Curious Unions: Mexican American Workers and Resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898-1961

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Crossing the Line

“Frankie, vete a la tienda y compra (go to the store and buy) . . . . . “Un carton de leche” (a half-gallon carton of milk), sour cream, unas papas (potatoes), “a pound of carne molida, extra lean” (hamburger). Vivid in my memory is the day I crossed the United Farm Workers’ union picket line boycotting a South Oxnard market in the early 1970s. I must have been 10 years old. As I approached a crowd, made larger in their holding intrepid red and white flags with a defiant black eagle at the center, I was struck by the drama of activism by a people, my people, that I never witnessed demonstrate in such a way. I did not want to enter the small neighborhood market for I felt, almost instinctively, sympathetic to their protest; at the same time I feared the wrath of mom for not fulfilling “mi mandado” (my errand). As I gazed at the brown faces of the picketers I considered “grandpa” and “grandma”, long time citizens, one by birth the other naturalized, on dad’s side and abuelita (grandmother) on my mother’s who picked and packed lemons, lettuce, plums, and other crops throughout California for much of the 20th century. Nonetheless I crossed the line.

Although I never picked a fruit or vegetable for a living, as a Chicano born and raised in Ventura County I lived in a cross-cultural community of agricultural workers. I remember visiting the homes of Filipino, Japanese, and Mexican families and viewing mud-caked trucks and boots in the driveway of homes. My family regularly received bounties of delicious strawberries, lemons, and celery gratis from our friends and neighbors; what could not be consumed we redistributed. The exchange of free produce strengthened communal bonds. I also eavesdropped on adult conversations sharing the experiences of work in the packing sheds and canneries, peppered with the word la union (the union).

While in graduate school I interviewed my grandmothers about their lives. They recounted the challenges they faced as women, workers, and mothers. Grandma talked about the freedom employment at the Oxnard Seaboard packinghouse afforded her in regards to escaping the isolated confines of the home; grandpa allowed her to work after my aunts and uncles left the nest. Mi abuelita explained how she migrated to the US as a 45 year old single mother while toeing three young daughters from Chihuahua, Mexico. A family friend, married to a Filipino, assisted my abuelita’s entrance into the land of sun and money—more sun than money. Although mi abuelita never returned to Chihuahua she referred to it as mi tierra natal (my homeland), along with the heroics of Pancho Villa. Both grandma and abuelita also spoke of la union.

Grandma related the family’s eviction from Rancho Sespe during the countywide citrus strike of 1941. Pickers and packers of the Agricultural and Citrus Workers Union (ACWU) desired union recognition, a ten cent raise in hourly pay from 30 to 40 cents (adjusted for inflation translating to $5.75), and compensation for la hora mojada or wet time—the idle morning period crews spent in the orchards waiting for fruit to dry before its harvest. Being that grandpa was a union organizer, the Barajas family, like many other families who for generations lived in the company housing of Rancho Sespe, suddenly found themselves homeless. Fortunately, Franklin Roosevelt’s Farm Security Administration established tent cities (nicknamed Teaguevilles after the Limoneira owner Charles Teague) for displaced citrus workers. Meanwhile, los missourees, Dust Bowl migrants, took over their homes and jobs. In this story, ACWU leader “Pedro” Pete Petersen’s name is in an important figure in this family’s story of labor activism.

Abuelita’s historical deposition, on the other hand, expressed the sense of empowerment Cesar Chavez instilled in her. In fact, abuelita also became a UFW organizer while working on a Japanese owned farm. With tears in her eyes, her daughter expressed the sense of humiliation when growers required strawberry pickers to constantly blow whistles to prevent them from eating the fruit as they worked. At one point, abuelita fired back at an overseer at one ranch in stating that she was a human being, not an animal. When I spoke to abuelita about Cesar Chavez she spoke of him with the same reverence as when she talked about Pancho Villa—a person who championed the cause of the underdog.

