The Tale of 'The Passionate One,' Emma Zepeda Tenayuca

Brilliant and pioneering Latina labor organizer; relentless fighter for Mexican Americans' civil, social and economic rights; fiery Tejano orator and educator (1916-1999)

Once upon a time, in San Antonio, Texas, a city named for Saint
Anthony of Padua, a Portuguese priest canonized for his heartfelt preaching and devotion to the poor and the sick, a woman named Benita Hernandez Zepeda gave birth to a daughter named Emma. Benita traced her roots to Spanish colonizers who owned land in East Texas; her husband, Sam Castro Tenayuca, traced his family’s roots to indigenous people in the region. After Emma, ten more children followed. Benita and Sam struggled to support their children. To reduce the strain, they sent Emma to live with her maternal grandparents in San Antonio’s West Side.

At that time, San Antonio’s West Side was an extremely impoverished barrio (or “neighborhood,” in Spanish) in which mostly Tejanos (i.e., Mexican Americans granted citizenship under the 1848 Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo) and ethnic Mexicans who had more recently migrated to Texas, lived. In San Antonio, as in so many other U.S. cities, employment and wage discrimination, racial prejudice, and Jim Crow laws targeting not just Black and African Americans, but also Mexican Americans, ethnic Mexicans and other Latinos, kept them segregated from whites, and in impoverished neighborhoods, or slums, such as the one in which Emma ‘s grandparents lived.

In the West Side barrio, Tejanos and the more recent Mexican migrants lived in overcrowded, substandard housing with little or no sanitation and no electricity. Families contracted high rates of tuberculosis and other diseases and experienced very high infant mortality rates. They suffered from poverty, many hardships, and hunger. Despite these hardships, Emma’s grandparents were resilient and optimistic about the future. In the care of her grandparents, Emma thrived.

Emma’s grandfather communicated to her early on his fervid interest in politics impacting Mexicans on both sides of the Texas/Mexican border, and his belief that organized political action could make things better for all in their community. Emma absorbed information about politics, world events and social justice like a sponge. As a small child, Emma sat in her grandfather’s lap, reading the news from both English and Spanish language newspapers, while he did, including those printed by Magonistas, political exiles who wanted to overthrow Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz.

From these, Emma learned of the extreme conditions of poverty and unfair treatment under which Mexican workers had suffered, and how, under Díaz's regime, dissent and resistance had been suppressed. After 3 1/2 decades of Díaz’s wielding power in violation of the Mexican Constitution of 1857, in 1910, oppressed workers and others suffering under Díaz’s rule decided they had had enough. And so, the violent Mexican Revolution began. It continued at least ten years until Díaz’s dictatorship ended and Mexico became a constitutional republic in 1920; however, as the new government consolidated its power, the violence persisted for many years after that.

Emma’s family taught her to be not only politically knowledgeable but also actively engaged. Since she was six, her parents brought her to political rallies. Once she began living with her grandparents, her grandfather regularly brought her to San Antonio’s Plaza del Zacate, which was then a gathering spot in what is now known as Milam Park where Mexican Americans came to share news and discuss politics, as well as issues related to labor and civil rights.

Shortly before Emma’s thirteenth birthday, the U.S. stock market crashed, touching off the Great Depression. Life for Emma’s family and other Tejanos, and for Mexicans who had more recently migrated to Texas, grew increasingly more desperate and difficult. Against the backdrop of the terrible economic conditions across the country, and increasing scarcity of agricultural jobs, unemployment greatly increased; also, poverty, hunger, and suffering deepened.

Amidst the misery, anti-Mexican sentiment grew. Members of the Ku Klux Klan and many white people in the community increasingly pressured San Antonio’s authorities to deport and punish the more recently arrived Mexicans and, along with them, Tejanos, despite their rights as Mexican American citizens being well established. Agents of the recently created U.S. Border Patrol were increasingly deployed against both the Tejanos and the more recently arrived Mexicans who had migrated to Texas. Observing the severely challenging economic, social and political conditions experienced by so many, Emma resolved to fight the injustices her family and community faced, and their suffering from extreme hunger and poverty, largely attributable to these injustices, with all she had.

