Labor historian Carl R. Weinberg argues that the Cold War was fought at a cultural level, films being one weapon to influence American perspectives on matters of class and labor, gender, and race.[1] He considers scenes from Salt of the Earth, the 1954 picture in which the wives of striking Mexican American workers ensure a victory over a zinc mining company by taking over the picket line, that evidence a push against hierarchical gender relations, racial prejudice, and corporate-state power over unions and workers.[2] Cultural and literary scholar Benjamin Balthaser takes the same film and explores the scenes left on the cutting room floor, positing that the filmmakers desired a stronger assault against U.S. imperialism, anti-communism at home and abroad (such as McCarthyism and the Korean War), and white/gender supremacy, while the strikers on which the film was based, despite their sympathetic views and militancy, felt such commentary would hurt their labor and civil rights organizing — or even bring retribution.[3] Balthaser sees a restrained version born of competing interests, and Weinberg, without exploring the causes, notices the same effect: there is nearly no “mention of the broader political context,” little commentary on communism or America’s anti-communist policies.[4] It is a bit odd to argue Salt of the Earth was a cultural battleground of the Cold War that had little to say of communism, but Weinberg falls roughly on the same page as Balthaser: the film boldly takes a stand for racial and gender equality, and of course union and workers’ rights, but avoids the larger ideological battle, capitalism versus communism. They are correct: this is largely a liberal, not a leftist, film.
This does not mean communist sympathies made no appearance, of course: surviving the editing bay was a scene that introduced the character of Frank Barnes of “the International” (the Communist International), who strongly supported the strike and expressed a willingness to learn more of Mexican and Mexican American culture.[5] Later, “Reds” are blamed for causing the strike.[6] And as Weinberg notes, the Taft-Hartley Act, legislation laced with anti-communist clauses, is what forces the men to stop picketing.[7] Yet all this is as close as Salt comes to connecting labor, racial, and women’s struggles with a better world, how greater rights and freedom could create communism or vice versa. As Balthasar argues, the original script attempted to draw a stronger connection between this local event and actual/potential political-economic systems.[8] The final film positions communists as supporters of positive social changes for women, workers, and people of color, but at best only implies that patriarchy, workplace misery or class exploitation, and racism were toxins inherent to the capitalist system of which the United States was a part and only communism could address. And, it might be noted, the case for such an implication is slightly weaker for patriarchy and racism, as the aforementioned terms such as “Reds” only arise in conversations centered on the strike and the men’s relationships to it.
True, Salt of the Earth is a direct attack on power structures. Women, living in a company town with poor conditions like a lack of hot water, want to picket even before the men decide to strike; they break an “unwritten rule” by joining the men’s picket line; they demand “equality”; they mock men; they demand to take over the picket line when the men are forced out, battling police and spending time in jail.[9] Esperanza Quintero, the film’s protagonist and narrator, at first more dour, sparkles to life the more she ignores her husband Ramon’s demands and involves herself in the huelga.[10] By the end women’s power at the picket line has transferred to the home: the “old way” is gone, Esperanza tells Ramon when he raises a hand to strike her.[11] “Have you learned nothing from the strike?” she asks. Likewise, racist company men (“They’re like children”) and police (“That’s no way to talk to a white man”) are the villains, as is the mining company that forces workers to labor alone, resulting in their deaths, and offers miserable, discriminatory pay.[12] These struggles are often connected (intersectionality): when Esperanza denounces the “old way,” she compares being put in her place to the “Anglos” putting “dirty Mexicans” in theirs.[13] However, it could be that better working conditions, women’s rights, and racial justice can, as the happy ending suggests, be accomplished without communism. Without directly linking progress to the dismantling of capitalism, the film isolates itself from the wider Cold War debate.
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[1] Carl R. Weinberg, “‘Salt of the Earth’: Labor, Film, and the Cold War,” Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 24, no. 4 (October 2010): 42.
[2] Ibid., 42-44.
[3] Benjamin Balthaser, “Cold War Re-Visions: Representation and Resistance in the Unseen Salt of the Earth,” American Quarterly 60, no. 2 (June 2008): 349.
[4] Weinberg, “Salt,” 43.
[5] Salt of the Earth, directed by Herbert Biberman (1954; Independent Productions Corporation).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Balthaser, “Cold War,” 350-351. “[The cut scenes] connect the particular and local struggle of the Mexican American mine workers of Local 890 to the larger state, civic, and corporate apparatus of the international cold war; and they link the cold war to a longer U.S. history of imperial conquest, racism, and industrial violence. Together these omissions construct a map of cold war social relations…”
[9] Salt of the Earth, Biberman.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
Griffin 