Daniela Vega ’19 is shining a light on the integral role women have played in labor movement history.
Vega, a history and Spanish double major, will travel this summer to the Imperial Valley to collect the oral histories of women who took part in the lettuce strike of 1979. The successful strike serves a case study for Vega, who hopes to show that Mexican immigrant women actively participated in labor organizing, challenging the gender dynamics of their time.
“Their involvement in the labor movement not only helped their families, it allowed them to feel empowered and part of a broader and bigger issue,” Vega said.
In the Imperial Valley, the largest irrigation system in the country pumps water through the expansive desert, stretching from Coachella Valley to Mexico, where farm workers, to this day, harvest 90 percent of the nation’s lettuce during winter. In 1979, a strike initiated by workers began to improve wages for those who harvest this crop.
In 1979, most of the field workers were men. Some were hesitant to picket or strike out of fear of losing their jobs or it leading to rougher working conditions, Vega said. Women, who’s voices at the time were not seen as important, educated themselves on the issues and began to strike on behalf of their husbands and communities. The women gained the attention and support of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and the strike would result in a raise to farm workers' pay to more than $5 an hour.
The Imperial Valley is more than a fascinating research subject for Vega, who wants to become a professor. It’s also home: her mother picks basil and her father is a foreman for a farming company. She was raised in a community in which hard work and determination were essential, and it’s to this community she’ll return to for her research. The oral histories she plans to collect are important, as these women’s voices help fill in gaps in a history that doesn’t always offer them a place.
“A lot of the time, farm workers are seen as the victims of the agricultural system and they emerge as faceless, powerless, passive, and ultimately outside the flow of history,” Vega said. “Oral history allows them to bring their own narratives into work. So as a historian, conducting an oral history on labor through a woman’s lens and researching the labor force in the Imperial Valley, I hope to fill in gaps in both labor and women’s studies.”
Despite the amount of information about Mexicans in the agricultural workforce, the involvement of women is typically overshadowed, she added.
“All of their contrasting roles were vital in this social movement, so agricultural social movements would not have had the same impact without the involvement of women,” Vega said. “The gender divisions in labor unions and society make it difficult for women to be recognized for their contributions because they tend to be invisible. But without them, these rights would not have been possible.”
Vega’s research is supported by the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, which funds underrepresented students’ research with the hope that they will become professors.
