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Reviews
| On Strike and On Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America. By Ellen R. Baker. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. viii + 180 pp. Maps, photos, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $59.95 (cloth); $22.50 (paper).
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In this well-researched and strongly argued study, Ellen R. Baker expands our knowledge of the Empire Zinc strike with a penetrating analysis of the New Mexico mining community that fought this battle and its role in the production of the landmark film Salt of the Earth (1954). Baker provides a richly textured account of a struggle that contributed to the rejection of atavistic "old ways" of gender relations and the growth of determined worker resistance to management in the postwar copper industry. |
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This work advances discussion of the Empire Zinc story with a sophisticated examination of the Grant County Mexican American community of the late 1940s—in particular, the historic development of its strong ties to the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (Mine-Mill), a labor organization that linked class exploitation to racial discrimination while offering progressive solutions to economic and social problems. As Baker notes, the new militancy was the product of local working-class agency more than external initiative, an insight that becomes one of the book's key themes. |
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Along with heightened ethnic consciousness, a new style of interpersonal relations developed within the union families. Once women asserted a demand for equal treatment, a new set of issues confronted Mine-Mill's Local 890. Such heightened self-awareness exposed contradictions as both women and men attempted to grapple with changes in the "old way." |
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Well before the strike, Local 890 members and their families had already reached an intense political consciousness that propelled them onto the public stage. Communists were active in Mine-Mill's battle with management and in escalated Mexican American activism and union growth. However, the union offered a powerful class analysis that also acknowledged racism as a key dimension of the struggle, thus asserting a direct connection between labor rights and civil rights. Baker correctly notes the important role of Communists in progressive social action in Grant County but argues that it was less dependent upon the Communist Party than on the grassroots activism of Mexican Americans and their Anglo allies. |
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While the book focuses on the social changes and economic advances that resulted from the strike, it includes solid coverage of the efforts by the Independent Productions Corporation's (IPC) filmmaking experiment to ensure that the movie honored Mexican American culture. A community-based production committee carried out this goal by enabling Grant County families to guard against the "expropriation" of their story. |
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While describing the production process, Baker supplies readers with an informed account of the Hollywood blacklist and its victims. This analysis provides little that is new but offers a useful reminder of the tensions inherent in the attempt to craft a working alliance among manual and cultural workers. The study also briefly addresses the suppression of the film, highlighting the abuse of civil liberties committed in the name of anti-Communism. |
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In a judicious conclusion, Baker skillfully draws together the strands of narrative in her work. Reminding readers of the contradictions evident in the struggle's outcome, she demonstrates that the bridge to the "new way" was not always traversed by males reluctant to accept the profound changes implied in the journey. Similarly, despite short-term gains, including the weakening of the discriminatory "Mexican wage," the long-term consequences of union militancy were not always positive. Although Local 890 remained strong and retained community support, it was eventually absorbed into the increasingly embattled United Steelworkers of America. Although IPC completed its film, the blacklist prevailed against its principals, who were ostracized in the film community. Similarly, militant unionist Clinton Jencks was essentially banished from the mainstream labor movement. |
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Although the ultimate results were mixed, the strike and the film have had great impact over time as subsequent generations have learned from a truly inspiring human story. Baker's foremost contribution to understanding these events rests in her thoughtful evocation of the ethnic, marital, and community relationships that underpinned the union as a social family. The result is an innovative treatment of the strike's ethnic roots and gendered character that provides a valuable addition to the fields of labor, ethnic, and women's history.
James J. Lorence
University of Wisconsin-Marathon County
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