Teaching American History Application Survey

February 2010
Latinas in American History: An Innovative Approach to Teaching with Technology

Minerva Torres Ríos, “Memories of Puerto Rico and New York;” excerpted from “Remembrenzas,” in Nuestras Vidas, Recordando, Luchando y Transformando, produced by the El Barrio Popular Education Program, June 1987 (2 pp.): Puerto Ricans who migrated to the United States not only left their homes, families, and friends but also said farewell to a way of life based on a strong sense of community. Minerva Torres Rios, 87 years old, came to the United States from Puerto Rico in 1929. For many years she lived in New York City's East Harlem, one of the oldest Puerto Rican settlements in the city, called “El Barrio,” or the neighborhood, by those who lived there. Ms. Rios was a member of a popular education and literacy program in El Barrio, organized with the help of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos. She reflects in this essay on her childhood in Puerto Rico and subsequent experiences as a laundry worker in New York City.

“Our Mother’s Struggle has Shown us the Way;” excerpted from the radio documentary “Nosotras Trabqjamos en la Costural Puerto Rican Women in the Garment Industry,” produced by Rina Benmayor, Ana Juarbe, Kimberiy Safford and Blanca Vazquez Erazo. Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos, Hunter College, 1985 (3 pp.): A period of mass migration from Puerto Rico to the United States began in the 1940s under “Operation Bootstrap.” Many women who came found work as sewing machine operators in garment factories in New York City, where pay and working conditions were often poor. These women played an important role in efforts to unionize factories and win better conditions for workers. Manufacturers, however, soon found it more profitable to move their factories overseas, where they could take advantage of even cheaper, non-union labor. After 20 or 30 years of work, many Puerto Rican women lost their jobs. In the 1980s the Oral History Task Force of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqufios interviewed former garment workers. From these interviews they produced a radio documentary, “Nosotras Trabajamos en la Costura.”

Celia Alvarez, “Stories to Live By: Continuity and Change in Three Generations of Puerto Rican Women;” excerpted from RinaBenmayor, Ana Juaihe, Blanca Vazquez Erazo, and Celia Alvarez, “Stories to Live By: Continuity and Change in three Generations of Puerto Rican Women,” Oral History Review 16:2 (Fall 1988): 1-46 (3 pp.): In this excerpt, Celia Alvarez, a daughter of Puerto Rican migrants who moved to the mainland in the 1950s and one of the researchers who collected women’s stories, reflects on her own experiences growing up in New York City. The interview touches on questions of language, race, prejudice, community, and the process of recovering and recording history.

Juana Gallegos, Mexican Identification Card, 1923 (1p.): The story of Juana Gallegos and her family is fairly typical of those who migrated to the United States in the early twentieth century. Born in 1900 in the rural town of Miquihuana, Tamaulipas, Mexico, Gallegos’s life was seriously disrupted by shifts in the agricultural system, construction of Mexico’s national railroad, and the Mexican Revolution. She moved to San Antonio, Texas in 1923 where she married and raised a family, but she never stopped visiting her Mexican family or defining herself as Mexican.

Reies López Tijerina, “A Letter from the Santa Fe Jail,” 1969 (2 pp.):Reies López Tijerina emerged as one of the most influential leaders of the Chicano/a Movement of the 1960s. A source of early inspiration for activists across the Southwest, he exhibited sharp public-speaking skills and an uncompromising militancy that emphasized direct action. He reframed the political struggle of Chicanos and Chicanas from one of domestic civil rights and U.S. citizenship to one shaped by colonization, violations of international law, and the loss of land. This excerpt from “A Letter from the Santa Fe Jail,” written while Tijerina was incarcerated for his participation in the Echo Amphitheater occupation, was modeled on Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” and lays out the charges and complaints of a Mexican-American political activist against his country.

