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Goldman                        20

conquered persons forced to kneel before the throne of a Maya ruler. In this adaptation, the throne is replaced by silhouetted smoke stacks of the mines. 
Emigdio Vasquez included a miner modeled after his father, who had been a copper miner in Jerome, Arizona, in his California mural (see Fig. 1). Unionism is emphasized here by the active position of the union leaders, and by the red union button worn by the miner.  In a 1974 oil painting, [[underline]]Black Lung[[/underline]], Vasquez addresses a major health problem confronting miners. Malaquias Montoya, originally from New [[left-margin]](Fig. 10)[[/left-margin]] Mexico and living in northern California, combines text with his black and white image of two miners with pickaxes, helmets and gloves: "Comrade miner/Bound by the weight of the earth/When your hands take out the metals/Fashion daggers/Then you will know the metals are for you."  Montoya has been an active muralist and graphic artist for many years in the nurturing climate of San Francisco and Oakland which has produced a major poster movement within the last fifteen years.  His silkscreen technique, derived from early training as a commercial designer, effectively uses flat and tightly interlocking designs combined with text; more recently he has experimented with looser, more "painterly" application of color in silkscreen, and with expressionistic black and white posters using handwritten script as text.  His miners' image is one of several works done in this style.  Like Rupert García, with whom he has been linked in exhibits[[superscript]]37[[/superscript]], Montoya is frankly didactic: "It is my objective . . . to show the relationship between artistic creativity and community action as both an educational tool and a catalyst for social change."

[[underline]]AGRICULTURE[[/underline]]
Large scale agricultural production in the Southwest, in fact the creation of an economic empire, dates from the Reclamation Act of 1902 which made possible the use of federal funds for reclamation and the construction of irrigation projects.  The other side of the equation was cheap labor.  Recruited in Mexico, brought to the Southwest by railroads with the assistance of Mexican American labor contractors