Farm Workers and the Churches: The Movement in California and Texas (review)

In his new book, Alan J. Watt provides readers with an intriguing, well-written comparison of the role of the Protestant and Catholic Churches during the farm workers’ actions in California and Texas in the 1960s. A pastor for over two decades, the author contributes to the growing body of literature produced by scholars such as Gilberto Hinojosa, Timothy Matovina, Roberto Treviño, and more recently Mario T. García, focusing on the role of religion in Mexican-American history.

Watt studies California and Texas because the struggles in the fields were contemporaneous, with the Delano strike beginning in September 1965 and the Rio Grande Valley struggle coming in June 1966; both ended in 1970. Watt also finds the comparison between these two states interesting because of four major differences between them. First, they had very different historical trajectories. California became a state after the Mexican War, and its international population influx created a stronger sense of cosmopolitanism in California. Texas, by contrast, was populated largely from the American South, resulting in greater provincialism. Second, agribusiness grew much earlier and more rapidly in California. Third, California urbanized more rapidly. Fourth, and most importantly for his argument, religion developed differently in each state as well. The Protestant missionaries who first came to California were Congregationalists, Northern Presbyterians, and Northern Methodists who believed in the ecumenical movement and social justice. Further, the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists established a chapter in San Francisco by the 1930s, where the Church maintained a tradition of union support. In Texas, by contrast, Southern versions of Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians dominated the religious landscape. No devotees of the social gospel, southern religion was individualistic and conservative.

To make his case, Watt divides the book into two major parts. The first examines events in California. The period from 1920 to 1940 is defined as one in which Protestants focused primarily on saving individual souls. The Catholic faith, for its part, had to balance the needs of the poor against the conservative, anti-union social climate in the southern part of the state. Further complicating issues was the fact that the Catholic church believed in the rights of workers to organize, but it stood foursquare against communism, which was sometimes rooted in organized labor. The second portion studies the unfolding of events in Texas, where a strong historical social and political conservatism joined forces with a deeply embedded religious conservatism to frustrate worker demands.

Although Watt proffers interesting food for thought in terms of religious, social, historical and distinctions between the states, his narrative does not always sustain his assertions. Unlike Texas workers, Californians reached an agreement in 1970 with the major grape growers. But in neither the California “peregrinación” nor in the Texas “marcha” did the respective governors (Pat Brown in California, John Connally in Texas) agree to meet with the marchers. Both areas faced strong opposition by growers, and both areas experienced disagreements between clergy of all denominations over how to deal with increasing farm worker demands over time. Watt even concludes that it was a confluence of factors, including religion, that shaped the fortunes of migrant workers in the two states.

That said, the book provides a rich account of the differing religious traditions in California and Texas. Students of religious history will find the work fascinating. Despite its interpretive shortcomings, students of labor history and Mexican American history will also find the book useful in fleshing out the complex story of the United Farm Workers in the tumultuous decade of the 1960s.