Reading the American Past: Printed Page 177
DOCUMENT 24–4
A Mexican American Farmworker Describes the Importance of Sticking Together
The New Deal's Farm Security Administration (FSA) tried to help migrant farmworkers, including tens of thousands of Mexican Americans and Okies fleeing the parched fields and mortgage foreclosures of the Dust Bowl. Between 1938 and 1941 two college students from New York visited FSA migrant labor camps in California to record migrants' music and interview farmworkers. President Roosevelt invited them to the White House to play some of their recordings. At the FSA camp in El Rio, California, just north of Los Angeles, they interviewed Jose Flores, a twenty-year-old Mexican American farmworker. His interview, excerpted below, revealed the efforts of migrant workers to obtain better wages. Flores also recounted the discrimination Mexican Americans confronted as they exercised their rights as citizens.
Jose Flores
Interview, Farm Security Administration Migrant Labor Camp, El Rio, California, 1941
Interviewer: Tell me about the set up you have in this camp here in El Rio. ...
Flores: [The] Welfare Committee tries to see that the families are in a good position concerning food or clothes, whatever clothes they can obtain from the church or some other offices or agencies, they try to distribute those clothes to whoever needs them the worst. ... We have a man that runs the employment office here. If a farmer comes in here and needs some help on his ranch, we try to send him to the employment agency man and he contacts him for whatever men he needs and he tells him what he's willing to pay.
I: What sort of work are people doing now?
F: Well, some are working on ranches doing general ranch work, some are hoeing weeds, I mean hoeing beans, they hoe weeds amongst the beans, and some of them are picking lemons out in the other neighboring counties, Santa Barbara County, owing to the fact of the strike that we had here before, they refused to pick lemons here, they are picking lemons in the other neighboring counties.
I: Before the people came into this camp, where did they live?
F: Before they came to this camp, well they lived in company-owned camps, by company I mean the lemon associations and companies for which they worked. These companies have their own homes and they keep them [farmworkers] in there because they need them in the winter time for smudging, that means lighting smudge pots when it gets too cold. They [farmworkers] happened to come to this camp here because they were evicted from the company-owned camps because they went on a strike trying to get a little better wage than what they were getting and the growers refused to give them the wages so they went on strike and because they went on strike they were evicted. So it was necessary that this camp here had to come into the county so that it could give these people who were evicted homes or housing. ...
I: What about the places you live in in the camp here? What are they like?
F: Well, here we're living in tents, just a platform and then the tent on top of the platform.
I: How do most of the people feel about coming in here?
F: Well, at the time that they came in here they just felt that it was the best thing to do so they could keep on the strike. They didn't worry that the tents were not like home or the home they used to live in or anything because they felt that it was what they should do to be able to keep up the strike.
I: In order to be together here, was that the idea?
F: Yeah, their main purpose was they wanted to stick together because only by sticking together could they obtain a gain in the strike or, even if it wasn't a strike, in other forms of life they could at least learn how to work together on different things.
I: What do you think most of them want, what's their main ambition right now.
F: Well, the main ambition now is to get a better wage than what they're getting because the cost of living right now is very expensive. They can't make a living on twenty-seven and a half cents an hour. That's what they get paid for work. It was alright if it was steady work all the year through, but sometimes they don't work the whole day or probably they won't work for week or so. The feel like the thing they need most now is to be recognized as a union and get a better wage.
I: They'd like to go back to living on the ranches?
F: They'd like to go back to the camps but they refuse to go back unless they go back as a union or as a group. They don't want to go back as individuals because they know very well that three weeks or a month after they go back they'll get fired and as a group they won't be able to fire them all.
I: When the Mexicans were put out [evicted], a lot of the Okies took their places.
F: Well, the Okies were put in before the Mexicans were put out because they were living in the groves. They had their trailers or tents in the groves. They were all ready to go in as soon as the Mexicans were thrown out. Their [the Mexicans'] reaction against them [the Okies] wasn't so bad because they felt that the Okies were just a poor laboring class like ourselves. And at the time that they were brought in they were promised good wages and they were promised that their wives would work at the ranches where the strike was on and they were hungry and they didn't have enough money to keep up and so they thought that it was a good chance to make a little money and fill their stomachs up with food. So we didn't feel bad against them, we didn't have any thing against them because we just thought they were pushed in the same ... as we could have been pushed in to one of their own strikes probably. So we didn't feel bad against them. ...
