MEXICAN WORKERS AND THE MAKING

OF ARIZONA

EDITED BY LUIS F. B. PLASCENCIA AND

GLORIA H. CUÁDRAZ

A new understanding of Arizona’s labor history

On any given day in Arizona, residents encounter a common circumstance: thou-

sands of Mexican-descent workers labor each day to make living in urban and
rural areas possible. The majority of such workers are largely invisible. Their work
as caretakers of children and the elderly, dishwashers or cooks in restaurants,
hotel housekeeping staff, and in many other settings remains in the shadows of an
economy dependent on their labor.
Mexican Workers and the Making of Arizona centers on the production of an
elastic supply of labor, revealing how this long-standing approach to the building
| L AT I N O S T U D I E S |
of Arizona obscures important power relations and the role of the state in aiding
the position of corporations vis-à-vis labor in the production of wealth. Building
| HISTORY |
| BORDER STUDIES |
on recent scholarship about Chicanas/os and others, the volume insightfully de-
scribes how U.S. employers such as railroads, mines, and agriculture fostered the
recruitment of Mexican labor, thus ensuring the presence of a surplus labor pool
that expands and contracts to accommodate production and profit goals.
October
Taking a longer perspective, the volume’s contributors delve into examples of
408 pp.
migration and settlement of the Salt River Valley; the mobilization and immobili-
6x9 zation of cotton workers in the 1920s; miners and their challenge to a dual wage
37 b&w illustrations, 4 maps, 14 tables in Miami, Arizona; Mexican American women workers in midcentury Phoenix;
Cloth the 1980s Morenci copper miners’ strike and Chicana mobilization; Arizona’s
978-0-8165-3186-8 / $45.00 S industrial and agribusiness demands for Mexican contract labor; and the labor
rights violations of construction workers today.
Electronic edition available This volume fills an important vacuum in our understanding of Mexicans
and Mexican Americans in the Southwest by turning the scholarly gaze to
Arizona, which has had a long-standing impact on national policy and politics.

LUIS F. B. PL A S CEN CI A is the author of Disenchanting Citizenship: Mexican

Migrants and the Boundaries of Belonging.

GLO R I A H. CUÁ D R A Z is a co-editor of Claiming Home, Shaping Community:

Testimonios de los valles and a member of the Latina Feminist Group, co-authors
of Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios.

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“Framed by an important set of critiques, Mexican Workers and the Making of
Arizona brings forward precisely what has not been incorporated into the state’s (or
the nation’s) historical analyses of the role of Mexican labor in the construction of a
major economy.”

AZFLR —Gilbert G. González, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Irvine

“This excellent book recognizes the workers’ critical role, dignity, and struggles for a
www.uapress.arizona.edu better life.”
1 (800) 621-2736 —Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, author of Starving for Justice: Hunger Strikes,
Spectacular Speech, and the Struggle for Dignity