The Strikers of Coachella

“Paiz does a masterful job weaving the UFW’s history with workers’ experiences. … A nuanced and incredibly well-researched volume.”–Power at Work“The Strikers of Coachella provides a deeply informed and nuanced account of the struggles of different groups of farmworkers in their interactions within and against each other in countering the power of ranchers and state organs as they sought to improve their employment rights and sense of dignity… . It constitutes a premier example of grassroots-based research with its focus on the actions of rank-and-file members of the UFW. It is a major contribution to industrial relations and union scholarship.”–British Journal of Industrial Relations“A welcome intervention [that] offers some guidance as to how we will narrate this history… . Among its many strengths, The Strikers of Coachella offers impressive and comprehensive footnotes that reveal the variety of evidence Paiz utilizes across the book’s ten chapters. The beautiful prose offers thoughtful language for describing the significance of ordinary people’s freedom dreams manifested by their joining the movement. Their voices are clear and present throughout the book.”–Aztlán“Focused on California’s Coachella Valley, Christian O. Paiz offers us a remarkable analysis of the UFW movement that centers the union’s grassroots and eschews unnecessary binaries of union victory or defeat. The work is a welcome change from the recent emphasis on the UFW’s failed leadership.”–North American Congress on Latin America“Paiz skillfully analyzes class, ethnicity, and gender tensions in both movements. He fearlessly dives into the conflicts within the social movement and disrupts the narrative that movements are a linear process.”–Perspectives“The book is based on oral history interviews and pays special attention to Filipino farmworkers, who played an integral role in the union but were frequently marginalized by union leaders and often treated as historical footnotes. Paiz doesn’t shy away from the messiness of social movements; indeed, a central theme of his book is that messiness and ambiguity is inseparable from social movements and that romantic narratives tend to obscure as much as they reveal.”–Western Historical Quarterly“The value of this book is that it gives voice to those workers often minimalized in our more recent narratives… . The author is to be commended for this contribution to the field.”–Journal of Arizona History“A powerful work, instructive for any reader interested in labor history, rural history, or the history of social movements and easily assignable in part for undergraduates.”–Southwestern Historical Quarterly“An empathetic, well-researched, and highly readable study … [A] must-read for scholars of labor, activism, and farmworker histories.”-H-Environment“Paiz goes beyond the familiar names of Chavez and Huerta to challenge how scholars and the general public approach the United Farm Workers as a historical subject… . By focusing on these workers, Strikers of Coachella not only tells the story of the UFW from below; the book also argues that the contributions of these rank-and-file members drove the success of the union.”–The Nation

Christian O. Paiz is assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley.