 Book cover | |
| Author | Vicki L. Ruiz |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | California History |
| Genre | Non-fiction, History |
| Publisher | University of New Mexico Press |
Publication date | 1987 |
| 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. [lower-alpha 1] [7] [8] [9]
The Bracero Programs were the result of a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated on August 4, 1942, when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico. For these farmworkers, the agreement guaranteed decent living conditions and a minimum wage of 30 cents an hour, as well as protections from forced military service, and guaranteed that a part of wages was to be put into a private savings account in Mexico; it also allowed the importation of contract laborers from Guam as a temporary measure during the early phases of World War II.
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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 leader in the United States labor movement and a social activist. She unionized workers, led strikes, wrote pamphlets in 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.
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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.
The Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) was a Communist-aligned union active in California in the early 1930s. Organizers provided support to workers in California's fields and canning industry. The Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) dated back to 1929 with the formation of the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL). With industrialization and the advent of the factories, labor started migrating into the urban space. An influx of immigrant workers contributed to the environment favorable to big business by increasing the supply of unskilled labor lost to the urban factories. The demand for labor spurred the growers to look to seasonal migrant workers as a viable labor source. Corporations began to look at profits and started to marginalize its workers by providing sub-par wages and working conditions to their seasonal workers. The formation of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union addressed and represented the civil rights of the migrant workers. Ultimately the CAWIU lost the battle, overwhelmed by the combined alliance of growers and the Mexican and state governments. The eventual abandonment of the Trade Union Unity League led to the dissolution of the CAWIU, which later emerged as the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA).
The Santa Clara cannery strike occurred during the summer of 1931. Workers spontaneously walked out of canneries in order to protest a 20% cut in wages. These workers were met with violence from local authorities, and strikebreakers were brought in to replace the workers. While this strike was unsuccessful, it marked the beginning of organizing cannery workers.
This is a Mexican American bibliography. This list consists of books, and journal articles, about Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and their history and culture. The list includes works of literature whose subject matter is significantly about Mexican Americans and the Chicano/a experience. This list does not include works by Mexican American writers which do not address the topic, such as science texts by Mexican American writers.
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.
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Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920 is a book by Gerald Horne, published in 2005 by NYU Press.
This is a bibliography of California history. It contains English language books and mainstream academic journal articles published after World War II.
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