Congreso Del Pueblo De Habla Española

CONGRESO DEL PUEBLO DE HABLA ESPAÑOLA. The exact details of the origins of El Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española (the Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples) are obscure, but the initial and main organizer was Luisa Moreno. Born in Guatemala, Moreno emigrated first to Mexico and then to the United States in 1928. Moreno was educated in the United States and graduated from the College of the Holy Names in Oakland, California. In a 1976 interview with Albert Camarillo, Moreno noted that she had worked as a seamstress in a New York City garment factory near Spanish Harlem. Sweatshop conditions plus association with leftist Latino workers led to her radicalization. Moreno first worked as an organizer for the Needles Trades Workers Industrial Union in the early 1930s and then with the American Federation of Labor organizing Florida cigar workers. Moreno joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1937. She helped organize striking Mexican pecan shellers in San Antonio as an organizer for the militant United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America. Living and working with Spanish-speaking people, Moreno recognized the need for a mass organization of the Spanish-speaking in the United States.

In 1938 Moreno traveled throughout the Southwest as well as to other parts of the country organizing Committees for a National Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples (Comités en Pro del Congreso). She received support from a variety of sources: Mexican-American community groups, CIO unions, and progressive whites. The founding national convention of El Congreso took place in Los Angeles on 28–30 April 1939 with an estimated fifteen hundred people in attendance. While the exact role of the Communist Party in the establishment of El Congreso is not clear, the congress largely reflected a Popular Front strategy linking radical and liberal elements in the Mexican communities on a range of issues affecting Mexicans in the United States. It stressed the unity between Mexican American workers and Mexican immigrant workers. Besides their common working-class roots, Mexicans were further united by history, culture, and oppressed conditions. Instead of regarding Mexicans in the Southwest as constituting a nation, El Congreso viewed Mexicans as a national minority that possessed inextricable ties with the rest of the American working class.

Between 1939 and the commencement of World War II, El Congreso engaged in a number of activities, principally in the greater Los Angeles area, aimed at protecting the rights of the Spanish-speaking as well as providing effective organization. These included relief assistance; protesting anti-alien legislation, police abuse, and the lack of low-cost housing; education; youth activities; the right to unionization; the rights of women; the neutrality movement; and wartime employment for Mexicans.
During its existence, El Congreso was led by its executive secretary, Josefina Fierro de Bright. Born in 1920 in Calexico, California, Fierro became the main organizer and fundraiser for El Congreso at age eighteen. Her mother had been a follower of Ricardo Flóres Magón, who represented the anarcho-syndicalist faction of the Mexican revolution. Politicized by her mother, Fierro later married the Hollywood screenwriter John Bright, who, according to Nancy Lynn Schwartz in The Hollywood Writers’ Wars, was an early member of the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party.

Although portrayed as a national organization, El Congreso consisted primarily of the California organization headquartered in Los Angeles. At least twelve branches of El Congreso functioned. These included branches in Central Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, Watts, Lincoln Heights, San Pedro, San Fernando, Wilmington, and Anaheim. Additional branches operated in Sacramento, Shafter, San Francisco, and San Diego. It is difficult to determine the exact number of members affiliated with each branch; however, one branch reported a membership of two hundred in 1940.

El Congreso’s shift from workers’ struggles to wartime unity led to its demise. Militant reformism during the war, it was believed by Popular Front groups, would only play into the fascists’ hands. By the middle of 1942, El Congreso effectively ceased to function. Still, activists such as Fierro did not remain silent when particular cases of social discrimination surfaced. Fierro helped organize the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee in 1942 to defend several young Mexican Americans who were unjustly accused of murder. During the “zoot-suit riots” in Los Angeles the following year, Fierro personally flew to Washington to appeal to Vice President Henry Wallace to help put a stop to the attacks started by servicemen against young Mexican Americans.

Following World War II and the commencement of McCarthyism, El Congreso leaders such as Moreno and Fierro suffered political harassment and persecution. Luisa Moreno exiled herself to Mexico. Josefina Fierro de Bright, who had never become a U.S. citizen, left the United States for Mexico because she did not want to remain, face arrest, and possibly incriminate friends if subpoenaed.

Camarillo, Albert. Chicanos in California: A History of Mexican Americans in California. San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser, 1984.

Garcia, Mario T. Mexican Americans: Leadership Ideology, and Identity, 1930–1960. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989.

Larralde, Carlos M. “El Congreso in San Diego: An Endeavor for Civil Rights, Journal of San Diego History, Vol. 5, #1https://sandiegohistory.org/journal/v50-1/el_congreso.pdf

Lewthwaite, Stephanie. Race, Place, and Reform in Mexican Los Angeles. United States: The University of Arizona. 2009.

Ruiz, Vicki L. Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.

Oral history interviews with Luisa Moreno and Josefina Fierro de Bright are in the private possession of Albert Camarillo, Mario T. Garcia, and Vicki L. Ruiz.