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

Chapter 2. The Church, Home Missions, and Farm Labor in California, 1920-40

Chapter 2: The Church, Home Missions, and Farm Labor in California, 1920–40 The business of the church is divine. To seek the things of the next world, not of this. . . . Christ did not found the Church to be a mere humanitarian institution. The Church is a teacher. She works to bring God’s grace to the souls of men. . . . She has, in fact, plenty to do to attend to her own business. The Tidings, Catholic organ of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, 1937 In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 Mexico ceded most of the present-day states of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and California to the United States, officially opening California to further AngloAmerican immigration. The following year miners discovered gold near Sacramento, and one of the greatest mixtures of humanity in world history descended on the northern part of what soon became the thirty-first state. In the 1870s a real-estate boom commenced in Southern California, and Anglos and others began settling in that region. Several religious traditions soon followed them, competing for the souls of gold seekers frequenting saloons and brothels in San Francisco and homesteaders searching for the good life in Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, the religious groups that prevailed were Irish American Catholics and Anglo-American Protestants , particularly Northern Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists. Although Catholics were numerous in the Bay Area and WASPs in Los Angeles, each group became well established in both locales. Anglo Protestants quickly dominated regional economic life, while, at least in San Francisco, Irish Catholic labor countered with its own strength. In any event, the way of life of the indigenous Californios, that is, the criollo landowners who eventually sold or lost their land to Anglo businessmen, disappeared before the cultural and economic on- 18 Chapter 2 slaught of these newcomers. The Mexican Revolution of the 1910s, however , brought a new generation of Spanish-speaking people to California, many of whom worked in agriculture. This chapter examines the arrival, growth, and interaction of the aforementioned groups in California: Irish Catholic and Anglo Protestant institutions, Mexicans, and, to a lesser extent, Filipinos. It also explores the nature of popular religion among Mexicans and Filipinos. I then turn to the farm labor unrest of the late 1920s and 1930s, noting the tenuous positions in which various ministers of migrant workers often found themselves. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States also developed substantial ministries among Mexicans and less significantly among Filipinos, but in both instances only as religious subjects and not specifically as organized workers. Prior to the late 1940s such support occurred only in rare, isolated cases. This state of affairs persisted not because Mexicans and Filipinos were not involved in farm labor organizing. Indeed, they founded a number of unions and desperately needed the resources of the Catholic Church. Instead, other factors were at play. First, the Catholic Church in the Far West initially lacked institutional strength and functioned primarily as a frontier entity. Bishops struggled to establish parishes, schools, and basic social services that were well developed in the East. Second, cultural differences served as a major obstacle. Irish American clergy unfamiliar with Mexican and Filipino socioreligious traditions tried to impose a more formal Catholicism on their charges. In short, these priests often concentrated on the fundamentals of the faith as they understood them, administering the sacraments of the Eucharist, baptism, confirmation, and last rites. Little time and energy remained to address labor issues. Third, the political and social conservatism following World War I discouraged Catholic support for organized workers. Although the crisis of the Great Depression revitalized the labor movement , the Catholic Church extended its aid mainly to Euro-Americans, such as Irish American longshoremen in New York, German American factory workers in Milwaukee, and Polish coal miners in Pennsylvania. In contrast, the hierarchy in California avoided applying the social encyclicals Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1930) to the plight of Mexican and Filipino farm workers. Local prelates were acutely aware of the fear, distrust, and hostility of xenophobic Anglos and less aware of their own racial prejudices. So the Catholic Church in California was content to seek to transform Mexicans, Filipinos, and other immi- The Church, Home Missions, and Farm Labor 19 grants into so-called good citizens. Suspicions of socialistic and communistic influences in farm labor unions also served to justify...