Women and Community
Contributions and Struggles
Mexican labor was strikingly different from the Chinese and Japanese laborers that preceded them because Mexicans migrated with their families, bringing them to the citrus belt searching for work. Many women joined their husbands and families, fleeing North in the hope of finding a better opportunity.
When women arrived at the citrus orchards, they held enormous responsibilities both to their communities as well as the citrus growers. While attempting to balance motherhood, household responsibilities, work, and leaders in their communities, they still managed to maintain a high level of independence and agency over their own lives. Women ran boarding houses for traveling migrants, became merchants while maintaining traditional household obligations, and became storytellers telling their children the old Mexican stories, with some having Pre-Columbian origin. (Gonzalez, 61) The importance of women in the citrus community cannot be understated.
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Their lives were also ones of struggle and difficultly with the extremely large workload but they endured the difficulty with the hope of providing their children better opportunities to escape the California citrus belt and have their children follow the American dream. In an interview, one Mexican sorter explains while that she was proud of her hard work, she would prefer her daughters' study and work elsewhere because packaging and sorting were hard work. (Internet Archive) This is despite the grower's attempts to lure generational employment of their Mexican laborers through Americanization programs. (Gonzalez, 295) In some cases like that of Limoneira Ranch, Mexican children were sent to segregated schools where teachers did not care about their education, and received old supplies. (McBane) Many children were set up to fail and go straight to work on the orchards.
Mexican Citrus Communities
Woman's Role in Strengthening a Marginalized Community
The first Mexican communities emerged in the citrus belt in 1910, which also marked an upward movement of Mexican labor coming into both the United States and California. Seeing the potential in harnessing this large and cheap labor pool, citrus growers adopted paternalistic and social Darwinistic attitudes toward Mexican labor. Believing that they could better control their labor and prevent them from abandoning their citrus orchards, growers began to construct housing and social programs to attract Mexican families and settle permanently. (Gonzalez, 294) On some occasions, amenities like free housing and Americanization programs were provided. (Gonzalez, 295) These programs not only consolidated control of the laborers' lives into the hands of the growers but also reinforced racist ideologies in hopes that educating their workforce would teach "hygiene, sanitation, and English"(Gonzalez, 296). Hallmarks of what growers considered civilized and everything their workforce was not.
Despite the supposed aid that growers gave their workers, Mexicans were segregated from the larger community and relegated to small villages that ranged from 300-1000 people (Gonzalez, 58). Along with segregation, discrimination was standard, with Mexican men not being permitted into managerial roles until WWII. (McBane, 78) These factors which were supported by social Darwinism and the societal and racial hierarchy of the day, kept Mexican laborers in perpetual poverty with "Conditions of life in the village varied from merely poor to extremely poor"(Gonzalez, 58). The yearly family income was not enough to sustain a household.
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Women were a pivotal factor in making ends meet in the most unlikely of odds. It was said that 'family income extended beyond limits usually thought possible' (Gonzalez, 58). Mexican communities were able to sustain themselves because women "institutionalized a pattern of activities in the home, including the tending of vegetables and herb gardening, recycling materials for additional uses, and canning"(Gonzalez, 60). Women fostered, maintained, and created a system of self-sustainability on top of tending to motherhood and work. There was also a community system in place to help divert resources to the most needy. Many villagers "cooperated to help out those who fell below the minimum income" and removed the need to go on welfare. (Gonzalez, 59)
This system helped improve the dyer situation that Mexican citrus laborers endured and loosened the grip of power that growers so desperately tried to hold over their workers.
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Mexican Women's Role in Packaging
Essential Yet Secluded
Women and Mexican women were important to the packaging and inspecting of citrus. Unlike the orchards, which were extraordinarily hierarchical and segregated on race, package houses were integrated with men and women of different races working alongside one another. (Sackman, 78) Packaging was a pivotal step in preventing oranges from spoiling due to blue mold. Washington sent expert, Taylor Powell, who placed a large responsibility on the managerial class, he also believed women packagers were extremely important to the process. What developed after Taylor's suggestions were adopted by the growers was a Ford assembly line-like system by the mid-1920s. (Sackman, 40)
Borrowing from social Darwinistic beliefs, growers believed that women were "naturally adapted to these positions," and by 1939, women made up 65% of the packaging workforce. (Sackman, 40) Growers believed that the woman's place was the packaging house because of perceptions that their strengths included 'manual dexterity, attention to detail, ability to tolerate monotony.' (Sackman, 40) Even with just being relegated to packaging, women great at their jobs and quickly gained the respect of their managers. So much so that women packers earned as much as men did. (Gonzalez, 62) This gave women a greater level of autonomy and independence. Women were also driven to work hard because of shared camaraderie and competition amongst themselves. "Cieneras" or packagers who could package 100 crates carried a lot of respect from other women. (Sackman, 43) Women were driven, motivated, and enabled to succeed in packaging.
On the other hand, work in the packaging house did little to remove stigmas and prejudice against Mexicans. Racism and marketing penetrated even the packaging houses. In keeping with the citrus fantasy, managers "preferred 'white women' handle the fruit in the final stages of preparation for the market, out of concern that a perception of ethnically Mexican women handling the fruit might spoil the image"(Sackman, 40). Even though Mexican women were vital to preserving citrus and made it possible for consumers to enjoy their citrus products, this did not fit the idealized marketing or fantasy of the growers and their associates. This is only the extension of the exploitation of female imagery by the growers to appeal to sexual desires and associate them with citrus shown in the seductive imagery in advertisements of both Spanish fantasy women and white women. Women were subjected to exclusion only to be objectified and fantasized for marketing the citrus paradise. In reality, this "paradise" was a sanctuary for racial tolerance where white and Mexican female packagers worked side-by-side, which would not have fit marketable tastes of a segregated America. Women were also paid very little, being paid 30 cents for every crate that sold for $7 on the market, making it difficult to sustain themselves. Finally, the hard and fast labor contributed to many women later developing rheumatoid arthritis later in life. (Sackman, 43) A lack of proper recognition, low wages, and crippling health problems were unfortunately associated with the job prompting workers to desire to find other employment and suffered with it until they could do so. (citrus interview)