Community and Violence in South Texas: 1930-1979
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COMMUNITY AND VIOLENCE IN SOUTH TEXAS: 1930-1979 HONORS THESIS Presented to the Honors Committee of Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation in the Honors College by Marcelina Rodriguez Garcia San Marcos, Texas May 2015 COMMUNITY AND VIOLENCE IN SOUTH TEXAS: 1930-1979 Thesis Supervisor: ________________________________ John McKiernan-Gonzalez Ph.D. Department of History Second Reader: _________________________________ Olga Mayoral Wilson, M.A. School of Journalism and Mass Communication Approved: _______________________________ Heather C. Galloway, Ph.D. Dean, Honors College Table of Contents Introduction: Personal Story ............................................................................................1 a) Context ..........................................................................................................................4 a) Research Question .........................................................................................................5 b) Research Methodology ..................................................................................................5 c) Research Historiography ................................................................................................6 Chapter 1: A Long Backdrop: Agriculture, Dispossession, and Deportation in South Texas, 1948-1942 ...........................................................8 Chapter 2: The 1938 San Antonio Pecan Sheller’s Strike ...............................................19 Chapter 3: Braceros Re-Work South Texas Farm Landscapes ........................................36 Chapter 4: Claiming the Right for a Union: From Braceros to Labor Organizers ..............................................................54 Chapter 5: The 1966-1967 Rio Grande City Melon Strike ..............................................72 Chapter 6: The 1979 Raymondville Onion Strike ..........................................................120 Reflections .......................................................................................................................130 My Story My parents were both born in South Texas to a long line of devout Catholic families. My father was born in 1927 in Edinburg, Texas. My mother was born in 1932 in Edcouch, Texas. In 1949, as many WWII soldiers came back from war to South Texas, my parents moved to Illinois. Ten of my siblings and I were born in Illinois, while 3 older step siblings were born in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. My family relocated to South Texas in 1962 in order to care for my elderly and ill grandparents. Consequently, I grew up in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas during the 1960s and 1970s. I always wondered why my grandparents were left behind in South Texas while both my parents’ siblings migrated to Illinois. I wasn’t aware of the repressive South Texas community my parents fled as targets of discrimination for their Catholic faith, their traditional Hispanic large family size, and for being of Mexican descent. I also didn’t know that the economic climate of South Texas played a role in their decision to move to Illinois. Except for farm labor, work was scarce. Ramos stated that the three things South Texas Anglos hated most about Mexican Americans were their Catholic faith, their large family sizes, and their ethnicity.1 This idea never dawned on me as I grew up in South Texas. In Illinois, whenever my mother would take us with her on public outings, people always stopped her and commented on “what a blessing” she had in so many children. I grew up with a desire to have a large family like my mother because I also wanted that blessing. There were no equitable jobs for uneducated minorities when my parents returned to South Texas in the early 1960s. My father only had a 4th grade education. My mother had a 3rd grade education. Any acquired education there-after, was self- taught. After 1 Ramos, Henry A.J. The American GI Forum: In Pursuit of the Dream, 1948-1983. xix 1 relocating to South Texas to care for his ailing parents, my father, a master mechanic for the Ford Motor Company in Illinois, was forced into the trucking industry. Farming labor was not enough for his family of ten to survive on. While my mother took care of our family and my father’s parents, my father drove a truck locally, carrying abundant “caliche” around the Rio Grande Valley to industrial building sites. Later he would travel regionally and then nationally. As a consequence, our home went fatherless for the most part, as my father appeared periodically after prolonged absences, from 1962 until I became an adult. As a child growing up, I knew my family was poor because we had to migrate to the Northern United States with my mother to work in the agricultural fields. Field labor allowed us to pay our home mortgage, and have clothes and supplies for the school term. There was little work and extremely low pay for the Mexican Americans of South Texas in the 1960’s. When we traveled to the northern states as migrant laborers, by law, everyone under sixteen years old had to finish the spring school term and begin the fall school term on time. School was released by 3 pm with plenty of daylight to join the family in the fields. During the summer, the whole family worked in the fields. When we went to school in the northern states, we went to desegregated schools with White children. The schools were clean, and we were given the opportunity to be creative and vocal. In our view, all students were treated equally. Although some states enforced the school attendance law, some did not; so that we did not always take advantage of educational opportunities in the northern states. Zaragoza Vargas relates examples in his book, “Labor Rights are Civil Rights.”2 2 Zaragosa Vargas. Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton: University Press. 2007. Web. April 2015. Page 30-31 2 In Hispanic majority South Texas, no semblance of equality was evident. Edcouch, Texas, school authorities forced my siblings and I to go to the all Hispanic “Migrant School” in which children were tagged “Burros” by teachers, families, and other children. The Spanish word for “donkey” is “burro.” This implied that the students at this school were hard headed and ignorant because we missed too much school. As migrants, we left to the northern states around April or May for the early crops and did not return until late September or October after the late harvests. One example of how my research emphasizes the way different generations took up collective tactics to challenge their exploitation as workers, students, and community members (and in the process, changed the political life of South Texas) was through the 1968 Edcouch Elsa High School Walkout. In 1968, when I was eleven years old, my mother kept my siblings and I home when it became known the Hispanic student body at Edcouch Elsa High School were planning a school walk-out. My mother feared, as did many families in the Edcouch Elsa School District, that violence would erupt and we would be caught in the middle. Seeking equality, desegregation, and civil rights, the students fought against a system that classified them as second class citizens. Later, as a young adult, my female Hispanic classmates and I were encouraged to take home economics, because according to school officials, Hispanic girls were destined to be homemakers and never go to college. Hispanic boys were assigned to the vocational buildings to learn mechanics and carpentry. As a result of the Edcouch-Elsa High School Walkout, the Edcouch-Elsa School District went on to become one of the leading high school districts in South Texas to send students to Ivey League schools all across America. Even through my child eyes, school policies and practices exerting attitude 3 differences towards migrant children in the southern states left an indelible impression of how geographical locations presented differential treatment to individuals based on status, economy, or race and made geography a racial destiny. Context As an older adult I became involved in family genealogical research. Seized with a desire to know South Texas history and how it related to my life, I sought out the historical written record through which I hoped to be able to begin piecing together my life experience. To my surprise, my history was not included in any of the history books involved in any of my academic classes. It was only through independent study programs offered through the Honors College at Texas State University that I was able to take advantage of other historical resources. Through these, I learned about a South Texas history I had never heard before. I began by investigating violence tactics perpetrated against Hispanics, following the path of civil rights groups and labor movements to investigate Hispanic lifestyle changes and what perpetuated those changes. I found that historically, many Anglos, especially from the Deep South, actively practiced racial discrimination, segregation, and oppression towards Mexican Americans in society, economics, and politics. Attitudes embedded from “Jim Crow” traditions dominating people of color were automatically transferred to all persons of color. Since the population of South Texas was either White or Hispanic, Hispanics became the colored people. These attitudes were prevalent in South Texas before and after 1930-1979, which are the years of my study. 4 The lack of any relevant Mexican American history in