1900s-1930s

My great-grandmother Julia Ruiz was born in a ranch named La Viga in Michoacán in the 1870’s. She married Luis Alcaraz and they farmed a variety of crops and raised cows, pigs, and chickens. After Luis’ death in 1906, most of the men of La Viga had either left to the United States to work or joined the uprisings, which were plaguing the country. When the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, she feared for the lives of her daughters. She told my mother that once when Pancho Villa and his troops arrived at El Rancho La Viga, she and others from the village fed them. but when the federales came, she hid her daughters up in the loft of a barn until they left the village. When the fear became unbearable around 1913, Julia and her children joined a few others and began an almost 1500-mile trek to the US border on foot. They traveled by night to hide from the federales and finally, months later, they reached Ciudad Juárez in Chihuahua and crossed the Río Grande into El Paso, Texas. They spent a short time in Texas before moving to Los Angeles, where a new generation settled and my U. S. family began to grow, eventually settling in the Del Rey and Sanger areas.  Rosita Arroyo Arenas

At the age of 15 in 1910, Aurelio joined the Revolutionary Army under General Carranza. He was wounded, captured and given the option of becoming a Villista or being executed. He joined Pancho Villas’ troops and crossed back and forth from Texas to Mexico. He took his soldadera wife Petra to his parents’ home in Donna, Texas, where she died shortly after giving birth to their son, Jacinto, who was raised by his grandmother and aunt. In the one old precious photo of him, I see another man by his side who looks like someone in a U.S. uniform. Aurelio migrated to Sanger with his two eldest sons in 1943 as farm laborers. Eliza and the six remaining children joined them one year later. They resided in Sanger and raised a family of seven sons and three daughters. Six of the seven sons served in the United States military.   Elva Rodríguez

My grandmother Angelita, from what I was told about her, was married to a Spaniard in the late 1800s. She was a businesswoman, operating a cantina, a mercantile store and even a “women’s place” in Durango, Mexico. When the Revolution began, she had a choice: stay and be shot or have her businesses confiscated and flee to the US. She arrived in Texas in 1918 with one son and made her way through Arizona to California, where there were some relatives. With a second husband she raised two more daughters in Visalia and died in the mid-1980s. I picture her in her cantina in Mexico.   Richard Arenas

Grandparents Vásquez left their farm in Zacatecas because of the war and their concern for the safety of their family. There were seven children, including my grandfather, Cipriano. He and his brother worked their way to the San Joaquin Valley as laborers on the railroads with the Chinese crews. Until he died, Grandpa had frequent vivid nightmares of the beatings they received in the railroad camps when they were invaded at night by the “anglos.” Until he moved in with me, he slept with a gun under his pillow, the gun he brought with him from Mexico. Two of the things that remained with him through old age were his fear of being picked up and forced to return to Mexico and his occasional obsession with checking to see if he could get the Vásquez property back that they had been forced to leave in Mexico.   Cecilia Aranaydo

Those with property struggled to maintain their holdings, produced as much of their own needs as possible, and hoped for the return of prosperity. Others joined the thousands seeking employment, at times, only to return jobless to the Valley. Still others fought for better working conditions, participated in strikes, and destroyed the myth of the “passive” Mexican in the labor confrontations of the 1930s in Pixley, Corcoran, Madera and in other localities. In many cases, Mexicans eked out an existence in the depressed economy of the San Joaquin Valley.

The ugly specter of prejudice again reared its head. In hard-hit urban areas, the unemployed sought scapegoats; “foreigners” became convenient targets. In cities with large concentrations of Mexicans, deportation pressures mounted. From Chicago to Los Angeles, in varying degrees of intensity, “repatriation” drives occurred. Mexicans were induced, at times coerced, into returning to Mexico. On the other hand, the need for cheap labor led government officials to minimize such efforts in agricultural areas. In short, the experiences of Mexicans during the Depression varied according to the circumstances of the individuals involved.

