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Showing posts from September, 2017

Ricardo Flores Mag�n, PLM, and the Labor Struggles of California Farmworkers

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�Cipriano Ricardo Flores Mag�n (known as Ricardo Flores Mag�n; September 16, 1874 � November 21, 1922) was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. His brothers Enrique and Jes�s were also active in politics. Followers of the Mag�n brothers were known as Magonistas . He has been considered an important participant in the social movement that sparked the Mexican Revolution.� �Periodically throughout their history, California farmworkers have fought vigorously, sometimes in small, local battles unknown to anyone but the immediate participants, and at other times in large campaigns�directed by radical or even openly revolutionary leaders�that have lasted for several seasons. The nature of these fights is rooted in the special character of agricultural production and in the real opportunities that farmworkers have encountered in the fields for nearly a hundred years.� Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out the Vintage : Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers (Verso,

Rethinking Agricultural History

A comparatively short(!) new article I believe worthy of your attention: Nathan A. Rosenberg and Bryce Wilson Stucki, � The Butz Stops Here: Why the Food Movement Needs to Rethink Agricultural History � Abstract �From the 1890s to the 1930s, rural Americans played a vital role in radical leftist politics. Over the decades, some of those people chose to leave, but more of them were driven out due to policy � agricultural policy, in particular. Republicans and Democrats, alike, have supported laws that favor corporate agriculture, which continue to drive small farmers out of business and depopulate the countryside. While specialists know this history well, the public tends to know a folk history, written by figures associated with contemporary food movements. This folk history rests on several key myths, which cover different periods of modern history from the New Deal to the present. We challenge these myths, not to attack particular authors or engage in pedantry, but to reveal the caus