S
ince World War II, more Hispanics
have come to the United States than
in all its previous history. Much of
that influx occurred from the mid-1940s
to the mid-1970s. The migration had
several sources. Mexicans came in
increased numbers as a result of the
bracero program, an initiative to recruit
temporary agricultural labor that was
begun during World War II and perpet-
uated afterward until 1964. The falling
cost of air travel made it possible for
Puerto Ricans to move to the mainland in
numbers large enough to be termed the
Puerto Rican “Great Migration.” A com-
munist revolution in Cuba in 1959 drove
hundreds of thousands of Cubans into
exile in the United States, where they
were welcomed as political refugees, not
subject to the same immigration restric-
tions as people from most other coun-
tries. Political turmoil, economic distress,
and lack of opportunity in the Dominican
Republic, Central America, and South
America brought people from all those
regions to the United States despite new
immigration restrictions enacted in 1965.
As Hispanic Americans became a
more visible presence in the United
States, they became more aware of their
distinct ethnic identity and more deter-
mined to work collectively for their share
of the American dream. During the 1960s,
César Chávez led Mexican-American
farmworkers to strike for better working
conditions, and “Chicano,” a slang term
for Mexican American, became a rallying
cry for a new civil rights movement. In
various ways—some peaceful, some vio-
lent—Hispanic Americans struggled for
equal treatment and full political partici-
pation. They built new communities that
bore the marks of their distinct national
origins. But they had not yet begun to
reach in any significant way across their
national differences. They had not begun
to form, in the hopeful phrase of a politi-
cal party founded at the time, La Raza
Unida: The United People.
In 1965, a young playwright named
Luis Valdez launched a theater company
from the back of a flatbed farm truck inDelano, California. The company, El
Teatro Campesino (“farmworkers’ the-
ater”), served as cultural offshoot of César
Chavez’ United Farm Workers (UFW),
and its mission was to entertain, to edu-
cate and to harness the arts in support
striking workers. In fact, the original
troupe was made entirely of migrant
farmworkers, some of whom were illiter-
ate. The troupe performed their actos, or
“short plays” without scripts, props, or
lighting, and the actors wore hand-let-
tered signs around their necks to identify
their characters: “grower, “ “farmworker,”
“green grape,” “rotten grape” or “raisin.”
“It was crude and rude and lively, but it
mattered,” says Valdez.
Valdez himself came from a migrant
farmworker family. After graduating from
San Jose State University, and a brief
stint with the San Francisco Mime
Troupe, he returned to Delano to found
the Teatro Campesino. Valdez later
gained fame for his play Zoot Suit,which
was produced on Broadway, and for
directing the film La Bamba,about the life
of Mexican-American singer Ritchie
Valens.
Although Teatro Campesino is no
longer affiliated with the UFW, Valdez
remembers those early performances as a
form of political art — an outgrowth of the
atmosphere of change that was sweeping
the nation. Issues of race, class and the
Vietnam War were at the forefront of the
nation’s consciousness. “We saw ourselves
as fighting a battle, and we had no idea
how it would end,” Valdez said in an inter-
view with the organization Tolerance.org.
“We had 24 or 25 ranches, a thousand
square miles to cover with a roving picket
line. We’d start driving before dawn, look-
ing for scab crews, then we’d pull up to the
side of the road and start performing.”
While Teatro Campesino’s early days
as a guerilla theater company were very
much in the spirit of the 1960s, they also
drew on centuries old traditions that were
rooted in centuries of Hispanic culture,
such as commedia dell’arte,Spanish reli-
gious dramas adapted for teaching
Mission Indians, Mexican folk humor, aLA RAZA UNIDA
(^7) The United People and Civil Rights
CHAPTER
They tell me I’m too head
strong, yell too much and
incite peopleThey tell me I am too head
strong, yell too much and
incite peopleBut Juarez was my uncle,
my father-in-law, ZapataAnd now organizing the
workers in all of the fieldsAnd now organizing the
workers in all of the fieldsBecause some only eat
tortillas with nothing else
but chilesWe’ve been many years,
fighting in this strikeWe’ve been many years,
fighting in this strikeOne grower bit the dust,
another’s a granddaddy— from the song “El Picket Sign”
by Luis Valdez, founder of
Teatro Campesino