activist: someone who works with others to achieve social change
agitators: people who urge others to protest or rebel allies: people who support a movement, but are not directly affected
AWOC: Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of Filipino farmworkers
boycott: refuse to spend money on a product or service, or at a place of business
“campesino”: Spanish word for farmer or farmworker
“corridos”: Mexican folk songs that usually describe aspects of the immigrant experience
“esquirola”: Spanish term for scab worker (see below)
“la huelga”: Spanish term for strike
“la causa”: Spanish term for the cause; how farmworkers involved in the strike and boycotts referred to their struggle
liberation: freedom from oppression militant: aggressive in support of a political or social cause
radical: fundamental changes to social structures and values
Reds: Communists, radicals
reform: movements seek to change or modify existing laws and practices
scabs: workers hired to replace workers who go out on strike
social movement: any formal or informal organization of people who are actively trying to change society
strategy: overall approach you take in your efforts to reach a goal
strike: refuse to work in an effort to improve wages, working conditions, or benefits
tactic: specific action you take toward achieving a goal
target: a person or institution responsible for the problem; who or what the movement is trying to change
United Farmworkers of America: a labor union created in 1966 when the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) merged with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA).
1. This is the beginning of a social movement in fact and not in pronouncements. We seek our basic, God-given rights as human beings. Because we have suffered--and are not afraid to suffer--in order to survive. We are ready to give up everything, even our lives in our fight for social justice. We shall do it without violence because that is our destiny. To the ranchers, and to all those who oppose us, we say, in the words of Benito Juarez, “EL RESPETO AL DERECHO AJENO ES LA PAZ.” Respect for others brings peace.
2. We seek the support of all political groups and protection of the government, which is also our government, in our struggle. . . . To the politicians we say that the years are gone when the farm worker said nothing and did nothing to help himself. . . . WE SHALL BE HEARD.
3. We seek, and have, the support of the Church in what we do. At the head of the Pilgrimage we carry La Virgen de la Guadalupe (the Virgin of Guadalupe) because she is ours, Patroness of the Mexican people. . . .
4. We are suffering. We have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer to win our cause. . . .
5. We shall unite. . .. We must use the only strength that we have, the force of our numbers. The ranchers are few; we are many. UNITED WE SHALL STAND.
6. We will strike. . . . Our revolution will not be armed, but we want the existing social order to dissolve; we want a new social order. . . . We do not want the paternalism of the rancher, we do not want the contractor; we do not want charity at the price of our dignity. We want to be equal with all the working men in the nation; we want a just wage, better working conditions, a decent future for our children. To those who oppose us, be they ranchers, police, politicians, or speculators, we say that we are going to continue fighting until we die, or we win. WE SHALL OVERCOME. . . .
MAY THE STRIKE GO ON! VIVA LA CAUSA!
We, the striking grape workers of California, join on this International Boycott Day with the consumers across the continent in planning the steps that lie ahead on the road to our liberation. As we plan, we recall the footsteps that brought us to this day and the events of this day. The historic road of our pilgrimage to Sacramento later branched out, spreading like the unpruned vines in struck fields, until it led us to willing exile in cities across this land. There, far from the earth we tilled for generations, we have cultivated the strange soil of public understanding, sowing the seed of our truth and our cause in the minds and hearts of men.
We have been farmworkers for hundreds of years and pioneers for seven [when the first farmworkers union was formed]. Mexicans, Filipinos, Africans and others, our ancestors were among those who founded this land and tamed its natural wilderness. But we are still pilgrims on this land, and we are pioneers who blaze a trail out of the wilderness of hunger and deprivation that we have suffered even as our ancestors did. We are conscious today of the significance of our present quest. If this road we chart leads to the rights and reforms we demand, if it leads to just wages, humane working conditions, protection from the misuse of pesticides, and to the fundamental right of collective bargaining, if it changes the social order that relegates us to the bottom reaches of society, then in our wake will follow thousands of American farmworkers. Our example will make them free. But if our road does not bring us to victory and social change, it will not be because our direction is mistaken or our resolve too weak, but only because our bodies are mortal and our journey hard. For we are in the midst of a great social movement, and we will not stop struggling 'til we die, or win!
We have been farmworkers for hundreds of years and strikers for four. It was four years ago that we threw down our plowshares and pruning hooks. These Biblical symbols of peace and tranquility to us represent too many lifetimes of unprotesting submission to a degrading social system that allows us no dignity, no comfort, no peace. We mean to have our peace, and to win it without violence, for it is violence we would overcome the subtle spiritual and mental violence of oppression, the violence subhuman toil does to the human body. So we went and stood tall outside the vineyards where we had stooped for years. But the tailors of national labor legislation had left us naked. Thus exposed, our picket lines were crippled by injunctions and harassed by growers; our strike was broken by imported scabs; our overtures to our employers were ignored. Yet we knew the day must come when they would talk to us, as equals.
