The Strikers of Coachella
A Rank-and-File History of the UFW Movement
By Christian O. Paiz
412 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 11 halftones, 3 maps, 1 table
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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-7214-4
Published: January 2023 -
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-7169-7
Published: January 2023 -
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-7170-3
Published: December 2022 -
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-5978-5
Published: December 2022
Justice, Power, and Politics
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Awards & distinctions
Honorable Mention, 2023 Book of the Year Award, International Labor History Association
Based on more than 200 hours of original oral history interviews conducted with Coachella Valley residents who participated in the UFW and Chicana/o movements, as well as previously unused oral history collections of 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 movement 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.
About the Author
Christian O. Paiz is assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Reviews
"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
“An empathetic, well-researched, and highly readable study . . . [A] must-read for scholars of labor, activism, and farmworker histories.”–H-Environment
“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
"Paiz does a masterful job weaving the UFW’s history with workers’ experiences. . . . A nuanced and incredibly well-researched volume."—Power at Work
“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
"The Strikers of Coachella takes a fresh and creative approach to the story of the UFW's formation, strikes, and organizing efforts. It centers farmworkers and makes clear the myriad overlapping, and even contradictory, forces influencing their decisions in the context of what Paiz aptly names the 'rancher nation.' His is a bold intervention into an increasingly crowded field of texts on the UFW movement, and one that holds significant promise to stand out."—Lane Windham, author of Knocking on Labor's Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide
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