Emma’s labor activism started at age sixteen. Reading about female workers who had recently struck against the H. W. Finck Cigar Company to protest deceptive pay practices and deplorable working conditions, Emma decided to join their picket line. As Emma picketed with the cigar workers, police came, attacked, and arrested the workers. They also arrested Emma. This would be the first of many times over the years that Emma would be arrested for her involvement in civil, social and labor rights protests and actions.

Rather than discouraging or scaring her, this first arrest, and the many arrests after that, served only to reinforce Emma’s resolve. In a 1987 interview for an article in The Texas Observer, Emma said:

I had a basic underlying faith in the American idea of freedom and fairness. I felt there was something that had to be done. But the idea of having women kicked. Now that was something I was going to do something about, and I went out on the picket line. That was the first time I was arrested. …

I was arrested a number of times, [but] I don’t think that I was exactly fearful. I never thought in terms of fear. I thought in terms of justice.

In high school, Emma excelled at academics and athletics. She was active in extra-curricular activities, including the investigator’s club, orchestra, the drama and debate clubs, and an after-school reading club, in which she read the works of Thomas Paine, Charles A. Beard, and Karl Marx. Her reading club also introduced her to literature from the “Wobblies,” members of the Industrial Workers of the World international labor union. This reading, along with the prior knowledge she learned at home, at political rallies, and in the Plaza del Zacate, helped Emma become, in her high school years and those that immediately followed, the remarkably astute, knowledgeable, and creative labor and civil rights leader, organizer and activist that she did.

A gifted orator, Emma particularly shone on her high school’s debate team. Emma’s oratory skill came to serve her well in her labor organizing and civil rights efforts, which she continued throughout high school and the next few years. They would earn Emma the nickname, “La Pasionaria” (in Spanish, ‘The Passionate One’).

While a high school senior, in 1934, Emma played an important role in the formation of two locals for the International Ladies’ Garment Worker Union (ILGWU) in San Antonio. After graduating, Emma attended local colleges and worked as a door-to-door salesperson, operated an elevator, and washed jars in a pickle factory. She also continued to organize the ILGWU locals, writing leaflets, visiting workers’ homes to offer encouragement, and leading the workers in various forms of protest, including marches, pickets and sit-ins. Emma soon became a familiar figure in every protest by Hispanic workers in the region. However, her work went beyond these activities. Emma’s compassion, intelligence, and strong bilingual skills came to be trusted by many in her community, who sought out her assistance on various everyday matters.

According to internationally acclaimed writer, poet, and University at Texas-San Antonio Professor Carmen Tafolla (herself, a native of San Antonio’s West Side barrio), Emma became her community’s voice. She also, Professor Tafolla explained, while delivering Emma’s eulogy in 1999, became the community’s heart:

“La Pasionaria, we called her, because she was our passion, because she was our heart – defendiendo a los pobres [in Spanish, 'defending the poor’], speaking out at a time when neither Mexicans nor women were expected to speak at all.”

While organizing the ILGWU locals, Emma frequently found herself at odds with their leadership, who, she believed, did not fully appreciate the needs of the Mexican American community. By the end of 1935, Emma left her work with the ILGWU and started with the West Side Unemployed Council, which later combined with other organizations to form the Workers Alliance of America (WAA). By 1937, Emma became the WAA’s general secretary representing thousands of unemployed and underemployed workers in San Antonio. In June 1937, after attending its national convention, Emma was elected to its national executive board.

Between 1935 and 1937, Emma increasingly garnered public attention as the leader of several very visible, highly coordinated actions to protest issues including the illegal deportation of Mexican American citizens by the U.S. Border Patrol; the abuse of Tejano and Mexican workers by local law enforcement; and the failure of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” Works Projects Administration (WPA) to provide fair and equal access to jobs and resources for Mexican Americans. Emma also lobbied San Antonio’s mayor Charles K. Quin to improve distribution of relief supplies; called for new minimum wage guidelines; and petitioned WPA officials to investigate discriminatory practices of the Texas Relief Commission and other local agencies.

