Huelga, 1928 Style: The Imperial Valley Cantaloupe Workers' Strike

Abstract

more spectacular conflicts in California's fields, the 1928 strike was a purely local affair, staged by Imperial Valley workers with little or no aid from outside organizations. It was broken easily, in part because of organizational weaknesses, but primarily through threats and force by the valley's growers and law enforcement officials. Nevertheless, the strike stands as an important event in California history. It was the first attempt at a major work-stoppage organized by Mexican farm workers in modern California. It is important to note that this attempt occurred nearly forty years before the current struggle in Delano and nearly fifteen years before the beginning of the formal bracero program. The strike of the Imperial cantaloupe workers in 1928 is part of a long and sometimes bitter heritage of conflict between Mexican agricultural workers and their employers in rural California.1 The basic economic and social conditions that caused the Imperial Valley strike already were well established in 1928, and the Delano Huelga indicates that these conditions still exist in California's fields.