBane, “House That Lemons Built,” 44; Minutes of Legislative Meeting, Agricultural Council of California Sacramento, California, 9–10 March 1939, Box 1, Reel 29–30, Letters Sent, 1901–1905, Charles Collins Teague Papers, University of California at Los Angeles. 9. McBane, “House That Lemons Built,” 150; “Agricultural Group Debates Mexican Employment,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 March 1940; “Iron Out Labor Situation with Local Mexicans,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 28 March 1940. 10. “Labor Head Raps Outside Workers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 15 May 1940. 11. “Citrus Growers in Three States Seek Relief,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 May 1940. 12. “Farmers Rap Labor at Fresno,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 December 1940. 13. McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 235–36. 14. “Organized Labor Opposes Plea of Citrus Industry,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 4 May 1940; “Farmers Plan Organization,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 28 January 1941; “Farm Labor Urges Action in Emergency,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 February 1941; “Fight on Farm Unions Urged,” Los Angeles Times, 13 February 1941; “Citrus Growers Vote ‘Fight to the Finish,’” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 February 1941; “Farmers Call Out the Dough in Lemon Fight,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 19 February 1941. notes to pages 163–166

301

15. An Address by C. C. Teague to a Mass Meeting of Ventura County Citrus Growers Held in the Auditorium of the Union High School and Santa Paula, 21 February 1941, Box 3, Reel 2, Papers and Addresses, 1939–1950, Charles Collins Teague Papers. 16. “Farm Leader Blasts Bridges, Hits Relief,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 May 1940; “Local Citrus Strike Near Last Spring,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 October 1940. 17. “Fifth Column Warn Given,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 May 1940; “Associated Farmers Embark on ‘Fifth Column’ Battle,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 June 1940; “Fifth Column Hit Here as Bill Sought,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 October 1940. 18. “Farmer Face Loss of Crop in Lemon Strike,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 January 1941. 19. Eloise Simmons, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999. 20. “Lemon Strike Spreads to Saticoy; 1400 Out,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 21 [31] January 1941; “5 More County Packing Houses Get Strike Threat,” Oxnard PressCourier, 4 February 1941; “Lemon Pickers on Strike in Oxnard,” Star Free Press, 30 January 1941; “Ventura Citrus Strike Spreads,” Los Angeles Times, 6 February 1941; “Ninth Lemon Plant Picketed,” Los Angeles Times, 7 February 1941; “Pizcadores Mexicanos en Huelga,” La Opinión, 1 February 1941; “Mas Mexicanos En La Huelga De Pizcadores,” La Opinión, 15 February 1941; “Fuerte Lucha En Una Huelga,” La Opinión, 23 February 1941. Anthropologist Martha Menchaca estimates that six thousand pickers and packers were involved at the height of the strike. See The Mexican Outsiders, 84. 21. Meany, “Peonage in California,” 5. 22. “nlrb Orders Labor Vote,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 November 1940; “Citrus Workers Union Elections Set December 9,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 December 1940; “Strike Peace Asked Here,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 1 February 1941; “afl Lemon Union Storm cio Rally,” Los Angeles Times, 2 February 1941; “Union Gives Strike Cause,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 February 1941; “4000 Mexicanos En Huelga,” La Opinión, 11 February 1941; “En Saticoy Ya Han Triunfado Los Limoneros,” La Opinión, 8 March 1941; “Auxilios Para Los Mexicanos De La Huelga,” La Opinión, 19 March 1941. 23. “Farmer Face Loss of Crop in Lemon Strike,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 January 1941; “Lemon Strike Spreads to Saticoy; 1400 Out,” 21 [should be 31] January 1941; “Lemon House Says Strike Is Confusing,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 February 1941; “Pizcadores Mexicanos en Huelga,” La Opinión, 1 February 1941. 24. “La Huelga De Pizcadores De Limon, En Pie,” La Opinión, 25 February 1941. 25. “Labor Summons More Help in Lemon Strike,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 February 1941; “Federal Referee on Job,” Star Free Press, 1 February 1941; “Government Acts in Strike,” Los Angeles Times, 3 February 1941; “Lemon House Workers

302

notes to pages 167–169

Form Organization,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 February 1941; “Fillmore Pickers on Strike,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 February 1941; “Que No Sirvan De Esquiroles Los Mexicanos,” La Opinión, 10 March 1941; “Dos Alcaldes Ofrecen Mediar En La Huelga,” La Opinión, 12 March 1941. 26. “Labor Summons More Help in Lemon Strike,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 February 1941; “5 More County Packing Houses Get Strike Threat,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 February 1941; “Teamsters Back Citrus Strike,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 February 1941; “Union Tells of Meetings,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 February 1941; “Lemon Strikers Ask Union’s Aid,” Los Angeles Times, 4 February 1941; “Deordenes En La Huelga De Los Limoneros,” La Opinión, 10 February 1941; “Dos Alcaldes Ofrecen Mediar En La Huelga,” La Opinión, 12 March 1941; “Lemon Boycott Hits Los Angeles,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 5 March 1941; Ruiz, Cannery Women/ Cannery Lives, 76. 27. “Growers Ask sra Probe as Mediation Refused,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 26 February 1941; “Government Acts in Strike,” Los Angeles Times, 3 February 1941. 28. “Legislative Inquiry Sought on Feeding Lemon Strikers,” Los Angeles Times, 27 February 1941. 29. “Growers Ask State Fight against Lemon Boycott,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 March 1941; “Farmers Get Mediation Bid,” Los Angeles Times, 8 March 1941. 30. “Packers Threatened by Union,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 7 February 1941; “4 Arrested in Lemon Pickers Strike Fight,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 February 1941; “Reign of Terror,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 19 February 1941; “Picket Leader Arrested for Battery Charge,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 February 1941; “Thirteen Women, 3 Men Cited for Disturbing Pickers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 28 February 1941; “Oxnard Mexican Held for Threat on Strike,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 7 March 1941; “Probe Stabbing in Strike, Beating Told,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 12 April 1941; “Picket Captain Seeks Complaint for Threat,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 March 1941; “Terrorism Charged in Strike,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 April 1941; “Lemon Pickers Trials End in Guilty Pleas,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 17 March 1941; “Strike Peace Conference Rumor Declared Untrue,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 17 April 1941; “Fillmore Women Cited for Heckling,” Star Free Press, 28 February 1941; “16 Facing Court in Fillmore,” Star Free Press, 10 March 1941; “Eighteen to Face Court in Lemon Pickers’ Strike,” Los Angeles Times, 10 March 1941; “Deordenes En La Huelga De Los Limoneros,” La Opinión, 10 February 1941; “500 Pizcadores Mas, En Huelga,” La Opinión, 18 February 1941. 31. “Strike Spreads to Farm as Union Demands Wage Jump,” Oxnard PressCourier, 27 March 1941; “Ranch Hand Strike Hits More,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 28 March 1941; “General Strike for Farms Is Threatened,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 April 1941; “Citrus Union Puts 259 Local Ranches on New Unfair List,” Oxnard notes to pages 170–172

303

Press-Courier, 3 April 1941; “Growers Blame Union for Sit-Down Tactics,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 April 1941; “En Saticoy Ya Han Triunfado Los Limoneros,” La Opinión, 8 March 1941. 32. “In the ‘Times’ Today,” Los Angeles Times, 8 February 1941; “Union Chiefs Visit Oxnard,” Los Angeles Times, 20 February 1941; “Labor Official Clears College,” Los Angeles Times, 21 February 1941; “Battlelines Form in Citrus Strike,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 12 February 1941; “Strikebreaking by School Charged,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 19 February 1941; “Dan Ayuda A Los Mexicanos De La Huelga,” La Opinión, 26 February 1941; “Llamamiento A Los Mexicanos,” La Opinión, 1 March 1941; “Que No Sirvan De Esquiroles Los Mexicanos,” La Opinión, 10 March 1941; “Otros Mil Pizcadores Mexicanos En Huelga,” La Opinión, 11 March 1941; “Durley Asks Strike Help,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 May 1941; “About the Citrus Strike,” Oxnard Press Courier, 24 February 1941; “State Relief Head to Investigate Strike Aid,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 1 March 1941; “Pickers Set Record for Local Fruit,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 March 1941; Frank Hernandez Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 28 June 2000; Josephine Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 16 March 1994; “Farmers Announce Records,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 April 1941; “Seek Strikers Campsite,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 May 1941; “Mexicans Evicted, Okies Moving In,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 30 April 1941; Meany, “Peonage in California,” 31. 33. “Llamamiento En Ventura,” La Opinión, 15 April 1941; “Meany Promises Lemon Strike Aid,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 16 April 1941. 34. “Meany Promises Lemon Strike Aid,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 16 April 1941. 35. “Strikers Given Notice to Vacate Farm Houses,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 February 1941; “To Evict Strikers; Peace Sought,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 February 1941; “Growers Blame Union for Sit-Down Tactics,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 April 1941; “Growers Demand Eviction,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 7 April 1941; “Court Summons Sent Striking Pickers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 April 1941; “Pickers Fight Eviction Efforts in Three Courts,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 April 1941; “Grand Jury May Investigate Strike, New Complaint Made,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 15 April 1941; “Attorneys Wrangle in First Eviction Trials in the County,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 16 April 1941; “Lemon Men Strike Back,” Los Angeles Times, 15 February 1941; Citrus Strike Chief Jailed,” Los Angeles Times, 18 February 1941; “Strikers Refuse to Move; County Seeks Camp Location,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 7 May 1941; “Terrorism Charged in Strike,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 April 1941; “Les Cortan La Luz Y El Gas A Los Pizcadores,” La Opinión, 11 April 1941; “State Federation Pledges Full Aid,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 26 February 1941; Meany, “Peonage in California,” 31.

