On this day in Labor History the year was 1936. Jesus Pallares, a Chicano miner and union organizer was deported from the United States.
He was charged with having communist sympathies, and declared an “undesirable alien.”
At the time he was deported, Pallares had been in the United States for more than twenty years.
He found work in New Mexico as a coal miner. He first stood up to the mine bosses in Gallup.
When he dared to speak out against the company, he was fired.
He then went to Madrid, New Mexico where he became involved in union organizing.
There again he was fired for speaking out, evicted from his company home and black-listed.
Pallares recognized that Chicano mine workers needed to stand together.
He helped found the Liga Obrera de Habla Espanola, or the League of Spanish-Speaking Workers.
The organization quickly gathered members around Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado.
It grew from a few hundred miners to 8,000 strong.
Then in 1935, the miners went out on strike in Gallup.
Martial law was declared.
Three-hundred miners and their families were evicted from their homes.
When a warrant was served on one miner to throw him out of his house, others blocked the doors in an effort to stop the eviction.
They were arrested for breaking and entering. Protestors converged on the jail and were met with tear gas.
The sheriff and his deputies opened fire on the protestors.
The fight left one sheriff and two miners dead.
In the aftermath, Pallares was jailed for his role as a labor leader.
He was deported, along with more than 100 other Chicano miners.
Deportation was a tool used to stifle organizing amongst Latino workers. Liga Obrera never recovered from the loss of its leader. The organization lost strength and momentum.
Liga Obrera is proof that workers can organize across ethnic lines and fight for a better tomorrow
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Labor History in 2:00 brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and The Rick Smith Show