The Salazar family of Selma journeyed to the Midwest on the eve of the depression. For five years Jose Maria Salazar worked in the steel mills of Chicago. Repatriation pressures pushed the Salazars to Calexico in 1935. That same year, the family returned to the valley, toiled in the cotton camps near Corcoran, and eventually established permanent roots in the west side of Selma. A small restaurant soon arose next to their modest home—the beginnings of Sal’s Restaurant were in the making.

For José “Red” Ramírez, a founding member of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8900, the Depression was spent in the Borden area near Madera. Pleasures were few: listening to the radio, (Amos n’ Andy, Jack Benny), Saturday night dances, a swim at Skaggs Bridge on summer evenings, and money permitting, a movie at the Rex Theater on Sundays. If one had an especially prosperous week, one could even invite a girl along to see los monos (movies).

Geronimo Manzanárez, a former employee of the Sugar Pine Lumber Company, was forced to seek another job when his children reached school age—no schools existed close enough to the family’s mountain home to send them to school. He soon landed a job on the Greenleaf Ranch near the San Joaquin River, and near schools for his children. At the time, few people would have guessed that his eldest son would graduate from UCLA, become a pediatrician, and establish a medical research company years later.

Barely five years of age in 1930, Robert Campos helped in his own way around the family farm. The ‘30s meant families getting together, sharing resources, enjoying an occasional picnic among friends, and sometimes introducing a young “city kid” by the name of Michael Cardenas to the mysteries of the “country.” Passersby had little idea a future insurance executive and certified public accountant were “running around” the fields near Clovis.

For others, the Depression led to a return to Mexico. An eight-year-old child remembers only his arrival in Chihuahua and his consequent education in Mexican schools. Much later, his father, Francisco Villegas, would tell him of “repatriation” and of the country where Fidel was born. But Fidel, his father, and the family would return later to build a multi-million dollar food products business. Appropriately, it carried the name of their adopted Mexican “home”—Chihuahua.

However poor, their spirit remained unbroken. The festivities for the Virgen de Guadalupe continued every December 12^th. Dancers performed El Jarabe Tapatío, accompanied by mariachi music, and applauded by large, appreciative audiences. Various organizations carried on their activities, albeit less elaborate than in the past. The Alianza Hispanoamericana, the Sociedad Morelos, Club Trece, and the Club Gaona provided welcomed moments of celebration.

For generations that followed, the realities of the Depression were difficult to appreciate. Mexican immigrants arrived with high hopes and had begun to reap the fruits of their labor. The Depression must have been a shock. Only in conversation does one begin to grasp the hardship of the era, and more importantly, the strength of the people who endured it. One must admire the perseverance of that generation.

Because of the discrimination against the “Oakies” and their reputation of living in filthy situations, the shacks outside towns were described as “Little Oklahomas.”  By the end of the severe Depression years, the government eventually helped build camps, about 13 in California by 1941, service 45,000 people.

Filipinos could enter more easily, being a territory, and were preferred to Mexicans, pitting them against each other.  “Oakies” still had one advantage of being “white” and Filipinos were a threat to Mexican fathers of daughters, as most were solitary men.

The Depression slowly lessened its grip on the nation and the Valley. Between 1930 and 1935, Fresno County farmland declined by nearly 430,000 acres. By 1940, however, acreage figures had practically reached pre-depression levels. Given the importance of agriculture to the Valley, the increases in crop acreage implied a general improvement in the area’s economy. Still, as late as 1941, the country counted six million people out of work.

The Great Depression and the years that followed pitted native against foreigner, as jobs became scarce and welfare costs rose.  Although Mexican pride resisted accepting aide, that community was hit even harder as laws and attitudes were directed to the Mexican population despite citizenship or not:  GO BACK TO MEXICO.

After weathering extreme hardships to keep families and lives together, US cities across the nation squeezed out their Mexican population with laws and meager offers of help with transportation, calculating the costs saved from welfare and the competition of jobs.  From 1931-1935 the Repatriation programs put together across the nation managed to dump families on Mexico’s border by train and boat and any other transportation available, separating families and those children born in the US with agonizing decisions to find ways to stay while women were torn between accompanying their husbands who were deported and their children who could stay.  

