Contemporary Authors

• Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 2016

1. Of forests and fields : Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest LCCN 2015024443 Type of material Book Personal name Sifuentez, Mario Jimenez, 1979- Main title Of forests and fields : Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest / Mario Jimenez Sifuentez. Published/Produced New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2016] Description x,169 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm ISBN 9780813576909 (hardcover : alkaline paper) 9780813576893 (paperback : alkaline paper) Shelf Location FLM2016 105747 CALL NUMBER HD1527.N87 S54 2016 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2)

• Mario Jimenez Sifuentez C.V. - http://www.mariosifuentez.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Mario-Sifuentez-CV-1.pdf

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  Mario Jimenez SifuentezMario Jimenez SifuentezUniversity of California, MercedMerced, CA 95340Humanities & World Cultures (HWC)(209) 228-4263Fax: (209) 228-4007Email: msifuentez@ucmerced.eduEducationBA, University of Oregon, 2002.Major: History, Ethnic Studies, and Political Science (Triple Major)Minor: Latin American StudiesMA, Brown University, 2005.Major: American CivilizationMA, University of Oregon, 2004.Major: HistoryDissertation Title: "Now I Can Hold My Own with Anybody: Conflict, Consensus, Community Action and theChicano Movement in Oregon" and "La Fiesta Mexicana : Ethinic Celebration and teh Spanish HeritageFantasy"PhD, Brown University, 2010.Dissertation Title: By Forest or by Fields: Organizing Immigrant Labor in the Pacific Northwest, 1940-1990Professional PositionsAssistant Professor, Humanities & World Cultures (HWC), UC Merced (2011-2015).Assistant Acting Professor, Visiting Assistant Professor, Humanities & World Cultures (HWC), UCMerced (2010-2011).Adjunct Instructor, Brown University. (2010).Taught "A Checkered Past: The United States and the Third World."Teaching Assistant, Brown University. (2009).For "Hip-Hop Music and Culture(s)." Led two sections of approximately 20 students for both classes.Responsibilities included grading papers and exams, office hours, and out of class screenings.Instructor, Brown University. (2006-2007).Taught freshman seminar designed to introduce students to Ethnic Studies in an intimate setting that focusedon the development of their writing and critical thinking skills. The course "Sports, Race, and Gender" wasnamed to the Top Ten Classes in Rhode Island by Rhode Island Monthly January 2007.Instructor, Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Centers. (2006-2007).Taught various coursesat "The Met" an alternative high school were more than 80 percent of the studentsqualify for federal meal subsidies and student body is 40 percent Hispanic and 30 percent Black and Latino.Over 94 percent of the Met sudents graduated last year (versus 57percent in the Providence schools). Everygraduate since its inception in 196 has been accepted to a college.Teaching Assistant, Brown University. (2004-2005).Teaching Assistant for two classes, "Sex, Love and Race" and "Introduction to Ethnic Studies" Led twosections of approximately 20 students for both classes. Responsibilities included grading papers and exams,office hours, and out of class screenings.Instructor, University of Oregon. (2003-2005).Taught various course independently. Createdsyllabi, lectures, and assignments for classes ranging from 15to 30 students. Additional responsibilities include grading papers and exams, holding office hours and outclass screenings. Course include, "Introduction to Ethnic Studies Part One and Two" ,Introduction toChicano/a and Latino/a Studies", "Sports, Race, and Gender" and "Race, Gender, and Prosions".Research Assistant, Brown University. (2004).Compiled articles for Professor Arlene Keizer's anthology of the work of Barbara Christian. Attained copyrightclearances and also gathered articles and secondary sources for professor Keizer's original research.Ethnic Studies Academic Advisor, University of Oregon. (2003-2004).
  Mario Jimenez SifuentezProvide academic counseling and guidance for new and current Ethnic Studies undergraduate majors andminorsGraduate Teaching Fellow, University of Oregon. (2002-2004).Teaching assistant for various course including "Introduction to Ethnic Studies Part One and Two", "20thCentury United States History" and "African American History." Assisted in these courses on more than oneoccasion. Led two discussion sections of approximately 35 students on all occasions. Responsibilitiesincluded grading papers and exams, holding office hours, and out of class screenings.Professional MembershipsAssociation for the Study of Food and Society. (September 2013-Present).Labor and Working Class History Association. (September 2013-Present).Society of Ethnomusicologists. (September 2013-Present).Organization of America Historians. (August 1, 2010-Present).American Historical Association. (2007-Present).American Studies Association. (2007-Present).RESEARCHPublicationsBook Chapters, Peer-ReviewedSifuentez, M. J. and M. Garcia. 