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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Invisible Bodies, Devalued Labor: Contract, Reproductive Labor, and the U.S. Sunbelt, 1900- 1963 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/75j4j2cn Author Zárate, Salvador Elias Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Invisible Bodies, Devalued Labor: Contract, Reproductive Labor, and the U.S. Sunbelt, 1900-1963 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies by Salvador Elias Zárate Committee in charge: Professor Fatima El-Tayeb, Chair Professor Curtis Marez, Co-Chair Professor Kirstie Dorr Professor Roshanak Kheshti Professor Natalia Molina Professor Kalindi Vora 2017 The Dissertation of Salvador Elias Zárate is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Chair University of California, San Diego 2017 iii DEDICATION To Juan and Maria Zárate for their love and support. In memory of Juan “lolo” Hurtado and Rosario Lambaren. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page .................................................................................................................. iii Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .................................................................................................................v List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... vii Vita .................................................................................................................................... xii Abstract of the Dissertation ............................................................................................. xvi Introduction: Dorothy “Dottie” Mulkey, Juan Zárate, and the Little-Known Histories of Gardening Labor ..................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Servants and Slaves: Freedom of Contract and U.S. Citizenship ...............27 Chapter Two: The Vital Poetics of Zora Neale Hurston and Luisa Moreno: Extractive Labor and Debt, 1900-1939 ..............................................................................................62 Chapter Three: Cotton and Thistle: Wage Contract and the Figure of the Child in Sherley Anne Williams’s Working Cotton and Tomás Rivera’s “Zoo Island” ............................111 Chapter Four: Bracero Contract: “The Business in Brown Flesh” and the Failure of Expectation .....................................................................................................................154 Conclusion: Gardeners and the Burning of Luisa Moreno’s and Zora Neale Hurston’s Archives ..........................................................................................................................193 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................207 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1: Shelan helps her mother pick cotton in the San Joaquin Valley ...................120 Figure 3.2: Tomás Rivera’s depiction of the social relations of Zoo Island ....................140 Figure 4.1: “The Mexican Labor Agreement” .................................................................170 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As a child, soon after arriving from Mexico, my slightly older brother and I would accompany my parents, Juan and Guadalupe, to work. We would drive to the affluent homes of South Orange County in our orange 1976 Ford F100; the truck’s hood ornament, a broken one-winged Pegasus, leading the way. At the front gates of homes my father would untie the lawnmower from the frame of the truck bed and with the help of my brother would lower it to the ground. My mother carried with her a make-shift caboodle with cleaning supplies. It wasn’t often that my mother undertook housework for others, but on occasions that she did, I would spend the first part of the work day with her indoors. I would kick off my shoes and follow her indoors. Then, I would translate orders as best I could for my mother: “clean kitchen, clean bathroom, don’t step on carpet too much.” After a while, my mother would send me to check up on my father’s progress. I would rush to my shoes and spend the next several moments undertaking an improvised shoe-lacing, which often ended with me cramming the laces to the bottom of my shoes. Outside, I could hear my father and his leaf blower in the distance. Using burlap sacks that smelled like misted gasoline and eucalyptus shavings from the trees at Irvine Boulevard and Sand Canyon Avenue, and on uneven footing caused by balled up laces, I collected the neat piles of leafs he left behind for me. Once completed, I threw my shoes off and went back indoors to help my mother. These early memories are wound up with one of the first items I wanted in the U.S., a pair of Kinney Shoes. The shoes were “summer camp” themed and had Velcro fasteners. My parents, no doubt after much persuasion from me, bought me my very own vii pair. Most likely teaching me some sort of lesson on work and earnings along the way. Looking back at that early memory, I can’t help but think of the way that the shoes, because they had Velcro, made it much easier for me to travel between outdoors and indoors during workdays– no longer would I have to deal with the anxiety of having to tie my shoe-laces. And comically enough, they had made me a much more efficient worker. Of course, the fit of the shoes, like my own ability to traverse the divide between gardening work and domestic labor, was momentary. And in the end, the memory of the shoes has come to symbolize my parents’ gendered labor and my own experiences as a child worker not yet fully disciplined into gendered male jardinería labor. What I’ve learned from my parents, as well as the love I have received from them, is intertwined with the labor we undertook to survive in the U.S. and the various social divides we negotiated. My intention to make visible the forms of sociality that blossom under conditions of exploited or unmarked labor is tied to the support of my dissertation chairs and committee members. They have placed value in my own experiences of gardening labor, as well as those of my family. They have made it so I could critically engage how my dissertation work, even when not directly engaged with Mexican jardinería or domestic labor, continued to shape my line of inquiry into racialized reproductive labor in the early twentieth century. I am grateful to Fatima El-Tayeb and Curtis Marez, my dissertation co-chairs. Their shared commitment to training me and pushing me to center the daily lived experiences of Black and Mexican laborers guided me throughout my research and writing. Even as my dissertation underwent radical changes, their guidance always viii brought me back to what mattered most to me. Without their support, this dissertation, as well as the book it will eventually become, would not be possible. Their support, particularly in terms of their letter writing on my behalf for various competitions, made it possible for me to not only get recognition as a teacher while at UCSD, a sign indicative of the stellar teaching in the department of Ethnic Studies, but made it so I was awarded a Ford Dissertation Fellowship. From the very beginning of my Ph.D. career, Kalindi Vora and Natalia Molina have provided me various opportunities to develop as a professional academic. Both Kalindi and Natalia connected me with a network of graduate students who they trained. Kalindi has read drafts of my publications, and provided feedback on chapter drafts. Natalia was a driving force behind my recruitment into the Ethnic Studies Ph.D. program, and through a Sally Casanova Fellowship provided crucial mentorship during the summer before my first year. When I was busiest with my parents’ gardening company, Natalia offered advice that allowed me to move forward in my research. I’m grateful to Roshanak Kheshti and Kirstie Dorr, they modeled excellent teaching. Their rigorous classes enabled me to grow in ways that far exceeded the materials we read in class. They provided crucial feedback on papers, chapters, and presentations. Daphne Taylor-Garcia’s mentorship guide me during my qualifying exams. I would also like to thank, Shelley Streeby, Wayne Yang, Yen Espiritu, Ross Frank, Sara Kaplan, Adria Imada, Rosaura Sánchez, Beatrice Pita, and Joe Hankins. I was incredibly lucky to be a part of a brilliant cohort: Lisa Ho, Malathi Iyengar, Christina Green, Juvenal Caporale, and Vanessa Saldívar. I’m grateful to have met many friends at UCSD, including Chris Perreira, Joo-Ok Kim, Marilisa Navarro, Christina ix Carney, Lila Sharif, José Fuste, Jade Power, Mohamed Abumaye, Crystal Perez, Alina Mendez, Luis Sanchez-Lopez, Jorge Leal, Ash Kini, Angela Kim, Jade Hidle, and Stevie Ruiz. The dissertation would not have been possible without a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, a UC Center for Global Justice Human Rights Fellowship, a dissertation writing group grant from the UCSD Humanities Center, an OCEANIDS Memorial Fellowship, and