From Mexico’s side came the argument that these persons had contributed to the US success and should be the responsibility of that country.  Nevertheless, they attempted to deal with the returnees as best they could, assisting with transportation from the border to states and offering a deal on a piece of land.  They, too, feared that the returnees who had businesses up north could create competition for their own country, trying to emerge from its own devastation of the Revolution. Conflicted also, the nation to the south also devastated by political and economic problems, thought the returnees might help develop their economy with skills learned up north.  One million Mexicans would experience Repatriation, as many as half were US citizens, children born here. By 1935 they subsided with a New Deal and a better economy and Mexicans started returning.

Between 1924 and 1930 migrant workers had employment in the valley in the summer and fall, but returned to southern California during the winter, a yearly average of 58,000 Mexicans.  The cotton strike, which broke out in October of 1933, involved 12,000-19,000 workers, paralyzed cotton farming operations in several counties for almost four weeks and threatened to destroy the state’s cotton crop valued at more than $50 million.  The Cannery and Agricultural Workers Union, affiliated with the Communist Party, spearheaded the organization of the strikers, 75% Mexican.  The strike was called because cotton growers rejected a demand for increase in wages from 60 cents to $1 for 100 pounds.  The final settlement was for 75 cents, but only after a violent confrontation in the fields that left scores of workers wounded and three killed by growers firing from ambush (they were identified, tried, and acquitted by a jury).  The strike caused such apprehension among farmers that it prompted them to organize vigilante groups, most powerful the Associated Farmers of America.

The Strike ended because it had caused enough suffering in the conclusion of the organizers, but it was considered a victory for the strikers because it changed the image of Mexican workers as docile and inferior, to be manipulated.  Since 1910 most of California’s labor force became Mexican, by 1933 75% in the valley. Cotton production had increased the seasonal work of migrants into winter through February and made it easier to keep a more permanent residence in the valley instead of returning to the south each year.

The greater forces and factors determining the size and frequency of strikes in agriculture was the prevalence of large-scale farms that underpaid workers to increase profits. Their domination of agriculture and labor unrest resulted in 42 strikes in the valley.  The cotton strikes stand out for being more violent and they centered around the dominant ginning companies, foremost Anderson Clayton, who were controlling the wage scale.  

Although the Depression contributed to lowering wages from $1.45 in 1929 to 40 cents per 100 pounds in 1932, the wage cutting power was the force to be confronted.  In 1933 the wage was 60 cents and raised to 75 cents after the Pixley strike.  It increased to $1 in 1936 and declined to 80 cents in 1939.  According to a report by the California State Relief Administration 1930-1935 the average earning of migratory farm workers declined from $381 to $289 and average amount of employment from 7.5 to 5.9 months.  That was well below the minimum subsistence levels of $780 and $850 in those years.

Beside the extremely hard work, the migrants faced stereotypes which ran from “docile, fairly intelligent under competent supervision, obedient and cheap.  If he were active and ambitious, he would be less tractable and would cost more.”  Farmers regarded Mexicans as a desirable addition to the population, for they were a class of people who would always be content with performing the menial tasks, thus leaving other people free to engage in a higher order of enterprise.”  Racially inferior beliefs were behind these, but also a practical attitude that they could be deported if they gave any trouble, and that they were not the economic threat like the Japanese, who were engaging in their own farms. They called them stupid, unambitious, spending money unwisely and content with their conditions.  Not after the strikes like in Pixley. 

Chacón, Labor Unrest and Industrialized Agriculture in California:  The Case of the 1933 San Joaquin Valley Cotton Strike, in Aquel Entonces by Manuel González

Negative images of Mexicans during this period fostered alienation and prejudice. 

The new KKK appropriated of the word “Fiesta” for their statewide event at the Fresno Fairgrounds in 1924 (they attracted thousands). William Randolph Hearst had a newspaper empire known for the term “yellow journalism,” and its anti-Mexican slant.