Mexican Migrant Workers and Lynch Culture

More than a million agricultural workers migrated to the United States in the early twentieth century.  The majority of these persons found work on small family farms in California; the white owners of these farms welcomed cheap labor.  Although most migrant workers in California today are of Mexican descent, they originally came from all over the world: East and West Europe, China, Japan, Korea and Latin America, along with Mexico.  The shift to almost exclusively Mexican migrant workers in the early 1900s was intentional.  Growers at this time anticipated racial conflicts between the immigrating workers and the “natives” of California.  Growers minimized local opposition to Mexican immigration by promising that the Mexican would return to Mexico (only a short distance away) following picking season. This broken promise enabled the growth of systematic oppression toward the incoming Mexicans.

            As time went on, growers depended increasingly on the cheap labor provided by the Mexicans.  This dependence, coupled with rising unemployment in Mexico, created a rising influx of Mexican immigrants to California, establishing Mexicans as “the single largest ethnic farm workers group in California” by the 1920’s. [1]   Because these workers were forced to settle into communities that did not want them, and in communities that were promised the Mexicans were only staying temporarily, Mexicans were segregated, victimized, and resented by the surrounding white population. This maltreatment eventually escalated into racial oppression comparable to that of the blacks in the Jim Crow south. [2]

            The racial hierarchy that Mexicans faced in the Southwest left them with no support from the law.  Officials and policy makers serving the courts, police stations and communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the same white supremacists fighting for the Mexicans removal.  The Texas Rangers were infamous for their brutality.  In the name of justice they executed thousands of Mexican migrant workers without any repercussions.  As early as the late 1800s, the Rangers began their violent attempt at repression.  Onofrio Baca, a Mexican migrant worker, was arrested in 1881 on the suspicion of murder.  The Rangers arrested him and promptly had him lynched, his body left to hang for days in front of the courthouse. [3]

            Though the Rangers were the most well known law enforcement agency attacking the Mexican immigrant, they were not alone.  For example, Jesus Romo was being held in custody by officers in California when he was taken by a group of masked men and hanged. [4]   The majority of the Mexican Americans lynched between 1848 and 1870 were already in custody when they were taken and hanged.  Records indicate 473 out of every 100,000 Mexican migrant workers during this time period died as victims of a lynching. [5]

            Over one-hundred years have passed since the beginning of large scale Mexican migrant worker immigration, yet groups in San Diego County, and other border towns are still fighting to embrace the lynch culture created by the Texas Rangers and similar organizations.  Groups such as “The Arizona Ranchers Alliance” and “American Patrol” are working ardently to ensure that Mexican migrant workers are not welcomed in  “their” state and country.  Groups like these are thriving in the Southwest under the premise that they must stop the “conspiracy to take over the US Southwest on behalf of the Mexican government”. [6]   This contemporary fear and hatred of Mexican workers was seeded over a hundred years ago.

            In San Diego in the summer of 2000, five Mexican workers were victims in a vicious attack.  Neo-Nazi “skinheads” beat, stabbed, shot pellet guns and further terrorized the five Mexicans.  Reports indicated the attack might have been related to a similar attack days prior in the same area.  In the earlier attack, a worker was beaten and lynched before his body was disposed of in a nearby ravine.  County officials deemed racism and the growing population of skinheads, especially in the juvenile population, reprehensible.  The Police Chief in San Diego County pledged to take offensive measures these offenses, claiming that “this kind of behavior will not be tolerated in the city of San Diego”. [7]

            Mexican migrant workers in the Southwest, mainly California, have become a permanent fixture in American economics and culture.  Although they are far from embraced in certain regions of the country, their presence cannot be denied.  Civil rights issues for all citizens are gaining power and it is no doubt that Mexican migrant workers have come a long way since the late nineteenth century.  Still, there is a long way to go in the quest for equality. 

Works Cited

Mexican Workers and American Dreams by Camille Guerin-Gonzales, Chapters 1-6.

Farm Laborers in California by Raymond Wiest, pages 25-37.

“The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the US, 1848-1929,” by William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb. The Journal

of Social History, winter 2003, pages 1-11.

www.aztalan.net/lynched.htm, viewed 11-2004.

Hard Traveling, by Tony Dunbar and Linda Kravitz, pages 259-280.

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