For decades in the Salinas Valley, the short-handle hoe, known as “El Cortito,” was used for weeding and thinning rows of crops that kept farmworkers stooped over for long hours each day. Workers were only able to stand and stretch when they reached the end of a row, finishing each workday with stressed and strained spines. Over many years, the stoop labor was not only physically debilitating, often resulting in permanent back injuries, but also reflected a systemic disregard for the health of our farmworkers.
On June 10, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors will be commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the landmark legal case that ended the use of El Cortito and improved the health and safety of so many farmworkers across California. It remains a powerful reminder of what happens when farmworkers, lawyers and local leaders unite to challenge adverse working conditions that have dire health consequences. We also hope it empowers the next generation of Californians to recognize that they too have the power to change the course of history and confront injustice.
The short-handle hoe, known as “El Cortito,” was used for weeding and thinning rows of crops that kept farmworkers stooped over for long hours each day. (Courtesy of Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries)The workers referred to El Cortito as “the devil’s arm” in Spanish and its use was not about efficiency or productivity. It was about control. Keeping workers stooped meant keeping them under constant supervision, a silent assertion of dominance embedded in the fields.
For years, farmworkers protested its use. But their cries went ignored. But in 1969, a group of agricultural workers in Soledad, including Sebastian Carmona, complained to a young attorney named Maurice “Mo” Jourdane of the California Rural Legal Assistance office in Salinas. They wanted justice. Labor leader Cesar Chavez, who attributed his own chronic back pain to the tool, also urged Jourdane to take the case.
At first, Jourdane was skeptical about whether the courts would outlaw the tool whose widespread use dated to the Depression Era. It was not until legal assistance office community worker and former farmworker Hector De La Rosa challenged Jourdane to attempt working with the tool for a single day. After just a couple of hours, Jourdane felt sharp excruciating pain down his spine and his shoulder became numb from the challenging, repetitive movement. What had once been a legal question became a moral obligation.
With Salinas CRLA’s Director Marty Glick, Jourdane would begin a six-year legal fight. Their first step was to petition the California Industrial Safety Board. Eleven physicians testified that the tool aged workers’ bodies prematurely: Men in their 30s and 40s resembled 70-year-olds with advanced arthritis. But in 1973, the Gov. Ronald Reagan-appointed board rejected their petition writing, “…the hoe is not an unsafe hand tool and the cost in discarding hundreds of thousands of hoes outweighs the harm resulting from their use.”
Undeterred, CRLA took the fight to the California Supreme Court with a writ challenging the adverse administrative agency decision. They had to not only prove El Cortito was an unsafe hand tool, but that there were viable alternatives, such as using a long handle instead. Sebastian Carmona became the lead plaintiff and was joined by other courageous Salinas Valley farmworkers.
The legal battle to outlaw the use of El Cortito finally came to an end on April 7, 1975, after the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of CRLA and the farmworkers, stating that the Industrial Safety Board had given “an unduly narrow interpretation” of state regulations. The board subsequently issued a new Administrative Interpretation Number 62 stating “the use of the short handle hoe shall be deemed a violation of safety order Section 8 CAC 3316.” A newly inaugurated Gov. Jerry Brown had just assumed office in January 1975 and the board recognized the political climate had just shifted significantly in Sacramento.
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Reflecting on the case, Glick said, “We just told their story to the court. When people are suffering as much as the workers have been with the short hoe, you don’t need much law to have a court of honest men, like our Supreme Court, to say ‘we will not permit the injustice to continue.’ All it took was a little persistence on our part to get someone to listen to what the farmworkers were saying.”
Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez is a historian and works in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University. Luis Alejo is a former state Assemblymember and serves as a Monterey County supervisor, representing Salinas.
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