In 1936, Emma traveled to Mexico City to meet with labor leaders and to study at the Workers’ University of Mexico, and returned with new ideas about labor union organizing modeled after the Confederación de Trabajadores de México. Upon returning to San Antonio, Emma worked with Mrs. W. H. Ernst, leader of the strike on the H. W. Finck Cigar Company, to organize the Confederation of Mexican and Mexican American Workers; and in 1937, helped form the National Workers Alliance (NWA). As the NWA’s general secretary and one of its leading activists, Emma fought for jobs; a minimum wage; the right to strike; and an end to abuse and violence of Tejanos and ethnic Mexicans at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol agents. Thanks to Emma’s passionate, hard work and that of other organizers, the NWA quickly grew to include ten chapters; and by 1938, at age 21, Emma was considered one of the WAA’s most effective organizers.

On January 31, 1938, about 12,000 pecan shellers, mostly Tejano and Mexican women, walked off the job after the Southern Pecan Shelling Company (SPSC) announced it was going to cut their wages by approximately 20%. The pecan shellers gathered at a local park and chanted, “Emma, Emma,” and elected Emma their official strike leader. These workers already labored twelve hours a day, seven days a week, at starvation wages and under unsafe conditions—in picking sheds without windows and bathrooms, with fine pecan dust in unventilated spaces that, workers feared, contributed to the high rates of tuberculosis from which so many in the community suffered. Now, they were told, they would have to get by on significantly less.

The workers knew they could not. With Emma as their leader, they had hope. Instead of going back to work after a few days, as the SPSC’s management expected, the workers continued to strike, and, with Emma’s help, began to organize. Emma helped the shellers organize under the International Pecan Shellers Union (IPCU) Local 172. They were soon joined by another 6,000 to 8,000 workers.

The strike grew to be the largest San Antonio had ever seen. The organization applied for a charter from the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), a national union affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Pecan production, then San Antonio’s biggest industry, ground to a halt.

Unsurprisingly, pecan producers, with city officials on their side and law enforcement at their disposal, fought back. San Antonio police attacked hundreds of protesters and picketers with ax handles and tear gas and hauled them off to jail on flimsy charges. Hundreds of strikers were arrested, Emma among them. However, the NWA, which Emma had helped form, fiercely and widely rallied the community’s support. The strike became a city-wide revolt by San Antonio’s poorest, most oppressed, and most vulnerable, and garnered much attention by local and national press.

In the midst of this extremely high stakes strike garnering national attention, union leaders worried about Emma’s political ties. The prior year, Emma had officially joined the Communist Party, and towards the end of that year, married the charismatic and highly visible Homer Brooks, Chairman of the Communist Party of Texas, who had once run for governor on the Communist Party ticket. In Emma’s day, many of the “radical” platforms which the Communist Party stood for, and for which Emma fought, are the very bedrock programs and protections we hold dear, today: Social Security; unemployment benefits; a minimum wage; a limited work day; equal access to education; and disability benefits, among them. Moreover, unlike so many other political organizations of her day, the Communist Party welcomed people of all races and of both sexes, and advocated for equality for all, core values in which Emma believed.

Nonetheless, in the 1930s, membership in the Communist Party was controversial. As the strike continued, the NWA’s leadership required Emma to step down from her official position as the strike’s leader. Emma agreed to officially renounce her title. However, she stayed on and for all practical purposes, continued to lead the strike just as she had before. Her name continued to appear in the national press, and she was arrested several times on invented charges. Tellingly, a February 28, 1938 TIME Magazine article called LABOR: La Pasionaria de Texas reported Emma as the true leader of the strike operating from behind the scenes.

Thirty-seven days into the strike, the pecan producers capitulated and agreed to arbitration. A few weeks later, the pecan shellers won a wage increase to seven or eight cents per pound, in accordance with the newly enacted Fair Labor Standards Act. While the pecan industry would, several years later, purchase new machines which eliminated the jobs of about 10,000 workers, the pecan shellers’ 1938 win about three months into the start of their strike was historic.

