Peons, prisons and probation [electronic resource] : the criminalization of the Mexican immigrant in Fresno County, 1880-1930

Between the years 1910 and 1930 Fresno County, situated in California's Central Valley, witnessed a tremendous upsurge in the number of Mexican immigrants seeking opportunity and employment in the rich agricultural zone enclosed by the Sierra Nevada and Coastal mountain ranges. Fresno attracted a great number of Mexicans during the years of the Mexican Revolution, and experienced the greatest percentage increase of Mexicans per capita than any other California county in the same period. Although farmers throughout the county welcomed them for their cheap labor, they were otherwise perceived as a problem by a White culture predicated on a racial hierarchy. Indeed, once Mexican immigrants stepped away from fields and out of the role as workers they became a nuisance and even a menace—a menace unfit for citizenship, and rather incarceration. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, southern Whites trekked into the Fresno area to make a new home, establishing a "new south." Beginning in the late 1860s migration from the southern states into Fresno County continued well into the early twentieth century. These southern migrants were essential in creating a culture in early Fresno founded on notions of White superiority. They built and worked the land where only deserts and swamps once thrived; they harnessed the waters of the mountains and created a veritable agricultural paradise—a White paradise with defined niches and little room for what they perceived as lesser, darker races. In the dynamics of power in Fresno County the ability to inflict legal punishment was wholly vested in the hands of White gatekeepers. Unlike other immigrant destinations in California such as Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego and the Monterey area, Fresno County did not have a substantial Spanish and Mexican past. Before the advent of irrigation in the late nineteenth century there was no reason to settle the Central desert region. Fresno was not founded on the site of a Mexican town with the typical Spanish plaza centered between the main church and municipal buildings. This meant that Mexican immigrants that came into the County in the early twentieth century came into an area that was totally foreign -- they came as strangers into an alien land. Without a local history to reference, the vast majority lacking education, and without the support of Californios to at least engage with the anti-Mexican discourse of the day, Mexicans lacked the power to combat their demonization and harsh treatment by the Fresno County justice system. This dissertation is concerned with the Mexican immigrant at the periphery of society who, for various reasons, committed a crime and was dealt with by an early twentieth-century justice system in Fresno, California. Of particular interests are how Mexicans were treated by the criminal court and how their sentences compare with similar cases involving Whites. Over seven hundred criminal court cases from the Fresno Superior Court archives provide the foundation for this examination.

Keywords: History.
Advisor: Camarillo Albert primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Frank Zephyr L.
Hobbs Allyson Vanessa advisor. Thesis advisor