The history of farm workers struggling for dignity in the form of a living wage and humane working condition is long and highlighted by UFW campaigns in the Southwest. And although the five year long farm worker strike in Delano dominates the state’s memory, lesser known rebellions took place throughout the state. Indeed, in 1974 the UFW launched a 4 month long strike against the strawberry growers of Ventura County. The collusion of local public agencies with agribusiness evidenced itself when sheriff’s department helicopters attempted to disperse UFW picket lines by hovering directly above protestors; in fact, one drifted so low a UFW protester retaliated by hurling rocks at it. This, however, only afforded law enforcement the pretext they needed to aggressively arrest him and others who came to his defense. Protest has a price.

As I drive by the fields of the Oxnard Plain on my way to work every day, I muse upon the challenges of men and women who labor in them today and ask myself: Do their families enjoy improved opportunities than those of my grandparents? Do they earn a living wage? Are they adequately protected from the effects of pesticides? Can they form a union without the terror of being fired or deported? I do not know the answer to some of these questions; but I am sure of one thing. If a UFW picket line forms at my grocery store I will not cross the line. I will join it.

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Op.Ed. Ventura County Star

I received a holiday card this year with a special surprise from Sylvia Mendez. It was a U.S. Postal Service stamp commemorating the precedent-setting Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County et al. (1946). As a graduate student in the early 1990s, I had the privilege of interviewing Sylvia and her mother, Felicitas, in their Fullerton home. Felicitas and her husband, Gonzalo, were the lead plaintiffs in a suit challenging their children's segregation in "Mexican schools."

The case demonstrated that systematic discrimination in the United States was not limited to African-Americans in the South but also targeted blacks, Asian Americans and Chicanos throughout the Southwest.

The Mendez decision held that separate-but-equal practices violated the constitutional rights of Chicano schoolchildren. Thurgood Marshall, lawyer for the NAACP and future U.S. Supreme Court justice, filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Mendez plaintiffs. The following year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision, but school boards throughout the state resisted desegregation remedies for decades.

In 1954, when Marshall successfully challenged the separate-but-equal doctrine as it applied to African-American children in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education, he cited the Mendez ruling.

Studying the Mendez case led me to wonder about historically high dropout rates among Chicanos. Over the years, I've asked Chicano parents, grandparents and great-grandparents throughout Ventura County about their schooling. The elders I spoke with described Mexican schools in Ventura, Santa Paula and Fillmore that were both separate from, and unequal to, those attended by white children.

And where budgets precluded the creation of Mexican schools, districts established segregated spaces within the schools. At the Woodrow Wilson School in Oxnard, for example, officials physically separated students of African, Asian and Mexican ancestry from their white peers, both in the classrooms and the playground. One person I interviewed said that Chicano children often relieved themselves behind trees because the nearest restroom was on the side of the playground designated for white students.

The same senior citizens also recalled the corporal punishment meted out to children who spoke Spanish at school. One Fullerton College counselor lamented the tight-lipped confusion he and his classmates endured. Unable to answer his teachers in English, and prohibited from speaking Spanish, he mostly remained silent while attending a Mexican school in Orange County. Chicano students who survived elementary and middle school were often tracked away from college preparatory courses and toward vocational and home economic classes.

Alienated and marginalized, 50 percent of Chicano youths dropped out — some contend they were pushed out — and then had to overcome educational handicaps to compete in the job market.

Southern California school districts weren't always quick to implement school desegregation. Before the Mendez and Brown decisions, Oxnard built neighborhood elementary schools (Juanita and Ramona) yards away from each other to prevent Chicano children of La Colonia from venturing outside their barrio for their education. In 1974, almost three decades after Mendez, U.S. District Court Judge Harry Pregerson used, in Debbie and Doreen Soria et al., Plaintiffs, v. Oxnard School District Board of Trustees, school board minutes from 1934 to show the "explicit intent to racially segregate its elementary school students." He ordered the Oxnard School District to implement a desegregation plan.

Desegregation was usually slow when it came at all, and recent studies show that American communities — and schools — are resegregating rapidly. The Mendez case reminds us that the problems of social equity now facing our children may be complex, but they're not wholly unprecedented. Income based on the education that persons received in previous generations now plays a large role in determining what neighborhoods their progeny live and where they send or do not send their children to school. This is the new face of segregation. If there is one thing that history reminds us it is that the struggle for social justice continues. Thank you for the stamp, Sylvia Mendez.

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Ventura County Star