Mexican consuls and labor organizing : imperial politics in the American Southwest

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Bibliographic Information

Mexican consuls and labor organizing : imperial politics in the American Southwest

Gilbert G. González

University of Texas Press, 1999

1st ed

  • cl.
  • pbk.

Available at  / 2 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-270) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

cl. ISBN 9780292728233

Description

"This is the most comprehensive extant study in a growing literature on the role of the Mexican consulate in the United States." - Dennis Nodin Valdes, author of "Al Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes Region, 1917-1970". Chicano history, from the early decades of the twentieth century up to the present, cannot be explained without reference to the determined interventions of the Mexican government, asserts Gilbert G. Gonzalez. In this pathfinding study, he offers convincing evidence that Mexico aimed at nothing less than developing a loyal and politically dependent emigrant community among Mexican Americans, which would serve and replicate Mexico's political and economic subordination to the United States. Gonzalez centers his study around four major agricultural workers' strikes in Depression-era California. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, he documents how Mexican consuls worked with U.S. growers to break the strikes, undermining militants within union ranks and, in one case, successfully setting up a grower-approved union. Moreover, Gonzalez demonstrates that the Mexican government's intervention in the Chicano community did not end after the New Deal; rather, it continued as the Bracero Program of the 1940s and 1950s, as a patron of Chicano civil rights causes in the 1960s and 1970s, and as a prominent voice in the debates over NAFTA in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Gilbert G. Gonzalez is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences and Director of the Focused Research Program in Labor Studies at the University of California, Irvine.
Volume

pbk. ISBN 9780292728240

Description

Chicano history, from the early decades of the twentieth century up to the present, cannot be explained without reference to the determined interventions of the Mexican government, asserts Gilbert G. Gonzalez. In this pathfinding study, he offers convincing evidence that Mexico aimed at nothing less than developing a loyal and politically dependent emigrant community among Mexican Americans, which would serve and replicate Mexico's political and economic subordination to the United States. Gonzalez centers his study around four major agricultural workers' strikes in Depression-era California. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, he documents how Mexican consuls worked with U.S. growers to break the strikes, undermining militants within union ranks and, in one case, successfully setting up a grower-approved union. Moreover, Gonzalez demonstrates that the Mexican government's intervention in the Chicano community did not end after the New Deal; rather, it continued as the Bracero Program of the 1940s and 1950s, as a patron of Chicano civil rights causes in the 1960s and 1970s, and as a prominent voice in the debates over NAFTA in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. The 1910 Mexican Revolution, the United States, and Mexico de afuera Chapter 2. Organizing Mexico de afuera in Southern California Chapter 3. The Los Angeles County Strike of 1933 Chapter 4. The San Joaquin Valley Strike of 1933 Chapter 5. The Imperial Valley Strikes of 1933-1934 Chapter 6. Denouement and Renaissance Notes Bibliography Index

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