We have been farmworkers for hundreds of years and boycotters for two. We did not choose the grape boycott, but we had chosen to leave our peonage, poverty and despair behind. Though our first bid for freedom, the strike, was weakened, we would not turn back. The boycott was the only way forward the growers left to us. We called upon our fellow men and were answered by consumers who said — as all men of conscience must — that they would no longer allow their tables to be subsidized by our sweat and our sorrow: They shunned the grapes, fruit of our affliction.
We marched alone at the beginning, but today we count men of all creeds, nationalities, and occupations in our number. Between us and the justice we seek now stand the large and powerful grocers who, in continuing to buy table grapes, betray the boycott their own customers have built. These stores treat their patrons’ demands to remove the grapes the same way the growers treat our demands for union recognition — by ignoring them. The consumers who rally behind our cause are responding as we do to such treatment — with a boycott! They pledge to withhold their patronage from stores that handle grapes during the boycott, just as we withhold our labor from the growers until our dispute is resolved.
Grapes must remain an unenjoyed luxury for all as long as the barest human needs and basic human rights are still luxuries for farmworkers. The grapes grow sweet and heavy on the vines, but they will have to wait while we reach out first for our freedom. The time is ripe for our liberation.
Mr. Hernández: And one day, another guy and I, his name is Francisco Uribe, finally decided to go over and come to work here in the United States. It was the time of the Second World War, that is, in 1943. And we arrived at the bridge of those days, a simple bridge, up to the booth where the Immigration man was and I asked him where were the trucks that took men from that area to pick cotton and he answered me... There were some trucks waiting for people to take them to pick cotton. And it was our turn to go with a gentleman named Faustino Loya from Mesquite, New Mexico. He took us and there we stayed, there we picked cotton for what was all of November, December, January and even part of February, that year. And I returned to my town and after that first time feeling great earning money in dollars, which lasted long enough, the following year I returned again, that is, in 1944 I crossed the border again. On this occasion...I returned to work, from the cleaning of cotton which happens around May, June and worked all of that year with him, until we brought out the harvest in 1945, in January of 1945.
Interviewer: And tell me how did you become contracted as a bracero, where would you go? What documents would they ask for?
Mr. Hernández: Well, well on that occasion the contracting took place in the city of Chihuahua, in the old train station. Back then, they called it the Trocadero. I don’t know why, that is how it was named. And then it was published in a newspaper that was sold in Chihuahua, it was named, the Heraldo, and I believe it has the same name. And the year [19]46 which was the first year, we approached and they contracted us, the association name was The United States Agricultural Association, I think.
And from there they would take us on bus to Ciudad Juarez and there we would cross the bridge on foot and they would meet us in a place that was in the same location as Immigration by the bridge. Once there they would do a medical exam, the Immigration, and they tossed some powder on our heads and all of our bodies, because they would undress us to see if we carried any sickness that could be contagious to other people.
The powder on our heads was for the lice, to see if we had lice (laughing) I think during this time my hair began to fall out. And from there sometimes they would take us in pick-ups, in cars. The time I went to Pecos, they took us in a trailer, in a trailer we were going, they took us to Pecos, an open trailer like those for cattle, but very clean, very clean...
Interviewer: And there in Chihuahua, how was The Trocadero?, was it like Government offices, or was it a covered area and nothing more, or was it a few tents?
Mr. Hernández: I don’t remember much about them, but I do remember the office was very organized and there were also people from here from the United States choosing people, they would check all of our hands to see if they were calloused.
Interviewer: This would mean that you were...?
Mr. Hernández: That we were laborers, that we were agricultural workers. It was one of the exams that I remember we had to place our hands out like this and they would grab the calluses. And I remember that, yes they would reject a few that were, office workers I think or something like that, those that did not have that mark. And I was never rejected, all of the times I was contracted I departed able to work. And there was disorder but outside, because there were plenty of people there, there they slept; they slept on, well on what they could and yes I was a bit uncomfortable and sometimes they waited four or five days waiting for their turn, but all else was fine. The disorder consisted in that some of the youth there, youth at that time, I believe they drank their bottle of, their drinks of sotol or tequila, but not that this created major unrest, fights, no!, no, there were none, at least I saw none during my time.
Interviewer: And, How much time did you wait from the moment in which you arrived at the exams and until you where contracted for you to come?, many days?
Mr. Hernández: No, in my case, the three times I was contracted was, well five days. Once we stayed two days here en El Paso in a place called Buena Vista, I believe...[No, it was] Río Vista! There we stayed a day and half. We had already been examined, ready for nothing more than for the bosses to come for us there, but it wasn’t a long wait, they were in much need of workers here and they themselves hurried to put us to work.
Interviewer: And, would they give any vaccines there?
Mr. Hernández: One day only, one day only they vaccinated us in the shoulder and, but only once! For sure it did nothing; it had no effect on me. You see sometimes it swells or something, it had no effect on me and it was for the better, go figure they fumigated us fully clothed and all of this, when we crossed, yes.