Oral Sources and the History of Mexican Workers in the United States

Abstract

Historians writing the history of Mexican workers in the United States face a discouraging paucity of written documentation. Most early twentieth century sourc es on Mexican labor focused on the impact of Mexican labor on the economy, work force, and society, but left unasked and unanswered fundamental questions about Mexican working people, their communities, and internal labor organi zation. l Under the pressure of political struggles in the 1960s the focus of Mexican studies began to change. Social scientists began to focus on Mexicans as active historical participants. They asked new questions which challenged the traditional stereotypes of Mexican working people. New written sources were located and old sources used in new ways. But written documentation was often clearly insufficient to answer questions about workers' lives, questions about class consciousness, ques tions about the social and political dynamics within the Mexican communities. Even simply factual questions about work and labor organization often evaded the histo rian searching in more traditional documentation. For these questions, oral histories became a pivotal source. Oral sources have been used to write or substantially revise the history of Mexican workers. What follows is a brief discussion drawn from my own work to illustrate the value of oral sources in writing the history of Mexican workers. In my article, The Organization of Mexicano Agricultural Workers in the Imperial Valley and Los Angeles, 1928-1934: An Oral History Approach I focused on Mexican participation in three agricultural strikes. These strikes were used to explore the nature of Mexican class consciousness, leadership, and labor organiza tion. I used newspapers, federal documents and other secondary sources, but oral sources were the basis for the study.2 Prior studies of these strikes had been distorted by the inadequacies of availa ble documentation and the limited perspectives of many, although not all, earlier historians. With the exception of Ron Lopez's article on the El Monte berry strike of 1933 which relied heavily on oral sources, historical studies had attributed class conscious organizing and agricultural strike leadership to the Anglo organizers of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union of the United States