304

notes to pages 172–173

36. “Strikers Promised sra Relief; Food Offices,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 February 1941; “Striking, Pickers Storm sra Demanding Food,” Los Angeles Times, 25 February 1941; “Legislative Inquiry Sought on Feeding Lemon Strikers,” Los Angeles Times, 27 February 1941; “Farmers Get Mediation Bid,” Los Angeles Times, 8 March 1941; “Dan Ayuda A Los Mexicanos De La Huelga,” La Opinión, 26 February 1941; “Llamamiento A Los Mexicanos,” La Opinión, 1 March 1941; “Otros Mil Pizcadores Mexicanos En Huelga,” La Opinión, 11 March 1941; “sra Chiefs Says Strikers Are Eligible,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 5 March 1941; “Foods Are Given to Ventura Strikers,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 26 March 1941; Burke, Olson’s New Deal for California, 129. 37. Briegel, “The Alianza Hispano Americana,” 19; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. Thomas E. Sheridan writes, “Many scholars regard it as one of the major precursors of the more militant Mexican American organizations emerging after World War II.” Los Tucsonenses, 108. 38. “Los Pizcadores Huelguistas Del Condado De Ventura Han Formado Un Comité De Auxilio,” La Opinión, 4 March 1941; “Auxilios Para Los Mexicanos De La Huelga,” La Opinión, 19 March 1941; “Ayuda Enviada A Los Pizcadores,” La Opinión, 18 April 1941; “State Federation Pledges Full Aid,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 26 February 1941; “S.B. Strike Aid Dance Next Week,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 9 July 1941; “Big Crop Losses in Citrus Strike,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 26 February 1941; “Strike Relief Support Growing,” Ventura County Union Labor News,” 2 July 1941. Anthropologist Martha Menchaca details the importance of such network of support in the strike and describes the testimony of one informant: “Roney amusingly recalls that, although picketing was dangerous, it was an easier task than the activities in Los Angeles. She remembers gratefully that if it had not been for the hard work of the Los Angeles Mexican community the strikers would have gone hungry. She also recalls the faces and compassionate words offered by the Mexican families whom she met when she collected donations. Many of these urban Mexican families were poor, yet they were willing to help the farm workers by offering food, money, or clothing.” The Mexican Outsiders, 85. 39. “Union Pleads for Meeting of Growers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 April 1941; “More Strike Families Are Evicted,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 1 May 1941; “Durley Asks Strike Help,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 May 1941; “Strikers Refuse to Move; County Seeks Camp Location,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 7 May 1941; “Supervisors Vote Aid for Evicted Strikers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 May 1941; “Seek Strikers Campsite,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 May 1941; “Achstetter Fined $25 in Santa Paula Row,” 3 May 1941; “Local Strike Meeting Due,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 5 May 1941; “Supervisors Debate Use of Parks for Strikers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 May 1941; “Ex-Strikers to Have Home on Rodeo Grounds,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 May 1941; “Strike notes to pages 173–181

305

Camp Nearing on Vineyard Ave.,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 17 May 1941; “Settlement of Strike Problem Due Here Soon,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 May 1941; “Oxnarder ‘Up in Arms’ Over fsa Camp Here,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 May 1941; “Local Group to Continue Camp Fight,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 28 May 1941; “Son Lanzadas Unas Familias De Pizcadores,” La Opinión, 2 May 1941. 40. “Strikers Demand Aid after sra Funds Ends,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 June 1941; Frank H. Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 28 June 2000; “Families Move into New El Rio Campsite,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 May 1941; “Strikers End Loafing as sra End Near,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 June 1941. 41. Josephine Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 16 March 1994. 42. “Strikers Demand Aid after sra Funds Ends,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 June 1941. 43. “Families Move into New El Rio Campsite,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 May 1941. 44. Josephine Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 16 March 1994; Frank H. Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 28 June 2000; Manuel Pérez, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 August 2000; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. 45. “Attorneys Wrangle in First Eviction Trials in the County,” Oxnard PressCourier, 16 April 1941; “Union Pleads for Meeting of Growers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 April 1941; “Otros Mil Pizcadores Mexicanos En Huelga,” La Opinión, 11 March 1941; “Platicas En La Huelga De Los Limoneros,” La Opinión, 4 May 1941; “La Union De Pizcadores De Limon Rechaza Las Cargos De Los Rancheros En Ese Condado,” La Opinión, 17 April 1941; “Es Justa La Huelga De Pizcadores En Ventura,” La Opinión, 25 May 1941. 46. “Es Justa La Huelga De Pizcadores En Ventura,” La Opinión, 25 May 1941. 47. “Los Pizcadores Están A Punto De Fracasar,” La Opinión, 14 May 1941. 48. “Hay Optimismo En La Huelga De Pizcadores,” La Opinión, 15 May 1941; G. G. González, Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing, 86. 49. “Olson Fights Relief Bill,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 May 1941; “Strikers End Loafing as sra End Near,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 June 1941; “Citrus Strikers Ask nlrb Status,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 25 June 1941. 50. “Strikers Demand Aid after sra Funds Ends,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 June 1941. 51. “Last Relief Checks Go Today; wpa Cut Certain,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 June 1941; “Strikers End Loafing as sra End Near,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 June 1941; “Mexicanos De Ventura Grave Situación,” La Opinión, 14 June 1941; “No Ayuda la Colonia a los Limoneros,” La Opinión, 18 June 1941; “Activarán la Campaña de Auxilios Para Ventura,” La Opinión, 22 June 1941; “Siguen Llegando Esquiroles A La Zona Limonera,” La Opinión, 2 July 1941; “nlrb Recognizes Citrus Workers,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 16 July 1941; Frank H. Barajas,

306

notes to pages 181–184

interview by Frank Barajas, 28 June 2000; Manuel M. Lopez, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 December 1999; Menchaca, The Mexican Outsiders, 88–89; Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 14, 80, 113, 124–25. 52. Ruiz, “ucapawa ,” 98, 207–10. 53. “Strike Relief Support Growing,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 2 July 1941; “nlrb Recognizes Citrus Workers,” Ventura County Union Labor News, 16 July 1941; “Union Admits Citrus Strike Here Is Ended,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 July 1941; “Termina La Huelga De Pizcadores,” La Opinión, 15 July 1941. 54. “Growers Pledge Jobs Minus Discrimination,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 15 July 1941; Teague, Fifty Years a Rancher, 148. 55. Letters to the editor, Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 February 1941. 56. Letters to the editor, Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 February 1941. 57. Letters to the editor, Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 February 1941. For a detailed discussion of the impact of tuberculosis on the Mexican community in Ventura County see Morales, Dionicio Morales, 90–91. 58. “Union Shuts Off Food Help for Residents of fsa Camp,” Oxnard PressCourier, 19 July 1941. 59. “Martinez Gives Policy,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 March 1942. 60. “Vote for V. A. Martinez,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 March 1942; “We Recommend . . . ,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 April 1942; “Press-Courier Slate Wins Election,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 15 April 1942. 61. “Rotary Subscribes 10 Per Cent of Entire Oxnard uso Quota,” Oxnard PressCourier, 19 August 1942; “uso Fund Drive Nears Half Way Mark,” Oxnard PressCourier, 14 September 1942; “Public Invited to Big uso Hall Opening,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 12 December 1942; “7th Street uso Fetes 80th Batt.,” Oxnard PressCourier, 21 September 1944; “Oxnard uso Marks Second Anniversary,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 December 1944. 62. “‘Bob’ Hinostro to Be Added to Police Force,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 October 1943; “Robert Hinostro Honored by Air Raid Wardens,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 October 1943; “City Growing Pains Occupy Plans Body,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 June 1945; Oxnard Press-Courier, 11 July 1945; Robert Hinostro, interview by Dawn Gómez, n.d. 63. “Saludos Amigos!” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 December 1943; “Saludos Amigos!” Oxnard Press-Courier, 21 December 1943; “Saludos Amigos!” Oxnard Press-Courier, 28 December 1943; “Saludos Amigos!” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 February 1944; “Saludos Amigos!” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 February 1944; “Saludos Amigos!” Oxnard Press-Courier, 16 March 1944; “Saludos Amigos!” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 March 1944; “Saludos Amigos!” Oxnard Press Courier, 19 April 1944; “Saludos Amigos!” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 June 1944. notes to pages 184–188

307

64. Quote from Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999; “Saludos Amigos,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 5 April 1944. For a discussion on the concept of “México Lindo” and the loyalties of the Mexicano community to Mexico, see Rosales, ¡Pobre Raza! 5–7; G. J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 3–5; and G. J. Sánchez, “The ‘New Nationalism.’” 65. “Valedictory,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 9 June 1939. 66. “New Public School for East Section of Oxnard,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 3 July 1939; “Grammar School Board Purchase 6 Acres for East Side school,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 12 September 1939. 67. “’71 Integration Plan for Oxnard Schools Affirmed in Ruling,” Los Angeles Times, 11 December 1974, a 3. 68. “Names for New School Suggested,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 June 1940; “School Vote Favors Name of Ramona,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 July 1940; “School Enrollment Mark Shows Population Gains,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 September 1941; Robert Hinostro, interviews by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999 and 8 August 2000. 69. “Housing Need Stirs Oxnard,” Los Angeles Times, 9 February 1941; “Housing Need Here Discussed,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 April 1941; “Cadet Dance at Cal-Aero,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 19 April 1941; “Oxnard’s Building Boom,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 1 August 1941; “Hundreds to Seek Homes in District Next Week,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 August 1941; “Population of Oxnard Grows 37 Per Cent,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 August 1941; “Camarillo Hospital Becomes Largest in California,” 4 December 1941; Cuevas, “The Oxnard Area,” 57–61; U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940; “Population of Oxnard Is 11,178,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 1 December 1942; “Population City Set 15,000,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 October 1943; “See 17,500 Population,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 April 1944. By 1950 the city led the county in size with a population of 21,567. U.S. Census Office, Seventeenth Census of the United States: 1950. 70. “City Near Building Record of 1926, Imus See Chance,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 November 1940; “98 New Homes Built in Oxnard during ’40,” Oxnard PressCourier, 27 December 1940; “Housing Need Here Discussed,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 April 1941; “$25,000 Housing Administration Project Here,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 11 April 1942; “Housing Gets ok by fha ,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 15 December 1942. 71. “Additional Houses Due Oxnard Area,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 December 1942; “U.S. Housing Project Near,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 January 1943; “San Miguel Project Does $425,000 Annual Business,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 September 1945; “See 17,500 Population,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 April 1944; “Dedicate San Miguel Homes with Open House Labor Day,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 August 1944; “Housing Project Being Rushed,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 October 1944; “Rush Work on Defense Homes,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 31 October 1944; “New Housing

