A01=Zaragosa Vargas
Activism
American Federation of Labor
American Labor Union
American Protective League
Author_Zaragosa Vargas
Category=KCF
Category=KCZ
Category=KNXU
Category=NHK
Civil and political rights
Civil defense
Civil Rights Congress
Civilian Conservation Corps
Community Service Organization
Company union
Craft unionism
Emma Tenayuca
Employment
Employment discrimination
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eq_history
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Equal opportunity
Fair Employment Practice Committee
Fair Labor Standards Act
Immigration law
Industrial relations
Industrial unionism
Industrial Workers of the World
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
International Labor Defense
Job Corps
Knights of Labor
La Follette Committee
Labor history of the United States
Labor relations
Labor Right
Labor rights
Labor unrest
Laborer
Labour law
Labour movement
League of United Latin American Citizens
Luisa Moreno
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Mexican Americans
Mexican Repatriation
Mexicans
Minimum wage law
Mutualista
National Industrial Recovery Act
National Labor Federation
National Labor Relations Act
National Negro Congress
Political machine
Progressivism
Progressivism in the United States
Pursuit of Equality
Racial democracy
Racism
Social democracy
Strike action
Strikebreaker
Syndicalism
Tejano
Trade union
Unemployment
Unfree labour
Union Movement
Union organizer
United Automobile Workers
United Farm Workers
Vigilance committee
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Workers Alliance of America
Workers International Relief
Working class
Works Progress Administration
Product details
- ISBN 9780691134024
- Weight: 595g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 28 Oct 2007
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In 1937, Mexican workers were among the strikers and supporters beaten, arrested, and murdered by Chicago policemen in the now infamous Republic Steel Mill Strike. Using this event as a springboard, Zaragosa Vargas embarks on the first full-scale history of the Mexican-American labor movement in twentieth-century America. Absorbing and meticulously researched, Labor Rights Are Civil Rightspaints a multifaceted portrait of the complexities and contours of the Mexican American struggle for equality from the 1930s to the postwar era. Drawing on extensive archival research, Vargas focuses on the large Mexican American communities in Texas, Colorado, and California. As he explains, the Great Depression heightened the struggles of Spanish speaking blue-collar workers, and employers began to define citizenship to exclude Mexicans from political rights and erect barriers to resistance. Mexican Americans faced hostility and repatriation. The mounting strife resulted in strikes by Mexican fruit and vegetable farmers. This collective action, combined with involvement in the Communist party, led Mexican workers to unionize.
Vargas carefully illustrates how union mobilization in agriculture, tobacco, garment, and other industries became an important vehicle for achieving Mexican American labor and civil rights. He details how interracial unionism proved successful in cross-border alliances, in fighting discriminatory hiring practices, in building local unions, in mobilizing against fascism and in fighting brutal racism. No longer willing to accept their inferior status, a rising Mexican American grassroots movement would utilize direct action to achieve equality.
Zaragosa Vargas is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of "Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933".
