Man of Fire: Selected Writings

Program for Action

Progr am for Action Ernesto Galarza, “Program for Action,” part of a special section titled “The Mexican American: A National Concern,” in Common Ground 9, no. 4 (Summer 1949): 27–38. Common Ground was a publication of the Common Council for American Unity (1939–1959), a progressive organization whose purpose was to conduct research and do outreach to promote inclusive citizenship. One of their stated purposes was “to help the foreign-born and their children solve their special problems of adjustment, know and value their particular cultural heritage, and share fully and constructively in American life.” The list of barriers to societal, political, and economic parity for the Mexican American that Galarza outlines are almost identical to those that activists and progressive academics speak of today. The solutions he offers to ameliorate the Mexican American condition include participation in trade unions and the reform of federal labor and educational laws. An interesting part of this article is his discussion of the migration to the interior United States that had begun by 1949. The Mexican American community was no longer staying in traditional border regions and states (California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico) but had successfully settled in new states such as Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. It is important to address Galarza’s use of the words “wetback” and “illegal ” to refer to undocumented Mexican immigrants. These terms were part of the popular discourse of the time and were commonly used by progressive academics, reporters, and others involved in the labor movement. After carefully studying Galarza and his work, we believe that if he was alive today he would be part of the movement to denounce these terms to refer to any human being. Notable life events during this era: • 1947: As a result of the 30-month strike of fruit pickers against the DiGiorgio Corporation, growers urge the House of Representatives to create a subcommittee to investigate the organizing activities and job actions of the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU). One of the three representatives on the subcommittee is Richard Nixon, who for two and a half days cross-examines Galarza and other witnesses of the strike on behalf of the growers. Program for Action 33 • 1951: Galarza leads a strike of cantaloupe pickers in the Imperial Valley of California. • 1953: With H. L. Mitchell, co-founder of the Southern Tenant Farmers ’ Union, Galarza helps organize and participates in strikes by sugar cane workers in Louisiana. The conditions of life and work of the Spanish-speaking minority in the United States are no longer a problem only of the borderlands. A historical process has been at work lifting this problem above local and sectional concern. It now involves communities as distant from the United States–Mexican border as Chicago, New York, and Detroit. It shows up in the rural slums that lie on an arc stretching from Arkansas to northern California. It is documented in federal reports on employment and in community conferences on human relations in the urban industrial East as well as in the rural agricultural Southwest. It has become a skeleton in the closet of our Latin American policy. The Mexican agricultural migrant and itinerant railway maintenance worker have been the primary agents in this process. Over the past fifty years they have moved into practically every state of the Union. Today, while the bulk of over 2,500,000 of this minority is still anchored in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, thousands can be found in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. Within the group, the inferiority complex has been disappearing. From the uncomplaining ranks of Mexican “stoop labor” have emerged trained men and women to spoil the myth of the innate servility and incompetence attached to this group, with some romantic concessions, by the finance fanners and railway corporations that long have exploited them. Two world wars proved the courage, tested the loyalty, broadened the experience, and tempered the will of young men born and bred in a no-man’s-land of social rejection and lack of civic opportunity for adult citizenship. In the cotton fields, the truck farm, and the corporation ranches, as well as in the armed services, the Mexican has mingled with other minority groups more experienced in the defense of human rights and dignity, especially the Negro. He has rubbed shoulders with the militant Nisei GI’s who did not come back from [the battle of] Monte Cassino to take it lying down. Through these contacts, methods...