--- title: The History You Didn't Learn: Latinas in the Labor Movement | TIME description: The History You Didn't Learn is a series that sheds light on past events that may have been omitted, misleading, or just downright wrong in our history education in school. canonical: https://time.com/video/Y0oOfDDS/ og:title: The History You Didn't Learn: Latinas in the Labor Movement og:description: The History You Didn't Learn is a series that sheds light on past events that may have been omitted, misleading, or just downright wrong in our history education in school. og:url: https://time.com/video/Y0oOfDDS/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Y0oOfDDS/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The History You Didn't Learn: Latinas in the Labor Movement twitter:description: The History You Didn't Learn is a series that sheds light on past events that may have been omitted, misleading, or just downright wrong in our history education in school. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Y0oOfDDS/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # The History You Didn't Learn: Latinas in the Labor Movement > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: Latinas in the Labor Movement [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: Latinas in the Labor Movement](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Y0oOfDDS.m3u8) (8:35)  _Published 2020-11-30. The History You Didn't Learn is a series that sheds light on past events that may have been omitted, misleading, or just downright wrong in our history education in school._ --- Jul 28, 2023 4:06 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [The History You Didn't Learn: The Black Panthers' Health Programs](/video/28opNCMF/) ### The History You Didn't Learn: The Black Panthers' Health Programs [The History You Didn't Learn: The Lavender Scare](/video/7jWjdOdm/) ### The History You Didn't Learn: The Lavender Scare [The History You Didn't Learn: The NYC School Boycott](/video/I4zgXOYu/) ### The History You Didn't Learn: The NYC School Boycott --- ## Transcript I knew that there was a family secret about my aunt Emma. The way that I found out was to read it in the newspaper. And I saw this picture of a 21-year-old standing on the steps of City Hall with her fist in the air. And it described her as Emma Tenayuca-Brooks, the charismatic leader of a movement. So, I was looking at a 2007 U.S. history textbook and scanning to see all of the times that it talked about the labor movement, and it seems there's very little mention of anybody who's not a white or a white immigrant in these big labor history moments. And so, a lot of times Latina and Latino activists are left out of this. The one mention there was of Latino activism was with the United Farmworkers. And Cesar Chavez is the only person mentioned in there. When history books mentioned the legacy of Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers, they often leave out the Latinas who also made great strides in the movement, and a nation that regularly fails to recognize the contributions of minority groups. It's not a big surprise that women like Dolores Huerta and Helen Chavez are left out of the story. But even before the still powerful UFW came onto the scene, Latinas were shaping the labor landscape across the US. I think one of the most incredible and important figures in Latino civil rights and labor activism is a Guatemalan woman by the name of Luisa Moreno. She is born in Guatemala, in like, 1907. She comes from a very privileged family. She's educated. She is a writer and a thinker. She's very intellectual, and then she decides to kind of forego her wealth and move to the United States. She moves to New York, and settles in Harlem. Begets work as a seamstress, and she then starts organizing local Puerto Rican women who are working in the garment industry. Moreno's work in labor activism only grew from there. In 1935, the American Federation of Labor recruited Marino as a professional organizer. She's probably one of the first women and like one of the first Latinas to cross the boundaries into the American Federation of Labor. I think one of the things that's most exciting about Moreno, Luisa Moreno, is that she was this excellent coalition builder. And she travels all around the country doing this kind of organizing. Traveling to organize cane workers in New Orleans, tuna packing workers in San Diego, and women in cigar factories of Florida. We think of the Latino labor movement as really starting to catalyze with the United Farmworkers. But she's out there doing this work 20 years earlier, which helped pave the way for these movements that came later. In 1950, Moreno faced deportation proceedings for her connection to the Communist Party. But before she left voluntarily, sh said this at our hearing, "They talk about deporting me, but they can never deport the people that I've worked with and with, and with whom things were accomplished for the benefit of thousands of workers. Things that can never be destroyed." At the end of the day. You can't deport the ideas and the support that she provided within the labor movement and Latino history. Luisa Moreno's work spanned several states, but a young Mexican-American woman named Emma Tenayuca made history right in her hometown. I wanted to tell you a story, because you're with TIME. One of the things we came across was this little article in TIME. The interviewer asked her some questions like she was kind of a newlywed, and they said, you know, "How is it working in your household?" You know, "You're going out doing all these organizing," while her husband, Homer Brooks was, he was an organizer too. And so she answers pertly, "I love my husband and I'm a good cook." Emma Tenayuca was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. During her high school years, she is aware of the inequality that Mexican Americans face in San Antonio. She looks at the neighborhood conditions that her and her family and her community are living in, right. They're segregated, they're very working class. You know, they're living in substandard housing conditions. She also you know, goes around her neighborhood and her community to ask people, what are the issues that affect you and your family? I think, you know, people think of her in terms of being very strong and very courageous. But, I think people don't realize that she was so sensitive, she was so tender hearted, compassionate that she just could not stand to see human suffering. In 1938, Emma Tenayuca kind of gets her big moment. 12,000 pecan shellers, who were mostly Mexican American women in San Antonio, marched out of factories in San Antonio and went on strike. Something like 20% of the nation's pecans were shelled in San Antonio in the 1930s. And the conditions in the factories were awful. They were poorly ventilated. So, a lot of women were getting tuberculosis or other health issues. They were crowded, they didn't have a lot of bathrooms or other facilities that people needed. And they were paid really low wages. Something like, less than $2 a week. So, they went on strike and they elected Emma Tenayuca unanimously as the leader of the strike. She was incredibly fierce. She was known as "La Capitana" or the captain of the strike. So, this labor dispute goes on for about six weeks, she organized demonstrations, lots of people were jailed during the strike. The strike ends and pecan shellers earn a wage increase. But then the companies begin buying more machines that eliminate the laborers. But, I think this movement kind of grew from there as they started thinking bigger about civil rights and minimum wages and things bigger than just the pecan shelling strike. I think that learning about Emma Tenayuca, not only, again, pushes our understandings of Latino history and labor history to an earlier period, but she can serve as a model for inspiration for our young kids. There was really no space for the Latinx activists within the context of these movements, they had to create space for themselves. And that's something that I really aspire to do as well. Faith Florez was only 15 when she started making an app called Calor to help prevent heatstroke among farmworkers. The app sends alerts to workers during dangerous heat conditions and connects them to emergency services when needed. I have roots in the Central Valley. I was raised there for the first 10 years of my life, and a lot of my family members were farmworkers. So, I felt a strong sense of kind of responsibility and obligation to go back home and to, you know, serve my community in the best way that I could. I definitely think Latinx people are underrepresented in our education system. I mean, our history classes really only cover like our founding fathers Declaration of Independence, just a lot of white history. Oftentimes, Black and other students of color never see themselves reflected in history books. 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