Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata is quoted as saying “the land belongs to those who work it with their hands.” The agricultural industry in the United States, fundamentally tied to the histories of settler colonialism and chattel slavery, complicates Zapata’s claim.

Under large-scale commercial agriculture, land, labor, and workers become commodities, primed for extraction. To sustain its ever-increasing growth of profits, this form of agriculture relies on a transnational labor pool, positioned as a racialized “other” in contrast to citizen workers.

Historically, agricultural labor in California has relied on a revolving door of foreign workers performing low-wage labor. Since the Gold Rush of 1849, Chinese, Japanese, Sikh, Filipino, and Mexican workers have alternately filled this role, feeding the domestic population while being excluded from the legal privileges and security afforded by U.S. citizenship.

As an economic system, capitalism leverages the tensions between classes of workers to cut costs as much as possible, creating competition and scarcity to drive down wages. However, since the late 1800s, farm workers in California have been organizing, forming associations, and striking.

Time and time again, disparate groups of workers have recognized their shared conditions and potentials for solidarity, joining together to form a militant multi-racial working class.

Migrant Farm Labor

Migrant farm workers move from one place to another looking for jobs harvesting seasonal crops. In the 1930s, monoculture crop cultivation devastated land in the American South, leading an influx of displaced, mostly white farm worker families to California.

Families fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930s joined the labor pool of California farm workers which, at the time, included Mexican and Filipino workers who migrated from crop to crop across the West Coast. Children and adults alike labored in the fields and lived in temporary and makeshift housing near the agricultural fields.

Many farm workers and their families also lived in labor camps, run by the government or private corporations, in Central California.

1963 map of farm labor camps in California

The agricultural power structure in the U.S. is known as “agribusiness,” which produces food for commercial purposes with the goal of maximizing profits. In order to generate profits, the growers attempt to keep wages low.

Throughout the 20th century, large corporations profiting from agribusiness sought to engineer an efficient yet disposable surplus labor pool that could be used to harvest an entire orchard of cherries one day and disappear from the farm the next.

The desire to increase profits at any cost necessitated a class of precarious workers who could be more easily exploited, performing critical labor while being devalued and underpaid.

People worked as day laborers, traveling to find jobs. But, as shown in this photograph, there was no guarantee of employment.

The work of harvesting crops was unstable. Farm workers cycling through periods of overemployment and underemployment were not guaranteed job security or offered unemployment insurance.

Migrant laborers, like those seen here, had to travel to offices of the Farm Placement Service, an agency run by the California Department of Employment, which contracted workers to farms on a temporary basis.

Moving multiple times each year to follow crops as they became ready to plant or harvest destabilized the lives of these workers and their families, who did not have reliable access to work, housing, education, healthcare, or social ties.

These agricultural laborers worked in fields, orchards, packing sheds, and processing plants, producing food to sustain the domestic population. The specialization of labor created different classes of workers who performed specific tasks over and over again.

“Stoop labor,” illustrated in this photograph, involved bending to the ground to harvest crops such as potatoes or strawberries.

This physically demanding work that quickly took a toll on the worker’s body, making this job less desirable. Often, the least protected class of workers - those without U.S. citizenship - ended up performing stoop labor.

The specialization of farm labor and the conditions of precarity that all migrant farm workers faced created a state of competition between workers who navigated hierarchies of race, class, and citizenship in order to survive.

1940

Following a successful 1939 strike action in which six thousand workers protested a wage cut by walking off the job in Stockton, California’s asparagus fields, Filipino agricultural workers create the Federated Agricultural Laborers Association (FALA). As a multi-racial coalition fighting for higher wages and better working conditions, FALA forces growers to bend to farm worker demands.

1942

As the U.S. enters World War II, workers are deployed into wartime industries and the field of agriculture faces a labor shortage. The United States and Mexico enter into a trade agreement called the Bracero Program, in which the U.S. government contracts Mexican citizens as a temporary workforce to sublet to farm employers. Soon after, bracero workers create the National Alliance of Mexican Braceros (Alianza), working with Ernesto Galarza to create a transnational labor organization. These attempts do not succeed against the state and corporate power of both countries.

1944

The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU), representing Black and white sharecroppers and tenant farmers in a militant union in the American South, expands to California, becoming the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), which seeks to organize all agricultural laborers into a national, multi-racial union.

