Luisa Moreno

Born August 30, 1907

Guatemala City, Guatemala

Died November 4, 1992

Guatemala

Labor leader

"During World War II … women took advantage of the wartime demand for their labor to advance their interests … Energetic labor organizers like Luisa Moreno … built a powerful union of women workers."
—From Pushing the Limits: 1940–1961

Luisa Moreno was a trade union leader and a civil rights activist. Fluent in both English and Spanish, she was a major figure in the struggle for Hispanic civil rights and fair treatment for nearly three decades. During World War II (1939–45), Moreno's efforts led to better pay and working conditions for women workers, particularly Hispanic workers in the war industries.

While the U.S. economy was booming in the mid-1920s, many workers emigrated from Mexico to the United States. However, when the Great Depression (1929–41), a period of high unemployment and decreased business activity through the 1930s, began, the U.S. government enforced the Mexican Repatriation Program. This program forced hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans back into Mexico until the United States once again needed them for the work force during World War II. With the repatriation program in force after 1929, the pace of Mexican American labor organizing accelerated in order to protect the civil rights of the Hispanic community.

Moreno was the first Hispanic vice president of a major U.S. trade union and became state vice president for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), a major national labor organization. As a founding member of the Spanish-Speaking Peoples' Congress, Moreno started the first national effort to bring Hispanic workers together from diverse ethnic backgrounds. She was active in the fight to end racial tension in Southern California and worked to end violent outbreaks between whites and Hispanics in 1943.

Coming to America

Born in 1907 in Guatemala, Luisa Moreno came of age in the United States. In Guatemala her family was considered upper middle class. Her parents sent her to an elite parochial school, the College of the Holy Names, in Oakland, California, for her education. As a teenager, she organized a group of her peers to successfully lobby for the admission of women into Guatemalan universities. Moreno decided against attending university herself and instead moved to Mexico, where she worked as a journalist. In 1928 she followed her Mexican artist husband to the art world of New York City, where she gave birth to her only daughter, Mytyl. The couple separated three years later and Moreno went to work as a seamstress in a Spanish Harlem sweatshop. The miserable conditions there led her to become one of America's first Hispanic labor organizers.

Moreno eventually moved to California and made San Diego her home base. She became an international representative of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), the first CIO local with a Mexican female majority membership. She traveled the nation visiting neighborhoods and speaking to local mutualistas or mutual aid societies. These societies were social and cultural support groups for the Hispanic American population.

During her career, Moreno organized a wide variety of unions ranging from cigar factory workers in New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida, to pecan processing workers in San Antonio, Texas. UCAPAWA staged a successful strike against the California Sanitary Canning Company in 1939. The strike proved to be an important event in the annals of Mexican American labor history as it won the union recognition and a smaller decrease in wages than had been expected. Moreno, as the union vice president, led organizing efforts over the next two years expanding membership throughout Southern California.

In 1938 Moreno helped found El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Hispana (The Spanish-Speaking Peoples' Congress). The first conference, held in Los Angeles, California, in 1939, called for an end to segregation in public facilities, housing, education, and employment. More than a labor union, the organization was a civil rights assembly dedicated to winning equal rights for all Hispanic Americans. Pragmatic, tough-minded, and a charismatic leader, Moreno was convinced that uniting together and seeking political compromise would reap the most benefit for the common, poorly educated worker.

Becoming American

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45; see entry) instituted many measures to combat the ills of the Great Depression, and he was seen as a champion for the poor. Roosevelt was admired by Hispanic Americans for his compassion as well as for his government's Good Neighbor Policy. The policy, named in 1934, made it clear that the United States would no longer intervene militarily in Latin American affairs. The good relations it engendered would pay off during World War II, when the United States enjoyed the close cooperation of Mexico and other Latin American countries on the Allied side.

The United States did not immediately enter World War II but mobilized industry on the home front to improve its own defenses and to supply countries fighting the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy. This mobilization that stepped up dramatically once the United States entered the war in December 1941 pulled the country out of the Great Depression. Suddenly jobs in defense and other industries were widely available, even more so as conscription and voluntary enlistment put more than sixteen million Americans in uniform.

While Moreno was organizing union workers in Southern California, World War II was transforming the region into a giant military base and factory. By July 1942 the United States had been at war for eight months and was facing an indefinite period in which much of its working population would be overseas. Temporary laborers were needed to fill their places at home.

Hispanic Americans and World War II

Hispanic Americans participated fully in all combat campaigns of World War II (1939–45), both in the European and Pacific theaters. They fought side by side with non-Hispanic Americans for a common cause and a shared national purpose. Unlike black Americans, they experienced little discrimination in the armed forces. After the war they benefited from the GI Bill, which financed higher education and offered low-cost loans to buy homes and establish businesses.

Despite the sacrifices Hispanic Americans made in the defense of their country in World War II, the struggle for full acceptance as Americans in civilian life was far from over. However, the experience of war had changed their collective focus. Having lost comrades and risked their own lives to defend their country, Hispanic Americans became more conscious of the world outside their own communities. They were more determined to demand the constitutional rights due to them as Americans.

Luisa Moreno's political activity helped a generation of Hispanic Americans, who came of age in World War II, to share in expanding federal policies banning racial discrimination and increasing protection of civil rights through the following decades.

