re dried up, with farmers hiring white over the Mexicans in California. In Texas the farmer relied heavily on the Mexicans to depress wages even furthers. B. Mexican American Rural Labor – New Deal programs in the 1930’s, which were to help agriculture, had a negative impact on Mexican workers. The displacement of owners and sharecroppers contributed to the swelling of the ranks of rural labor. A series of strikes of unprecedented scope and intensity throughout the country caused the Mexican workers to suffer greatly from the restructuring which took place in the southwest in which production became concentrated in the hands of a few.C. Mexican American Farm Workers’ Revolt – Given the industrialization of agriculture, the exploitation of Mexican labor, and the abuses of the contract labor system, conflict would have occurred without the depression; the events of 1929 merely intensified the struggle. Farm industrialists determined to make up their losses. They fixed wages as low as possible. In California, wages went from 35 – 50 cents an hour in 1931 to 15 to 16 cents an hours by mid-1933. Once again, Mexicans became angry strikers. There were several strikes so violent it led to killing. After the strike was settled, with the states intervention, it was decided to raise the rate of the workers to 80 cent per hour. D. Mexican American Urban Labor – Los Angeles’s mixed farm and industrial economy encouraged the movement of workers to the city. In the mid-1930’s, 13,549 farms operated in the county, with hundreds of thousands acres devoted to agriculture. Competition between the AFL and CIP helped in the unionization of Chicanos in other cities and regions. Prior to 1937, the AFL cared little for unskilled minorities or women workers. It became less discriminative; however, given the successes of the CIP, whose industrial unionism was more attractive to Chinanos then the AFL&#...
