Noticias de oportunidad del VML/Opportunity News

Noticias de oportunidad del VML, or Opportunity News, was a newspaper of the Valley Migrant League (VML), published from 1965-1968. The VML was a non-profit organization, largely funded by federal anti-proverty programs, headquartered in Woodburn, Oregon. From 1965 to 1974, the VML focused on improving the labor and living conditions of Hispanic farm workers who labored in Willamette Valley fields. 

The edition featured here documents the Portland visit by the labor activist Cesar Chavez in 1967. Chavez had been part of a years-long struggle with California's growers over the rights of migrant workers, an effort that included labor strikes and boycotts by thousands of people. He had come to Oregon to accept the PIC Action Award from the Presbyterian General Assembly Interracial Council, and he met with workers to advise them on how to unionize.

The conversation documented here, in both English and Spanish, indicates the obstacles workers faced in their efforts to reform migrant working conditions. "Is it possible," said one worker, "For a small insignificant group to organize the people to form a union?" "It is not impossible," said Chavez, "The beginning is to establish the practical basics, such as a place to meet and means of finance. A strike must be well planned. It is an economic endeavor. It cannot be made of ideals only, there must be practical planning or it will fail."

Today, there are a number of farm worker organizations that grew out of the strikes and boycotts of the 1960s, including Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) in Oregon.

Written by Amy E. Platt, 2014

Further Reading

Stephen, Lynn. "The Story of PCUN and the Farmworker Movement in Oregon." Eugene: University of Oregon, 2012. http://cllas.uoregon.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/PCUN_story_WEB.pdf

Gonzales-Berry, Erlinda V. and Marcela Mendoza. Mexicanos in Oregon: Their Stories, Their Lives. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2010.

Garcia, Jerry, and Gilberto Garcia, eds. Memory, Community, and Activism: Mexican Migration and Labor in the Pacific Northwest. East Lansing, MI: Julian Samora Research Institute and Michigan State University, 2005.

Gamboa, Erasmo and Carolyn M. Baun, eds. Nosotros: The Hispanic People of Oregon. Portland, Ore.: The Oregon Council for the Humanities, 1995.