2012. The Foundations of Modern Farm Worker Unionism: From UFW to PCUN.InLabor Rising: The Past and Future of Working People in America. ed. Daniel Katz & Richard Greenwald.253-266. New York, USA: New Press.BooksSifuentez, M. J.Of Forests and Fields: Organizing Immigrant Labor in thePacific Northwest. Rutgers UniversityPress. Forthcoming: 2016Presentations GivenSifuentez, M. J., "By Forests or By Fields: Immigrant Labor and Foundations of Modern Farmworker Unionism,"Center for Latino and Latin American Studies at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois. (February 5,2014).Sifuentez, M. J. (Keynote Speaker), Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942-1964 (A SmithsonianExhibit), "Memory, Public History, and Creating the Bracero Archive?," University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa,Alabama. Opening Keynote Address for the exhibit opening. (February 18, 2013).Sifuentez, M. J., Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, Panel: Environmental Health inSouthern California, 1920-1965, San Diego, California. Panel Chair. (August 2012).Sifuentez, M. J., Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, "Roundtable: After the Contracts:The United Farm Workers and Farm Worker Activism since 1970," San Diego, California. (August 2012).Sifuentez, M. J.,American Historical Association Annual Meeting, "From a Student Activist to an Academic: WhenYour Passion Becomes Your Project," American Historical Association, Panel: Inside Stories: Identity,Community, and the Historian's Subjectivity, Chicago Illinois. Having grown up in a farmworker family I wasinstantly attracted to student labor activists that were working with farmworkers. As an undergraduate at theUniversity of Oregon I was the director of the Gardenburger boycott on our campus that had been called byOregon’s farmworker union Pineros y Campesinos Unidos Noroestes (PCUN). Throughout my time at theuniversity I grew close to the organizing staff, volunteers, and student leaders involved with the union. At thetime of my graduation I had to decide whether or not to pursue a career in organizing or one in academe. Ichose to go to graduate school only when my advisor convinced me that I could write about the union I wasso passionate about. During this roundtable I will discuss how my relationshipto the union both gave me
  Mario Jimenez Sifuentezunfettered access to its private archive and the obstacles I faced working with a community I felt so stronglyabout. (January 5, 2012).Sifuentez, M. J. (Keynote Speaker), Center for Research on Teaching Excellence, "Use of Social Media in theClassroom," UC Merced. (November 9, 2011).Contracts, Grants and Sponsored ResearchMultiple Campus AwardSifuentez, Mario Jimenez (Collaborator), "Working Class Cultural Labor in the Central Valley," UC HumanitiesResearch Institute, $25,000.00. (May 2012-June 2013).Sifuentez, Mario Jimenez (Collaborator), "Changing Work, Changing Workforce: Immigrants and their Impact onthe Meanings of Work," UC Humanities Network-Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, $25,000.00. (May 2012-May 2013).Research in Progress"Auslanders and Illegals: Turkish and Mexican Guestworkers in the Global Economy" (On-Going)A comparative look at the way the United States and Germany treat guestworkers in their respectivecountries. The article examines the structural similarities and differences between the two programs as wellas the response by the two ethnic communities to their immigration status.TEACHINGSpecial Pedagogical ActivitiesGuest Lecture, (April 28, 2012).A consortia of community groups alongwith UC Merced-affiliated groups are partnering to provide the spaceand information for a public dialogue to help dispel the misinformation that we hear about the complex issuesof immigration. The focus will be on the effects of enforcement/detention andeducational opportunities. Weseek to find humane solutions that unify families.Guest Lecture, (April 24, 2012).LIT 60 Spring 2012 Intro to Chicano Culture and Experiences.Doctoral CommitteeSeptember 2013-Present, Amrit Deohl, AdvisorSeptember2013-Present, Neama Alamri, AdvisorDirected Individual/Independent StudySeptember 2013-December 2013, Amrit Deohl, Neama Alamri, AdvisorJanuary 2012-May 2012, Carl Ponzio, AdvisorDirected an Independent study in Chicano HistoryUndergraduate Honors ThesisJanuary 2013-May 2013, Jordan Eisen, AdvisorJanuary 2013-May 2013, Micah Chandler, AdvisorAugust 2011-May 2012, Garrett Peterson, AdvisorSERVICE
  Mario Jimenez SifuentezDepartment ServiceSpeaker, Recuriting Oakland High Student to UC Merced. (November 28, 2011).University ServiceMember, Honor's College Task Force. (January 1, 2015-Present).Member, Ethnic Studies Ad-Hoc Committee. (August 1, 2014-Present).Member, Undergraduate Council. (August 1, 2014-Present).Researcher, Japanese AmericanCitizens League Yamato Colony Project. (June 2014-Present).Researcher, Voices of the San Joaquin. (April 2014-Present).Member, Athletic Advisory Committee. (August 2011-Present).Coordinator, Central Valley Oral History Project. (July 2011-Present).Advisor, History Club. (July 2011-Present).Advisor, M.E.Ch.A. (July 2011-Present).Advisor, Students Empowering Dreams. (July 2011-Present).

