ABSTRACT
Mexicana field workers, as agricultural laborers, have been remarkable for their absence in written agricultural history. This chapter explores how oral histories can help us understand the consciousness of a group of Mexican women cotton workers who participated in the 1933 cotton strike in California’s San Joaquin Valley. The wretchedness of conditions became confused with the social worlds of the workers. Pictured as victims of a brutal system, they emerged as faceless, powerless, passive, and, ultimately, outside the flow of history. Oral histories or stories are often dramatic, moving with a grace and continuity that embody analytical reflections and communicate an understanding of social relations and the complexities of human existence. Food was central to her memory, reflecting a gender division of labor. Financial independence and a changing gender division of labor outside the house altered expectations of women’s responsibilities and obligations. Exhortations turned to threats and conflict.