308

notes to pages 188–190

Project Here,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 November 1944; “Housing Needs Met by Building 1080 Family Units,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 May 1945; “Permanent Housing City’s Big Need Now,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 August 1945; “Oxnarders Dispute Sub-Standard Home Tally,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 August 1945; “A Low-Rental Home Project Is Approved,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 7 September 1945; “Housing Need Here Discussed,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 21 November 1945. 72. “Housing Plan to Be Debated Here Tonight,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 September 1945; “A Low-Rental Home Project Is Approved,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 7 September 1945; “Racial Strife Predicted Over Housing,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 16 February 1944. Housing officials determined a family with combined annual earnings between $1,050 to $2,160 to be low-income. 73. “Council Can’t Regulate Cost City of Homes,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 October 1945. 74. “Council Can’t Regulate Cost City of Homes,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 October 1945; “Reservations, Restrictions, and Protective Covenants Applicable to the Eugene H. Agee Subdivision lot 132 of Patterson Ranch Subdivision of Ventura County,” Ventura County Clerk and Recorder, Book 1005, 18 June 1951, 36. 75. M. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush, 92; Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 25–26. 76. Robert Hinostro, interviews by Denise Gómez, 2 and 14 June 1999; Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 August 2000. 77. Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999. 78. William Soo Hoo, interview by Mary Johnson and Hazel Clymer, 27 October 1982; Dagodag, “A Social Geography of La Colonia,” 156. Real estate businessmen dominated local housing authorities in California during the twentieth century. M. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush, 107–11. 79. Bedford Pinkard, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. Not until 1963 did the California legislature enact the Rumford Fair Housing Law, barring racial discrimination in the home industry. Two years later, however, the California electorate overwhelmingly approved Proposition 14, repealing the Rumford Act. See Rice, Bullough, and Orsi, The Elusive Eden, 537. For an incisive discussion of the actions of homeowners and public and private institutions in stonewalling fair housing practices see Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness, chap. 2. 80. “Negro uso Center to Be Instituted in Oxnard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 17 March 1944; “Negro uso to Be Housed in Center,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 March 1944; “Colored uso Has Opening,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 April 1944; “Colored uso Begins Dance Sessions Here,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 12 April 1944; “7th Street uso Fetes 80th Batt.,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 21 September 1944; “7th Street uso A Vital Force to Build Morale,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 May 1945; Robert Valles, notes to pages 191–193

309

interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. During the first two years of the war, few African Americans migrated to the West. This changed in 1943 with the increasing demand for labor. See White, “‘It’s Your Misfortune,’” 505–7. For a discussion on the recruitment of laborers, especially African Americans from the South, during the war see M. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush, 31–39. 81. “Problems of Negro Topic at Rotary,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 12 April 1944. 82. “Negro Group Asks Housing,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 June 1944. 83. “Negro Group Asks Housing,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 June 1944; “Tenant Sits as Workmen Raze Home,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 1 May 1945; “China Alley to Be No More Jan. 1,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 August 1945; Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 266–70. On the Naval Construction Base at Port Hueneme, more than a thousand African American enlisted men conducted a brief hunger strike in protest to racial discrimination in relation to the navy’s refusal to promote black sailors and filling open posts of leadership with Euro-American servicemen transferred in from other bases. Ninety percent of the Thirty-Fourth Battalion stationed at Port Hueneme consisted of African Americans. “Negro Seabees Call Off Hunger Strike; Eat Hearty Breakfast,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 5 March 1945. 84. “Labor Need on Farms Told Here,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 31 July 1941; “Importing of Mexican Labor Groups Planned,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 5 September 1941; “Farm Labor Shortage Is Acute, Say State Growers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 November 1941; White, “‘It’s Your Misfortune,’” 503–5; Balderrama and Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal, 121–22. Historian David G. Gutiérrez maintains that protests regarding labor shortages arose as early as 1940 with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s approval of the Selective Service Act in September of that year. See Walls and Mirrors, 133. 85. “Farmers Ask Labor Help Here,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 11 February 1942; “The Oxnard News Week,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 February 1942; “Farmers Offer Peace,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 26 February 1942; “Urge Farmers’ Deferment,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 May 1942; “Farm Vexed by Labor Need,” Oxnard PressCourier, 13 August 1942; Tentative Program for State-wide Agricultural Meeting of Farm Organization to Consider California Labor Shortage in Its Relation to the Impending National Food Shortage, n.d., Box 2, Reel 1–2, Papers and Addresses, 1914–1938, Teague Papers. 86. “Schools Pledge Aid in Farm Labor Need,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 12 February 1942; “Jaysee Plans Usual Opening,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 19 August 1942; “Grammar School Work Permits to Expire on Nov. 1,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 October 1942; “Farmers Study Role of Students,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 11 February 1943. The California State Department of Education coordinated the use of students in agriculture in 1942. See Nash, The American West Transformed, 48.

310

notes to pages 193–194

87. “250 Sign for Farm Harvest,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 June 1942; “Harvesting of Crops Needs Help,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 September 1942. 88. Nash, The American West Transformed, 49–50. 89. Acuña, Occupied America, 261–62; Calavita, Inside the State, 1, 19, 22; G. G. González, Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing, 207; Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 133; Nash, The American West Transformed, 50–51. 90. Acuña, Occupied America, 262–63; Calavita, Inside the State, 19–20; Nash, The American West Transformed, 51; “Farm Labor Needs Acute,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 March 1943. 91. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 134–35. 92. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 134–37; Ruiz, Cannery Women/Cannery Lives, 56. Mario T. García defines a political generation, regardless of citizenship status or nativity, as a group affected by historical changes such as war, economic depression, and/or persecution. A biological generation, on the other hand, is defined by boundaries of age. See Mexican Americans, 3–6. For an analysis of the development of a Mexican American identity in Los Angeles during the Great Depression and World War II see G. J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, chap. 12. 93. John and Mary Acosta, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 April 1999; Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 August 2000; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. 94. Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. 95. John and Mary Acosta, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 April 1999; Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 August 2000. 96. John and Mary Acosta, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 April 1999; Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 August 2000; Robert Valles, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999; Menchaca, The Mexican Outsiders, 98. The following reports and testimony indicate instances of Mexican American youths, specifically pachucos to be discussed below, who targeted braceros with violence: “Find Beaten Man Near Warehouse,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 124 April 1944; “Pachuco Gang Assaults Man,” Oxnard Press-Courier, October 1944; “Pachuco Gang Robs National,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 November 1944; Frank H. Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 28 June 2000. 97. Congress did not authorize the bracero program until 29 April 1943, with the passage of Public Law 45. Calavita, Inside the State, 1, 19, 22, appendix B. 98. “Mexican Nationals Arrests Total 46,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 5 August 1944; “More Mexican Nationals Nabbed,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 7 August 1944; “Arrest 15 More Mexican Workers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 August 1944; “Mexicans Missing from Work in State,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 June 1945; Charles C. Teague to notes to pages 195–198

311

Colonel Phillip T. Bruton Labor Administrator War Food Administration Department of Agriculture, 1 May 1944, Box 2, Reel 1–2, Papers and Addresses, 1914–1938, Teague Papers. 99. “Mexican Citrus Workers to Arrive Here at 3:30 p.m. ,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 December 1942; “Farm Labor Needs Acute,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 1943; “Mexican Official Visits Citrus Workers in County; Tell Aid,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 January 1943. 100. “250 Mexican Workers Arrive,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 March 1945; García y Griego, “Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers,” 50. 101. “Foreign Labor for Farm Aid Sought in ’46,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 September 1945. 102. “Farm Labor Needs Acute,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 March 1943; “Teague Enroute to Washington,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 19 March 1943; “Growers Must Hurry to Get Harvest Help,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 August 1943; “Farm Bureau in Plea for Help in Lemon Harvest,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 January 1944; “OxnardVentura Area in Labor Group II Now,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 28 June 1943; “Ventura County Needs 3500 Crop Workers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 April 1944; “Report Farm Labor Supply Discouraging,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 May 1944; “Ventura County Farmers Facing Critical Harvest Labor Shortage,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 June 1944. 103. “Need Workers at Port Base,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 August 1943; “Port Hueneme Naval Base on ‘Urgent’ Worker List,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 21 December 1943; “The Base Begs for Workers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 April 1945; “Port Hueneme Base Training 30,000 Men,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 May 1945; Greenland, Port Hueneme, 96. 104. “Officials Order Caution for Next Raid Alarms,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 1941; “Blackout in City Is Reported Improving,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 11 December 1941; “County Store Closing Urged,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 31 December 1941; “Ask Merchants to Dim Lights in Oxnard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 17 August 1942; “Schedule Street Dance for Local Mexicans Sunday,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 September 1943. 105. Manuel Pérez, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 August 2000. Roger W. Lotchin contends that “More than any other event, the blackouts united a disparate urban people.” “California Cities,” 398. 106. “Japs Ordered from Harbor,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 December 1941; “Jap Farmers Urged to Move Local Produce,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 December 1941; “Aliens Give Up Radios, Cameras,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 December 1941; “Many Radios Cameras Here,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 December 1941. 107. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 386; “Local Japanese Arrested; To Be Held for fbi ,” Oxnard Daily Courier, 2 January 1942; “Two More Japs Arrested