• Mario Jimenez Sifuentez Home Page - http://www.mariosifuentez.com/about/

  The son of immigrant farm workers from Mexico, Dr. Sifuentez grew up in rural Oregon. As a child he read voraciously even while working alongside his parents in the onion fields. At an early age he became acutely aware of injustice and it had a profound effect on him. His appetite for reading led him to open his eyes way beyond the circumstances of his life. He did well in school and had opportunities that his parents could hardly have imagined.
  Dr. Sifuentez attended the University of Oregon on an academic scholarship and became involved in campus politics and was a vocal student leader. He held various leadership positions in M.E.Ch.A (Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlan), the Multicultural Center, and student government. Along with other activists he founded the Oregon Students of Color Coalition, an organization committed to fighting for educational access for students of color. He graduated a triple major in History, Ethnic Studies, and Political Science. He continued his education at the University of Oregon receiving a Masters in History. He also mentored and tutored student athletes while working for the athletic department.
  Instead of becoming a full time organizer, he decided to pursue his PhD at Brown University. At Brown, Sifuentez worked with his mentor Matthew Garcia on the award winning Smithsonian exhibit on Braceros. He began teaching as a graduate student at Brown University where he was awarded Top Ten Classes in Rhode Island by Rhode Island Monthly for his Sports, Race, and Gender course. He was awarded his American Studies PhD in 2010. His dissertation about Mexican workers in the Pacific Northwest has been developed into a forthcoming book from Rutgers University Press.
  Dr. Sifuentez began his professional career at the University of California, Merced, in the heart of the California’s Central Valley. The first Research-One university built in the 21st century, the school is known for its diverse student body and emerging academic reputation. On campus he sits on the Undergraduate Council, Athletic Advisory Committee, and is a member of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies working group.
  His current project focuses on farm workers, water rights, and food equity in the Central Valley.
  Dr. Sifuentez currently lives in Fresno, with his wife Sarah and baby boy, Santana. When he isn’t working he enjoys watching his Oregon Ducks play on Saturdays.

• University of California Merced - http://www.ucmerced.edu/content/mario-sifuentez

  Mario Sifuentez
  Mario Sifuentez
  Title:
  Assistant Professor
  Email:
  msifuentez@ucmerced.edu
  Phone:
  (209) 228-4263
  Education:
  Ph.D., 2010 — Brown University
  M.A. in American Civilization, 2005 — Brown University
  M.A. in History, 2004 — University of Oregon
  B.A., 2002 — University of Oregon
  Research Interests:
  Immigration
  Labor
  Food
  Sports
  Hip-Hop
  Politics of the Third World

