Cortaro Farms

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search
English: Cortaro Farms was an industrialized farming area in Pinal County north of Tucson, Arizona. Dorthea Lange photographed farm operations in November 1940.

Pinal County, Arizona

[edit]

Pickers

[edit]

Migratory cotton pickers on Cortaro Farms.

This Mexican cotton picker, a day-worker, is hauled daily from Tucson to the Cortaro Farms by truck during cotton harvest.

Yaqui Indian cotton picker. Some are employed on this ranch the year round, especially for irrigating, at $.20 per hour. When irrigating they work 12-hour shift. The superintendent says that they are not good with machinery but that "the Yaqui is an artist with the shovel".

Housing

[edit]

African American

[edit]

Quarters for Negro cotton pickers on industrialized cotton farm.

Caucasian

[edit]

Quarters for white cotton pickers on industrialized cotton farm.

Yaqui

[edit]

Yaqui Indian "Jacal". On highly industrialized corporation farm these Yaquis live -- by their own request -- in the dwellings of their ancestors, native to the desert. Huts are made of mud, cactus ribs, and mesquite timbers.

Transportation

[edit]

Harvesting

[edit]

Bringing the cotton in from the field

[edit]

Cotton pickers with full sacks make their way through the field to the weighmaster at the cotton wagon. Wages $.75 per 100 pounds.

Weighing the cotton

[edit]

Weighing cotton at the truck. Cotton pickers weigh, haul, and dump their sacks at the cotton wagon on large-scale industrialized farm.

Weighmaster is a year-round employee paid $60. per month.