The strikers of Coachella : a rank-and-file history of the UFW movement

The past decades have borne witness to the United Farm Workers' (UFW) tenacious hold on the country's imagination. Since 2008, the UFW has lent its rallying cry to a presidential campaign and been the subject of no less than nine books, two documentaries, and one motion picture. Yet the full story of the women, men, and children who powered this social movement has not yet been told. Based on more than 200 hours of original oral history interviews conducted with Coachella Valley residents who participated in the UFW and Chicana/o movements, as well as previously unused oral history collections of Filipino farm workers, bracero workers, and UFW volunteers throughout the United States, this stirring history spans from the 1960s and 1970s through the union's decline in the early 1980s. Christian O. Paiz refocuses attention on the struggle inherent in organizing a particularly vulnerable labor force, especially during a period that saw the hollowing out of virtually all of the country's most powerful labor unions. He emphasizes that telling this history requires us to wrestle with the radical contingency of rank-and-file agency--an agency that often overflowed the boundaries of individual intentions. By drawing on the voices of ordinary farmworkers and volunteers, Paiz reveals that the sometimes heroic, sometimes tragic story of the UFW movement is less about individual leaders and more the result of a collision between the larger anti-union currents of the era and the aspirations of the rank-and-file. Cover Contents List of Illustrations Introduction: In a Small Place Part I: The Rancher Nation and Its Discontents Chapter 1: The Law of the Jungle: Power and Society in the Coachella Valley, 1945–1965 Chapter 2: The Known World: Fragments and Fissures in the Coachella Valley Part II: To Make the World Anew Chapter 3: A Flash Flood in Red: On the Farmworkers’ Many Movements, 1965–1970 Chapter 4: In a Field of Flowers: The UFW Offensive against the Rancher Nation Chapter 5: Chicana/o Coachella and the Civic Retreat of the Rancher Nation Part III: Politics in a Precarious Present Chapter 6: Insurgent Frailties: Errors, Setbacks, and Fissures, 1970–1973 Chapter 7: The Battle for Coachella, 1973–1974 Chapter 8: Overlaid Tenses and Trajectories: Movements In and Out of the Coachella Valley, 1974–1977 Part IV: Denials and Afterlives Chapter 9: Sparks at Dusk: Elections and the (Denied) Promise of Utopian Futures, 1977–1983 Chapter 10: Here Is Where We Meet Acknowledgments Appendix: Oral History Project: United Farm Worker Movement in the Coachella Valley Notes Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z "The past decades have borne witness to the United Farm Workers' (UFW) tenacious hold on the country's imagination. Since 2008, the UFW has lent its rallying cry to a presidential campaign and been the subject of no less than nine books, two documentaries, and one motion picture. Yet the full story of the women, men, and children who powered this social movement has not yet been told. Based on more than 250 hours of original oral history interviews conducted with Coachella Valley residents who participated in the UFW and Chicano Movement, Filipino farm workers, bracero workers, and UFW volunteers throughout the United States, this stirring history spans from the 1960s and 1970s through the union's decline in the early 1980s"-- Provided by publisher