University of Texas historian Don Carleton called the pecan shellers’ strike of 1938, “the first successful rally in what became the Mexican-American social justice movement.”

The pecan workers’ success, and the national attention drawn to the health, discrimination, and economic issues impacting the city’s poorest and most vulnerable people, led to the creation of a fact-finding commission to study San Antonio’s population and problems. The commission concluded that discrimination against Latinos hurt the entire city and that political recognition of the population must take place. Although improvements did not occur quickly, or consistently, by the end of the 1930s, attitudes started changing towards San Antonio’s poorest citizens by the end of the 1930s.

However, Emma’s highly visible leadership, and the strike’s success, came with a price. Emma, a young Tejano women, had dared to lead a movement which directly opposed a powerful establishment of city leaders and pecan producers. And: she had won. As a Mexican American woman who dared to courageously use her voice, and use it effectively, she flouted every convention. She went against everything they stood for. They resolved to make her pay.

Emma decided to run for Congress on the Texas Communist Party ticket, and persuaded the newly elected mayor to allow use of San Antonio’s Municipal Auditorium for the party’s state convention. As the day of the planned event neared, city leaders and pecan producers used the press to whip the local San Antonio population into a frenzy. The press branded the gathering of approximately 150 activists seeking to hear Emma speak on subjects ranging from union rights, a minimum wage, Social Security, and racial equality as a “socialist plot.”

On August 25, 1939, the day of the convention, an angry mob of 5,000, fueled by anti-Mexican, anti-Communist, and anti-union hysteria, massed around and surrounded the city building. The mob started throwing rocks and bricks, then stormed through and past the police cordon, threatening to lynch Emma. It was one of San Antonio’s biggest, and worst, riots in its history. Emma and other state convention attendees barely escaped with their lives via a secret passageway, escorted by San Antonio police. Finding Emma gone, the mob vented their rage by ripping out auditorium seats, setting fires, and, together with the Ku Klux Klan, burned the city’s mayor in effigy for having defended Emma’s right to free speech.

While Emma’s life was saved that day, for many years, Emma received constant and serious death threats which forced her to change her name and to move out of San Antonio and the state of Texas for her safety. She was also, unbeknownst to her, blacklisted by the U.S. government. Her name appeared on U.S. enemies lists long after she divorced her husband in the 1940s and formally left the Communist Party, in 1946, after she became disillusioned with it after learning, first, of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939, and later, of atrocities committed by Joseph Stalin. A file maintained on Emma by the Federal Bureau of Investigations was thick.

For many years, Emma struggled with poverty and worked office and odd jobs to put herself through college. Over time, she earned her degree and a teacher certification from San Francisco State College. In 1952, she became a reading teacher and that year also gave birth to a son, Francisco Tenayuca Adams.

In 1968, Emma returned to San Antonio. When she did, she learned to her surprise, that in the intervening years, she had been re-discovered by a new generation of Chicana scholars, feminists, and by San Antonians and Texans who now lauded her as a folk heroine. In her hometown, Emma earned a master’s degree and taught bilingual education until her retirement in 1982.

Emma lived to see herself inducted into the San Antonio Women’s Hall of Fame in 1991. She died in 1999 at the age of 82. At her funeral, she received many honors.

Emma’s life has been celebrated in public murals, documentaries, corridos (ballads), biographical plays, and a bilingual children’s book. Very recently, she was also honored and remembered with a unique, immersive ofrenda (an altar or offering that set up to honor a deceased loved during Día de los Muerto, or “Day of the Dead”) at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

The South Texas Civil Rights Project also gives an annual award for outstanding civil rights accomplishments, named in Emma’s honor.

Photo #1: Emma Tenayuca standing inside jail, June, 1937. Photographed in San Antonio, Texas.

Photo # 2: Emma Tenayuca, greeted by her friends. Arriving back in San Antonio after visiting New York City for medical treatment and to attend a Communist Party school, June 7, 1939.

Credit for both: The San Antonio Light Collection, UT Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio. Link: houstonculture.org/hispanic/tenayuca.html