“The Eyes of California are on You”: Mexican American Farmworkers, Agribusiness, and the New Deal State in the Ventura County Citrus Strike of 1941

In 1941, the farmworkers of Ventura County attempted to wrestle economic power from the agribusiness elite and incorporate themselves into the legal-labor regime of the United States. Their strike represents a critical moment of contingency for the American labor movement before the U.S. entered World War II. Using periodicals, government documents, cultural productions, business and union records, and oral histories, this thesis uncovers the experiences of a diverse community in a moment of tumultuous change. In doing so, it challenges some long-held assumptions about agrarian labor, the development of industrial agriculture, and the New Deal state. On the eve of the U.S.’s entry into World War II, what opportunities existed within the New Deal state and society to forge a different path for farmworkers in a country built on racial capitalism? To address this question, this thesis examines the relationships between unions, farmworkers, growers, and the state in a local setting. Intersecting structural constraints—including legal, economic, and cultural—limited the ability for farmworkers in the U.S. to realize a socially democratic alternative for agrarian labor. But against all odds, Ventura County farmworkers launched one of the most valiant attempts to usher agricultural unionism into America’s “factories in the fields.”