312

notes to pages 198–200

Here for Government,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 5 February 1942; “Seven More Jap Aliens Arrested Near Oxnard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 February 1942; “Inadomi Taken Out of County,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 March 1942. 108. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 750–51. 109. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 389. 110. “Supervisors Hit Japs in County,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 February 1942; “Grand Jury Passes Anti-Axis Resolution Urging Evacuation,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 7 February 1942; “Mira Loma Celebrates End of Second Year in Oxnard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 July 1942. 111. “Chamber Urges Curfew for Japs and Aliens,” Oxnard Press Courier, 28 February 1942. 112. “Racial Tolerance,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 February 1942. 113. “County Product Output Hit by Jap Evacuation,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 5 March 1942; “Farmers Pledge Full Output of All Produce after Japs Move,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 March 1942. 114. Brokaw, The Greatest Generation, 216; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 753; Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 390–91. 115. Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Brokaw, The Greatest Generation, 217–18. 116. Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; “Elmelund New Rotary Head,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 11 April 1942. 117. Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; “500 Japs Must Leave Local Area Next Week,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 21 April 1942; “Japanese Quit County,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 April 1942; “Former Oxnard Japanese to Leave Tulare,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 11 August 1942. 118. Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999. 119. Nao Takasugi, interview by Frank Barajas, 19 February 1999; Ignacio Carmona, interview by Frank Barajas, 9 August 2000; Manuel Pérez, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 August 2000; “Inadomi Sells Local Market,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 26 February 1942; Matsumoto, Farming the Home Place, 99–100; Sone, Nisei Daughter, 161–64; Takaki, Double Victory, 43–44; Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 272–73; Mendez vs. Westminster for all the Children — para todos los ninos. 120. Mazón, Zoot-Suit Riots, 26; Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 125. 121. McWilliams, North from Mexico, 206–9; Barajas, “Defense Committees of Sleepy Lagoon,” 33. 122. Quotes from “Police Use Tear Gas against Local Crowd,” Oxnard PressCourier, 2 February 1942; “Officials Flay Tear Gas Use,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 February 1942. 123. “Pachuco Boys Ranks Thinning,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 August 1942. notes to pages 201–204

313

124. “Pachuco Boys Ranks Thinning,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 August 1942; Eloise Simmons, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999; Joe Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 13 August 2000; “Oxnard Youths Held after Riot,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 November 1942; Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 83; Sanchez-Tranquilino, “Mano a Mano,” 39; Cosgrove, “The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare,” 84; Vigil, Barrio Gangs, 40. 125. “Oxnard Youths Held after Riot,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 November 1942. “Police Grab Gang Suspect,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 December 1942; “Youth Arrested Here Formerly School Inmates,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 December 1942; Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 123; McWilliams, North from Mexico, 215; White, “‘It’s Your Misfortune,’” 509; Tuck, Not with the Fist, 141; Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot; Ramirez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit. 126. McWilliams, North from Mexico, 212; Escobar, Race, Police, 212. 127. “Pachuco Boys Ranks Thinning,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 August 1942. 128. “Pachuco Suspects Arrested; Given Free Haircuts,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 15 October 1942; “Zoot Suit Gang Stabs Sailor,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 November 1944. 129. “Avert Murder by Tear Gas in Pachuco Riot,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 17 September 1942. 130. “Judge Drapeau Brands Pachuco Gang as ‘Fifth Columnist,’” Oxnard PressCourier, 18 September 1942. 131. “Judge Drapeau Brands Pachuco Gang as ‘Fifth Columnist,’” Oxnard PressCourier, 18 September 1942; “Four More Pachuco Boys Arrested,” Oxnard PressCourier, 23 September 1942; Mazón, Zoot-Suit Riots, 26; Barajas, “Defense Committees of Sleepy Lagoon.” 132. “Judge Drapeau Brands Pachuco Gang as ‘Fifth Columnist,’” Oxnard PressCourier, 18 September 1942. 133. “Judge ‘Jails’ Zooters,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 December 1942. 134. Quote from “Pachuco Gangs Fading Out,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 5 October 1942; Sanchez-Tranquilino and Tagg, “The Pachuco’s Flayed Hide,” 101. 135. Bedford Pinkard, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 March 1999. For incisive interpretations on the representation and use of the zoot suit by African Americans and Japanese Americans see Kelley, Race Rebels, and Spickard, “Not Just the Quiet People,” 78–94. 136. Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 August 2000. 137. Robert Hinostro, interview by Frank Barajas, 8 August 2000. 138. “Zoot-Suit Problem,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 June 1943; “Police Foil Attempt to Burglarize Oxnard Homes,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 December 1942; “Police Grab Gang Suspect,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 December 1942; “School Heads Get Inside on Youth Problem,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 April 1943; “Name Leader of Pachucos,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 January 1943; Sanchez-Tranquilino, “Mano

314

notes to pages 205–208

a Mano,” 35; Sanchez-Tranquilino and Tagg, “The Pachuco’s Flayed Hide,” 101; Cosgrove, “The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare,” 79–80. 139. “School Heads Get Inside on Youth Problem,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 April 1943. 140. Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, 14. 141. Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 83–84; G. J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 13, 269; Tuck, Not with the Fist, 197–218; Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot; Ramirez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit. For an insightful critique of Paz’s analysis see Sanchez-Tranquilino, “Mano a Mano,” 34–42. 142. Lilly Robles, interview by Frank Barajas, 9 August 2000. 143. Manuel Pérez, interview by Frank Barajas, 17 August 2000. 144. Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot; Ramirez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit. 145. Quoted in Loza, Barrio Rhythm, 147. 146. Escobar, Race, Police, 184. 147. Eloise Simmons, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999. George J. Sánchez also comments that parents particularly opposed their daughters dressing in the pachuca style. Becoming Mexican American, 265. For a discussion on the impact of the cinematic performances of Dolores Del Rio and Lupe Velez, coupled with cosmetic advertisements in both English- and Spanish-language newspapers, on the consumerism of Mexican American women see Ruiz, “Star Struck,” 112–13. 148. “Cholitas Wage War for Zoots,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 11 June 1943; Ramirez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit, 72; Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 83; McWilliams, North from Mexico, 231. 149. “Oxnard Youths Held after Riot,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 November 1942; Frank H. Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 28 June 2000; Joe Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 13 August 2000; Eloise Simmons, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999; Lilly Robles, interview by Frank Barajas, 9 August 2000; Vigil, Barrio Gangs, 121. 150. “Fights, No Dances, Council Rules in Boulevard Problem,” Oxnard PressCourier, 24 February 1943. For a discussion of tensions between Mexican Americans and both undocumented immigrants and braceros in the Pomona Valleys see M. García, A World of Its Own, 177–78. 151. “Mexicans to Bar Zooters from Dance,” Oxnard Press Courier, 26 February 1943; “Police Chief Praises Mexican Cooperation,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 September 1943. 152. Zoot Suit Boy Quiet,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 June 1943; “Schedule Street Dance for Local Mexicans Sunday,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 September 1943; “Swing Shift Dances Ban Passed Here,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 June 1943; “Police Chief Praises Mexican Cooperation,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 September 1943. notes to pages 208–211

315

153. “Oxnard Youths Held after Riot,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 November 1942; Frank H. Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 28 June 2000; Joe Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 13 August 2000; Eloise Simmons, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999; Lilly Robles, interview by Frank Barajas, 9 August 2000; Mazón, ZootSuit Riots, 7–8; Ruiz, “Texture, Text, and Context,” 149. 154. “Three Men Robbed, Stripped by Zoot-Suited Youths Here,” Oxnard PressCourier, 13 April 1943; “5 Suspects Arrested in Robbery Cases,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 April 1943; “Zoot Riot Runs Wild,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 June 1943; McWilliams, North from Mexico, 220–25; Escobar, Race, Police, 234–42; Tuck, Not with the Fist, 217. 155. “Zoot Suit Boys Quiet,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 June 1943. 156. Mazón, Zoot-Suit Riots, 59; “Oxnard Youths Held after Riot,” Oxnard PressCourier, 27 November 1942; “Judge ‘Jails’ Zooters,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 2 December 1942; “Police Grab Gang Suspect,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 December 1942; “Youth Who Beat Sailor Sentenced,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 31 December 1942; “Soldier Hit with Wrench,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 February 1943; “Police Report Sailors Beats Off Attackers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 21 April 1943; “Sailors Arrested Following Attack on Young Wife,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 April 1943; “Report Riot on Boulevard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 April 1944; “Sailors Beaten by Civilians,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 October 1945; Eloise Simmons, interview by Frank Barajas, 15 July 1999; Joe Barajas, interview by Frank Barajas, 13 August 2000. 157. “Police Report Women Periled,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 December 1942.

6. creating ce´sar 1. John Soria, interview by Frank Bardacke, 25 January 1996. I wish to thank Frank Bardacke, author of the magisterial book Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farmworkers, for sharing this oral history interview with me. 2. John Soria, interview by Frank Bardacke, 25 January 1996. 3. John Soria, interview by Frank Bardacke, 25 January 1996; “Civ Improvement Assn. Will Hear L.A. Councilman,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 October 1956; “Civil Liberties Union to Aid in Suit against City Police,” Oxnard Press0Courier, 22 December 1956. 4. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 138–39. 5. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 139–40. 6. Kim, “Political Economy,” 16. 7. Teague to D. J. Thompson, Editor, the California Citrograph, 1118 Story Building, Los Angeles, California, 16 April 1943, Box 2, Reel 1–2, Papers and Addresses, 1914–1938, Teague Papers.

316

notes to pages 212–218

8. Galarza, Merchants of Labor, 51; Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 137; Vargas, Labor Rights Are Civil Rights, 238; McWilliams, North from Mexico, 238. 9. Calavita, Inside the State, 1–3, 24; Kim, “Political Economy,” 21–22; Norris, North for the Harvest, 88–95. 10. Information Concerning Entry of Mexican Agricultural Workers in the United States, 1 and 4. 11. Information Concerning Entry of Mexican Agricultural Workers in the United States, 1; Watson, “Mixed Melody,” 59. 12. Calavita, Inside the State, 10; Galarza, Merchants of Labor, 47; Watson, “Mixed Melody,” 59; “Supplemental Statement Supporting H.R. 4575,” 32. 13. Braceros (Policy) nawu , Correspondence, nawu –California State, 1954–1958, Folder 9, Box 22, Ernesto Galarza Papers, Stanford University; Braceros (Policy) nawu , Correspondence, nawu –California State, 1959–1960, Folder 10, Box 22, Galarza Papers; Braceros (Policy) nawu , Correspondence, nawu-usdl , Bureau of Employment Security, 1952–1960, Folder 2, Box 23, Galarza Papers: “Growers Exploit Braceros, Say afl-cio Official,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 February 1959; “Coast Weighs Cut in Mexican Labory,” New York Times, February 23, 1958, 54; H. P. Anderson, Bracero Program in California, 86, 138. 14. “Largest Labor Camp in Nation in Oxnard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 March 1958; “Recreation Sought for Nationals,” Los Angeles Times, 23 May 1957. As of 1957, Ventura County was home to 165 bracero camps. H. P. Anderson, Bracero Program in California, 61. 15. “Largest Labor Camp in Nation in Oxnard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 March 1958; “Mexican Official Visits Oxnard, Labor Camps,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 November 20 1959; Morales, Dionicio Morales, 148. 16. U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Employment Security Room 506, 630 Sansome Street San Francisco 11, ca , 2 August 1956, Report, Box 12, Folder 7, Regional Foreign Labor Operations Advisory Committee, 1954–1960, Galarza Papers; Galarza, Merchants of Labor, 123. 17. Teague to D. J. Thompson, Editor, the California Citrograph, 1118 Story Building Los Angeles, California, 16 April 1943, Box 2, Reel 1–2, Papers and Addresses, 1914–1938, Teague Papers; C. C. Teague, Santa Paula, California, Memorandum, 1 June 1943, Box 2, Reel 1–2, Papers and Addresses, 1914–1938, Teague Papers; Teague to Paul S. Armstrong c/o Karl D. Loos, 707 Munsey Building Washington dc , 4 May 1946, Box 2, Reel 1–2, Papers and Addresses, 1914–1938, Teague Papers; Street, Beasts of the Field, 502. 18. Galarza, Merchants of Labor, 115. 19. Galarza, Merchants of Labor, 159; quote from Morales, Dionicio Morales, 136. notes to pages 218–222

