Mexican immigrant farm-worker mothers' class, race, citizenship status, and jurisdictional status of their town in a Northern California community rendered them invisible. However, when the school board decided to close the elementary school the mothers mobilized. Drawing on these mothers' "'fototestimonios" we examine how they, as…

During the interwar period, California's labor-intensive agriculture transitioned from reliance on diverse immigrants to preference for Mexicans. Political movements to restrict immigration, the Great Depression, and labor unrest compelled farm employers to search for labor that could be used flexibly and deported easily. To achieve this…

Based on a collaborative ethnography with Lideres Campesinas, a state-wide farmworker women's organization in California, this essay explores how activists have created multi-issued organizing strategies grounded in family structures and a community-based social world. Building on Gloria Anzaldua's theory of nepantla, it illustrates how campesina…

Written for young people, this book traces the accomplishments of Cesar Chavez, a labor leader who fought to improve the lives of Mexican-American farmworkers in California. Chavez was born in 1927 in the Gila Valley, Arizona. When Chavez was 10, his family lost their farm and was forced to move to California and become migrant workers. Chavez and…

Interviews with 60 Mexican-American female farmworkers in the Coachella Valley (California) identified their major problems, needs, and suggestions of topics to be presented in a community-based educational radio program. Two major problems identified by these women were low wages and occupational exposure to pesticides. Contrary to cultural…

Since the late 1970s, California's rural poor (frequently immigrants and refugees) have been engaged in grassroots efforts to change the cultural and political landscapes of their communities. Told in the words of rural people, this book presents six stories of struggle and empowerment. In Yuba City, Latino and East Indian farmworkers felt that…