The rebellion of farm workers in the 1960s and 70s was the greatest challenge to the apartheid system in the Southwest.

1. Salinas farmworkers produce a large
% of the vegetables of the U.S.

2. California produces a sizable majority of
many American fruits, vegetables, & nuts:
99 percent of artichokes,
99 percent of walnuts,
97 percent of kiwis,
97 percent of plums,
95 percent of celery,
95 percent of garlic,
89 percent of cauliflower,
71 percent of spinach,
69 percent of carrots, etc.

3. % of U.S. food crops produced in California:
99 percent of artichokes,
99 percent of walnuts,
98 percent of garlic,
98 percent of pistachios,
97 percent of plums,
97 percent of kiwis,
97 percent of plums,
96 percent of olives,
96 percent of figs,
96 percent of processing tomatoes,
95 percent of nectarines,
95 percent of broccoli,
95 percent of celery,
95 percent of garlic,
92 percent of lemons,
92 percent of strawberries,
91 percent of grapes,
89 percent of cauliflower,
88 percent of avocados
88 percent of apricots
71 percent of spinach,
69 percent of carrots,

4. Farmworkers are denied their rights and
treated like a lower caste.
Trabajadores del campo se les niega
sus derechos, tratados como una casta
inferior.
92% of California farmworkers are from
Mexico. More than 50% denied
documents.

5. From India to Africa, Asia to the U.S. farmers and farmworkers
are trapped in a web of exploitation.
Indian cotton farmer
Mexican corn farmer
Guatemala coffee farmer
African cocoa farmer

6. There’s a web of global capitalist
relations that trap farmers and
farmworkers across the planet.

7. Modern corporate farming on one end, massive
impoverishment and hunger at the other

8. Plunder of Mexico at one end --
desperate workers driven north at the other.

9. A farmworker movement
in the 1960s – 1970s
challenged the injustices
of this relationship.
Un movimiento
campesino desafió las
injusticias de estas
relaciones.

10. En los años de las guerras de lechuga.
YEARS
In the

11. The story of an exploiting empire
begins early on.
The seizure of native lands. The mass importation of slaves.

12. “Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern
industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the
colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the
pre-condition of large-scale industry.” K. Marx

13. Slave States
Mexico

14. In 1848 U.S. troops were sent into Mexican lands on
the Rio Grande to provoke a war with Mexico.

15. The U.S. seizes ½ of Mexico with
two thirds of Mexico’s resources.

16. California was never about the small farmer,
but the large robber baron land owners.

17. The building of
a continental
railroad opened
markets and
set the pattern
for California’s
labor system.

18. Chinese brought to build the railroad – a system of
non-white, highly exploited labor, as in the South.

19. California farm converted to fruit & vegetable crops
on the backs of Chinese farmworkers

20. Chinese faced racial discrimination including
violent attacks and pogroms.

21. .
Later Filipino workers prepared and
harvest California crops.

22. Filipinos faced violence, racist slander and laws
that outlawed Filipino men from marrying
outside their ethnic group.

23. By the 1920s Mexican workers were a growing part
of the farm labor force in California, Arizona, Texas,
etc.

24. A World War II agreement between the U.S. and Mexico brought
hundreds of thousands of bracero workers to the U.S.

25. Between 1941 and 1964 braceros coming in
were inspected like cattle, sprayed with DDT.

26. Millions of African Americans also came north in those
years, many to work in factories and shipyards.

27. Blacks and Mexicans
faced racial and
language discrimination

28. Braceros worked for low
wages, denied the right to
organize or protest.
The border patrol (migra) –
used to intimidate &
deport workers.

29. “They chased them like outlaws,
like rustlers like thieves”.
Song writer and singer Woody
Guthrie wrote a song protesting
the deportations of braceros.
Deportees -- Outernational
Being “inspected” by a grower.