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20. Calavita, Inside the State, 61; Galarza, Merchants of Labor, 37; “Largest Labor Camp in Nation in Oxnard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 March 1958. 21. Galarza, Merchants of Labor, 157. 22. “Statement by C. C. Teague at Meeting of Representatives of Col. J. Taylor of the Federal Government and Representatives of the State of California Who Have Charge of the Domestic and Foreign Agricultural Labor Program for the State of California,” n.d., Box 2, Reel 1–2, Papers and Addresses, 1914–1938, Teague Papers; pamphlet, California Guide for Farm Workers, State of California, Department of Employment, Folder 6, Braceros (Policy) California Dept. of Employment, Farm Placement Service, 1959 (1), Box 20, Galarza Papers; Galarza, Merchants of Labor, 87–91, 175–77; minutes, cso Headquarters, Oxnard, California, 15 January 1959, p. 16, Box 20, Folder 6, California Department of Employment, Farm Placement Service, 1959, Galarza Papers. 23. London and Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap, 40–45; Ernesto Galarza — National Agricultural Union — afl Local 274, Brawley Ben Porry — United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Workers — cio Local 78, El Centro, 25 January 1954 letter to President Eisenhower, Box 12, Folder 9, Teamsters Union, 1948–1964, Galarza Papers; Civil Liberties Newsletter No. 3, of the American Council of Spanish-Speaking People, Austin, Texas, 5 February, Box 12, Folder 9, Galarza Papers. 24. H. P. Anderson, Bracero Program in California, 6–9; London and Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap, 45, 123–24. 25. Ernesto Galarza — National Agricultural Union — afl Local 274, Brawley Ben Porry — United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Workers — cio Local 78, El Centro, 25 January 1954 letter to President Eisenhower, Folder 9, Teamsters Union, 1948–1964, Box 12, Galarza Papers. 26. Rios to Galarza, June 24, 1957, Galarza to Rios, July 5, 1957, and Rios to Galarza, July 25, 2007, all in Folder 7, Community Service Organization, 1949–1967, Box 13, Galarza Papers. 27. Galarza to Governor-elect Edmund G. Brown, Attorney General’s office, 18 December 1858, Folder 9, Braceros (Policy) nawu , Correspondence, nawu –California State, 1954–1958, Box 22, Galarza Papers. 28. Galarza to Edmund G. Brown, Attorney General’s Office, 10 September 1958, Folder 9, Braceros (Policy) nawu , Correspondence, nawu –California State, 1954–1958, Box 22, Galarza Papers. 29. Edward F. Hayes, Chief. Farm Placement Service reply to Anthony P. Rios, President of cso in (2701 1/5 Fourth Street) Los Angeles request for information regarding crops “dominated” by Mexican Nationals in 1957, Folder 9, Braceros (Policy) nawu , Correspondence, nawu –California State, 1954–1958, Box 22, Galarza Papers.

318

notes to pages 223–225

30. “upw Forces Action on Illegal Braceros,” special to Labor’s Daily, 8 October 57[9?], Folder Employment, Displacement, of U.S. workers by Braceros, Correspondence, 1952–1959, mo 224, Box 43, Galarza Papers; United Packinghouse Workers of America afl-cio Statement of Interest No Date, Folder 11, United Packinghouse Workers of America, afl-cio , 1959–1967, Box 12, Galarza Papers. 31. United Packinghouse Workers of America afl-cio , Statement of Interest, no date, 12, Folder 11, United Packinghouse Workers of America, afl-cio , 1959–1967, Box Galarza Papers; Watson, “Mixed Melody,” 58. 32. London and Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap, 45. 33. United Packinghouse Workers of America afl-cio , Statement of Interest, no date, pp. 1–4, Folder 11, United Packinghouse Workers of America afl-cio , 1959–1967, Box 12, Galarza Papers. 34. United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit, 240 F.2d 554; 1956 U.S. app., 11 December 1956; “Lemon Packinghouses Face nrlb Contempt Proceeding,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 October 1958. 35. Report of Ernesto Galarza to National Agricultural Workers Union, 4 May 1955, Folder 10, United Packinghouse Workers of America, afl-cio , 1951–1958, Box 12, Galarza Papers. 36. H. L. Mitchell to John W. Livingston, Director of Organization, afl-cio , 25 July 1958; National Agricultural Workers Union afl-cio report; Walter Reuther, president of uaw , to H. L. Mitchell, 30 October 1958; H. L. Mitchell to George Meany, President of afl-cio , 10 November 1958; H. L. Mitchell to Walter P. Reuther, President of United Autoworkers, 17 November 1958; all in Folder 10, nflu⁄nawu Correspondence, 1958, Box 7, Galarza Papers. 37. Memorandum, 8 January 1959, Folder 11, nflu⁄nawu Correspondence, 1959, Box 7, Galarza Papers; Watson, “Mixed Melody,” 59, 62. 38. Quote from Levy, Cesar Chavez, 126; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 4; Ross, notes on a conversation with Saul Alinsky on 26 August 1958, Folder 2 Minutes Reports, and Notes July–August 1958, Box 3, Fred Ross Sr. Collection, Wayne State University. 39. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 4–5; cso Reporter, n.d., Box 13, Folder 8, Galarza Papers. 40. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 129–31. 41. “Students Reveal Strong Views on Recreation Center,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 April 1958; “Racial Discrimination Denied at Meeting,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 April 1958; McWilliams, Southern California, 12–13. 42. Antonia Di Liello, Capstone Family History Report, Spring 2006; Antonia Di Liello, interview by Frank Barajas, 24 March 2006; Robert Hinostro, interview by Denise Gómez, 14 June 1999; Robert Hinostro, interviews by Frank Barajas, 25 June 1999 and 8 August 2000. notes to pages 226–230

319

43. “Voice of the People: Discrimination a Lie,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 April 1958. 44. “Prejudice Discussion Scheduled April 21 at Juanita,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 12 April 1958; “Voice of the People,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 April 1958; “Voice of the People,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 April 1958; “Voice of the People: Make Most of School,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 April 1958. 45. “Voice of the People: Discrimination Exists,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 April 1958, 16. 46. C S O Reporter 1958, n.d., “Oxnard Civic Group Joins cso as New Chapter” and “Ventura County cso ,” Folder 7, Community Service Organization, 1949–1967, Box 13, Galarza Papers; “cso Opens Drive to Get Out the Vote,” Oxnard PressCourier, 1 November 1958; “Del Buono Heads Service Group, Oxnard Press-Courier, 8 November 1958; John Soria, interview by Frank Bardacke, 25 January 1996. 47. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 130–31. 48. C S O Reporter 1958, n.d., “How They Got the Vote Out in Ventura County,” Folder 7, Community Service Organization, 1949–1967, Box 13, Galarza Papers; C S O Reporter 1958 Special Edition, Folder 9, Community Service Organization (cso ), 1958–1964, Box 26, The United Farm Workers: Office of the President Collection, Galarza Papers; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 20. 49. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 19. 50. C S O Reporter 1958, n.d., “How They Got the Vote Out in Ventura County,” Folder 7, Community Service Organization, 1949–1967, Box 13, Galarza Papers; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 21. 51. “Editorials — New Citizens in La Colonia,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 26 November 1958. 52. “Editorials — New Citizens in La Colonia,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 26 November 1958; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 22–23. 53. “Editorials — New Citizens in La Colonia,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 26 November 1958. 54. “Voice of the People-The cso ,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 16 December 1958. 55. “City Council Studies Double-Deck Parking,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 July 1958 “Plea for Law to Protect Nationals Goes to County,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 27 August 1958. 56. “Mexican Officials Sues after Death of 14 Nationals,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 4 April 1959. 57. “21 Nationals Inquired in Crash,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 February 1959. 58. “Beet Worker Dies beneath Big Harvester,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 September 1958; “Voice of the People: Why No Inquest?” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 September 1958. 59. “Voice of the People-Mexican Labor,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 September 1958.

