Status Updates From Radicals in the Barrio: Mag...

IN THE HOME STRETCH

Part three ends with the introduction of explicitly communist groups following the Great Depression and the Russian Revolution. Also it discusses how much control the capitalists have over the state, with many owners putting money into local government to effectively make the gov an arm of their operation.

In their attempt to shut down the strike, multiple people were killed. Shots were fired, with four people dying and five being arrested and tried. Ford, the aforementioned strike leader, ended up serving a decade in prison on trumped up chargers in a sham trial where the jurors were growers and the judge was a friend of the person they were trying to prosecute Ford for “planning to kill.”

This short ass chapter covers the wheatland hops protest, which occurred due to the horrific and inhumane conditions suffered by the migrant workforce at the Durst farm. After the strike broke out, Durst himself ordered one of the leaders to be arrested, at which point the cop pointed a gun at the strike leader. The two were then chased off the property by the strikers. Later, eight armed men showed up

The solution was to create a narrow sliver of acceptable life for Mexican migrants. They were pushed into segregated areas, with border patrol picking people up with no real rhyme or reason outside of the barrio. So, the business class got a group of laborers who were incredibly vulnerable and were therefore easily exploitable.

And when aligned with the influx of anti-migration laws, this helped the landowning elite create a situation in which they encouraged a lot of migrant workers while working against those same workers getting citizenship. The purpose of the border patrol, established in 1924, was a compromise between the racists who wanted to ban Mexican workers and the racists who wanted to exploit their labor.

Chapter is about California and radicalized labor during the growth of capitalist agriculture. Essentially labor from migrants was routinely vilified. And whenever one group of migrants was limited or banned, another would take its place due to ongoing colonization. Mexican migrants were viewed as extra valuable in this regard. There were already trains to the economic centers of the US from Mexico.

It really can’t be understated how important race is in breaking up radical movements. Reminds me of something I saw a while ago about how white people in the US are against things that would benefit them (socialized healthcare, UBI, etc.) because minority groups would also benefit from those things.

Ch 15 Arizona mine radicalism. There are a few general themes emerging in most chapters, that being:
-Divide between those who want segregated unions and those who don’t
-Those who are pro-segregated unions tend to work against the non-segregated unions, including working with bosses and the gov (IMUWW identifying IWW leaders during the 1917 strikes)
-Massive state repression

Pt 2 of this book was just about the PLM, really. How they grew, where their base was, who their base was, and who their non-state peers were. My only complaint is that like. This is not told chronologically, which can be a bit confusing. But honestly it’s so well-researched that idec really. This book is anti-pop-history. Fuck a narrative Chacon has shit to say

Some members of the PLM joined with Madero after this failed uprising. However, after he came to power and Magón rejected his offer of the vice presidency, the US effectively broke the PLM apart by arresting the PLM leadership. Magón said to undercover agents that the PLM aimed to continue to resist Madero, which the US gov claimed broke the neutrality clause.

Ch 14 and end of pt 2- the IWW forms as an offshoot of the reformist socialist party. They team up with PLM, becoming more focused on internationalism. The groups found some success, as they weren’t discriminatory which expanded who they could organize. PLM and some Wobblies led a failed uprising in Baja California in 1911. US with a tiny amount of help from Diaz crushed it, arresting the surviving leaders.

Fuck the AFL, racism pushed people further right leading to less support for the radical PLM. Same shit with the socialist party

Ch 12- fuck the Texas rangers. About the PLM and socialist party in Texas. Talks about the plan of San Diego, originally created but abandoned by the PLM. A second plan of San Diego was formed by Mexican ranchers who were being attacked. They proceeded to attack local police and white landowners, i.e. those who played a role in and benefitted from their displacement. The US gov responded with a wave of repression.

There was a lot of crossover between the PLM and the socialist party, with one helping get the other’s leaders out of prison often.

The PLM got more notice from the capitalist class than before, as by this point they were known to have organized several large strikes in Cananea, Veracruz, Yucatán, and elsewhere. In LA, socialists worked closely with the PLM. Most Mexicans who could vote often voted for the socialist party, with a large chunk of the socialist party’s local leadership being Mexican.

With the leadership of the PLM being exiled, they re-settled in LA. Unsurprisingly, they quickly became popular. Women played a major role in the organization’s growth, with the PLM publishing explicitly feminist papers. Women also played a huge role in communication, as the male figureheads of the PLM were often arrested by the US. Cross-border collusion still was in action.

In a moment which left me gobsmacked, Otis cut his printers’ wages by 20 percent in 1890 in order to cause a strike which he could then break. Other capitalists in the area engaged in similar behavior, moving from stopping new unions to stomping out existing ones. However, they still worked to crush new unions, with the UFM strike in 1903 being a prime example of what the cartel could do.

The US capitalists wanted to make LA an industrial and economic powerhouse, and they aimed to do this by forming a cartel and crushing unions. They essentially wanted to make it so LA was a prime location for those hoping to exploit workers with as little resistance as possible. Open white supremacists including the publisher of the LA times worked together as cartels, building up right-wing militias to crush strikes

Ch 11 is about the PLM and socialists in LA. The next chapter is about these two groups in Texas. LA is described as a place which was almost entirely populated by Mexicans in small communities until the early 1900s, when US capitalists started building railroads in the area. The influx of foreign capital and the actions of the Diaz regime caused mass migration to LA.

an army of labor which is easily exploitable. The IWW and other unions in the southwest became more radical as a result, with the IWW and PLM starting to work together. Fuck the AFL