The Community of Mexican Women

Mrs. Valdez remembered a collectivity of Mexican women. By 1933, Mexican women worked alongside men in the fields. Like the men, they were

paid piece rates and picked an average of two hundred pounds per ten-hour day. Picking required strength, skill, and stamina. As one woman recalled:

But let me describe to you what we had to go through. I'd have a twelve foot sack . . . I'd tie the sack around my waist and the sack would go between my legs and I'd go on the cotton row, picking cotton and just putting it in there. . .. So when we finally got it filled real good then we would pick up the [hundred pound] sack, toss [!] it up on our shoulders, and then I would walk, put it up there on the scale and have it weighted, put it back on my shoulder, climb up on a wagon and empty that sack it.^[12]

As Mrs. Valdez recounted, women faced hardships in caring for their families: houses without heat, which contributed to disease; preparing food without stoves; and cooking over fires in oil barrels. Food was central to her memory, reflecting a gender division of labor. Getting enough food, a problem at any time, was exacerbated by the depression that forced some women to forage for berries or feed their families flour and water. Food was an issue of survival. As in almost all societies, women were in charge of preparing the food, and Mrs. Valdez's concern about food was repeated in interviews with other women. Men remembered the strike in terms of wages and conditions; women remembered these events in terms of food. Men were not oblivious or unconcerned, but women's role in preparing food made this a central aspect of their consciousness and shaped the way they perceived, remembered, and articulated the events of the strike.

Mrs. Valdez's memory of leadership reflects this sense of female community. After initially replying that there were no leaders (interesting in itself), she named her labor contractor and then focused on a woman named Lourdes Castillo, an interesting choice for several reasons. Lourdes Castillo was an attractive, single woman who lived in Corcoran. She wore makeup, bobbed her hair, and wore stylish dresses. Financially independent, she owned and ran the local bar. Lourdes became involved with the strike when union organizers asked her to store food for strikers in her cantina.

In some respects, Lourdes represented a transition many Mexican women were undergoing in response to capitalist expansion, revolution, and migration. When the revolution convulsively disrupted Mexican families, women left alone took over the work in rural areas, migrated, and sometimes became involved in the revolution. "Soldaderas," camp followers in the revolution, cooked, nursed, and provided sexual and emotional comfort. Some fought and were even executed in the course of battle. This image of "la soldadera," the woman fighting on behalf of the Mexican community, was praised as a national symbol of strength and resistance.

Yet it was an ambivalent image: praised within the context of an often mythicized revolution, the "soldaderas" were criticized for their relative sexual freedom and independence. The term "soldadera" became double edged. When used to describe an individual woman, it could be synonymous with "whore."

Gender mores in the United States differed from those in rural Mexico. Some changes were cosmetic manifestations of deeper changes: women bobbed their hair, adopted new dress and makeup. But these changes reflected changes in a gender division of labor. Women, usually younger and unmarried, began to work for wages in canneries or garment factories, unobserved by watchful male relatives. Some women became financially independent, such as Lourdes, and ran bars and cantinas. Financial independence and a changing gender division of labor outside the house altered expectations of women's responsibilities and obligations. Yet these women still risked the disapprobation of segments of the community, male and female.

According to Mrs. Valdez, during the strike Lourdes was in charge of keeping the log of who entered and left the camp and spoke at meetings. She was also in charge of distributing food.^[13] Lourdes thus reflects women's traditional concern about food while at the same time she epitomized the cultural transition of Mexican women and the changing gender roles from pre-revolutionary Mexico to the more fluid wage society of California. It was precisely her financial independence that enabled her to store and distribute the food. Perhaps Mrs. Valdez's enthusiastic memories of Lourdes suggests Mrs. Valdez's changing values for women, even if not directly expressed in her own life.

While Mrs. Valdez described the abysmal conditions under which women labored, the women were active, not passive, participants in the strike. Women's networks that formed the lattice of mutual assistance in the workers' community were transformed during the strike. The networks helped form daily picket lines in front of the cotton fields. Older women still sporting the long hair and rebozos of rural Mexico, younger women who had adapted the flapper styles of the United States, and young girls barely into their teens rode together in trucks to the picket lines. They set up makeshift child care centers and established a camp kitchen.

With the spread of the conflict, these networks expanded and the women's involvement escalated from verbal assaults on the strikebreakers to outright physical conflict. When after three weeks growers refused to settle, women organized and led confrontations with Mexican strikebreakers. According to Mrs. Valdez, the women decided that they, not the men,

would enter the fields to confront the strikebreakers.^[14] They reasoned that strikebreakers would be less likely to physically hurt the women.

In organized groups, the women entered the field, appealing to strike-breakers on class and national grounds—as "poor people" and "Mexicanos"—to join the strike. Those from the same regions or villages in Mexico appealed to compatriots on the basis of local loyalties, denouncing as traitors those who refused.

