 Book cover | |
| Author | Vicki L. Ruiz |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | California History |
| Genre | Non-fiction, History |
| Publisher | University of New Mexico Press |
Publication date | 1987 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Hardcover, Paperback, eBook |
| Pages | 194 |
| ISBN | 978-0826309884 |
| Website | |
Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 is a 1987 monograph by Vicki L. Ruiz published by the University of New Mexico Press. [1]
Cannery Women, Cannery Lives tells the history of Mexican and Mexican-American women working in the California canning and food processing industry and their involvement in labor organization and unionization during 1930–1950. Ruiz combines a variety of sources, government records, newspaper articles, union documents, and oral histories to tell the story of how Mexican American women shaped the canning and food processing industry and unionization in California and how the industry in turn impacted their lives, families and communities. [2] [3]
The book is divided into six chapters. The first two chapters discuss the details of the work, family, and community lives of the women working in the industry; [4] the role of family and kinship connections form an important theme in the work. [5] Chapters 3–5 focus on the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), a loosely organized labor union created in 1937, and how it developed and influenced the California food packing industry and the roles Mexican women in the cannery industry played in its organization, development, and leadership. The final chapter discusses the competition between the UCAPAWA and the more centrally organized Teamsters and its eventual decline and absorption into the Distributive and Processing Workers of America. [2] [6]
Vicki L. Ruiz is a historian and professor focusing on the lives of Mexican American women in the 20th century. Ruiz has served as president of the American Historical Association, the American Studies Association, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, and the Organization of American Historians. In 2015 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded the National Humanities Medal. [7] [8] [9]
The Bracero Program was a U.S. Government-sponsored program that imported Mexican farm and railroad workers into the United States between the years 1942 and 1964.
Mexican American history, or the history of American residents of Mexican descent, largely begins after the annexation of Northern Mexico in 1848, when the nearly 80,000 Mexican citizens of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico became U.S. citizens. Large-scale migration increased the U.S.' Mexican population during the 1910s, as refugees fled the economic devastation and violence of Mexico's high-casualty revolution and civil war. Until the mid-20th century, most Mexican Americans lived within a few hundred miles of the border, although some resettled along rail lines from the Southwest into the Midwest.
Yolanda Margarita López was an American painter, printmaker, educator, and film producer. She was known for her Chicana feminist works focusing on the experiences of Mexican-American women, often challenging the ethnic stereotypes associated with them. Lopez was recognized for her series of paintings which re-imagined the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe. Her work is held in several public collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) was a labor union formed in 1937 and incorporated large numbers of Mexican, black, Asian, and Anglo food processing workers under its banner. The founders envisioned a national decentralized labor organization with power flowing from the bottom up. Although it was short-lived, the UCAPAWA influenced the lives of many workers and had a major impact for both women and minority workers in the union.
Luisa Moreno was a Guatemalan social activist and participant in the United States labor movement. She unionized workers, led strikes, wrote pamphlets in both English and Spanish, and convened the 1939 Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española, the "first national Latino civil rights assembly", before returning to Guatemala in 1950.
Mexican American literature is literature written by Mexican Americans in the United States. Although its origins can be traced back to the sixteenth century, the bulk of Mexican American literature dates from post-1848 and the United States annexation of large parts of Mexico in the wake of the Mexican–American War. Today, as a part of American literature in general, this genre includes a vibrant and diverse set of narratives, prompting critics to describe it as providing "a new awareness of the historical and cultural independence of both northern and southern American hemispheres". Chicano literature is an aspect of Mexican American literature.
Francisca Flores was a labor rights activist, an early Chicana feminist, a journal editor, and an anti-poverty activist.
The Stockton cannery strike of 1937, also known as the spinach riot, was the bloody culmination of conflict between the Agricultural Workers Organization local and the California Processors and Growers in the San Joaquin Valley of California. The riots of April 23, 1937, in which both sides were armed with clubs and firearms, began in front of a Stockton cannery and resulted in one death, over fifty serious injuries and tied up the movement of a $6 million vegetable crop. The strike is remembered as the most violent confrontation in a long struggle between unions and growers for control of Stockton canneries and the political, economic and labor ramifications that affected California for years to come.
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Patricia Zavella is an anthropologist and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Latin American and Latino Studies department. She has spent a career advancing Latina and Chicana feminism through her scholarship, teaching, and activism. She was president of the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists and has served on the executive board of the American Anthropological Association. In 2016, Zavella received the American Anthropological Association's award from the Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology to recognize her career studying gender discrimination. The awards committee said Zavella's career accomplishments advancing the status of women, and especially Latina and Chicana women have been exceptional. She has made critical contributions to understanding how gender, race, nation, and class intersect in specific contexts through her scholarship, teaching, advocacy, and mentorship. Zavella's research focuses on migration, gender and health in Latina/o communities, Latino families in transition, feminist studies, and ethnographic research methods. She has worked on many collaborative projects, including an ongoing partnership with Xóchitl Castañeda where she wrote four articles some were in English and others in Spanish. The Society for the Anthropology of North America awarded Zavella the Distinguished Career Achievement in the Critical Study of North America Award in the year 2010. She has published many books including, most recently, I'm Neither Here Nor There, Mexicans' Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty, which focuses on working class Mexican Americans struggle for agency and identity in Santa Cruz County.
Vicki Lynn Ruiz is an American historian who has written or edited 14 books and published over 60 essays. Her work focuses on Mexican-American women in the twentieth century. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.
Mexican-American folklore refers to the tales and history of Chicano people who live in the United States.
Susan Elaine Emley Keefe is an American anthropologist and author. She is a professor emerita at Appalachian State University. Keefe has published books on Mexican-American culture and Appalachian health issues.
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The 1985–1987 Watsonville Cannery strike was a labor strike that involved over 1,000 workers at two food processing facilities in Watsonville, California, United States. The facilities were owned by Watsonville Canning and Richard A. Shaw Inc., two of the largest frozen food processors in the United States, while the workers were all union members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Local 912. The strike began on September 9, 1985, and completely ended about 18 months later, on March 11, 1987.
Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945, written by George J. Sánchez and published in 1993 by Oxford University Press, explores the experiences of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles during the early 20th century. Sánchez provides a detailed look at Mexican Americans' lives, examining how they navigated living in a new country, including discrimination, poverty, and cultural displacement, and how they created a distinct Mexican American identity.
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This is a bibliography of California history. It contains English language books and mainstream academic journal articles published after World War II.