Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 2 (2013), p. 365

Dionicio Nodín Valdés has written an important book examining the labour movements that emerged in three different areas colonized by the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth century: Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, and California. He places those movements in the context of the global capitalist economy and US imperial policies and designs. Valdés privileges the economic and military aspects of the US conquest but makes clear that it was facilitated – sometimes unevenly – by political machinations operating out of Washington, D.C. His focus is on the consequences for agricultural labourers, some of them newly made into labourers by virtue of the economic transformations that followed US dominion. Attentive to racial and ethnic factors that arose as new Anglo-American elites established or, in the case of Hawaii, furthered their economic dominance of their respective areas, Valdés captures the complicated and sometimes contradictory designs of employers and the concerted and sometimes successful efforts of agricultural labourers to represent their own interests. In placing the struggle of labourers in the context of the power their employers were able to muster – economic, military, and political – Valdés has revealed just how remarkable were their successes. By the time the United Farm Workers coalesced in the mid twentieth century, agricultural labourers in California, Hawaii and Puerto Rico had won and lost many battles and came to the UFW with considerable experience.

Similar economic and imperial motivations inspired the incursions into California, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, but the United States confronted different cultures and economies in the three regions. In California, the first to fall to the imperial power of the US, a few Spanish elites operated ranchos and only a small Anglo-American presence existed. Although small landowners enjoyed little presence in California at the time, neither did the labourers there suffer the kind of oppression that would emerge later. In Hawaii, in contrast, Anglo-American sugar planters had not only established a dominant position, they were already well into the process of undermining the authority of the Hawaiian monarchy and the independence of native Hawaii labourers. The importation of Asians provided needed labour but created communities founded on ethnic and racial similarities that would work against domination of the labour force. The Puerto Rican situation differs in two important respects. Anglo-Americans had virtually no presence there until after colonization. A small landowning peasantry existed and enjoyed a certain level of prosperity and independence. The arrival of the Anglo-Americans and the sugar industry would change everything. Regardless of the differences between the three areas, the colonizers, backed by the economic, military, and political authority of the United States, presented a formidable challenge, transforming the agricultural landscape and often repelling concerted efforts of agricultural labourers to assert their interests.

In Puerto Rico, as the sugar economy developed and expanded and the independence of farmers fell in the process, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labour – the Federación Libre de Trabrajdores (the Federación) – emerged and by 1918, less than two decades after conquest, created a democratic workers movement. By the late 1930s, the Federación became too closely connected to employer groups, however, making way for the surprisingly rapid rise of a rival union, the CIO-backed Confederación General de Trabajadores. Valdés suggests that the focus on a certain hero of this new union, Luis Munoz Marin, obscures a ‘complex story involving the interaction of political and labour leaders with agricultural workers and their organizations’ (p. 61). Affiliation with the United Packinghouse Workers of American both facilitated and compromised their efforts, and factionalism within the Confederation emerged in the context of the modernization of agriculture. One faction embraced the new political/economic order and its leaders enjoyed increased prestige and rewards. Another faction eschewed such cooperation and forcefully represented the interests of agricultural labourers. For their efforts, their leaders faced harassment and imprisonment.

Unionism in Hawaii was much more successful, owing to a combination of complex forces. Although the precipitous decline of the native population necessitated the importation of labourers from elsewhere, particularly Asians, the location of Hawaii made importation a costly enterprise. No significant labour surplus developed there. Companies made some efforts to counter unionism, but were not as hostile as those on the mainland. A crucial factor in the success of union activism was inherent in the plantation paternalism that existed on the island. The creation of small but ethnically and racially cohesive communities of workers isolated by distance from one another made for the recognition of interests in common and attachment to union activities, particularly with the Longshore Union. Not only did workers there secure meaningful improvements in their standard of living, the Longshore Union was able to influence decisions made during the period of modernization and mechanization that worked to their long term benefit.

Valdés’ treatment of California is particularly illuminating. He traces the evolution of the farm labour movement there from its origins in the Southern Tenant Farmers Union to its reformulation in California as the National Farm Labor Union. He examines the failed action against DiGiorgio and the abilities of farm corporations to exploit divisions within the farm labour force. Taking on the arguments made by historians, Valdés challenges the notion that the movement itself was flawed and argues, instead, that the inability of farm workers to succeed there was the result of a failure of democracy. California became the ‘Sahara of trade unionism’ (p. 230), he argues, because of the collusion between the state and agricultural concerns whose interests they served. His argument is strengthened by the comparative perspective, rendering Organized agriculture and the labour movement before the UFW a book that will change the way historians understand the farm labour movement not only in California, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii, but also elsewhere.