320

notes to pages 230–237

60. “Voice of the People-Contract Labor,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 September 1958. 61. “Voice of the People-Braceros Not Needed,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 September 1958. 62. “Editorials — The Returns from Japan,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 16 November 1959. 63. “Voice of the People: Need for labor Force,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 19 November 1959. 64. “Voice of the People — Reading the Funnies,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24 November 1959. 65. “Voice of the People — Farm Labor Program,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 25 November 1959. 66. “Mexican Nationals’ Pageant Honors Virgen of Guadalupe,” Oxnard PressCourier, 13 December 1958. 67. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 129–30; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 62–64; Gable, “Politics and Economics,” 557; “Oxnard Sugar Factory Closed Permanently,” Oxnard PressCourier, 29 October 1958. 68. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 64; Minutes, cso Headquarters, Oxnard, California, 15 January 1959, p. 14, Folder 6, California Department of Employment, Farm Placement Service, 1959 (1), Box 20, Galarza Papers. 69. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 65. 70. “Farm Labor Assn. Meets Wednesday, to Elect Officers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 January 1959; “Foreign Labor Plan Abuse May Kill It, Farmers Told,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 15 January 1959; longer quote from Ross, Conquering Goliath, 67–68. 71. “Foreign Labor Plan Abuse May Kill It, Farmers Told,” 15 Oxnard PressCourier, January 1959. 72. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 132–33. 73. Minutes, cso Headquarters, 15 January 1959, p. 14. 74. Minutes, cso Headquarters, 15 January 1959, p. 5. 75. Minutes, cso Headquarters, 15 January 1959, pp. 9–12; Information Concerning Entry of Mexican Agricultural Workers in the United States, 4, 11; H. P. Anderson, Bracero Program in California, 152; Calavita, Inside the State, 22–23, 63; Elac, Employment of Mexican Workers, 115; Galarza, Merchants of Labor, 64, 116, 136, 140, 150–51, 204. 76. Minutes, 15 January 1959, cso Headquarters, pp. 12–15. 77. Minutes, 15 January 1959, cso Headquarters, pp. 24–25; Dionicio Morales, interview by Frank Barajas, 26 August 2006; Information Concerning Entry of Mexican Agricultural Workers in the United States, 1. 78. Minutes, 15 January 1959, cso Headquarters, p. 14; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 69–71. 79. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 66, 74–75. notes to pages 237–245

321

80. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 80–82. 81. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 138; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 138. 82. Ross, Conquering Goliath, 56, 104–5. 83. Quote from Levy, Cesar Chavez, 139; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 121–22. 84. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 139; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 121–22; “Cesar — Day after Jones Fires [illeg.],” n.d., Folder 1, Box 35, Ross Papers, Stanford University; “Labor Assn. Attacks Handbill as Farm Workers March,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 April 1959. 85. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 139–40; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 123–29; “Labor Assn. Attacks Handbill as Farm Workers March,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 April 1959. 86. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 139–40; Ross, Conquering Goliath, 123–29. 87. “Secretary of Labor Greeted by Officials, Union Protests, Oxnard Press-Courier, 21 May 1959; “Labor Secretary Would Give Farm Workers $1 Base Wage,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 May 1959; Levy, Cesar Chavez, 140, quote on 141; John Soria, interview by Frank Bardacke. 88. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 142. 89. John E. Carr to Governor Brown, 4 June 1959, and Carr, Director, to awoc , 8 June 1959, both in Folder 12 [13], Department of Employment, Box 1, Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee Collection, 1959–1966, Walter Reuther Library. 90. “Import Farm Labor Policy Study Ordered,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 May 1959; “Farm Group Rejects U.S. Bracero Plan, Oxnard Press-Courier, 23 January 1960; Mexican Farm Labor Program Consultants Report, 1. 91. Mexican Farm Labor Program Consultants Report, 4–7. 92. Mexican Farm Labor Program Consultants Report, 17. 93. “Farm Labor Standards Plan Is Held Legal,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 10 July 1959; “Farm Labor Probe Spreads North,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 August 1959. 94. “Farm Job Official Fired 4 Days before Retirement,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 29 July 1959; “State Farm Placement Service Faces Inquiry,” Los Angeles Times, 31 July 1959. 95. “Farm Job Unit Under Fire from Employment Director,” Oxnard PressCourier, 31 July 1959 (quote); “State Farm Placement Service faces Inquiry,” Los Angeles Times, 31 July 1959. 96. “Mexican Labor Dispute Turns on Wage Scale,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 August 1959, 2. 97. “Another Farm Job Official Quits,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 13 August 1959; “Chief of Farm Labor Shifted after Inquiry,” Los Angeles Times, 9 August 1959. 98. “Mexican Nationals Center of a Storm,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 20 August 1959; “Bracero: A Bribe Starts Him North,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 21 August 1959; “Transportation a Bracero Problem,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 22 August 1959; “Bracero Labor Program May Face Test before Congress,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 24

322

notes to pages 245–254

August 1959; “Labor Agent Hits Modesto Fruit Growers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 September 1959. 99. “Labor Agent Hits Modesto Fruit Growers,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 September 1959; Morales, Dionicio Morales, 136. 100. “Farm Labor Camp Closed by Mitchell,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 17 September 1959; “Unsanitary Conditions 1000 Mexicans Moved from State Farm Camps,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 6 October 1959; “Domestic Labor Supply falling, Farm Bureau Told,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 30 October 1959; “Two County Labor Assns: Banned Over Bracero Use,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 November 1959; “Trend of Rural Youth to City Raises Farm Labor Issue,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 18 December 1959. 101. “cso Has Nine Girls in Contest for Queen of Mexican American Festival in Oxnard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 3 September 1959; “cso Crowns Queen at Ball Tonight,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 11 September 1959; “cso Dance Set Tonight,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 15 September 1959; “Oxnard Woman, 94, Wins Citizenship,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 19 September 1959; “67 of 92 Naturalized from Oxnard,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 14 December 1959; “cso Plans Registration Campaign,” Oxnard Press-Courier, 9 January 1960. 102. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 143; Tjerandsen, Education for Citizenship, 624–25. 103. Tjerandsen, Education for Citizenship, 625; Cesario (Cesar) to Fred Ross, 7 May 1959, Box 3, Ross Collection, Wayne State University. 104. Cesar to Fred Ross, 15 August 1961, and Cesario (Cesar) to Fred Ross, 4 December 1961, Box 3, Ross Collection. 105. Cesario (César) to Fred Ross, 4 December 1961, Box 3, Fred Ross Sr. Collection, Walter Reuther Library; Cesario (César) to Fred Ross, n.d. [1962], Box 3, Ross Collection. 106. Cesario (César) to Fred Ross, 25 January 1962, Box 3, Ross Collection. 107. Levy, Cesar Chavez, 147–48. 108. Cesario (César) to Fred Ross, 2 May 1962, Box 3, Ross Collection.

conclusion 1. Darlene and Jerry Serros, interview by Frank Barajas, 23 March 2006.

notes to pages 254–263

323

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343

I NDEX absc (American Beet Sugar Company), 1, 4, 44–46, 49–51, 59–62. See also Oxnard Beet Sugar Company accidents, industrial, 56 Aces baseball team, 126–27 aclu (American Civil Liberties Union), 155, 158 acwu (Agricultural and Citrus Workers Union), 166, 168–69, 171–73, 181–82, 183 Adame, Pedro Nares, 236 Adams, Olen, 53–54 adobe residences, 59–62, 92–93, 96–98, 289n73 African Americans, 63, 192–93, 310n83 Agricultural and Citrus Workers Union (acwu ), 166, 168–69, 171–73, 181–82, 183 Alarcon, G. 155 alcohol, 72–73 Alianza De Trabajadores Mexicanos, 151–52 Alianza Hispano Americana, La, 173 Alien Land Laws, 57–58 Alinsky, Saul, 227–29 Almaguer, Tomás, 268n48 Alvarado, Juan Bautista, 21 Alvarez, Joseph, 155 American Beet Sugar Company (absc ), 1, 4, 44–46, 49–51, 59–62. See also Oxnard Beet Sugar Company

American Civil Liberties Union (aclu ), 155, 158 American Federation of Labor (afl ), 138–39, 184 Americanization, 115–16, 119–30 Andrade, Guillermo, 133 ’antap, 16 anti-Japanese hysteria, 56–58, 199–203 Arguello, Antonio, 66 Asian laborers and residents: baseball and, 127–28; celebrations of, 75–76; discrimination against, 56–58, 191– 92, 199–203; integration of, 86–90; and replacement of subordinated groups, 54, 66–67; safety of, 238–39; segregation of, 94–96; tensions among, 76–77; in Ventura County, 51–54 Asociación Mexicana de Baseball del Sur de California, La, 126–27, 147 Associated Farmers (af ), 150, 159, 166, 297n68 Associated Farmers of Ventura County (afvc ), 164–65, 167, 194 Ayres, Edward, 205 Baisia, José, 133 band, formation of Latin American, 114 Barajas, Josephine Hernandez, 181 Bard, Thomas, 44–45 Barflies Committee, 245–48 baseball, 125–28, 147

345

Beach, Robert G., 59, 81, 114–15 Beardsley, Robert, 201–2 berdache, 16–17 Berthold, Simon, 142 Bess, Don, 181 betabeleros, 58–64, 71–74, 92–93, 96, 134–40, 148–55 Bird, Edwin A., 253 bootlegging, 72–73 Borchard, Johannes, 44–45 bounties, 37–38 boxing, 128–30 braceros and bracero program, 193–98; César Chávez on, 229–30; demonstrations against, 248–50; and displacement of domestic workers, 241–44; following César Chávez’s departure, 254–58; heightened controversy over, 252–54; investigation of, 250–52; Oxnard Barflies Committee and, 244–48; Public Law 78 and, 217–26; public opinion and press coverage of, 236–39; safety of braceros, 236, 238–39, 254 Bridges, Harry, 167 Bronner, George, 165 Brown, Joe, 254 Brown, Pat, 250 Buena Vista labor camp, 221 bullfights, 77–78 Bulosan, Carlos, 145–46, 294n35 Busby, Neal, 231 Cabelleria, Father, 105 Cabrillo, Juan Rodríguez, 17 Californios, 5, 24–30 Camarillo, Adolfo, 28, 84 Camarillo, Juan, 26–27

