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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 UNLIKELY STRIKERS: MEXICAN AMERICAN WOMEN IN STRIKE ACTIVITY IN TEXAS, 1919-1974 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Irene Ledesma, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1992 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Leila Rupp Claire Robertson Warren Van Tine Advisor • Department of History Copyright by Irene Ledesma 1992 VITA February 14, 1950 ................. Bom-Pharr, Texas 1972 .............................. B.A., Pan American University, Edinburg, Texas 1977 .............................. M.A., Pan American University, Edinburg, Texas 1984-85 ........................... Instructor, Pan American Itoiversity, Edinburg, Texas 1991-92 ........................... Chicana Dissertation Fellow, University of California, Santa Barbara FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History Studies in U.S. and Third World Women's history with Professors Leila Rupp and Claire Robertson. Studies in U.S. Twentieth Century labor history with Professor Warren Van Tine. Studies in Latin American history with Professor Kenneth Andrien. 11 table of contents VITA ..................................................... il CHAPTER ................................................. PACT! I. Introduction...................................... 1 Literature on the Mexican American Ibgerience 5 The S t u d y ..................................... 7 Endnotes ...................................... 18 II. Mexican American Wcanen in Texas ................... 25 Mexican Immigration to Texas .................. 26 Mexican American Women in Texas Industries 31 The Laundry Industry in El Paso ............... 34 The Garment Industry in San Antonio andEl Paso . 43 The Cigar Industry in San Antonio .............. 60 The Pecan Shelling Industry in San Antonio....... 68 Endnotes ...................................... 75 III. The Pre-World War IIStrikes ....................... 82 The Laundry Strike; 1919, El Paso ............ S3 The Cigar Strike: 1933, San Antonio .......... 92 The Pecan Shellers' Strike: 1938, San Antonio... 103 The Garment Strikes: 1935, 1937, 1938, San Antonio .................................. 114 Summary and Conclusions ...................... 126 Endnotes ..................................... 131 111 IV. The Post mil Strikes .............................. 137 The Mini-Strikes: 1953, 1965, and 1 9 7 1 ....... 138 Hortex: El Paso .......................... 138 Top-Notch: El Paso ....................... 143 Lévi-Strauss: El Paso ..................... 152 Tex-Son: 1959, San Antonio .................... 157 Farah: 1972, San Antonio and El P a s o ......... 179 Summary and Conclusions ...................... 207 Endnotes ..................................... 211 V. The Opposition..................................... 220 Company Use cf the Legal System ............... 221 Company Propaganda........................... 229 Discrediting the St'-ikers .................... 235 Other Company Tactics ........................ 245 Conclusions .................................. 248 Endnotes ..................................... 251 VI. Conclusions ....................................... 255 Endnotes ..................................... 273 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................. 274 IV C h u t e r I Introduction Mexican American women workers, because cf their ethnicity, gender and class, have until recently been triply obscure historically, hidden in what Paulo Freire called the "culture of silence" and what faninist historians refer to as the invisibility 1 of women in American history. Labor historians interested in the new social history have since the 1960s emphasized native-born and European immigrant workers; feminist historians have focused on Anglo women; and Mexican American historians have tended to look generally at the Mexican American population or, if interested in labor history, to concentrate on male workers. Because of the Mexican cultural tradition of the male-dominated family, both scholars and the general public have assumed that Mexican American women have been and continue to be private figures in the shadow of the macho Mexican male. The various union and strike actions of Mexican American women in Texas between 1919 and 1974 prove otherwise. My study deals with a group of women, considered doubly unlikely to organize, who frequently joined unions and went on strike to protest their work situation publicly. Traditional craft unions considered women and minority workers as unorganizable. Mexican American women, then, were 1 2 characterized doubly as not organizable. I will show in this study that Mexican American wcxnen strikers were not passive victims of their worJç>lace. They resorted not only to typical union tactics but to Mexican culture and to violence in their efforts to have an inpact on the course of strike events. From ray research I found that the level of organization and attention to women's issues in the strikes I have studied varied dramatically over the course of the 20th century. Labor historians have noted since the 1960s that labor unions had by the 1920s beccane as bureaucratic as the other big institutions in American society. David Montgomery, in the Fall of the House of Labor, pointed to the decline of labor unions as progressive reforming agents and contended that unions had become just another arm of the establishment, intent on saving themselves rather than meeting the needs of their constitutencies. Women historians, likewise, began in the 1970s to explore the ways that labor unions have worked hand in hand with enployers to keep women segmented and stratified in low-skill jobs and paid less than male workers doing the same work. Ruth Milkman, in her study of women workers in the electrical industry, and Nancy Gabin, in her book on women in the automobile factories, both documented that reality for 14 working women in the United States. What we know about union organizing among Mexican American working women supports this picture. In a 1975 article on the 1933 garment strike in Los Angeles, Mexican American historian 3 Douglas Monroy charged that the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was so determined to play a role in the direction of the garment industry that it failed to address 15 adequately the concerns of the Mexican American wcsnen strikers. My work builds on the studies of Milkman, Gabin, and Monroy to show that American unions at first ignored the Mexican American women workers and then neglected their particular i^eds, leaving room for the women to act on their own behalf and in their own ways to advance interests not being met by the unions. My study will also show that Mexican American wdiiien advanced their interests through the use of Mexican culture and traditions and through extensive use of violence. While some labor historians were exploring changes in the traditional labor unions, others had begun to look at the life and job experience of the ordinary worker. One of the most prcxninent of these was Herbert Gutman. Gutman's seminal essay on the worker in Work. Culture, and Society in Industrializing America examined the "form and content" of workers' reactions to attempts by employers to make them more efficient factory employees. According to Gutman, workers often relied on the culture and traditions they brought with them from the Old World or the farm to temper employer 15 controls in the workplace. In the same manner, Mexican American women in Texas turned to Mexican customs and ways in order to retain some power in the face of the many forces arrayed against them, including sometimes the unions. 4 Violence against the opposition, who most often were other Mexican American wcacen, was frequently the "form and content" of Mexican American working wcxnen's repsonses