IN HONOR OF INTERNATIONAL WOMANS MONTH…some REAL TEXAS CHICANA HERSTORY: Emma Tenayuca (December 21, 1916 – July 23, 1999) was a Mexican American labor leader, union organizer and educator. She grew up in a family of eleven and began living with her grandparents at an early age in order to ease the burden on the rest of her family. Emma Tenayuca was born into a Tejana/o family whose residence in South Texas predated both Mexican independence and the Mexico-U.S. War. Emma and her family were hit hard by the Depression, and all around her Emma Tenayuca began opening her eyes to see the suffering of low class workers. She became interested in activism and was a labor activist even before graduating from Brackenridge High School in San Antonio. Tenayuca’s first arrest came at the age of 16, in 1933, when she joined a picket line of workers in strike against the Finck Cigar Company. Organizing large scale strikes against the injustices in the labor sphere was also one of Tenayuca’s vocations. Tenayuca was instrumental in one of the most famous conflicts of Texas labor history–the 1938 Pecan Shellers Strike at the Southern Pecan Shelling Company. During the strike, thousands of workers at over 130 plants protested a wage reduction of one cent per pound of shelled pecans. Mexicana and Chicana workers who picketed were gassed, arrested, and jailed. The strike ended after thirty-seven days when the citys pecan operators agreed to arbitration. In October that year, the National Labor Relations Act raised wages to twenty-five cents an hour. Another source of Tenayucas first-hand knowledge of the struggles of working people came from visits as a young child to the Plaza del Zacate, a place where socialists and anarchists would come to speak and work with families with grievances. Because it advocated her passion for minority rights, Tenayuca joined the Communist Party in 1936. In 1938 she married organizer Homer Brooks. Then, less than a year later, she was scheduled to speak at a small Communist Party meeting at the Municipal Auditorium permitted by San Antonio Mayor Maury Maverick. A crowd of 5,000 attacked the auditorium with bricks and rocks, huntin Communists. Police helped Tenayuca escape from the mob, but she was blacklisted and forced to move out of San Antonio. Eventually, Tenayuca went on to pursue a college degree. She divorced Homer and left her hometown in order to attend San Francisco State College where she majored in Education. She later earned a master’s in education from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. From there Emma went on to teach in Harlandale School District until her retirement in 1982. Shortly after retirement Emma Tenayuca developed Alzheimers disease and died on July 23, 1999.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 15:08:44 +0000
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