Exhortations turned to threats and conflict. The women threatened to poison one man who had eaten at the camp kitchen—an indication again of the centrality (and their power over) food. But women had come prepared. Those armed with lead pipes and knives went after the strikebreakers. One ripped a cotton sack with a knife. Others hit strikebreakers with pipes, fists, or whatever was handy. Although strikers had felt that the women would not be hurt, the male strikebreakers retaliated, and at least one woman was brutally beaten:

Las mismas mujeres que iban en los troques . . . que iban en el picoteo. Adentro, les pegaron. Les rompieron su ropa. Les partieron los sombreros y los sacos y se los hicieron asina y todo. Y malos! Ohh! Se mira feo! Feo se miraba. Y nomas miraba y decia "no, no." Yo miraba la sangre que les escurria. [She imitates the strikebreakers in high-pitched, pleading tones:] "No les peguen, déjenlos, no les peguen." [Her voice drops as the voice of the strikers speaks:] "Que se los lleve el esto . . . Si a nosotros nos esta llevando de frio y de hambre pos que a ellos también. No tienen, vendidos, muertos de hambre!" [Her voice rises as the strikebreakers continue their plea:] "Pos nosotros vivemos muy lejos, venimos de Los Angeles . . . tienes que saber de donde, que tenemos que tener dinero pa' irnos." [Her voice lowers and slows as it again becomes the voice of the strikers:] "Si . . . nosotros también tenemos que comer y también tenemos familia. Pero no somos vendidos! "^[15]

This passage underlines the importance of the female collectivity. The women went in because it was women's business, and they acted on behalf of the community. Mrs. Valdez implied that the men had little to do with the decision or even opposed it. "Porque las mujeres tenemos más chanza. Siempre los hombres se detenian más porque son hombres y todo. Y las mujeres no. Los hombres no nos pueden hacer nada. No nos podian hacer nada pos ahi vamos en zumba."^[16]

The issues of confrontation focused around food. This underlines a harsh reality—strikebreakers worked to feed their families; without food, strikers would be forced back to work. Her memory reflects the reality of the confrontation but also her understanding of the central issue of the strike. Mrs. Valdez recalls the strikebreakers justifying themselves to the

women in terms of the need to feed their families. But the striking women's ultimate rebuke was also expressed in terms of this need: "Si . . . nosotros también tenemos que comer y también tenemos familia. Pero no somos vendidos !"^[17] Food remained central in her memories. Discussions about the strike and strike negotiations were all couched in relation to food. Her interests as a Mexican worker were considered, weighed, and expressed within the context of her interests as a woman, mother, and wife.

As the strike wore on, conditions grew harsher in the Corcoran camp. Growers lobbed incendiaries over the fence at night. Food became hard to get, and at least one child died of malnutrition.^[18] In response to public concern following the murder of two strikers, the California Governor overrode federal regulations withholding relief from strikers under arbitration and, over the protestations of local boards of supervisors, sent in trucks of milk and food to the embattled camp. Mrs. Valdez remembers nothing of federal, state, or local government or agencies, but she remembered the food: ". . . rice, beans, milk, everything they sent in."

At a meeting where Lourdes addressed strikers, food, or lack of food, was juxtaposed against their stance in the strike:

Pa' [Lourdes] decirles que pasaran hambre.

"Mira," dice . . . "aunque alcanzemos poquito pero no nos estamos muriendo de hambre," dice. "Pero no salga. Pero NINGUNO a trabajar . . . aunque venga el ranchero y les diga que, que vamos y que pa' ca. No vaya ninguno!" dice.

"Miren, aunque sea poquito estamos comiendo . . . pero no nos hemos muerto de hambre. Ta viniendo comida . . . nos estan trayendo comida."

[Mrs. Valdez interjected:] Leche y todo nos daban . . . Si. Y a todos ahi los que trabajaban diciendo que no fueran con ningún ranchero. Que no se creeran de ningún ranchero. Que todos se agarraban de un solo modo que nadien, todos parejos tuvieran su voto, parejos. . . .^[19]

Mrs. Valdez was clear about the effects of a united front on both sides, but if one grower broke with the others the rest would follow. [The collective voice speaks:] "No. Y no que no. No. Si nos paga tanto vamos. Y al pagar un ranchero tenían que pagar todos lo mismo. Tenían, ves."^[20]

Unity and the centrality of women were carried over into her recollection of the final negotiations:

El portuguese [a growers' representative] . . . le dijera que ahí iban los rancheros . . . a tener un mitin en el campo donde estaban todos ahí campa-dos con la Lourdes Castillo y todo.

"Si," dice. "Ahí vamos a juntarnos todos los rancheros. Y vamos a firmar. Les vamos a pagar tanto. Y vamos a firmar todos para que entonces, si, ya vayan cada quien a sus campos a trabajar."

"Si," dice [the strikers' representative], "pero no menos de un centavo. No. No salimos hasta que tengan un . . . sueldo fijo. Todos vamos. Pero de ahí en más ni uno vamos. Ni uno salimos del camps." Y todo.^[21]

The strike was settled, the ranchers had been beaten, and wages went up.