Cantaloupe strike of 1928

The workers unionized in order to protect their interests. In April 1928, Mexican workers in California formed the Union of United Workers of the Imperial Valley that boasted a membership of 2,754 workers of Mexican heritage.[6] The union sought a remedy to their grievances, so on May 3, 1928, “they appealed to the Chambers of Commerce in the Valley to act as intermediaries in adjusting their complaints”,[5] but it was to no avail. On May 7, Mexican cantaloupe pickers at the Sears Brothers Ranch spontaneously walk-off the jobsite.[7] On May 8, cantaloupe pickers at other Imperial Valley ranches refused to work. According to scholars, there does not seem to have been any pre-planning of the strike by the union, but was a spawned by spontaneous actions of dissatisfied workers that decided to take a stand. Employers feared the loss of profit because of the limited time span of harvesting season, so they enlisted the help of local law enforcement. “The County Board of Supervisors ordered Sheriff Gillett to arrest agitators”,[8] which the Sheriff took to mean arrest any Mexicans gathered in public spaces. Sheriff Gillett’s exploits left many workers in jail on trumped up charges of vagrancy or disturbing the peace. According to one story, on May 8, “he saw a group of Mexicans gathering outside the county Courthouse...fearing the worst, the sheriff arrested the group, only to discover that it was a delegation of workers invited to discuss the crisis with District Attorney Heald”.[9] The Los Angeles Times reported that at least forty eight Mexicans had been arrested by May 10 and the police had shut down pool halls, after another incident involving the ever entertaining and horrible Sheriff Gillett.[10] The newspaper reports that the Sheriff was thrown out of a local pool hall where thousands of Mexican agitators were congregating.[10] However, a patron and witness at the pool hall explained that there were only six people in the establishment and only six that threw him out.[9] With many workers languishing in jail and no organized momentum behind the strike, it died out and pickers returned to work. The strike ended as quickly as it had started, on May 12, 1928. The strike was considered a victory because employers conceded to a wage increase for cantaloupe pickers.

The strike had revived anti-Mexican immigration fervor. Efforts to pass an immigration bill that would put a quota on the number of Mexican immigrants allowed into the United States, were revitalized in Congress. The quota for Mexicans, “would permit entry of approximately 12,000 the first year, 7000 the second year, and 2900 a year thereafter...in the case of Canada...[the bill] would permit 60,000 immigrants a year without any sliding scale or other restrictions”.[11] The Mexican produce laborers would soon have to deal with job competition, as well as anti-immigration policies. The dawn of the Great Depression, “created a disastrous drop in wage rates and caused the introduction of hundreds of thousands of Anglo workers into the field-labor market”.[12] Anti-immigration policy and job competition culminated in the Mexican Repatriation, where hundreds of thousands of American citizens of Mexican descent and Mexican immigrants were forcefully and unconstitutionally deported to Mexico.[13] Despite, the tragedy that befell many of these workers, many scholars suggest that the spontaneous actions of these cantaloupe pickers helped spur other agricultural strikes in California in the 1930s.