The Racial and Labor Landscapes of the Salinas Valley Before World War II
The Racial and Labor Landscapes of the Salinas Valley Before World War II
This chapter explores the racial and labor landscapes of the Salinas Valley prior to World War II. The land that became the Salinas Valley was inhabited by Native Americans for 700 years before the Spanish, who colonized Mexico in 1521, arrived in present-day California. The valley's first residents were mostly migrants from the eastern United States, Canada, England, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland. This chapter considers race-making in California after the U.S.-Mexican War and Gold Rush and how conceptions of racial difference led to the ethnic succession of Asian and Mexican workers in the state's fields. It shows how racialized beliefs that Asians and Mexicans were “naturally suited” for stoop labor led to other forms of discrimination It also discusses the strikes staged by “Okie” and Filipino agricultural workers during the 1930s, along with the antiunion hostility displayed in these moments of labor militancy and its impact on Mexican-origin workers.
Keywords: discrimination, Salinas Valley, Mexico, California, migrants, Asians, Mexicans, strikes, agricultural workers, labor militancy
Yale Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.