Workers: Maria Moreno

Maria Moreno (1920-1989) was a farmworker and labor union activist during the Farmworkers' Movement of the 1960s. She is the first woman to be hired as a union organizer. During her time with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, Maria led strikes and fought for workers’ rights. 

Further Reading:

• You already know Cesar Chavez. What about Maria Moreno?
• SO SHALL YE REAP 
• Meet Maria Moreno: The First Farm Worker Woman in America To Be Hired As A Union Organizer
• Adios Amor: The Search for Maria Moreno

This month we’re talking about workers: Women who fought for labor rights and shaped the way we do business today. They advocated and innovated to make the “office” – wherever it is – a more equitable place.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones, Abbey Delk, Hannah Bottum, Lauren Willams, and Adrien Behn. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. Original theme music composed by Miles Moran.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
is Wamanica. This month we're talking about workers, women who
fought for labor rights and shaped the wavy to business today.
They advocated and innovated to make the office wherever it is,
a more equitable place. One day, a filmmaker was in
San Rafael, California, doing research for a new project focused

(00:25):
on the farm workers movement leader Cesar Chavez. But as
she searched through the archive, she came across a set
of photographs of a different movement leader who had been
lost to history. The woman she saw in the pictures
was the first woman farm worker to be hired as
a union representative. She helped lay the early groundwork of

(00:45):
the movement in the nineteen sixties. Today we're talking about
Maria Morano. Maria Moreno was born in nineteen twenty in Texas.
Her mother was Mescalero Apache and her father was a
preacher and an orphan of the Mexican Revolution. By nineteen forty,
Maria had started a family. Her family left Texas during

(01:08):
the dust Bowl Migration, one of the largest migrations in
American history. Hundreds of thousands of farm workers like Maria
were displaced and sought a new home in California. After
arriving in the San Joaquin Valley, Maria settled with her
husband and twelve children in a fifteen foot shack. They
would wake up in the early morning and make their

(01:30):
way to the fields to work. Sometimes they would follow
the harvest as far as Colorado and Utah. In nineteen
fifty eight, Maria and her family were living into Larry
County when a devastating flood occurred. It destroyed farms and
left hundreds of farm workers without a job or home.
To make matters worse, farm workers weren't eligible for food assistants.

(01:55):
Maria's family didn't have enough food. Her nineteen year old
son sacrificed his poor for his younger siblings. It got
so bad that he lost his site for three days
and ended up hospitalized. Determined to speak out, Maria turned
to her testimony as a tool of protest. The Fresno
b published an article about Maria and her family's arduous circumstances.

(02:20):
Her story gained momentum and drove the county to change
its food assistant policy to include farm workers. It was
this story that caught the eye of the director of
the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee or a WALK. The group
was in its early days and hired her to be
a union organizer. Maria was one of the first people hired,

(02:41):
and she was also the first female farm worker to
be a union organizer. When Maria started the job, farm
workers didn't have many of the rights workers and other
industries did, minimum wage, social security, unemployment benefits, and even
child labor regulations. He needed collective organizing. When it was

(03:02):
time to lead a strike, Maria would get in the
car with her husband and he would drive her all
around the state. At the same time, there was another
new leader fighting for farm workers' rights in California. His
name was Ceesar Chavez. Seesar was one of the founders
of a different union, the National farm Workers Association, But

(03:23):
Ceesar and Maria had very different stances on immigrant workers.
Some farm workers, including Ceesar Chavez in his union, advocated
for closing the borders. In certain cases. They would even
call border control on migrants. They saw this as an
effort to protect their jobs. On the other hand, in

(03:44):
nineteen sixty one, Maria represented AYWALK at a labor union conference.
In her speech, she called the members of AWOK Transnational
at the time a radical position, but one grounded in truth.
Awok's members came from diverse backgrounds. It was an organization
composed primarily of Filipino migrant farm workers, but also included

(04:06):
ok Arqui, Black, and Mexican American members. In her own time,
Maria's organizing style wasn't seen as assertive or bold, but
rather brash. In nineteen sixty two, Ceesar Chavez wrote a
letter in which she dismissed Maria's quote big mouth. Eventually,

(04:27):
tension between Maria and awok's parent organization, along with other
movement leaders, grew to be too much. By the time
the AWALK led the now renowned Delano Grape labor strike
of nineteen sixty five, Maria had left the organization. Over
the years, Ceesar Chavez became the public face of the
farm worker's movement. This, in turn pushed other organizers, specifically

(04:50):
women like Maria, to the background of the movement's history.
Maria eventually moved to Arizona, where she found a new
passion as a Pentecostal minister. In nineteen eighty nine, Maria
died from breast cancer. In recent years, Maria's story has resurfaced.
The filmmaker took the images and audio recordings she found

(05:11):
in the archives and tracked down the details of Maria's story.
The result was a documentary called Adios Amor All month,
We're Talking about Workers. For more information, find us on
Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast special thanks to Liz Kaplan,
my favorite sister and co creator. Talk to you tomorrow.