We Met in Spinach, Fell in Love in Peaches, and Married in Tomatoes

Abstract

Poverty is the most intractable, and potentially most explosive, example of injustice in America today, and increasingly the ranks of the poor are made up of mothers and their children, particularly among immigrants, Black Americans, Latinos, and other peoples of color. Mexican women, whether U.S. citizens or not, have suffered some of the worst abuses of low-wage work and twelve-hour days in canneries, garment factories, on agribusiness farms, and more recently in their roles as custodians, housekeepers, and food service workers, often without health benefits, job security, or avenues of advancement. As historian Vicki Ruiz reminds in From Out of the Shadows, these Mexican women workers have always been central to the economic development of places and spaces in the American West, even if their story has been ignored by most historians. Politicians, especially in proposition-mad California, whip up anti-immigrant hysteria by invoking nativist fears that impoverished Mexicans will bankrupt America and transform us into an alien nation with their inassimilable culture.' California's 1994 Save our State