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219 In the 1930s Mexican Americans fought their first major battles for worker rights and racial equality when they joined the revitalized labor movement.1 In many instances of labor upheaval on farms, at mine sites, and in factories in the United States, Spanish-speaking workers took the lead. They created separate labor unions that were rooted in the tradition of mutual aid societies and workers’ leagues, joined unions of mixed racial-ethnic composition, or sought national union affiliation. What emerged was a style of unionism that drew not just on the courage and militancy of Mexicans but also on their rich historical and cultural traditions, refashioned to fit the immediate labor struggle. From these shared social and cultural experiences emerged a collective identity and class-consciousness. Immersion in labor activism broadened the political horizons of Mexicans. They linked their struggles to those of other American workers by joining causes that embraced national and international issues such as the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys, the CIO-sponsored Labor’s Non-Partisan League, the Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples, and the Communist Party’s American League Against War and Fascism.2 New Deal labor legislation became the impetus for the first phase of Mexican American labor insurgency in 1933–34. The creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1935 ushered in another wave of rank-andfile labor organizing that embraced the democratic principle of racial equality. In the Southwest and Midwest, unions targeted Mexican workers in mining, metal mills, agriculture, food packing, steel, and auto work.3 An important factor in union campaigns was the integral leadership and commitment of leftwing organizers. Lacking a formal directive about working with Mexicans, like the Southern strategy outlined for blacks, the Communist Party realized that it would have to accommodate the interests and needs of these wary workers. Communist organizers soon discovered that dry Marxist doctrine and lofty Tejana Radical Emma Tenayuca and the San Antonio Labor Movement during the Great Depression zaragosa vargas 220 Zaragosa Vargas revolutionary aims counted less than their antiracist stance and willingness to lend their organizing abilities to the Mexicans’ cause.4 Grassroots activism brought Mexican and Mexican American women to the forefront of labor struggles as rank-and-file organizers, and these minority women comprised the main ranks of some local unions. Such acts of solidarity transformed their lives and consciousness, just as gender, racial-ethnic, and class identities in turn shaped the various working-class movements that unfolded among the larger Mexican population.5 As workers and strike leaders, Tejanas (Texas Mexicans) like Manuela Solis Sager, Minnie Rendon, and Juana Sanchez all played prominent roles in the depression-era union effort in San Antonio, Texas. A key activist was Emma Tenayuca. She had a magnetic personality and possessed extraordinary organizing abilities honed by years of active struggle on behalf of San Antonio’s Mexican community. Under the banners of the Unemployed Councils and the Workers’ Alliance of America, she helped Mexicans organize hunger marches, protests, and demonstrations to gain relief, obtain jobs on public works projects, and fight against racial injustice and harassment by the US Immigration Service.6 Tenayuca is best known as a leader of the 1938 pecan shellers’ strike. With over ten thousand participants, it was the largest labor strike in San Antonio history and the most massive community-based strike waged by the nation’s Mexican population in the 1930s. Tenayuca challenged the Southern Pecan Company, a major Texas industry, and the city government of San Antonio when she demanded an end to race-based wage differentials between “white” workers and lower-paid Mexicans. In calling for equal pay for equal work for the entire San Antonio market, the Tejana sought nothing less than a restructuring of the compensation system on the basis of racial and gender equity. Tenayuca’s efforts thus shared a common purpose with those of ethnically diverse women who struggled for justice during the 1930s. As Tenayuca grew in the belief that the workplace required radical revision to achieve equality, she joined a small group of Mexican Americans who turned to the Communist Party. She belonged to communist-led organizations and married an avowed communist; she finally joined the party in 1937, only to leave it in disillusionment two years later following the signing of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact. She found Marxism especially persuasive in intellectual terms. She coauthored a polemic for the Communist Party that discussed Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the national question. In...

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