Ethnic Mexicans in Rural California

One of the main questions to tackle for week 2 is how does the ethnic Mexican community become such a large part of the agricultural labor force?

Early Migration

Early Mexican Migrants, 1900s via academics.utep.edu

In the late 1700s until the late 1800s the United States primarily used Asian migrants as a major source of labor. Chinese bachelors in particular and later Japanese laborers filled most of the positions for cheap labor, particularly in agriculture. However, increasing xenophobia and violence against Asian communities eventually pushed the federal government to restrict Asian migration. The passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barred legal Chinese migration and later in 1924 the Johnson-Reed Act created a quota system and barred all legal migration from Asia altogether.

Chinese Laborers, 1880s source unknown

With the systematic removal of almost the entire Asian immigration, there was a lack of cheap labor. It is at this time that we see Mexicans move into the position of a significant labor force in the US. There is a number of pull factors that entice them to move north.

Pull Factors

One is obviously the wages. Where they would earn 12 cents a day in the rural areas of Mexico, they could get paid anywhere from 50 cents to 2 dollars in the US.

There was also a diversity of industry in terms of mining, railroads, and the largest industry agriculture which meant there would ample jobs.

Finally there was the close geographic proximity, which easily fills the labor demand. The railroad system that went into Mexico opened up the opportunity for travel.

Push Factors

There were also a number of  factors pushing ethnic Mexicans out of Mexico. The presidency of Porfirio Diaz from 1884-1991 was fairly corrupt.

Porfirio Diaz via Aurelio Escobar Castellanos, Archive

Diaz nationalized the land and eliminated the small farm system, called ejidos. An ejido is a small parcel of land that a person owns. Under Diaz, ejidos were eliminated. The system shifted to large land holdings and the former small farm owners were forced into becoming laborers.

Along with the loss of their land, there was also a shortage of resources, food and such. The large land holdings were created to grow crops to export so not enough food was produced to sustain Mexican nationals. Also this boosted the cost of living (less resources equals more demand, more demand causes prices to rise).

Mexican Rebels via latinamericanstudies.org

Then in 1910 the Mexican Revolution broke out. The violence that spurned from it was one of the major stimulus’ for people to leave, land was ravaged/ decimated in some areas. The revolution also meant the end of Porfirio Diaz’ corrupt regime, but the outcome also resulted in political unrest with little to no direction for the country.  

The development of the railroad system opens up Mexico and boosted migration in both a good and bad way. It opened up opportunities for modernization. Diaz was the one who created the national railroad system in hopes to unify the nation and modernize the economy. However, Mexico really did not have the funding to construct it so Diaz sought help from American investors, which in turn “Americanized” the economy.

The railroads opened up the access of rural communities into more urban areas of Mexico and also travel to the US as well as access to material goods. But the system also closed off towns/ villages/ communities. For the communities where the railroad did not even touch them it was like they were isolated. There is whole other economic and to some extent political world that is happening where those communities are excluded.

The choice to move, leave home, almost always had attached to it the idea of returning. Circular migration was how ethnic Mexicans decided to shift north. This is in opposition to Eastern and Southern European migration, which is known more as chain migration. Chain migration is the idea that some people come to the US and then send for family and community member later. European immigrants were more likely to stay permanently and/or if they did return to their countries of origin it was not easy to come back. 

For ethnic Mexicans, because of the close proximity they were able to go and come back. What changes this pattern is the shift in US federal policies, which begin to restrict open migration after the influx of migration during the Mexican Revolution. A “brown scare” begins and ethnic Mexicans are looked at with a suspicious lens as the US begins to view them as “other.” And yet at the same time the agriculture industry relied on ethnic Mexicans for their main labor source by the 1920s.

Development of Colonias

As more Mexicans settle in the US we began to see the development of communities within rural areas. Usually, agriculture laborers populated the outskirts of already developed towns and the communities were usually called colonias. The term literally means colony, but it was a general reference to a community with a distinct Mexican demographic. Also, the community generally remitted earnings to family and friends back in Mexico. Use the rural community as a place to generate income and extract wages and earnings.

This was different from barrios of the urban sector (such as our reading of Sanchez last week) where the community is almost exclusively Latina/o and whites are the minority. Rural settlements are linked to seasonal agriculture work and the community though segregated still has a mix of both Anglo and Mexican residents.

Residential concentration of ethnic Mexicans in rural areas are attributed to :

1.     agricultural employment

2.     wages and working conditions

3.     cheap housing

4.     community: family and friends

5.     The social phenomena of likes attracting likes (in other words one is attracted to settle in areas where there is a similar demographic to personal identity-ethnicity, race, class, etc)

However, colonias come to represent underclass and exploitative conditions. Often relying on the companies or agricultural owners to provide housing and/or having these communities linked to a particular grower or crop industry often meant there was little to no opportunity for upward social mobility.

1930s Sunkist Advertisement, source unknown

Socioeconomic indicators such as low education achievement, high levels of unemployment, segregated occupations with low earnings, high incidences of poverty became the reality for many colonias.

In  1950 no rural community in California had more than 23%  Latina/o (Mexican) population with the concentrations highest at border towns. By the 1980s and 1990s you see communities with up to 98% Latina/o population, mainly in central California/central valley, which are some of the richest agricultural counties in the state.

Colonias remained disadvantaged in terms of public expenditures for public safety, transportation, community development, health, cultural events, leisure, and public utilities. Little to no civic attention is paid to the thse areas.