In 2004, Richard Steven Street published Beasts of the Field to contextualize the historical development of agricultural workers in California and argue that the state created an agricultural empire by dominating the industry’s labor production. Challenging other historical agricultural perspectives on American commercial farming, Beasts of the Field is a major contribution to current scholarship on Chicana/o agricultural workers and migration.
Looking beyond California, Neil Foley’s The White Scourge and Chicana/o labor historian Emilio Zamora’s The World of the Mexican Workers in Texas are critical contributions to the historiography of Mexican agricultural workers in Texas. The White Scourge examines working-class Mexican, African American, and Anglo-American agricultural workers and social relations in the Texas cotton industry in the early twentieth century. In the book, Foley pinpoints racial tensions among Mexican, African American, and white cotton workers, providing a critical analysis of all three working-class sectors. Zamora’s The World of the Mexican Workers in Texas more specifically hones in on the historical experience of Mexican agricultural workers in Texas during the early twentieth century and challenges Foley’s analysis by arguing that Mexican farmworkers were exploited, leading them to participate in the organized union struggles of the era. Zamora’s study is the best scholarly text on the subject.
Devra Weber’s Dark Sweat, White Gold and Gilbert Gonzalez’s Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing constitute some of the most important scholarship on Mexican agricultural labor and union organizing in the United States. Examining agricultural workers, labor strikes, and labor organizing in California during the Great Depression, Weber’s book argues that farmworkers were marginalized and given a raw deal by California’s agricultural growers and industry. Weber’s analysis debates the mainstream views of American labor historians and offers a more progressive historical assessment that reveals Mexican workers and labor organizers as important subjects in American labor and Great Depression history. Gonzalez’s Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing explores Mexican agricultural labor organizing and the involvement of the Mexican consuls in supporting labor struggles in the early twentieth century. He argues that Mexico became an economic satellite of the United States due to its emigrant policies and asserts that Mexican labor organizing was catalyzed by this economic imperialism and American imperial politics more generally. He pushes back against other labor historians’ conceptions of empire and imperialism, contending that both are major reasons for agricultural workers’ marginalization in the modern United States. Compared to Weber’s text, Gonzalez’s monograph more strongly argues that Mexican labor was a product of American capitalism.
W. K. Barger and Ernesto M. Reza’s The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest and Dennis Nodín Valdés’s Al Norte both present critical scholarship focused on the Midwest and other agricultural belts outside the American Southwest. Barger and Reza’s The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest considers Mexican migration, agricultural workers, and labor organizing in the Midwest. Concentrating on Baldemar Velasquez and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, the authors argue that both made a major impact in advocating for and organizing Chicana/o agricultural workers outside the American Southwest. Valdés, however, challenges Barger and Reza’s scholarly analysis and, through well-developed archival research on the same topic, surpasses his counterparts in broadening Chicana/o Midwest historiography. His book, Al Norte, studies the experiences of Mexican migrant and agricultural workers in Great Lakes region during the twentieth century, ultimately establishing that these workers faced exploitation and discrimination. Documenting the historical development of Mexican migration, agricultural labor, and immigration settlements in the Upper Midwest, Al Norte is the best scholarly text published on the Mexican experience in the region.
Zamora, Valdés, Gonzalez, and Weber provide the best historical accounts of Mexican agricultural workers, labor strikes, and labor organizing in the modern United States. However, Valdés and Gonzalez pay more attention to the concepts of empire and imperial politics in contextualizing the development of Mexican agricultural labor in mainstream American society. These scholarly texts will be important touchstones for future scholarship on the topic.