30. The Bracero program ends in 1964. In 1965 the
Filipinos workers strike in Coachella for better wages.

31. On September 16, 1965, Mexican workers
join the Filipinos on strike in Delano.

32. An era of political upheaval had just begun.
Anti-Vietnam war protests Civil Rights struggles

33. Student strikes and other
actions spread across the
country.
Uprising in the Watts
community of Los Angeles.

34. A Chicano movement
and a boycott of grapes.

35. Movements of liberation spread across the planet, from
Asia, Africa and Latin America – revolution in China.

36. Soldiers, students,
war veterans,
prisoners –-
a society in
rebellion.

37. The Black Panther Party puts revolution
on the U.S. map.

38. 1970: In the midst of this the Farmworkers’ Union
(UFWOC) forces grape growers to recognize a union
in the grape vineyards.

39. August 1970: A General strike of lettuce
workers in the Salinas Valley follows.

41. UFW didn’t take a public stand against
the Vietnam War until 1969 – after
prominent Democrats came out
publically against the war.
Prominent figures in the ruling class
came out in support of the UFW – their
point – to split off the farmworker
movement from the broader radicalized
social movements.

42. “The farmworker struggle gained in vitality to
the degree to which it came to represent the
rebellion against the twofold oppression of
farmworkers: as highly exploited workers with
low wages, few benefits, poor housing, and so
on, and as Mexicans, subject to intense forms
of repression and discrimination in nearly
every aspect of social and civil life (or as some
farmworkers considered themselves with
ample justification, a lower caste).”
Lettuce Wars Pg 123

43. This duality was precisely what the openly
declared enemies (growers) and alleged friends
(Democrats, certain labor leaders, etc.) most
despised and sought to suppress.

44. Farmworker strikes and
protests all over
California in 1973 and
1974 in response to
efforts to destroy the
union and the
movement.
Growers’ counter offensive –
Coachella 1973.

45. For 12 years –
Lettuce Wars in the
fields of Salinas,
Watsonville,
Imperial Valley, etc.

46. In 1974 at the height of strike wave the UFW
launched its biggest campaign – the “anti-
illegals campaign”, doing great political damage
to the farmworker movement and the broader
progressive movement.

47. Elections followed the passage of the
Agriculture Labor Relations Act, ALRA
in 1975. The UFW emerged the
dominant union in the vegetable fields
by 1977. But this period was also
marked by internal repression and
purges of progressives.

48. The Imperial – Salinas
Valley Lettuce strike of
1979 – the longest and
hardest fought strike.
The funeral of Rufino Contreras

49. The decline of radical
social movements . . .
The overturning of
socialism in various
countries . . .
The rise of Reaganism,
Thatcherism and the
reassertion of
capitalist/imperialist
authority here and
internationally . . .
Strengthened the growers
and conservative forces in
the union . . .

50. The farmworker movement ended in
the early 1980s.
• Growers dumped their union contracts and
faced little resistance.
• The growers flooded the fields with labor
contractors dividing workers up.
• Wages and conditions declined.
• The 1986 Immigration Reform flooded fields
with workers.
• The racial caste system -- pervasive as ever.

51. “Labor contractors became the fortress standing guard over the newly re-conquered
terrain. By using contractors the growers created a downward
pressure on wages and conditions through competition among the contractors;
distanced themselves from blame for worsening working conditions; and made
collective action by farmworkers to defend themselves extremely difficult . . .”

52. “The results were evident: wages dropped dramatically and then
stagnated; benefits deteriorated or disappeared; working conditions
declined. Around the mid-1980s, growers began to dismantle the labor
camps, reaping the benefits of rising real estate prices while dispersing
the workers even more and ratcheting up the debilitating struggle for
survival.”

53. 15 years of intense and complex struggle –
strikes, boycotts, mass jailing, beatings,
killings, marches . . . to squeeze a few
drops of justice from a desert of human
plunder and today . . . conditions are even
more oppressive – what does this say
about reform and the need for truly radical
change?

54. “Those who this system has cast off, those it
has treated as less than human, can be the
backbone and driving force of a fight not only
to end their own oppression, but to finally end
all oppression, and emancipate all of
humanity”.
“Those who this system has cast off, those it
has treated as less than human, can be the
backbone and driving force of a fight not only
to end their own oppression, but to finally end
all oppression, and emancipate all of
humanity”. B. Avakian

55. The End
Fin
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