Hispanic Heritage Month, observed September 15 to October 15, is a reminder that many of the protections employees rely on today. They were won by organizers, many of them Hispanic and Latino, who risked their jobs and safety to demand fair treatment. Several of them came from right here in Texas.
Carmelita Torres: Dignity as a Condition of Work
In January 1917, a 17-year-old housekeeper named Carmelita Torres was crossing from Ciudad Juárez into El Paso for work when she refused the degrading chemical “baths” U.S. authorities forced on Mexican workers at the border, which involved stripping and being doused with gasoline, kerosene, and other chemicals. Her refusal sparked what became known as the Bath Riots, as thousands of workers, most of them women, joined her. Her stand was an early demand for dignity and safety at work.
Emma Tenayuca: “La Pasionaria de Texas”
In the 1930s, San Antonio’s pecan shellers, most of them Mexican American women, earned as little as 30 cents to $1.50 a day. When operators cut wages even further in 1938, nearly 12,000 workers walked off the job. Emma Tenayuca, then in her early twenties, led them. Her repeated arrests earned her the nickname “La Pasionaria de Texas.” The strike won a wage increase and is recognized as one of the first significant labor victories for Mexican American workers. That same year, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, creating the federal minimum wage and overtime protections workers still depend on.
Luisa Moreno: Organizing Across Industries and Borders
Born in Guatemala, Luisa Moreno spent two decades organizing workers wherever she found them: garment workers in New York, cigar rollers in Florida, sugar cane workers in Louisiana, and cannery and tuna packing workers in California. She helped build unions in which women and immigrants held real leadership roles. In 1938 she co-founded the National Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples, one of the first national Latino civil rights organizations. Her activism made her a target, and in 1950, facing deportation proceedings, she left the country. Her words about Latino workers still resonate: “They have contributed their endurance, sacrifices, youth, and labor to the Southwest.”
Dolores Huerta and Jessie De La Cruz: Farmworker Power
A former schoolteacher, Dolores Huerta left the classroom because she saw her students coming to school hungry. In 1962 she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, later the United Farm Workers, with Cesar Chavez. Huerta negotiated the union’s first collective bargaining agreement with an agricultural employer, directed the national grape boycott, and pushed for disability insurance and state assistance for farmworkers in California. She also coined the rallying cry “Sí se puede.” She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
Jessie De La Cruz began working in the fields at age five. After joining the UFW in 1965, she became its first woman recruiter. She fought to ban the short-handled hoe, which forced workers to stoop for hours and caused lasting back injuries, and she testified before the U.S. Senate about farmworker conditions. California banned the tool in 1975.
Linda Chavez-Thompson: From Cotton Fields to the AFL-CIO
A Movement Bigger Than Any One Person
Long before most of these women, Puerto Rican feminist and organizer Luisa Capetillo helped lead sugarcane workers’ strikes in the early 1900s and argued that women’s rights and workers’ rights were one fight. Many other leaders shaped this history, including Santiago Iglesias Pantín, known as the father of the free trade union movement in Puerto Rico; Ernesto Galarza, a farmworker turned scholar and organizer; Gilbert Padilla, a UFW co-founder and longtime organizer; Baldemar Velásquez, who founded the Farm Labor Organizing Committee; and Eliseo Medina, who rose from the grape fields to the leadership of the Service Employees International Union. Today, the work continues through leaders like Teresa Romero, the first Latina immigrant woman to lead a national union in the United States as president of the UFW; Esther López, the first Latina International Secretary-Treasurer of the United Food and Commercial Workers; and Camille Rivera-Westin, who pushed for fair wages and stable hours for retail, airport catering, and car wash workers. The results are measurable: unionized Latino full-time workers earn roughly $11,000 more per year than their non-union counterparts.
What This History Means for You Today
Minimum wage, overtime, safety rules, and anti-discrimination laws grew out of struggles like these. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Texas Labor Code, it is illegal for an employer to discriminate or harass based on national origin, which can include your ancestry, your accent, or your ethnicity. Federal wage laws generally protect you for work you have performed regardless of immigration status. And even without a union, the National Labor Relations Act protects most private sector employees who talk with coworkers about pay or working conditions.
Change often starts with one person refusing to accept unfair treatment. If you believe your rights at work have been violated, whether through discrimination, unpaid wages, or retaliation for speaking up, we encourage you to speak with an attorney about your options. Wiley Wheeler, P.C. represents employees exclusively, with offices in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Schedule a consultation with me or another attorney at our firm to discuss your situation.