Sifuentez, Mario Jimenez. Of forest and fields: Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest
C. Pearson
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 54.2 (Oct. 2016): p294.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Sifuentez, Mario Jimenez. Of forest and fields: Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest. Rutgers, 2016. 169p index afp ISBN 9780813576909 cloth, $90.00; ISBN 9780813576893 pbk, $27.95; ISBN 9780813576916 ebook, $27.95

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Sifuentez (Univ. of California, Merced) has written a terrific book exploring the struggles of Mexican farm and forest laborers, documented and undocumented, in the northwest from World War II to the turn of the century. This is a first-rate labor and environmental history attentive to the types of work performed by his subjects, the tensions between laborers and growers, and the role of pro-business state authorities. This workforce, consisting of undocumented wage earners, guest laborers, and migrants from Texas, was routinely forced to confront exploitative employers, anti-labor police forces, hostile politicians, and immigration enforcement agencies. But the tree planters and field workers remained resilient, and Sifuentez has documented a series of impressive organizing activities. The most inspiring organization was the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos Noroeste (PCUN), which launched a number of boycott campaigns and strikes against unfair growers while offering legal services to laborers irrespective of immigration status. PCUN's militancy and solidarity, which Sifuentez compares to the Progressive Era Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), led to a number of victories, including cases of wage increases and union recognition in the 1990s and early 2000s. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.--C. Pearson, Collin College