1956

Ernesto Galarza, organizer with the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU) and research director of the National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU), publishes “Strangers in Our Fields,” a pamphlet which uses interviews with hundreds of bracero workers to expose the abuses of the Bracero Program. This study galvanizes a coalition of labor organizers, civil rights activists, priests involved with the Catholic Workers Movement, and government officials to end the Bracero Program.

1958

Members of the Community Service Organization (CSO) including Dolores Huerta and radical priest Father Thomas McCullough form the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA).The AWA uses community organizing strategies to unite small cells of organized farm workers, to build affinity and power among members.

1959

The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), AFL-CIO forms with the goal of applying the lessons of automotive and other trade union organizing to the problem of farm labor. AWOC chapters are composed primarily of Filipino migrant laborers who campaign to unionize workers across the grape, brussels sprouts, and lettuce industries.

1962

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta form the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in Stockton. Operating with a community organizing strategy, NFWA differs from other attempts to impose trade union models on farm labor, focusing around the need for farm workers to organize themselves, with their own leadership and resources.

1965

Led by Larry Itliong, Filipino members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) go on strike for higher wages, beginning the Delano Grape Strike. Mexican American workers with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) join AWOC on strike. Together, AWOC and NFWA create a system of roving pickets, sending cars full of striking workers to picket farms employing strikebreakers.

1966

After a year-long strike and boycott, Cesar Chavez leads a 340 mile march from Delano to Sacramento. The publicity generated by this action leads to an outpouring of public support, causing the farm corporation Schenley Industries to sign an agreement with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) merges with NFWA to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), gaining support from the AFL-CIO to continue organizing agricultural labor.

Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC)

Under the banner “If we stick together we can win,” the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) advocated for unity in struggle, bringing together a multi-racial coalition of farm workers and labor organizers to discuss the strategy and tactics of past strike actions and the current terrain of agricultural labor organizing.

AWOC headquarters, shown here, was located American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Labor Temple in Stockton, California.

AWOC was a labor union for agricultural workers that utilized a top-down approach to “organize the unorganized,” creating new unions in farms and canneries where none had previously existed.

This document shows a flyer created by AWOC encouraging agricultural workers to organize themselves and fight together for better conditions.

Tactically, AWOC utilized flying squads of pickets, sending striking workers to shut down farms during harvest while organizers negotiated with the growers to meet the union’s demands.

Initially chartered and funded by the AFL-CIO (a federation of unions with significant political power), AWOC’s administration was composed of trade union veterans and farm worker organizers.

Most rank-and-file members, like those pictured here at AWOC headquarters, were Filipino migrant farm workers who formed a militant base and fought for union recognition and higher wages, helping AWOC to gain twelve thousand new members in its first two years.

In October 1961, Larry Iltiong led a strike of Filipino American workers against brussels sprouts farmers in Santa Cruz demanding union recognition and higher wages. Growers defeated the strike by employing strikebreakers in the fields.

The members of AWOC shown here are protesting for higher wages and the removal of bracero workers being temporarily employed by growers in an attempt to break the strike.

In July 1961, AFL-CIO President George Meany revoked AWOC’s charter and financial support, stating that this attempt to organize farm labor had failed. AWOC staff and advocates organized the Strathmore Conference to explore their next steps after this sudden loss of funding.

Father Thomas McCullough, pictured here speaking at the Strathmore Conference, was a social justice-oriented priest who provided religious services and organizing assistance to braceros and other agricultural workers in Stockton, California.

After the Strathmore Conference, AWOC shifted focus to volunteer-led autonomous local councils of farm workers until the AFL-CIO re-certified AWOC in 1962, firing all volunteers and reclaiming the top-down power of the organization.

Throughout these turbulent organizational changes, AWOC continued to carry out strike campaigns, thanks to the continuity and organizing strengths of the Filipino American Labor Association (FALA).

Under the leadership of Filipino farm worker Larry Itliong, AWOC initiated the Delano Grape Strike in 1965. The National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), a primarily Mexican American organization led by Cesar Chavez, went out on strike with AWOC, joining with Itliong to form a multi-racial campaign that had the strength and the will to fight against the entrenched political power of the growers.

Bracero Program, 1942-1964

The Bracero Program was an international agreement that contracted five million guest workers from Mexico to work seasonally in the United States between 1942 and 1964.

