The past decades have borne witness to the United Farm Workers' (UFW) tenacious hold on the country's imagination. Since 2008, the UFW has lent its rallying cry to a presidential campaign and been the subject of no less than nine books, two documentaries, and one motion picture. Yet the full story of the women, men, and children who powered this social movement has not yet been told Based on more than 250 hours of original oral history interviews conducted with Coachella Valley residents who participated in the UFW and Chicano Movement, Filipino farm workers, bracero workers, and UFW volunteers throughout the United States, this stirring history spans from the 1960s and 1970s through the union's decline in the early 1980s. Christian O. Paiz refocuses attention on the struggle inherent in organizing a particularly vulnerable labor force, especially during a period that saw the hollowing out of virtually all of the country's most powerful labor unions. He emphasizes that telling this history requires us to wrestle with the radical contingency of rank-and-file agency-an agency that often overflowed the boundaries of individual intentions. By drawing on the voices of ordinary farmworkers and volunteers, Paiz reveals that the sometimes heroic, sometimes tragic story of the UFW is less about individual leaders and more the result of a collision between the larger anti-union currents of the era and the aspirations of the rank-and-file.
Christian O. Paiz is assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
"A powerful work, instructive for any reader interested in labor history, rural history, or the history of social movements and easily assignable in part for undergraduates."--Southwestern Historical Quarterly "An empathetic, well-researched, and highly readable study . . . [A] must-read for scholars of labor, activism, and farmworker histories."-H-Environment "Paiz does a masterful job weaving the UFW's history with workers' experiences. . . . A nuanced and incredibly well-researched volume."--Power at Work "Paiz goes beyond the familiar names of Chavez and Huerta to challenge how scholars and the general public approach the United Farm Workers as a historical subject. . . . By focusing on these workers, Strikers of Coachella not only tells the story of the UFW from below; the book also argues that the contributions of these rank-and-file members drove the success of the union."--The Nation "The value of this book is that it gives voice to those workers often minimalized in our more recent narratives. . . . The author is to be commended for this contribution to the field."--Journal of Arizona History
