The 1933 Los Angeles county farm workers strike

Abstract

Although many historical accounts touch briefly upon the ubiquitous Mexican consulates, none to date have delved beyond superficial details of that presence, preferring instead to reconstruct Chicano political history as if it were an experience shaped by factors within the United States. This study reveals that the Mexican governments in the post‐1910 Revolutionary era implemented a strategy to influence the political culture and actions of the emigrant community in the US. An important part of that strategy contained measures to influence and develop an ethnic Mexican unionization movement along conservative lines. The compiled evidence leads to the conclusion that the Mexican community forged their experiences not only in terms of the conditions extant within the US, but that their home government followed them across the border seeking to assimilate them into the social relations and political culture of the emerging Mexican state. Mexico aimed at nothing less than developing a loyal and politically dependent emigrant community, a strategy that replicated Mexico's domestic social policy and complemented Roosevelt's New Deal labor objectives, while corresponding to the labor demands of large‐scale agricultural interests.