The history of Hispanic sugar beet laborers in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Northern Colorado, and Fort Collins expresses themes of labor exploitation, racialized economies, and intersections of politics and community development. Spatial dynamics related to these elements shaped the experiences and legacies of the Hispanic population.

Early twentieth-century forces shaped the migration of Hispanic laborer’s northward and their employment within the U.S. sugar beet industry. Previously, the flow northward following the annexation of Texas in 1845 amounted to little more than a trickle, and there was a more significant migration trend of Mexican citizens leaving the newly annexed territories to resettle within Mexico proper. In the wake of the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920, the flow of war refugees and political exiles escaping into the United States increased. These migrants also left rural areas for urban areas while searching for both stability and employment. While much of United States immigration policy limited immigration at this time, Mexico was considered exempt from the quotas enacted through the Immigration Act of 1924. Farmers in the American Southwest found Mexican migrants vital to the sowing and harvesting of crops, and this exemption facilitated the labor recruitment of Mexicans as temporary workers (Steinhauer 2015).

The Hispanic workers, especially those working in the sugar beet fields, often experienced wage discrimination and poor conditions. The contracts the Hispanics signed often led to their economic dependency on the sugar beet companies. In Northern Colorado, for example, this manifested through the agreements Great Western Sugar Company made with its laborers. The exploitation in relationships like these drove labor disputes and gradually shifted circumstances to include unionization and better labor laws (Norris 2009).

Over time, organizations like the League of United Latin American Citizens emerged to preserve the labor and political rights of the Hispanics. This specific organization, better known by its acronym LULAC, became instrumental after its founding in 1929. The group won major legal victories, such as in the 1954 Hernandez v. Texas case. The decision on this case recognized the right of Mexican-Americans to serve on juries, continuing to push back on “separate but equal” doctrines leveraged against people of color (Norris 2009). Despite the challenges that the Hispanic workers endured, they found economic support in mutual aid societies, which helped to provide community members things like insurance and property acquisition. Hispanic communities achieved local economic development in part due to these collaborations (Cole 2002).

The circumstances of Hispanic and Mexican laborers and their communities in the American Southwest fluctuated throughout the twentieth century, often in tandem with federal policies that interacted with their legal status. For example, the Bracero Program established in 1942 permitted Mexican nationals temporary work with limited rights in the United States (Norris 2009). The workers earned low wages while the employers saw incentives to hire undocumented Mexicans for even lower wages. Furthermore, this allowed employers to circumvent the bureaucratic processes related to legal immigration. A vocal portion of the American public cried out against the influx of undocumented workers and against the corruption of grower employers. The federal Operation Wetback emerged from these tensions in 1954 and deported between 300,000 to over a million persons (Funderburk 2016).

Enduring attitudes of racial segregation often forced Hispanics to reside in specific areas, sometimes called colonias or barrios. This occurred in Fort Collins with a group of neighborhoods that would become known as the Tres Colonias, composed of Andersonville, Buckingham, and Alta Vista. The spatial segregation often limited Hispanic workers to substandard housing and controlled both their mobility and integration. Reports in 1918 issues of The Salt Lake Tribune, for example, noted that the region’s barrios lacked plumbing and stoves (“Sugar Beets and Sheep”).

Hispanic workers met with several social and cultural barriers related to racial discrimination and white supremacy. They often face pressures to assimilate and were treated as second-class citizens similar to Black folk and Jim Crow. The communal identity of Hispanics did strengthen due to their experiences with racial discrimination, but these social circumstances also required that they constantly negotiate the preservation of their culture and assimilation into the United States (Pérez, “Sugar Beet Industry”).

Women played integral roles in the formation and maintenance of Hispanic communities in the American Southwest. They often participated in the labor force as well as family and cultural structures. However, they often faced unique challenges of their own. On top of working the fields, these Hispanic women often remained responsible for cooking and cleaning at home, what some scholars refer to as the “double day”. Children also participated in the planting and harvesting, which meant they were often pulled out of school. Entire families, not just men, engaged in the stoop labor of hoeing, thinning, weeding, and harvesting, including with the use of tools like the short-handled hoe and a curved knife (Wishart, “Betabeleros”).

As agriculture became increasingly mechanized in the 1950s, Hispanic workers sought and found steadier, better-paying jobs, including those related to the railroad and packing plants. Some worked to improve the educational opportunities available to Hispanic children and to improve other aspects of their community. Early on, for example, the 1929 Comision Honorifica Mexicana supported Hispanics in need by organizing social and cultural events. During the 1960s, this association further advocated for jobs and education, and in 1971, the Migrant Council began aiding families in relation to health, education, and labor (Wishar, “Betabeleros”).

Today, beet growers and other agricultural industries still rely on some hand labor. Mexican-Americans from Texas still work the beets seasonally in Yellowstone Valley. The migrants follow routes that also allow them to find work harvesting apples, onions, and beans (Wishart, “Betabeleros”). Despite providing the bulk of agricultural labor, migrant workers like the Hispanics often remain marginalized in historical narratives. In Colorado, for example, they were significantly responsible for the prosperity of the sugar beet industry and other, labor-intensive sectors of agricultural industries (Pérez, “Sugar Beet Industry”).