Race, Paternalism, and "California Pastoral": Rural Rehabilitation and Mexican Labor in Greater Los Angeles

In Southern California, regional and national myths of agrarian life as pastoral became entwined with paternalistic policy and racialized visions of the Mexican laborer. Re-worked in the context of the New Deal and increasing strike activity across California after 1928, these rural myths and polici...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Agricultural history 2007-01, Vol.81 (1), p.1-35
Main Author: Lewthwaite, Stephanie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agrarian society
Agribusiness
Agricultural land
Agriculture
California
Contract labor
Crops
Employment
Hispanic people
Labor
Labor shortages
Los Angeles
Mexicans
Migrant workers
Myth
New Deal
Pastoralism
Paternalism
Race
Racial attitudes
Rural areas
Stereotypes
U.S.A
Urban agriculture
Welfare
Workers
Workforce
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Summary:In Southern California, regional and national myths of agrarian life as pastoral became entwined with paternalistic policy and racialized visions of the Mexican laborer. Re-worked in the context of the New Deal and increasing strike activity across California after 1928, these rural myths and policies shaped plans for the resettlement of Mexican-American workers in self-sustaining villages within Los Angeles County. Under the direction of government officials, reformers, and employers, these plans articulated diverse ideologies and agendas: the New Dealer's commitment to reform and rehabilitation through planning and paternalism, and the employer's drive to segregate and racialize labor under a pastoral ideal. Yet the village schemes foundered; weakened by employers' lack of commitment to worker welfare and fears of rural sedition, by the inconsistencies of the New Deal rehabilitation policy, and by an inability to manipulate the realities of agribusiness. This failure bore testimony to the mythic nature of an agrarian tradition in California.
ISSN:0002-1482
1533-8290
DOI:10.1215/00021482-81.1.1