Harvest Histories: a Social History of Mexican Farm Workers in Canada Since 1974”

“Harvest Histories: A Social History of Mexican Farm Workers in Canada since 1974” by Naomi Alisa Calnitsky B.A. (Hons.), M.A. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2017 Naomi Calnitsky Abstract While concerns and debates about an increased presence of non-citizen guest workers in agriculture in Canada have only more recently begun to enter the public arena, this dissertation probes how migrant agricultural workers have occupied a longer and more complex place in Canadian history than most Canadians may approximate. It explores the historical precedents of seasonal farm labour in Canada through the lens of the interior or the personal on the one hand, through an oral history approach, and the external or the structural on the other, in dialogue with existing scholarship and through a critical assessment of the archive. Specifically, it considers the evolution of seasonal farm work in Manitoba and British Columbia, and traces the eventual rise of an “offshore” labour scheme as a dominant model for agriculture at a national scale. Taking 1974 as a point of departure for the study of circular farm labour migration between Mexico and Canada, the study revisits questions surrounding Canadian views of what constitutes the ideal or injurious migrant worker, to ask critical questions about how managed farm labour migration schemes evolved in Canadian history. In addition, the dissertation explores how Mexican farm workers’ migration to Canada since 1974 formed a part of a wider and extended world of Mexican migration, and seeks to record and celebrate Mexican contributions to modern Canadian agriculture in historical contexts involving diverse actors. In exploring the contexts that have driven Mexican out-migration and transnational integration, it bridges oral accounts with a broader history that sets Mexican northward migration in hemispheric context. It reads agricultural migration upon various planes, including corporeality, experience, identity, masculinity, legality, “contra-modernity,” and the management of mobilities. ii Acknowledgements A great number of people and forces of circumstance have come together to spawn and support this work to help achieve the goal of offering a more comprehensive history of Mexican farm labour in Canada than that which currently exists. I first would like to extend a big thankyou to Dr. Michel Hogue in the Department of History at Carleton University for reviewing a draft and offering insightful comments on structure and organization. In Winnipeg, Tyler Pierce proved invaluable as copy editor for the dissertation. Thanks especially to the members of my examination committee for constructive and encouraging comments on refining the work and guidance on how to work out its kinks. Staff at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (U.N.A.M.) Escuela de Extensión en Canadá in Gatineau encouraged my development of conversational Mexican Spanish, an invaluable resource in the field. Professors of History and Anthropology at the University of Manitoba were instrumental in drawing me into the field and shaping my early scholarly inspirations as an undergraduate. The Commonwealth Scholarship program at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, supported my completion of a Master’s thesis in Pacific history, where my early research interests in South Pacific colonial and labour history would develop alongside an interest in contemporary patterns of trans-national and seasonal farm labour migration in the region. Supervisors at Otago, including Drs. Angela Wanhalla and Tony Ballantyne offered their expertise in New Zealand and Pacific History; Angela encouraged me to travel to Samoa to pursue oral history research and Tony oriented my dissertation toward New Zealand's relationship with the Pacific. Tony in particular offered invaluable direction on archives relevant to my evolving research interests on Pacific labour history. iii My interest in Mexico and its complexities was first sparked and maintained by a number of opportunities to travel there. My connections with Mexico developed first as a visitor and volunteer farmworker. I first travelled to Mexico City via Cuba, to numerous towns, cities and historical sites as well as rural regions including Mexico City, Chalma, Teotihuacan, Morelia, Pátzcuaro, Tacámbaro, Guadalajara, and other locations in Michoacán and Jalisco. On return trips to Mexico I was able to visit Mazatlán, Puebla and Oaxaca and spend more time in the Federal District. Prior to the onset of this project, I had numerous opportunities to engage in fruit harvesting work in Canada and New Zealand, including apple thinning and harvest work in Summerland, British Columbia, cherry work in Kelowna alongside Mexican farmworkers at Valley Orchards, and apple, nectarine and cherry harvest work in Roxburgh in Central Otago, New Zealand alongside seasonal migrant workers from Vanuatu and elsewhere. At Carleton, Christine Hughes offered valuable insights into her own field research with Guatemalan farmworkers in Quebec, and I was able to meet Enrique Florescano, to discuss the project and re-orient it more closely within Mexican scholarship and research bodies engaged with work on migration. I also gained inspiration from the work of fellow graduate students at Carleton and I was supported by a graduate scholarship, several teaching assistantships, a Peter Browne Memorial Scholarship, travel bursaries, and grading posts at the University of Manitoba. I have presented findings linked to this dissertation at Concordia University, Carleton University, York University, Dalhousie University, and Ryerson University, for the Congress of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CALACS) in Quebec City and San José, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH). More recently, my interest in the photographic work, Juchitán de la Mujeres, was shared at the McGill-Queens Graduate Conference in iv History and University of British Columbia Art History and Visual Arts (AHVA) Symposium and findings from Manitoba and British Colulmbia shared at the Oral History Association 50th Annual Conference in Long Beach, California in 2016. Archival staff at the Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley, the Vancouver City Archives, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, the Legislative Library of Manitoba, Manitoba Archives, B.C. Archives, Victoria, Archives of Chilliwack and Vernon, and the Kelowna Public Archives should also be thanked here. Volunteers and staff with the Agricultural Workers Alliance and Winnipeg-based Migrant Worker Solidarity Network all proved helpful including Gustavo Mejicanos in Portage la Prairie; Raul Gatica and Gil of Chiapas; Alejandra of Colombia in Surrey; and Jodi-Dueck Read and Thomas Novak in Winnipeg. Jodi introduced me to the work of Lionel Cantú and shared her own experiences of fieldwork with Mexican farmworkers in Manitoba. The support of my partner, Paolo, who accompanied me on numerous journeys into the field, including in British Columbia, was invaluable, and the intellectual climate and supportive environment provided by my parents throughout my time as a graduate student made this work’s completion possible. My brother David and sister Shauna also proved highly supportive. Thanks also go to all the inspiring scholars of Latin American history who encourage their readership to think and read beyond the boundaries of Latin America and the Caribbean world, offering daily incentives to continue on work in the field. The final thanks go to all of those workers, both men and women, who opened their hearts and doors to my study, enriching the direction of the work and offering new and engaging pathways toward sociability and friendship. I dedicate this work to them. v Author’s Note In the preparation of this thesis, I have prematurely destroyed the majority of notes related to my fieldwork. This is solely my responsibility. The supervisors of my thesis were not able to access this material, nor were the members of my examination board. A Note on Terminology The use of the terms Aboriginal, Indigenous, First Nations and Native occur throughout this work and should not be viewed as interchangeable. The term Native is used primarily in instances where the journalists, authors or government documents cited do so and should not be taken as a given for regular usage. Where possible, all of these terms are capitalized. vi Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………….…….ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………….…………….….iii Author's Note and Note on Terminology...................................................................vi List of Illustrations……………………………………………….…………...........ix List of Appendices................................………………………….…………….…...x List of Appendices................................………………………….…………….…...x Introduction…………………………………………………...……………...……1 1. Excavating Rural Space in Manitoba and the British Columbian West.......38 1.1 The Colonial Origins of Canadian Agricultural Practice…………………........39 1.2 Farm Labour in Manitoba: Antecedents and Transformations…….………......44 1.3 Settling British Columbia: Labour and Migration from the Margins……..…...50 1.4 A Flourishing of Fruits: Rural Hired Help in British Columbia…………….....57 1.5 A “Fruit-Growing Heaven on Earth”: Life and Production in the

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