I: Most of the young people around here were born here, weren't they? Most of the young people in this camp.
F: Well, yeah, most of the young people in this camp, they were born here, most of them.
I: Well they think of themselves as Americans, don't they?
F: Yeah, they do.
I: Well, do they think they are getting all the benefits that Americans are supposed to get?
F: No, they don't think they are getting them because for example, like in theaters, they go to the theater, there's always a middle aisle and two side aisles and they're not permitted to sit in the middle aisle. They've got to sit on the side aisle just because they are Mexicans.
I: Are there any other things like that that they do? How about schools?
F: Well, in schools they [Americans] always try to have them [Mexicans] separate at least if the county can go to the expense of building a school and there's enough Mexican people around which can be put in a separate school, they [Americans] just build a school and put them in a separate school. That's what happened here in our county. There was about a hundred children that used to be going to the American school, so in 1931 they just thought they'd get rid of the Mexican greasers and they'd build a school separately for themselves for the Mexican people so they just went ahead and built a school just to have them in a separate school.
I: Even though there really wasn't a need for another school?
F: No, there was no need for another school. The school that they were going to was big enough for all of them. The only reason was that they wanted to get rid of them and put them in a different school.
I: Well, the people, especially the young people, do they worry very much about trying to do much about it?
F: No, they don't seem to worry much about it. They just seem to think that it just came to happen and it has happened and probably isn't much they can do about it, about changing the situation. I'm referring to the discrimination of Mexican people in this part of the country here. They feel that it came to happen and they just can't do much about it.
I: What about the cops? Can you tell me about the fiesta the other night? Can you tell me about that fight?
F: Oh, yes. At the ... fiesta there it's always been a fact that every year the Mexican boys they fight with American boys and usually the officers come around and instead of picking up both parties involved in the fight, they pick up the Mexicans mostly. Sometimes they'll pick one American fellow and three Mexicans just to make it look good. But still they're picking mostly Mexicans all the time and throwing them in the can instead of picking up both parties to teach both parties a lesson. They seem to teach just the Mexican people a lesson, but instead of being a lesson they enforce the idea that they [Mexican boys] should come back next year and fight them [American boys] again because they get the raw deal out of the fight or the decision, so the officers they just throw them in the can.
I: What do you think can be done about it?
F: Well, the only thing that I feel that could done about it is by forming young people's clubs or older people's clubs too and contacting different other American clubs and telling them about discrimination against Mexican people. That's about the only way that I feel it could be done, that something could be done about it, because it's really the public who makes this discrimination against Mexican people, it's not the government particularly, it's the public itself that does it.
I: You were saying something a while ago about what they did in Los Angeles about discrimination.
F: Well, in Los Angeles they tried to get together and form clubs and in some cases a certain Mexican fellow applies for a job and the place where they tell him they couldn't give him a job because he's a Mexican, this certain club that he belongs to, they try to contact the manager or the superintendent at the plant and explain to him that even though he's a Mexican he's drafted and is counted in this country for the army and he's gotta do every other thing that the regular American citizen does, so why shouldn't he be allowed to have a good job to live by, a good job that he can depend on? If he has to do every other thing that the American citizen does for the benefit of the country, why shouldn't the country let him have a good job or else the individual manager of the plant should give him a good job. You're expected to be a good citizen. They only way I feel they can make good citizens out of Mexican people is treating them like American citizens.
I: Do you think they make good citizens?
F: Oh, absolutely, they sure will. I know they will make good citizens, if they're just treated the right way.
I: Do you think the project like this camp that we're in can be any help in training people to be good citizens?
F: I feel that it does a lot of good to the people. And it would do them a lot of good to become good citizens, a camp like this will. I can see that certain forms of getting together that do get together it helps a lot.
I: For cooperation.
F: For cooperation and to educate them. Because what this camp is doing, the good that it's doing is to education mostly, showing the people that by getting together they can get somewhere.
I: Have you ever been on the [camp governing] council before together like this in self-government?
F: No, they've never had a self-governing council like this before.
I: The council here works according to the democratic process, doesn't it?
F: That's right.
I: What do you think about that? Do you think that's going to be good in educating them?
F: There is one good thing in educating. It gives the democratic point of view at least because everybody has a right to vote and make decisions.
From Jose Flores, personal interview, 1941. Transcribed by the editor. Audio from the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, Digital ID: AFCTS 5145a1 and 5145b1.
Questions for Reading and Discussion