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From South Texas To the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century

Online ISBN:
9781469625256
Print ISBN:
9781469625232
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press
Book

From South Texas To the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century

Published online:
19 May 2016
Published in print:
26 October 2015
Online ISBN:
9781469625256
Print ISBN:
9781469625232
Publisher:
University of North Carolina Press

Abstract

In the early years of the twentieth century, newcomer farmers and migrant Mexicans forged a new world in South Texas. In just a decade, this vast region, previously considered too isolated and desolate for large-scale agriculture, became one of the United States' most lucrative farming regions and one of its worst places to work. By encouraging mass migration from Mexico, paying low wages, selectively enforcing immigration restrictions, toppling older political arrangements, and periodically immobilizing the workforce, growers created a system of labor controls unique in its levels of exploitation. Ethnic Mexican residents of South Texas fought back by organizing and by leaving, migrating to destinations around the United States where employers eagerly hired them—and continued to exploit them. This book reinterprets the United States' record on human and labor rights. It illuminates the way in which South Texas pioneered the low-wage, insecure, migration-dependent labor system on which so many industries continue to depend.

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