The U.S. and Mexican governments worked together to set up the Bracero Program, which brought hundreds of thousands of Mexicans into the country during the war. Their labor in agriculture made it possible to fill wartime demands for food. The Mexican term bracero comes from the Spanish word brazo or "arm." Roughly translated, bracero means "hired hand" in English. Mexico was still stinging with memories of the recent repatriation act. It agreed, as a friend and ally, to supply braceros to the United States but asked for safeguards to avoid their exploitation. Because of Mexico's severe unemployment and low wages, more than two hundred thousand Mexicans participated in the program by the time the war ended. Although contracts were signed, in practice they were routinely violated and the workers were subjected to a variety of abuses.

Zoot suits and pachucos

The introduction of large numbers of immigrants triggered anxiety and renewed long-held prejudices in increasingly crowded California. As a labor consultant, Luisa Moreno found herself defending the new immigrants against the conservative anti-Mexican movement. As wartime stress mounted, Moreno was also called upon to participate in the Sleepy Lagoon case in Los Angeles.

On August 2, 1942, a young Mexican American named Jose Diaz was found dead near the Sleepy Lagoon swimming hole. A gang fight had been reported near the scene the day before, and twenty-two Hispanic youth gang members involved in that fight were tried for the crime. The media frenzy that followed focused on the pachuco gangs in Los Angeles. Pachuco is a type of slang that became associated with Hispanic youths, and the word itself came to mean "tough guy." In the early 1940s the pachucos had adopted an outfit known as the zoot suit. The suit consisted of a long coat worn with a high-waist, tight-cuffed pant, and the outfit was usually topped with a broad-brimmed hat. A long, ducktail haircut and hanging watch chain completed the look. White Americans associated the zoot suit with gangs and crime.

Despite a lack of evidence and numerous violations of their civil rights, twelve of the defendants in the Sleepy Lagoon case were found guilty of murder in January 1943. In reaction, Luisa Moreno and other supporters formed the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee. Through their efforts, in October 1944, an appeals court reversed the convictions and dismissed all charges. However, the high-profile trial coverage had already caused widespread damage in promoting anti-Mexican sentiment.

The zoot suit riots

Coming in a time of war when many young Americans were enlisted in the military, the Sleepy Lagoon case called attention to the perceived character of those on trial. In June 1943 the tension erupted into full-scale violence in Los Angeles.

Minor skirmishes between white servicemen on furlough (approved leave of absence) and pachucos in zoot suits began as a series of street brawls before escalating into a full-fledged race riot. The riots, fueled by sensationalist media, quickly spread to Pasadena, Long Beach, and San Diego. Working to end the violence, Luisa Moreno attempted to mediate the conflicts between San Diego's Mexican American community and the U.S. military. At the same time, she continued her work supporting community organizations such as Mothers of the Hispanic Soldier.

Deported

Moreno's World War II organizing efforts jeopardized her own residency in the United States. Over the years, Moreno's political life had brought her into conflict with state senator Jack B. Tenney of Los Angeles. When Moreno retired and married navy veteran Gray Dayton Bemis, she petitioned the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for American citizenship. A sense of fear was sweeping the country at that time. Even the accusation of membership in the Communist party was enough to ruin a person's reputation. Passports could be taken away and jobs and promotions denied. The government closely monitored those under suspicion. Many political leaders in the labor movement were charged with being Communists because of their unpopular union work. Moreno came under investigation by the California State Committee on Un-American Activities led by Tenney. She was offered citizenship in exchange for testifying at the deportation hearing of other labor leaders. Moreno refused, and Tenney had her deported as a dangerous alien on November 30, 1950.

Luisa Moreno and Gray Bemis left the United States, never to return again. They initially went to Chihuahua, Mexico, but later lived in several other Latin American countries as well. Moreno eventually moved back to her native Guatemala, only to flee in 1954 when the U.S.-backed coup of the Guatemalan government threw the nation into chaos. In her final years Moreno returned to Guatemala, where, isolated and incapacitated by old age, she died on November 4, 1992. Her will stipulated that she wanted to be cremated, but her brother, Ernesto, opposed it, and she was buried in the family's marble mausoleum instead.

For More Information

Books

Gonzalez, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. New York: Viking, 2000.

Kanellos, Nicolas. Hispanic Firsts: 500 Years of Extraordinary Achievement. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1997.

May, Elaine Tyler. "Pushing the Limits: 1940–1961." In No Small Courage: A History of Women in the United States, edited by Nancy F. Cott. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Meier, Matt S., and Feliciano Ribera. Mexican Americans, American Mexicans: From Conquistadors to Chicanos. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

Ochoa, George. Atlas of Hispanic-American History. New York: Media Projects, 2001.

Shorris, Earl. Latinos: A Biography of the People. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992.

Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.

Web sites

"Becoming American: A Cautionary Tale." University of Southern Florida, Latin American & Caribbean Studies. http://w3.usf.edu/~lacs/editorialsmckiernan-gonzalez.html (accessed on July 22, 2004).

"Luisa Moreno and the Beginnings of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement in San Diego." The Journal of San Diego History. http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/97summer/moreno.htm (accessed on July 22, 2004).