Obreros Unidos

This dissertation examines the role played by young Chicano migrant farm workers in the creation of the Chicano Movement after 1950. It argues that the Chicano Movement grew out of a translocal migrant community operating between Wisconsin and Texas. After 1950, Chicanos in Crystal City, Texas, where they represented the majority population, pushed for an end to school segregation. This advocacy facilitated youth entry into the local Chicano migrant worker political movement, which elected five Chicanos, known as Los Cinco, to the city council in Crystal City. Though Los Cinco only held office between 1963--1965, young Chicanos carried an activist impulse north to Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, with the assistance of local progressives, these activists pushed for the reform of conditions for migrant farm workers. This effort led to the founding of Obreros Unidos, a labor union, among Texas-Mexican migrant farm workers, who in turn transformed the migrant labor system to serve themselves. Once only a labor recruiting network, the migrant system now facilitated community mobilization in both Texas and Wisconsin. After 1969, as the union deteriorated, activists spread out to take positions with migrant-serving agencies operating under the Office of Economic Opportunity in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they called for and won Chicano control of "War on Poverty" agencies. After 1970, as political protest under the banner of La Raza Unida Party developed in Crystal City, Cristaleno activists, trained in Wisconsin, returned to their hometown as leaders. The Chicano Movement thus developed in Crystal City and Wisconsin, and took as its single greatest resource the translocal migrant farm worker network operating across the Midwestern migrant stream. And over an eventful decade, the activists gained a permanent political presence in both Texas border politics and Wisconsin welfare agencies.