Curious Unions: Mexican American Workers and Resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898–1961

3. Segregated Integration

3 SEGREGATED INTEGRATION From the city’s inception, a divide developed between “respectable” districts west of Oxnard Boulevard and north of Fifth Street and “tougher elements” east of the boulevard. A polyglot of black, Chinese, Japanese, East Indian, and Mexican residents largely lived east of the boulevard and within the streets of A and B, south of Sixth Street to Eighth. They were the “tougher elements” of Oxnard. In the early decades of the twentieth century, a jim-town of tents and shanties arose on the grounds of the American Beet Sugar Company on the south side of Fifth Street, east of Oxnard Boulevard. By the mid-1920s the company built adobe structures for the betabelero families vital to the industry’s existence. White factory workers and their families resided in midwestern-style homes on the west side of town. White residents in general lived near or just northwest of the plaza as the city developed. Mexicans and other racial minorities found themselves segregated on the periphery at the south end of China Alley, the absc grounds, Meta Street, and La Colonia.1 This geographical segmentation, however, simultaneously existed in an agricultural-industrial economy that curiously negotiated the unification of a cross-cultural population. This chapter examines the geographical and social boundaries in the city of Oxnard shaped by an economy that dictated a hierarchically defined 91 92 segregated integration workforce. The social layout of the city as a result congealed along ethnic, occupational, and class lines. The demographic examination of the city during the early twentieth century should be described in the context of the size of other municipalities in Southern California and as a community that developed a “rurban” milieu surrounded by agricultural space. Oxnard, like other communities, represented a small satellite in relation to the metropolis of Los Angeles. So to understand its existence as a municipality in Southern California during the early part of the twentieth century it needs to be contextually compared with other cities in the region. The 1910 U.S. census was the first in which Oxnard was listed as a city, with a population of 2,555; it was the county’s second-largest city, behind Ventura, which stood at 2,901. Los Angeles in 1910 comparatively held a population of 319,198—nearly 125 times the size of Oxnard. In the 1930 census, Oxnard’s population had more than doubled, to 6,285; it was third behind Ventura and Santa Paula, which had populations of 11,605 and 7,452, respectively. Los Angeles had grown to more than 1.2 million.2 Amid Mexicans Mexicans, both U.S.-born and immigrant, for the most part resided in four areas of Oxnard. The first lay in a barrio enclave between A and B Streets, just west of Oxnard Boulevard, and Eighth and Ninth Streets. Mexican residents also lived on Meta Street just off Seventh, east of Oxnard Boulevard. A large number of betabeleros and their families, on the other hand, lived in the adobe homes built and owned by the absc. The Mexican community over time concentrated in the district of La Colonia.3 This barrio existed east of Oxnard Boulevard between Cooper Road and Third Street and was bordered on the east by McKinley Avenue for most of the first half of the century. The Mexican community lived within these residential sites along with blacks and various ethnic Asian residents, mainly Japanese and Filipinos. The dominant white population lived principally west of Oxnard Boulevard. With the early segregated development of Oxnard’s residential spaces emerged corollary institutions of education and religion, particularly the Catholic Church. These geographic cleavages that girded oppression within and outside the fields that surrounded the segregated integration 93 absc factory, however, were not absolute. Group interactions occurred and were influenced by economic necessity, length of residency, class, and the generational position of persons. Migrants and immigrants lived near the Southern Pacific Railway depot on Fifth Street and Saviers Road (now Oxnard Boulevard) upon their arrival at the emergent company town of Oxnard. As time passed this early cycle of migrants dispersed to the center of town near the plaza, west of C Street. During the early twentieth century, white residents resided near the depot due to a housing shortage, low rents, and the proximity of these residences to the city’s commercial district.4 The Southern Pacific spur railroad line...