Myla’s Reviews > Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican American Working Class > Status Update

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.