346

index

Camarillo, Juan Jr. “Dennis,” 86 Campos, R., 141 Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (cawiu ), 148–54, 156–58, 297n68 Cannon, Marion, 44 Carballo, Louis, 108–9 Carmona, Ignacio, 66, 203 Carr, John E., 250, 252–53 Carty, Ed, 192 Catholic Church, 97, 103–5, 111, 147 cattle, 23–24 cawiu (Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union), 148–54, 156–58, 297n68 celebrations, cultural, 75–80, 82–84, 86–90, 115, 146 Chávez, César, 3, 216–17; displaced domestic workers and, 240–41, 243– 44; guiding voter-registration drive, 231–34; Helstein Plan and, 229–30; leaving Oxnard, 255–58; Oxnard Barflies Committee and, 244–48; staging demonstrations, 248–50; working in sugar beet fields, 38 Chávez, Helen, 258 Chew, Ng Poon, 76 child labor, 53, 69–71 China Alley, 73, 94–96, 140–41 Chinese laborers and residents, 54, 66–67, 75–77, 94–96 Chumash, 13–21 Chumash Revolt (1824), 18–19 churches, 97, 103–5, 147, 230–31 cic (Colonia Improvement Company), 46 circuses, 64–65 Cisneros, Armando, 184–85 citrus industry, 74–75, 164–69, 226–27

citrus workers strike, 166–69; end of, 183–84; evictions during, 173–82; mobilization of, 170–73 Colmenero, Natalia, 212 Colonia Improvement Company (cic ), 46 Comité Mexicano Pro-Huelga, El, 169 Commercial Federation of California, 145 Commission on Migratory Labor, 219 Communism, 153, 158–60, 167 community involvement, 111–18, 146, 185–86. See also recreational activities Community Service Organization (cso ): Americanization and, 114–16; after César Chávez’s departure, 256–57; demonstrations for, 248–50; displaced domestic workers and, 240–44; Oxnard Barflies Committee and, 244–48; potential of, 225; separation of César Chávez and, 255–58; victories of, 216–17; voter-registration drive and, 231–36 Cooke, Henry W., 110 Cordero, Tomás Ferrell, 144 Crespí, Juan, 17–18 crop vacations, 69–70 cultural celebrations, 75–80, 82–84, 86–90, 115, 146 Cunningham, William N., 241, 252–53 dances, 210–12 Davis, James, 158–59 Deering, Tam, 116 Del Buono, Tony, 230–31, 249 demonstrations, to expose cso struggle, 248–50

Department of Agriculture, 36 de Santiago, Pablo, 155 DeWitt, John L., 200 Díaz, José, 203–4 Di Liello, Antonia, 66 Di Giorgio Fruit Company, 223–24 Dingley Tariff (1897), 38 disease, spreading of European, 18 domestic workers: demonstrations for, 248–50; discrimination against, 253; displacement of, 240–44; Oxnard Barflies Committee and, 244–48; under Public Law 78, 251–52 Domínguez, Nina, 113–14 Dominick, Malvern, 156 Donlon, Charles, 114 Drapeau, Louis C., 206–7 Driffill, James Alexander, 46, 73–74 Durley, Howard, 150–51, 212 dynamite, 71 East Indians, 53–54, 57, 86 economy: bifurcated character of Oxnard, 236–37; Californios and, 25–26; of Chumash, 14–16; grain and, 31; Mexicans’ impact on, 71–74, 112; ruin of rancho, 27–28; Spanish explorers and, 17; sugar beet factory’s impact on, 44, 46; during World War I, 59 education: Americanization through, 119–22; child labor and, 69–71; increased demand for, 67–68; of Mexican American children, 105–10, 275n42; segregation in, 103 Elac, John C., 237–38 Elizalde, Anicato, 72–73 Elliot, C. J., 63 Elmelund, Nels, 202 index

347

El Monte Berry Strike, 151 el rodeo camps, 181 Enderlain, Ella, 46 evictions, 173–82 Executive Order 9066, 202 factory, refining, 43–46, 66, 67 Farm Placement Service (fps ), 240–41, 253–56 Farm Securities Administration (fsa ), 185, 218 fba (Filipino Brotherhood Association), 87–90 Federal Housing Authority (fha ), 190 fha (Federal Housing Authority), 190 fiestas, 15, 24–25 Filipino Brotherhood Association (fba ), 87–90 Filipinos, 87–90, 152–53 fire, at Oxnard jailhouse, 133–34 Fitzgerald, Edward P., 169 Flores, Eddie, 244 Flores, James, 248 flu epidemic, 113 Foster, C. P., 170 Fourth of July celebrations, 81, 82–84, 115 fps (Farm Placement Service), 240–41, 253–56 fsa (Farm Securities Administration), 185, 218 Fulkerson, James, 140 Fuller, Elizabeth, 96 Galarza, Ernesto, 220, 222, 223–25, 256 Garcilazo, Jeffrey, 66 gender roles, 16–17. See also women get-out-the-vote campaign, 231–35 Gill, Ed, 154

348

index

Gómez, Begnigno, 133 González, Gilbert, 153, 275n42 González, Salvador, 182 grain, 31 gran jamaica, 85–86 growers associations, 219, 221–23, 250, 256, 257 Grupo Regeneración, El, 143–44 Guadalupe school, 105–6, 111–12 Guajardo, Rachel, 246 Guerra y Noriega, María Teresa de la, 27 Gutiérrez, Nellie, 245 handball courts, 115–16 Hartley, Joseph A., 170–71 Hartnell, William E. P., 27 Harvey Girls, 72 Haydock, Richard B., 25, 119 Haydock School, 108 Hayes, Edward F., 225, 241–44 health, 119–22 Heffernan, Helen, 69–70, 71 Helstein, Ralph, 227–29 Helstein Plan, 227–31 hemp, 73 Henderson, Max, 169 Hendrickson, P. M. “Max,” 194 hide preparation, 23–24 Hinojosa, Manuel, 184–85 Hinostro, Robert, 106, 122, 186–88, 191, 197, 207–8, 211 hoboes, 54–55, 102–3, 140–41 holidays, crop, 69–70 Hollingsworth, James C., 155 Home Teacher Act (1915), 119–20 home teaching, 119–22 Homeworkers Association, 151–52 “hot cargo,” 170–71

housing: during citrus workers strike, 173–82; conditions in worker, 289n73; discrimination in, 284n19, 309n79; for hoboes, 54, 102–3; increased demand for, 51; for Mexican laborers, 59–62, 66, 96–98; sanitation issues and, 119–22; segregation in, 91, 92–98, 190–93; for white absc employees, 98–102 Hovley, Frank X., 222, 238 Huerta, Dolores, 258 hunger strike, 310n83 hygiene, 119–22 identity, 184–89, 197 imc (Independent Mexican Committee), 118 immigrants, 29–31, 54, 86–90, 93, 115–16. See also Asian laborers and residents; braceros and bracero program Inadomi, Manuel, 200 Independent Agricultural Labor Union, 138 Independent Mexican Committee (imc ), 118 industrial accidents, 56 industrialization, 54–56 Industrial Workers of the World (iww ), 145 integration: events and support for, 84–90; in housing, 190–93; of Mexicans, 4, 64–67, 80–84, 106; in sports, 125–30 international events, 75–80, 82–84, 86–90, 115 International Labor Defense, 155–56, 158 internment camps, 199–203

irrigation, 34 iww (Industrial Workers of the World), 145 jailhouse fire, 133–34 Japanese internment camps, 199–203 Japanese laborers and residents: baseball and, 127–28; discrimination against, 56–58, 124, 191–92, 199–203; integration of, 86–87; safety of, 238–39; unrest between Chinese residents and, 76–77 Japanese-Mexican Labor Association ( jmla ), 134–39 Jesús Luján, José de, 169 Jiménez, Jesús N., 84, 118 jmla (Japanese-Mexican Labor Association ), 134–39 Johnson, Caswell, 192–93 Jones, Ellis O., 155 Jones, Robert, 216 Jones ranch, 245–46, 249 Katsuda, Lester, 257 Keating, Stephan J., 208 Kellogg, Cecil, 161 Kerrick, Joe, 150–51, 153–54, 155, 158 Krouser, Wenley, 67 ksen, 16 labor associations, 221–23, 240–44, 250 labor camps, 221–22 labor contractors, 2, 6–7, 68, 134–39 labor shortage, 71, 193–99, 217–18 La Colonia barrio, 92–93, 94, 109, 122, 189, 231–34 land booms, 31–32, 49 land grants, 28, 29–30 land tenure, 32–34 index

349

Lara, Blas, 144 Lathrop, W. H., 191 Latin American Band, 114 Laubacher, Father, 104 law enforcement: conflict with, 140–42, 145–46, 158, 160–61, 216; 1933 sugar beet strike and, 150, 155–56; zoot-suiters and, 204, 207 League of United Latin American Citizens, 105, 196, 224 Leahy, Charles E., 159 Legion Stadium, 130 Lehmann, Coletha, 67 Lillie, Josephine, 141 lima beans, 43, 53–54 Lippmann, Walter, 200–201 Lizarras, J. M., 136, 138–39 López, Anselmo, 184–85 López, Manuel M., 66 Lucero, Val, 242–43, 258 machinery, 54–56 Madrid, John, 156 Magón, Ricardo Flores, 142, 144 manager tenants, 33 marijuana, 73 Maritime Commission School, 189–90 Márquez, Edmundo Estrada, 235–36 Martínez, Anastacio, 84, 116 Martínez, Victor A., 185–86 Martino, César, 198 Marvin R. Paige Poultry Processing Company, 225–26 matanzas, 23–24 Maulhardt, Albert, 44–45 Maxwell, Edward C., 108–9 McColloch, F. C., 122 McNaughton, Andrew, 141 McVey, Sam, 128

350

index

McWilliams, Carey, 67, 218 Meany, George, 168 mechanization of agriculture, 54–56 Menchaca, Martha, 305n38 mestizos, 20–21 Meta Street barrio, 112–13 Mets, Keith, 254 Mexican Independence Day, 77–80, 84, 115, 146 Mexican Revolution, 79–80 Mexicans: absc ’s impact on, 49–51; boxing and, 129–30; Californios as, 26–27; celebrations of, 77–80; Chumash integration with, 19, 20–21; community involvement of, 111–18, 146–47; cross-cultural identity of, 184–89; demographic information on, 132; discrimination against, 230–31; economic impact of, 71–74; education of, 69–71, 275n42; field work and, 58–64; integration of, 4, 64–67, 80–84; labor crisis and, 71; Mexican Americans and, 2–3; resistance of, 133–34, 140–46; segregation of, 92–93, 96–98, 103–10; uniting with Japanese labor contractors, 2, 134–39; working conditions of, 55; as zoot-suiters, 203–12 Mexican traveling circuses, 64–65 migrants, 93, 102–3, 124–25, 141–42, 172 Miller, Jack C., 151, 159 minstrel shows, 123 Mission San Buenaventura, 18–21 Mitchell, James P., 249 Mitchell, Walter B., 193, 252 money-renter tenants, 33 Montas, José, 155

