Viewing page 21 of 48

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Goldman 21

known as [[underline]]jefes[[/underline]] (chiefs), [[underline]]papacitos[[/underline]] (little fathers) and more recently as [[underline]]coyotes[[/underline]] (a scavenging desert animal); or crossing the border without contract (illegals or undocumented workers), or coming in the 1940s under special contractual arrangements and know as [[underline]]braceros[[/underline]] (working arms), Mexican labor since the beginning of this century has been the staple of Southwest agriculture.  Mexican workers were systematically exploited and targeted by discrimination; racial, social and cultural.[[superscript]]38[[/superscript]]
One of the earliest and strongest pictorial statements on economic and racial exploitation by the United States was made in continental terms by Siqueiros in his [[left-margin]](Fig.11)[[/left-margin]] 1932 mural [[underline]]Tropical America[[/underline]]. One of three political murals painted in Los Angeles during a six-month stay, it was executed with a team of local artists in a section of the city know as "Sonora Town" because of its high Mexican population.  Before a crumbling pre-Columbian pyramid, an Indian figure is crucified on a double-shafted cross surmounted by, according to Siqueiros, the eagle of U.S. currency.  To the right, in this strongly baroque composition, are two snipers perched on a rooftop aiming at the eagle; one is Mexican, the other a Peruvian Indian.  The meaning is clear: throughout the American continent indigenous peoples have been exploited, "crucified," for U.S. profit, and revolutions are the only way to end this exploitation.[[superscript]]39[[/superscript]] Siqueiros had always orchestrated his painting with political action and union organizing.  He came to Los Angeles during the Depression in a period of widespread and violent labor conflict, particularly in the rich agricultural Imperial Valley of southeastern California where many Mexican were employed under wretched conditions.  Vigilantes and repressive laws repeatedly crushed the strikes, accompanied by mass deportations presumably for "getting Mexicans off relief" but actually because the so-called "docile Mexican" worker was unionizing.  With scarcely an exception, every strike in which Mexicans participated in the 1930s was broken by the use of violence and followed by deportations.  In most of