2010.54.11416

La Pasionaria
Late 20th Early 21st Century
23.25 in HIGH x 12.25 in WIDE
(59.05 cm HIGH x 31.11 cm WIDE)
All Of Us Or None Archive. Gift of the Rossman Family.
2010.54.11416


Poster is screen printed on white paper. Images and text are in white with a black background. Poster tells the story of Emma Tenayuca. At the top of the poster are two hands holding each other at the figners. Above the arms reads: "La Pasionaria". On the arms is black text that reads:"Emma Tenayuca". Below the arms is a portrait of a woman wearing a coat with buttons down the front. At the bottom of the poster are two columns of white text that reads: "Emma Tenayuca, born in 1916 in San Anotonio, Texas, / championed the rights of Meixans and women in / America when neither had a voice. She began union / organizing her senior year of high school and in / 1938 helped organize the San Antonio pecan / shellers strike against the Southern Pecan Shelling / Company. The San Antonio pecan industry employed / 10,000 Mexican workers, mostly women, who cracked / and sorted pecans by hand for 5-6 cents a pound, / making about two dollars a week. At a time when / many factories were becoming mechanized, it was / cheaper to employ Mexican hand labor thean to intro- / duce machinery. The workers had begun organizing / into their own union, El Nogal (the pecan tree), to / protest low wages and poor working conditions. / When wages were reduced to 3 cents a pound, / thousands of workers walked out of 130 shops on / February 1, 1938, at the peak of the shelling season. / Despite intimidation and fierce police harrassment, / the strike lasted several months thanks to Tenayuca''s / empowering speeches, which earned her the title / "La Pasionaria," the passionate one. The strike was successful in awarding workers higher wages, but the / industry soon afterwards mechanized, diminishing / the need for almost all of the laborers. Tenayuca / continued organizing and later became one of the / first Mexican-Americans to earn a college degree, / graduating magna cum laude from San Francisco / State College. She later became a role model for / activists such as Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta".
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