Although advertised as a short-term solution to labor shortages during World War II, this program was also a response to a wave of militant labor actions in the 1930s that threatened corporate profits in California fields.

The Bracero Program was extended year after year and codified under Public Law 78 in 1951.

Administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, the Bracero Program was designed by corporate growers to create a pliable surplus of cheap workers that could be tightly controlled, operating in conditions that would prevent labor organizing.

Labor unions and advocacy groups opposed the program, citing the abusive conditions braceros faced as well as the impact of a foreign labor force in competition with domestic workers. 

Although the housing and labor conditions for bracero workers was often poor and in violation of their contracts, the workers themselves had a wide variety of motivations and experiences during their participation in the program.

Braceros, meaning people who work with their hands, were men recruited from rural areas in Mexico with the promise of earning higher wages across the border.

Aspiring braceros from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds responded to the call, traveling to processing centers in places like Empalme, Sonora for inspection by U.S. officials. If chosen, these men were packed into boxcars used for transporting livestock and brought to reception centers in the U.S. to undergo further examinations.

Workers were subjected to invasive medical inspections and treatments including fumigation with the pesticide DDT before being issued identification documents and sent to labor camps.

As a non-citizen class of workers entering a state of indentured servitude, braceros were subject to exploitative and dangerous conditions. Workers were housed in barracks and transported in truck beds for long days of grueling work.

Although the terms of the Bracero Program guaranteed a standard of housing, food, wages, and medical care, these standards were not enforced, and abusive conditions were rampant.

In a state of precarity, many braceros were unable to seek medical care or file complaints against their mistreatment due to the threat of deportation.

However, some bracero workers sought to organize with labor unions, churches, or each other to advocate for better conditions or otherwise reclaim their agency in a foreign land.

Utilizing research, outreach, and legislative pressure, AWOC worked to end the Bracero Program to increase the political and labor power of domestic farm workers.

Although AWOC fought for the termination of the program, the union also helped bracero workers file grievances against growers, and coordinated with braceros on labor actions.

Bracero workers and AWOC collaborated on labor actions until AWOC was sued by growers for interfering with their workforce. Due to the political pressure of labor unions and advocates, the program expired on December 31, 1964.

Henry P. Anderson

This exhibit is composed of materials created or collected by Henry P. Anderson during his years of research and advocacy into issues related to farm labor. The material shown here is a product of Anderson’s interactions with bracero workers as research subjects.

Anderson’s 1961 graduate thesis for the UC Berkeley School of Public Health investigated how the health attitudes of bracero workers were changed by their experiences in the United States.

Anderson contracted Louis Tagaban as a bilingual interviewer and together they conducted hundreds of interviews with bracero workers, their doctors, employees of labor camps, farmers, and government officials. The document shown here is Spanish version of the survey instrument used by Tagaban.

Through his research, Anderson developed an analysis of corporate power in the field of agriculture, recognizing the shared plight of bracero workers and migrant domestic laborers working in a state of alienation on land that they did not own.

Anderson witnessed and documented the exploitative nature of the Bracero Program and the way guest worker programs are leveraged against the domestic labor force to the benefit of agribusiness.

This document, created by Anderson for a "Agriculture and the Social Order" class at the Free University of California, depicts the agricultural industry's multi-faceted power structure.

In 1958, Anderson submitted a paper entitled “Social Justice and Foreign Contract Labor” to a meeting held by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in which he detailed the abuses of the Bracero Program.

Without his knowledge, AFSC circulated Anderson’s paper to their mailing list, including officials at the agencies that managed the Bracero Program. The claims made in his paper provoked a cascade of complaints, causing the University of California to shut down his research.

The University administration confiscated Anderson’s copies of interviews with individual bracero workers and demanded the censorship of chapters in his thesis which criticized the Bracero Program. While Anderson removed the controversial chapters in his dissertation, he later published the entire work under the title “The Bracero Program in California” (1982).

Henry P. Anderson served as the Director of Research for the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) from 1958-1962 and directed Citizens for Farm Labor from 1962-1974, working on issues related to farm labor and social justice throughout his life.

The footage shown here was shot and edited by Anderson throughout his time with AWOC.

It includes scenes of bracero workers being processed through a reception center; farm workers picketing in Podesta, California; Father Thomas McCullough speaking at the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) Strathmore Organizing Conference; and the National Farm Workers Assocation (NFWA) Pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento, California.