Today in Labor History October 10, 1933: 18,000 cotton workers struck in Pixley, California. Four were killed in the struggle, which ultimately won them a raise. The Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union (CAWIU) led the strike by Mexican pickers. The union was demanding a wage of $1.00 per hundred pounds of cotton picked, recognition of the union and abolition of contract labor. The union led 24 strikes, involving 37,500 union members, in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1930s. During the cotton strikes of 1933, striking workers were evicted from company housing. Growers and managerial staff were deputized by the police. The owners employed bankers, merchants, ministers and Boy Scouts to attacks the workers. A local sheriff said, "We protect our farmers here in Kern County. But the Mexicans are trash. They have no standard of living. We herd them like pigs." #workingclass #LaborHistory #cotton #strike #california #mexican #union #police #policebrutality #racism

Today in Labor History October 10, 1980: The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front was founded in El Salvador. The FMLN, which fought a long civil war to overthrow the rightwing dictatorship, was named after Salvadoran revolutionary Farabundo Marti (1893-1932). Marti, a comrade of Augusto Sandino, the Nicaraguan revolutionary leader, helped found the Central American Communist Party. In 1932, he helped lead an uprising that, for ten days, was the first Soviet in the western hemisphere. The rebellion was crushed by the dictator Maximiliano Martinez, who slaughtered over 30,000 peasants, indigenous people and communists in the Matanza. Martinez had once proclaimed, “America is great because it eradicated its Indians. For El Salvador to become great, so must we.” Martinez was also one of the first world leaders to recognize Adolf Hitler. He also believed in the “court of invisible doctors.” #workingclass #LaborHistory #elsalvador #FarabundoMarti #communism #soviet #Revolutionary #imperialism #fascism #genocide #indigenous #FMLN #Nicaragua #Sandinista