Central Coast Farm Labor Organizing Collection

A contingent of Mexican workers from Mexicali and UFW supporters from Santa Maria take a break while en route to a UFW strike near Yuma, Arizona sometime in 1972. Committee members in the photo also worked in Arizona as farm laborers. The bus in background was one of a fleet UFW used to shuttle supporters to the front lines.

As a result of low wages, day care was not an option for most farm workers in the Santa Maria Valley. Children also worked to help supplement income for the family. The girl helps her family plant strawberries during May to August season in 1969. Unfortunately, the practice continues to this day.

In March 1972, la causa came to Guadalupe. UFW supporters and organizers, otherwise known as the Santa Maria Ten, were charged with disrupting a public meeting in the towns grammar school. Witnesses testified that the 300 community members in attendance had in fact booed a member of the ultra-rightist John Birch Society incited by the Parent-Teachers Club to lecture against the UFW. A U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report concluded that the charges, most of which were dropped, illustrated a pattern of reprisals taken against Mexican-American UFW activists who spoke out against racist school officials. Starting from left to right in the first row, is Margarita Cabello, Juanita Estorga, Carmen Magana, Maria Manriques Cota Vaca, Jesus Ortiz. Starting from left to right in the second row, Angel Fierro, Sammy Gonzalez, Fermin Sepulveda, and Manuel Echavarria, the only one who served jail time.

It was a busy year. Members of Santa Maria's UFW chapter witnessed the bloody summer of 1973. The photograph captures a tense moment in which Cesar Chavez, hand on chin, and flanked by UFW supporters, is locked in a heated debate with a Coachella Valley grower. Chavez had asked the farm owner why he had picked the Teamsters, who are standing behind the owner, to represent the farm workers who picked his grapes. By accepting Teamster representation, Chavez argued, growers were trying to deny farm workers their democratic right vote for a union.

Demonstration against Minami continues at the packaging plant.

Guadalupe, a small farm worker community located 10 miles west of Santa Maria, was also a site of many rallies in support of various UFW causes. Guadalupe, una pequeña comunidad agrícola, situada a diez millas al oeste de Santa Maria, también fue escenario de numerosas demostraciones en apoyo a las diversas causas de la UFW.

That same year, Santa Maria UFW members learn another lesson in grassroots politics. They go to Los Angeles to join in letter writing campaigns urging state senators to support the lettuce boycott, and denounce unfair labor practices against farm workers.

The letter writing continues at a Los Angeles area gymnasium.

The UFW's national lettuce boycott is taken up in Santa Maria. Photograph shows local farm workers and UFW supporters striking in 1973 against one of the valley's largest lettuce growers, H. Y. Minami & Sons.

The children demonstrating in front of the Teamsters Santa Maria office show how the labor struggles of Cecilia came to Santa Maria in 1976. The picket signs urge a "Vote yes for Prop. 14." The initiative failed due to a grower-financed media scare campaign.

Farm workers harvest Anaheim chiles in a Santa Maria Valley field late in 1975. Echavarria recalls that these workers voted to join the UAW, but the grower refused to negotiate a contract.

Years of struggle are rewarded in 1975. Veteran UFW organizers Jessica Govea, far right, and Eugenio (Winnie) Arvallo, left, perform in the Guadalupe Recreation Center to celebrate Governor Jerry Brown's signing of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act into law. The act allows farm workers to vote and select the union of their choice, and UFW organizers to walk into the fields to talk to farm workers during specified break periods: a right enjoyed by industrial workers.

The Regalado family, followed by Jesus Loya and others, lead marchers during the Prop. 14 campaign.

A group of "gorillas" sit waiting for trouble to start in the Coachella vineyards.

Violence could erupt at any moment. Coachella Valley Sheriff's deputies take away a branch from one of the strike breakers. Sticks and two-by-fours often turned into fearsome weapons in Teamster hands.

Picketing and walkouts spread throughout the Santa Maria Valley strawberry harvest.

Picketing produced more than acrimony. Echavarria remembers lunchtime as a beautiful and blessed moment when local residents could show their support by preparing and donating food, and thus strengthening the bonds between local farm workers. From left to right: Lola Flores, Jesus Estorga, Maria Guzman, Leopoldo Rodrogues, and Fela Teniente.

Cesar Chavez, bodyguards at his side, tells workers how they can organize themselves to receive better wages, working conditions, and, most importantly, earn self-respect. Chavez had invited Santa Maria's UFW chapter to Coachella to help organize grape strikes and picket Teamster interference.

During this decade, hundreds would participate in the causa, thus making an historic upsurge in the Mexican and Chicano community's participation in the valley's public life. Durante esta década, cientos de personas participaron, incrimentando inesperadamente la participación de las comunidades mexicana y chicana en la vida pública del Valle de Santa Maria.

Farmers who have heeded call to halt work in the strawberry fields.

Meanwhile, local UFW organizers and supporters find a new way to support the national lettuce boycott: they target farm workers in the lettuce fields during the desaije, or the crucial thinning stage. Police stand by to keep the peace. Failure to thin could stunt the crop's growth. Echavarria estimated that as much as 50 percent of lettuce crop was made unfit for packing. The tactic proved so successful that Chavez used thinning strikes with other crops. Growers replaced workers who honored picket lines with scabs. Short-handled hoe remained in use.

Police video picketing action during lettuce thinning. Echavarria recalls how Roy Miname, son of grower Yataro Minami, gave him a karate chop to the neck after he had walked onto one of his fields to get workers to walk off their jobs. Echavarria said the Minamis filed trespassing charges against him, and made the charges stick. The incident was one of many in which UAW members committed civil disobedience to challenge laws that denied them access to the work place, a right long enjoyed by other industrial workers.