Shapiro, Peter1
Source:
Labor Studies Journal. Jun2017, Vol. 42 Issue 2, p157-159. 3p.
Document Type:
Book Review
Subject Terms:
*LABOR
MEXICO
NONFICTION
Reviews & Products:
OF Forests & Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest (Book)
People:
SIFUENTEZ, Mario Jimenez, 1979-
Author Affiliations:
1California Alliance for Retired Americans, Oakland, CA, USA
Sifuentez, Mario Jimenez. Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016. 169 pp. $27.95 (paper).
Reviewed by: Peter Shapiro, California Alliance for Retired Americans, Oakland, CA, USA
Analyzing the decline of the United Farm Workers has become something of a cottage
industry. It is easy to forget the other organizations, like the Farm Labor Organizing
158 Labor Studies Journal 42(2)
Committee in the Midwest and South and the Pineros y Campesinos Noroeste (PCUN)
in Oregon, that continue to organize and even thrive despite the undeniable challenges
of building stable farm worker unions.
Mario Jimenez Sifuentez has written a short but illuminating book about the emergence
of PCUN. It began not as a union but as an immigrant rights organization called
the Willamette Valley Immigration Project (WVIP). Advocating for the undocumented
remains central to its mission, and in tracing its history, Sifuentez offers a host of
insights about organizing strategies, coalition politics, and the changing demographics
of farm labor. Given the current attacks on Mexican immigrants emanating from the
White House, the book could not be more timely.
The first two chapters provide valuable context by showing how Oregon’s farm
labor force has evolved since World War II. In Oregon, as elsewhere, wartime labor
shortages made the bracero program indispensable, but in Oregon, a thousand miles or
more from the Mexican border, the guest workers in the program were not easily
replaced. This gave them plenty of leverage in dealing with growers, and “strikes,
work stoppages, and walkouts occurred monthly” (p. 28).
The bracero program’s extension after the war is generally viewed as a windfall for
agribusiness, and growers in the Southwest profited immensely from it. But for their
Oregon counterparts, the cost of recruiting and transporting braceros—which employers
now had to bear—was prohibitive, and the wartime experience suggested that these
workers were anything but docile.
One consequence of the war, however, was that growing numbers of Mexicans and
Mexican-Americans migrated to Oregon. The bulk of them were Tejanos who, like
their African-American counterparts in the Deep South, came North after the war,
uprooted by mechanical cotton harvesters and fleeing the abuses of the Jim Crow
South. These Texas transplants became the backbone of Oregon’s farm labor force,
and Sifuentez makes good use of oral history interviews to portray the lives they built
for themselves in the Northwest.
By the 1970s, the Tejanos were leaving the fields for better paying work. The
undocumented workers who replaced them faced aggressive workplace raids by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The WVIP began as an attempt to
inform them of their rights and publicize INS abuses. It pioneered the strategy, currently
favored by the American Civil Liberties Union, of using the Fifth Amendment
protections against self-incrimination as the immigrant’s first line of legal defense
against possible deportation.
WVIP’s founders included Larry Kleinman of the National Lawyers Guild, Cipriano
Ferrel, a former Brown Beret and United Farm Workers boycott organizer, and Ramon
Ramirez, a native of East Los Angeles who had been involved in the Chicano
Moratorium. Ferrel felt a deep bond with the UFW and its commitment to unionism,
but grew frustrated with its often hostile approach to Mexican immigrants. Ramirez
was influenced by CASA, a left organization that rejected the distinction between
Mexican immigrants and U.S.-born Chicanos altogether. (In fact, CASA regarded the
term “Chicano” as inherently divisive.)
Their different political paths led the three to a common concern for the undocumented.
They came to realize that “chasing immigration agents across the state, a
Book Reviews 159
tedious task punctuated by dramatic moments, did not develop a community base or
stimulate the growth of a movement” (p. 82). This led them to begin organizing pineros
(tree planters), whose dangerous job and isolated work sites made them among the
most vulnerable and viciously exploited of Oregon’s undocumented.
In a fascinating chapter, Sifuentez details WVIP’s unsuccessful attempt to make a
principled alliance with the Northwest Forest Workers Association (NFWA), a labor
cooperative of anglo environmentalists committed to repairing the damage done by
U.S. Forest Service mismanagement of federal lands. Nominally leftist in its politics,
NFWA was initially sympathetic to the undocumented but eventually came to see them
as competitors rather than potential allies—much like the UFW.
With the passage of the Simpson-Rodino immigration bill in 1986, WVIP emerged
as a mass organization, soon reconstituting itself as PCUN. It helped thousands of
undocumented Oregonians navigate the amnesty provisions in the law, and, in the
process, gained a foothold in the fields as well as the forests. It was involved in a number
of farm labor struggles in the 1990s, most of which appear to have been initiated
by workers themselves. Workers turned to PCUN for help; PCUN responded with a
strategic approach straight out of the UFW’s playbook, augmenting militant workplace
action with lawsuits, coalition-building, and consumer boycotts.
Given the instability of farm labor, PCUN was often less concerned with winning
formal collective bargaining than with building stable organizations in the community
that could sustain workplace struggles as they occurred. A notable feature of its boycott
work was its alliance with Basic Rights Oregon, a gay rights group that proved a
far better coalition partner than NFWA.
Sifuentez’s account of this phase of PCUN’s history relies heavily on the organization’s
archives, and the partisan rhetoric of PCUN’s literature finds its way into the
narrative. This can be distracting: referring to someone as a grower’s “henchman”
does not afford much insight into the person’s behavior, an important consideration
from an organizer’s as well as a scholar’s point of view. I also wanted some analysis
of the Chicano and Mexicano labor contractors (with nicknames like “El Diablo”) who
often served as heavies in PCUN’s dramas. It would have been useful if Sifuentez had
been able to provide more information about the workers who initiated the struggles
detailed in the book’s last two chapters.
These weaknesses bear mention only because the rest of Fields and Forests is so
good. I learned enormously from it, and appreciate that it is written so that both academics
and general audiences can do likewise.

Pearson, C. "Sifuentez, Mario Jimenez. Of forest and fields: Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Oct. 2016, p. 294. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479869178&it=r&asid=8d1c3312a6b33cc232b68d52ceedd6a4. Accessed 12 Aug. 2017.

• H-Net
  https://networks.h-net.org/node/19397/reviews/137182/karp-sifuentez-forests-and-fields-mexican-labor-pacific-northwest
  Word count: 935

  Karp on Sifuentez, 'Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest'

  Author:
  Mario Jimenez Sifuentez
  Reviewer:
  Michael Karp

  Mario Jimenez Sifuentez. Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016. 264 pp. $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8135-7689-3.