"Cesar Chavez," Letter from Delano, (Excerpt), 1969 (3pp):Cesar Chavez was a twentieth-century Mexican-American labor activist and leader and an especially strong advocate for migrant farm workers, people who move from place to place in order to find work. From the 1950s through the 1970s, he led the first successful farm workers’ union in American history, arguing for dignity, respect, fair wages, medical coverage, pension benefits, and humane living conditions, as well as countless other rights and protections for hundreds of thousands of farm workers. In 1969 he was imprisoned for his participation in a march for undocumented immigration. He wrote this letter to E.L. Barr, Jr., the then President of the California Grape and Tree Fruit League, to protest conditions of migrant workers as well as emphasize the peaceful nature of Chicano activists seeking change. Like Tijerina’s letter written after he had been imprisoned that same year for similar participation in civil disobedience, Chavez’s “Letter from Delano” also drew on King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” As you read these letters, identify the similarities and differences in their subject matter and rhetoric and consider how each tries to persuade his audience.

“The Little Strike that Grew to La Causa,” and magazine cover image, Time Magazine (July 4, 1969) (10 pp.):This article chronicles a four-year boycott of common table grapes in America between 1965 and 1969 in an effort to reform work conditions for migrant laborers. It highlights the role of Latino labor activist Cesar Chavez, and addresses the concerns of U.S consumers, government officials, and migrant workers. Most of the piece, however, details how Chavez created a grassroots consumer movement, and how Mexican Americans combined cultures to create their space in the United States. A painting of Chavez was featured on the cover of this magazine issue.

“We Serve Whites Only,” photograph, 1949, part of the collection of the University of Texas, Austin, Study of Spanish Speaking People Collection (1pp.):The rise of commercial agriculture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries increased U.S. need for seasonal and farm laborers, often filled in the West Coast particularly by Mexicans and native-born Tejanos. But as Hispanic populations expanded, so did fear and prejudice. Tejanos faced lynchings, discrimination, segregation, political disfranchisement, and other injustices, as demonstrated in this image. This image further illustrates the degree to which Jim Crow segregation was more than simply a black and white issue. Instead, it highlights the existence of a broader racial hierarchy and showing the extent to which Hispanics, as well as Asians, Jews, Catholics and Native Americans faced differential treatment.

“Si Se Puede,” boycott poster, 1978 (1 pp.):On August 22, 1966, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), later renamed the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), was formed. Under the founding leadership of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the UFW won many labor or civil rights concessions for disenfranchised Mexican-American farm workers. Before the rise of the UFW, working conditions were harsh for most agricultural workers. On average, farm workers made about ninety cents per hour plus ten cents for each basket of produce they picked. Many workers in the field did not have even the most basic necessities such as clean drinking water. Through a series of demonstrations, strikes, and protests, illustrated by this poster boycotting grapes and lettuce, the UFW brought these issues to the public’s attention and helped to put into effect in 1975 the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which protects farm workers’ rights to unionize.

Jose Flores, interviewed by Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin, Library of Congress, American Memory: Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941, available online as a Quicktime audio clip at: http://memory.loc.gov/afc/afcts/audio/514/5145a1.mp3: The file contains a relatively brief interview with twenty-year old Mexican-American Jose Flores recorded by Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin. Between 1940 and 1941, these two instructors in the Department of Speaking at the City College of New York visited Farm Security Administration (FSA) or government-funded agricultural camps in California to record the cowboy songs, ballads, stories, conversations, and council meetings of the camps inhabitants. Although most of their recordings were of Exodusters, migrant workers who left the southern plains that were decimated by dust storms during the 1930s, a few, including the interview with Flores, were recordings of Mexican Americans. In this interview, Flores considers gender dynamics in a Mexican family and defends the FSA’s government-funded camps for migrant workers. The bulk of the interview, however, describes the discrimination and segregation experienced by Mexican and Mexican-Americans in public schools, the labor market, and even movie theaters. This interview illustrates the obstacles Mexican-Americans faced, the existence of racial tensions and divisions beyond the black and white story, and the ways that Mexican-Americans resisted such discrimination.