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Goldman 10
trials blazed by the conquistadores. Until 1880, the proud, flamboyant and elegantly dressed arrieros (loaders) provided and efficient and economical mode of transport for cargos of all types: merchandise, mail, equipment, supplies and ore to and from the mining camps. When in the last quarter of the 19th century the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads began construction in the Southwest, they followed the Spanish trails using Mexican labor to construct their tracks. "From that day to this," says Carey McWilliams, "Mexicans has repaired and maintained Western rail lines,"23 constituting 70% of the section crews and 90% of the work gangs and earning a dollar a day. In a 1912 article, Samuel Bryan recorded the fact that "most Mexican immigrants have at one time been employed as railroad laborers. At present they are used chiefly as section gangs and as members of construction gangs...but a number are also to be found...about shops and powerhouses" as boilermakers and pip fitters.24

Nevertheless, those New Deal murals that show railroad construction and maintenance crews focus on the white worker, the Asian, and the European immigrant to the exclusion of the Mexicans who formed the majority of the railroad force, at least in the Southwest [[left margin]] (Fig. 3) [[/left margin]] A detail of James Michael Newell's mural in New York shows three sturdy workers wielding sledge hammer, jack hammer, and welding torch constructing tracks in the path of an oncoming engine. In the background are the cotton plants, sheaves of wheat, and cattle (herded by a placid vaquero) which will be transported on the completed railroad tracks. None of the workers are Mexican, though a Western settling is suggested by the cattle and the vaquero. Edward Laning's Ellis Island mural, Role of the Immigrant in the Industrial Development of America shows the construction of the Central and Union Pacific railroads by Chinese and Irish laborers. Both Newell and Laning painted New York, albeit about the West, however even Anton Refregier, widely know as a radical and pro-labor artist, limited his depiction of Hispanics in the 27 mural panels at the Rincon Annex of the San Francisco