  Reviewed by Michael Karp (Bard High School Early College)
  Published on H-Environment (August, 2016)
  Commissioned by David T. Benac

  Mario Jimenez Sifuentez’s Of Forests and Fields provides a detailed and fascinating account of Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest between the 1940s and the mid-1990s. In crafting his narrative, Sifuentez relies primarily upon oral histories, which he supplements with newspapers, government reports, and union records. In examining the labor of ethnic Mexican workers in the Pacific Northwest, Sifuentez provides important context to the larger history of Chicana/o history by showing that “Mexicanization” of rural communities occurred much earlier in places like Oregon. By exploring the bracero program, Tejano culture, and farmworker unionization efforts in the Northwest, he convincingly argues “that place matters” (p. 3). Interestingly, Sifuentez demonstrates that ethnic Mexican farmworkers found unique allies in the Northwest, ranging from anticapitalist reforestation workers to Nisei onion growers who provided year-round work. By engaging with several fields of scholarship, Sifuentez has written a richly textured history of ethnic Mexican laborers in the Pacific Northwest.

  The opening chapter details the bracero program, which brought over forty thousand workers to the Pacific Northwest between 1942 and 1947. Sifuentez shows that braceros in the Northwest went on strike more often and received better wages than their counterparts elsewhere in the United States, in large part due to their geographic isolation and distance from Mexico. Additionally, braceros in the Northwest engaged in a range of occupations, including agricultural labor, railroad work, and a variety of tasks for the National Forest Service. One of the most interesting sections of the book is drawn from oral histories that Sifuentez uses to explore bracero social life, which gives readers a vivid depiction of workers’s life outside the fields. The bracero program ended in the northwest in 1947, but the program led to large-scale immigration of Mexican and Mexican American immigrants to the region following World War II.

  After exploring the bracero program, Sifuentez turns his attention to the Texas-Mexican diaspora in Oregon. Like the braceros before them, Tejanos created a vibrant social culture in the Northwest by holding dances, founding businesses, and fighting for their own public spaces. Fascinatingly, Japanese American farmers became one of Tejanos’ strongest allies, providing year-round work in Oregon’s onion fields. Nisei growers also provided housing and recreation for Tejanos in the region.

  The remainder Of Forests and Fields details the establishment and growth of the labor movement among ethnic Mexican workers in the Northwest. The roots of labor resistance in the Northwest began with the Willamette Valley Immigration Project (WVIP). In particular, the WVIP worked with ethnic Mexican workers in their dealings with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). As the INS stepped up deportations, the WVIP provided legal assistance, successfully advocating for clients under the Fifth Amendment right to “due process” in all criminal and civil cases at the federal level.

  In their work advocating for workers facing deportation, WVIP became involved in labor organizing. Activists in WVIP first became involved in labor organizing by working with ethnic Mexicans who labored for the National Forest Service’s reforestation programs during the late 1970s and 1980s. White environmental activists initiated reforestation efforts in the region, and for many years, received the best contracts from both federal and private contractors. Over time, however, competition came from contractors who employed undocumented workers, who faced low wages (or none) and horrendous working conditions. While white environmentalists working in reforestation programs initially supported and advocated for ethnic Mexican’s rights, they came to resent use of immigrant labor, severing the possibility of an interracial labor movement in Oregon’s reforestation industry.

  The WVIP’s work with immigration reform and reforestation workers laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos Noroeste (PCUN)—the most successful union in the region’s history. By using the Special Agricultural Workers (SAW) provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, PCUN developed a highly efficient program for immigrants to apply for—and in many cases obtain—legalization in thousands of cases. As a result, PCUN gained immediate traction with immigrants, and union membership grew rapidly. While PCUN never won union recognition early on, the union won ethnic Mexican farmworkers better wages, among other concessions from growers. Like the United Farm Workers, PCUN worked with unions and progressive organizations—including the LGBTQ community—to create strong opposition to growers who mistreated farmworkers. To this day, PCUN has continued to maintain a progressive labor movement in the Pacific Northwest, although immigrant laborers still face low wages and poor living conditions.

  Of Forests and Fields provides a new and detailed history of ethnic Mexicans’s lives and labor patterns in the Pacific Northwest following World War II. Sifuentez has paved the way for scholars to more readily engage with the ways in which Mexican and Mexican American labor fits into a larger environmental history of the United States.

  Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=46800

  Citation: Michael Karp. Review of Sifuentez, Mario Jimenez, Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. August, 2016.
  URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=46800

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