Morales, Dionicio, 107, 222, 246–49 Moreno, José, 141 movie theaters, 123–24 Murray, A. J., 65, 142 Murray, John Jr., 137 mutual aid societies/mutualistas, 80–84, 279n75 Muwu, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19 Nash, Jack T., 192 National Agricultural Workers Union (nawu ), 224 National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (ncdpp ), 155–56 National Farm Labor Union (nflu ), 223–24 National Labor Relations Board (nlrb ), 183 Naval Construction Base, 310n83 Navarro, Mary, 78 Navy labor shortage, 199 nawu (National Agricultural Workers Union), 224 ncdpp (National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners), 155–56 nflu (National Farm Labor Union), 223–24 nlrb (National Labor Relations Board), 183 Noble, Frederick, 62, 98 Notomi’s Giants baseball team, 127–28 O’Brien, Charles, 252 O’Brien, M. B., 207 oflc (Oxnard Farm Labor Center), 258 Olson, Culbert, 164

Ortega, Louis, 120–21 Our Lady of Guadalupe, 111–13, 147 Oxnard, Benjamin, 35–36 Oxnard, Henry, 1, 35–37, 43–44, 46, 103 Oxnard, James, 1, 35–36 Oxnard, Robert, 1, 35–36 Oxnard Barflies Committee, 245–48 Oxnard Beet Sugar Company, 36. See also American Beet Sugar Company (absc ) Oxnard Citrus Association, 74–75 Oxnard Civic Improvement Association, 216, 231 Oxnard Farm Labor Center (oflc ), 258 Oxnard jailhouse fire, 133–34 Oxnard Press-Courier, 234–39 Pacheco, E. B., 184–85 pachucas, 205, 210 pachucos, 203–12 Pacific Electric Railroad Company, 139–40 Paige Poultry Processing Company, 225–26 Pantoja, Ezquiel, 154 Park, Don E., 253–54 Parsons, Levi, 29–30 Partido Liberal Mexicano, El (plm ), 142–45 part-owner tenants, 33 pastimes, 123–30. See also recreational activities patriotism, 113, 279n75. See also Fourth of July celebrations Paz, Octavio, 208 Pérez, Eddie, 239, 246 Pérez, Manuel, 94, 163, 199, 209 index

351

Perluss, Irving H., 256 Peterson, “Pedro Pete,” 173, 181–82 Pettigrew, J. D., 63 Peverly, Charles, 204 Pinkard, Bedford, 124–25, 192, 207 playground, 116–17 plaza of Oxnard, 113–14 plm (El Partido Liberal Mexicano), 142–45 population, 31–32, 49, 92, 132, 189–93 Port Hueneme, 189–90, 310n83 Portolá, Gaspar de, 17–18 “powder monkeys,” 71 Pregerson, Harry, 189 Press-Courier, 234–39 Prohibition, 72–73 property rights, 28 Pryor, George, 204 Public Law 78, 219–20, 222, 242, 243, 244, 251–52 public opinion, 235–39 racial demographics, 20–21, 34 Ramírez, Leo, 234, 235 Ramona Elementary, 109, 189 Rancho Calleguas, 22, 26, 28 Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara O La Colonia, 22–23, 29, 30, 49 Rancho Las Posas, 21–22 ranchos, 21–25, 27–28, 268n48 Rancho Santa Clara del Norte, 21, 28–29 Rancho Santa Paula Y Saticoy, 21 Rand, Jean, 153, 154 Randolph, A. Philip, 227 Randolph, Mary L., 190–91 rebote (handball) courts, 115–16 recreational activities, 75–80, 82–90, 115, 123–30, 146

352

index

recruitment, of sugar beet workers, 43, 59 “Red Scare,” 145 referral cards, 240, 248, 256 refining factory, 43–46, 66, 67 Regeneración, 142–45 Reno, William, 141 residences. See housing resistance, 131–32; jailhouse fire and, 133–34; labor strikes and, 134–40, 148–57; to law enforcement, 140–42, 145–46; Regeneración and, 142–45; support networks and, 146–47 Reynolds, Blanche T., 69 Rios, Anthony, 224, 229 Rivera, Joe, 258 Roberts, Owen J., 200 Robertson, Thomas, 222 Robles, Lilly, 209 rodeos, 23 Ross, Fred, 229, 246, 257 Roth, Almon F., 171 Ruiz, Rodolfo, 188 Ruiz, Vicki L., 297n68 Rumford Fair Housing Law, 309n79 Russell, Andy, 209–10 Russell, Charles, 140–41 Sackman, Douglas C., 74–75 Sailer, Joseph, 65 Salas, Frank, 156 Salazar, Rodolfo, 182 Sánchez, Jesús, 182 sanitation, 119–22 Santa Clara Agricultural Association, 63 Santa Clara Catholic Church, 103–5, 111, 147

Santa Clara Irrigation Company (scic ), 34 Sarabia, Juan, 144–45 sbflu (Sugar Beet Farm Laborers Union), 138 scbga (Southern California Beet Growers Association), 148, 149–50, 152–53 Schiappapietra, Antonio, 28–29 Schiappapietra, Federico, 28–29 schools, 105–10, 189, 194, 230–31, 275n42. See also education scic (Santa Clara Irrigation Company), 34 segregation: of Chinese residents, 94–96; of churches, 103–5; in education, 70–71, 105–10; geographical, 91–92; in housing, 190–93; of Mexicans, 65, 92–93, 96–98; movement against, 230–31; rationalization for, 96–98; in recreational activities, 123–25 servicemen, 211–12 Shaffer, Alice, 108 Shantzek, Mike, 160 share-cash tenants, 33 share-renter tenants, 33 sheep, 24 Sheridan, Thomas E., 279n75 Simmons, Eloise, 70, 168, 210 Simo’mo, 14, 16 Soo Hoo, William, 192 Soria, John, 215, 236–38, 258 Southern California Beet Growers Association (scbga ), 148, 149–50, 152–53 Spanish explorers, 17–19 “Spanish” label, 111–12 Spanish language, 67, 112

speakeasies, 72 sports, 125–30, 147 Spreckels, Claus, 35, 43–44 sra (State Relief Administration), 173, 183 State Relief Administration (sra ), 173, 183 Stevning, Donald A., 166 Stewart, William K., 234, 235–36 St. John, Thelma, 106, 120 St. Joseph’s Institute, 106 Strangers in Our Fields (Galarza), 225 strike(s): of citrus workers, 166–69; 1903 sugar beet, 135–39; 1933 sugar beet, 148–57; against racial discrimination, 310n83; of Unión Federal Mexicanos, 139–40 Strobel, Henry “Hank,” 167 subsidies, 36–37 sugar, 37 Sugar Beet Farm Laborers Union (sbflu ), 138 sugar beet industry: establishment of, 35–46; expansion of, 43–46 sugar beet strike (1903), 135–39 sugar beet strike (1933), 148–57 support networks, 146–47, 305n38 Suytar, William, 154 Taft, Clinton J., 160 Takasugi, Nao, 188–89, 191–92, 202–3 Takasugi, Shingoro, 202–3 tariffs, 37–38 Teague, Charles Collins, 150, 159, 165, 166–67, 184, 218 Teague, Charles M., 234 technology, 54–56 Téllez, Alberto, 144 Thornton, Eloise M., 119, 121 index

353

tractors, 55 trade, 14–16, 17, 20, 25, 31 transportation of braceros, 236, 254 traveling circuses, 64–65 Tuck, Ruth, 110

uffvg (United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Growers), 226–27 ufm (Unión Federal Mexicanos), 139–40 Unión Federal Mexicanos (ufm ), 139–40 Unión Femenil Mexicana, La, 81 Unión Patriótica Benéfica Mexicana Independiente, La (upbmi ), 81–84, 146, 150, 155 United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Growers (uffvg ), 226–27 United Packinghouse Workers of America (upwa ), 225–29, 246, 256–57 upbmi (La Unión Patriótica Benéfica Mexicana Independiente), 81–84, 146, 150, 155 upwa (United Packinghouse Workers of America), 225–29, 246, 256–57 Uranga, Ramona Ortega, 68, 104 Ure, William, 191 Urqhart, C. H., 121 U.S. Department of Agriculture, 36 vacations, crop, 69–70 Valles, Robert “Quito,” 109, 126, 192, 196–97 vaqueros, 23 vcfb (Ventura County Farm Bureau), 64, 164 vcfla (Ventura County Farm Labor Association), 2, 216, 222

354

index

Ventura County Farm Bureau (vcfb ), 64, 164 Ventura County Farm Labor Association (vcfla ), 2, 216, 222 Ventura County Protective Association, 160 vice, 140–41 Vineyard Avenue camp, 181 violence, 135–36, 205–6, 211–12, 297n68 voter-registration drive, 231–35 Voz de la Colonia, La, 146–47

wac c (Western Agricultural Contracting Company), 134–39 wage rates, 64, 134, 157, 164–65, 222 Webb, Mary, 121–22 Wells, G. S., 96 Western Agricultural Contracting Company (wac c ), 134–39 “wetback” undocumented workers, 224 Whatley, Marie Lockwood, 72 white Americans, 29–31, 53–55, 58, 98–102 Winter, Ella, 155 Wirin, A. L., 155 Wobblies, 145 women: Americanization and, 115, 119–22; boxing and, 129–30; Chumash, 16–17; community activism and, 111, 113, 116; duties of, 68–69; employment of, 71–72; 1933 sugar beet strike and, 149; rights of, on frontier, 22; zootsuiters and, 205, 210 World War I, 59, 71, 113 World War II: bracero program and, 193–98; Japanese internment during, 199–203; population growth during, 189–93

wot, 16 Wright, Robert M., 170 Yamaguchi, Y., 136 Yellow Peril hysteria, 56–58, 199–203 Yizzard, James L., 254 Yorba, Isabel, 22 youth dances, 210–12 Zamora, Hector, 221, 222, 240, 241, 244–45, 256–57 zoot-suiters, 203–12

index

355

in the race and ethnicity in the american west series

Imagining the African American West Blake Allmendinger Curious Unions: Mexican American Workers and Resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898–1961 Frank P. Barajas Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves Art T. Burton The Line Which Separates: Race, Gender, and the Making of the Alberta-Montana Borderlands Sheila McManus Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West Matthew C. Whitaker To order or obtain more information on these or other University of Nebraska Press titles, visit www.nebraskapress.unl.edu.