The C.I.O. was cleaning out one more Red-infested corner of its labor empire. This time the man in the corner was 39-year-old Maurice Travis, boss of the militant Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers … “Only the Communist assumption that what is good for the Soviet Union is good for American labor could justify Mine-Mill’s position. Only constant subservience to the Communist Party can explain it.” Mine-Mill, said Potofsky [the CIO official who presented the indictment against the Mine Mill], was dominated and its policies set by a four-member steering committee, which took its orders from … the hierarchy of the Communist Party. The Reds ran the union newspaper, its organizing staff and its leadership … Travis denied the charges, declared that the hearing was a “kangaroo court.” But C.I.O. President Philip Murray gave him short shrift. He threw Mine-Mill out of the C.I.O.16
Red-infested or not, the Mine Mill remained for another fifteen years the voice of the Mexican community in the mining strip of Arizona and eastern New Mexico. The leadership of Local 586 in Miami, Roberto Barcon, Kikes Pastor (father of future Congressman Ed Pastor), Elias Lazarin, and the regional organizer Maclovio Barraza, were treated with deference in the town. Barcon and Barraza were both named communists by a Congressional committee, which led to the often-whispered wisdom, “If Barcon and Barraza are communists, then communists must be some pretty good people.” The Union responded to every act of discrimination in the town. In time the schools were integrated, the Y’s Christian pool became open to Mexicans every day of the week, and the Irish priest deigned to give Mexicans communion from the same silver service as he did the white folk. The Union maintained its fierce opposition to the dual pay system in any form and challenged the Company on discriminatory promotion practices. The skilled crafts––electricians, carpenters, welders––always a bastion of white workers as long any old-timer could remember, opened to its first Mexican members. Arnold Rojas, a lifelong Union member, became the first Latino electrician at Inspiration Consolidated Copper Company, and my father the first at Miami Copper Company’s Sleeping Beauty Mine.
Mine Mill was instrumental in forming a progressive Mexican-American national organization that would unabashedly fight for the rights of Mexican workers and families, be they documented, undocumented, or braceros. The Asociación Nacional México-Americana (ANMA) formed in response to angry Union members who were beaten and abused by the sheriff of Grants, in New Mexico. A legal defense was mounted on their behalf, a successful political campaign to defeat the sheriff was organized. In the aftermath the Union came to the realization that a national organization to aggressively defend the rights of Mexican-American working people was needed.17 The initial membership was drawn from the members of Mine Mill and from the progressive unions that had also been forced out of the CIO by anti-communist hysteria. ANMA grew quickly. Within four years there were local branches in almost every Western community in which progressive labor had a presence: Los Angeles, San Francisco, El Paso, Phoenix, Denver, Tucson, Albuquerque, and of course every mining community in the southwest. One of ANMA’s significant organizers was a very young former president of the Longshoremen’s local in San Francisco, the future founder of the Mexican American Political Association and soon to become one of the most important political and community leaders of the Latino community: Bert Corona.
ANMA aggressively fought discrimination on every front and—unlike LULAC, the Forum, and even the predecessor to Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, the National Agriculture Workers Union—organized braceros to fight the wanton abuse to which they were often subjected.18
Mine Mill and ANMA were both important players in the making of perhaps the most significant and realistic film of Mexican life in mining towns, depicting for the first time the powerful role of women in Mexican life: Salt of the Earth. On the morning of October 15, 1950, the miners at the underground Empire Zinc mine in Hanover, New Mexico, mounted a picket line at the gates. Mine Mill had demanded an end to the dual wage system, wherein Mexican workers were paid less than their white counterparts for doing the same job, and for their wages to be raised to the industry standard. The company refused. The strike began when the workers surfaced from below. The strike was not unlike any other in the parched hills of the mining strip that ran from northern Mexico, through Arizona, and into western New Mexico. Strikes were a tough drama that dominated the region while they lasted, but the mining towns’ isolation meant that they rarely received much notice in the major cities. What transformed the Empire Zinc strike was the company’s decision that it would reopen with non-union labor. In preparation for what they perceived as their ultimate defeat of Mine Mill, the Company asked for an injunction against further picketing by the Union. On June 12, 1951, a federal judge dutifully granted it.19
The Union’s meeting that evening was contentious and angry. It was doubtful that future action would be possible. Defeat seemed imminent. But the gloom lifted when the wife of one of the workers pointed out that the injunction was against striking miners. The wives were not miners, “so they could picket and the Sheriff would have no authority to stop them.” Macho Mexican men first scoffed at the notion, but when they realized the women were serious, mockery gave way to stunned disbelief, followed by vociferous objections. The meeting lasted for hours. “We had a hard time convincing the men but we finally did, by a vote,” Braulia Velázquez, an outspoken wife, would comment later. An unusual provision in the Mine Mill’s bylaws made the difference. Local 890’s auxiliary members, the miner’s wives, were allowed a vote, and they voted overwhelmingly to take over the picket line. The women were at the company’s gates at sunrise. They would stay there until the end of the strike. 20
The sheriff and the company representatives stared at the women in the picket line, uncertain how to respond. A few days later they regained their composure, wrangled an arrest order from the local county attorney and sent the sheriff’s deputies to arrest the picketers, who were all women, many with children. The deputies threw gas grenades into the crowd of women, then charged at them. There was bitter resistance; according to the deputies, “we keep arresting them but they keep moving in …” Fifty-three women were ultimately arrested and jailed, where they proceeded “to raise hell the entire day. The deputies jailed the children as well as the women and the conditions were intolerable. According to the Sheriff they made the ‘worst mess.’ He released all 53 along with their children that evening. The following morning they were at the picket line as a national scandal erupted.”21
Rosie the Riveter did what she was told on behalf of the United States of America, always depicted as a smiling, red-cheeked, young white woman beloved by everyone. Esperanza the Picketer was brown, spoke English with an accent, did not do what the authorities asked, was angry, demanded equality, and acted on behalf of a union that had been declared communist by the red-baiters in Congress. Women like her were not conforming to the preachings of the Americanizers.
ANMA launched a national campaign in support of the strike. By 1951 ANMA had locals throughout the southwest. ANMA adopted Mine Mill’s method of organizing families, as Bert Corona, the northern California lead organizer, explained: “In Oakland for example we had about one hundred and fifty families. In San José, about four hundred families joined ANMA … we built quite a chapter in San Francisco organizing between three hundred and four hundred families. ANMA supported equal pay for equal work for Mexicans, and it supported equal rights for men and women.’’ He recalls, “Several ANMA chapters had strong women leaders. In San José, for example, Dora Sanchez … was the heart and soul of ANMA. The INS tried to deport her husband … In San Francisco key women leaders were Aurora Santana de Dawson, Elvira Romo, and Abigail Alvarez.” ANMA was fiercely proud of its Mexican heritage, it was uncompromising in its support for liberation movements throughout Latin America, and it displayed an internationalist, pan-Latin perspective (the Guatemalan consul in northern California attended meetings to describe how the US government was trying to overthrow the democratically elected administration of President Jacobo Arbenz). It participated in demonstrations supporting the Cuban Liberation movement headed by a then obscure guerrilla leader named Fidel Castro, it opposed nuclear armament and supported the peace movement. ANMA’s reach was impressive, and its