Pastures of Plenty: Hard Times in the Country: The Depression Years

Summary:

Program 2 in a four-part series on farmworker history.

Website:

http://www.coastridge.org/pastures/program2.html

Additional Credits and Funding:

Host: Luis Valdez (Zoot Suit, La Bamba)
Funding: California Council for the Humanities

Tones:

Engaging, Inspiring, Real

Description:

This program looks at the European immigrants who came to work the fields of California. We'll tour the farms of Ivano Comelli, son of an Italian farm worker, and Nita Gizdich, Croatian-American apple farmer. The decade of the 1930?s was marked by bloody labor battles across the state, in places like Pixley and Salinas, as workers began to demand their rights. As times got harder, thousands of families took to the roads, picking crops up and down the Central Valley. The Okies joined the migrant stream in 1935, swelling the ranks of unemployed pickers. We also hear about El Repatriacion, where law enforcement and immigration officials deported nearly 400,000 Mexican and American citizens of Mexican descent. We think we know this chapter of our history, but we haven't heard this part. Includes two :29 second music bed cutaways. NPR newscast friendly.

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