Farm Workers and the Churches: The Movement in California and Texas

Chapter 3. From Service to Advocacy, 1940-64

Chapter 3: From Service to Advocacy, 1940–64 Surely this is the time when our ministry, the Church’s ministry, His ministry must mean something more than paints and dolls, films and hymn singing. For what good are all of these when you have no job and there is hunger in the house [sic]. Surely now the Church must speak in a voice that will be heard in high places and in low places. Surely the Church cannot keep silent . . . Migrant Ministry staff, 1953 As a result of World War II, a number of Mexican Americans realized signi ficant economic gains in the 1940s and 1950s. The enrollment of minorities in the armed forces helped to weaken racial obstacles and open up new opportunities for them. A few Mexican Americans also took advantage of the G.I. Bill and attended college. Others worked as civil employees at military bases. Still others held on to factory jobs that became available during the wartime manufacturing boom, especially in cities like Los Angeles. A small percentage of Mexican Americans thereby entered the ranks of the working class and some even the middle class. As a sign of their newfound status, a handful of men with Spanish surnames ran for political office on local, state, and national levels—notably Edward Roybal in California, Dennis Chavez in New Mexico, and Henry B. Gonzalez in Texas. New self-help organizations, such as the American G.I. Forum, were founded as well. Despite these gains, the majority of Mexican Americans continued to suffer from poverty and racial prejudice. Most of them remained in urban barrios. Others, like their parents before them, labored in the fields. By the 1950s, a significant percentage of Mexican Americans had built permanent homes in farm communities. They were no longer migrants, but tended nearby specialty crops and worked at odd jobs in the off-season. Most Filipino men were less fortunate, resigned to a nomadic existence of endlessly traversing the breadbasket of California. Still, they were arguably From Service to Advocacy 49 better off than Mexican nationals. Growers increasingly used the latter in World War II, under the auspices of the new government-sponsored Bracero Program, which, after 1951, was known as Public Law 78. Composed of groups such as “the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Vegetable Growers Association of America, the Amalgamated Sugar Company, the National Cotton Council, and others,” the farm lobby originally persuaded the U.S. Congress to enact the program as an emergency wartime measure. Growers liked it so much, however, that they convinced lawmakers to extend it in various forms into the early 1960s. Finally, on the lowest rung of the agricultural ladder were undocumented Mexicans, whom growers could summon and dismiss at will. Most of the braceros and undocumented nationals toiled on farms near the border. So Mexican Americans were forced to move to agricultural communities in central and northern California. Even there, however, braceros eventually appeared in the fields and orchards, once again displacing domestic workers who both resented yet identified with them. A harsh assessment of postwar realities for Mexican Americans in general was certainly accurate for farm laborers in particular: It is a historical truth that, while the United States fought World War II to free the world from fascism, neither that country nor western Europe planned to extend the benefits of democracy to people of color, at home or abroad. The Western world never intended to abolish colonialism . . . Mexican Americans and other minorities returned to a racist society, separate and unequal. Religious liberals, civil rights organizations, and labor unions opposed the Bracero Program. Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants led the charge among faith groups, evidencing a growing trend of advocacy on behalf of farm workers. Priests steeped in the social encyclicals had risen to positions of leadership. They strongly supported the labor movement, which not only recovered but also surpassed earlier gains. Catholic clergy in the Northeast and Midwest had endorsed labor in the building trades, manufacturing, and mining. A small but vocal group of Catholic clergy felt compelled to apply the same principles to migrant labor in the Southwest and far West. Robert E. Lucey, Archbishop of San Antonio and executive chair of the new Bishops’ Committee for the Spanish Speaking (BCSS), set this goal high on his list of priorities. Representatives in two 50 Chapter 3 other Catholic organizations fired off a steady...