Tomás Villanueva (1941-2014) was a labor activist who spent decades advocating for the rights and welfare of farmworkers, especially Latino migrant workers. Villanueva was born in Monterrey in northern Mexico and immigrated to the United States with his family at age 13. The Villanueva family settled in Toppenish, Washington in 1958 after traveling across the US following farm work for a few years. In 1967, Villanueva founded the United Farm Worker Collective (not officially affiliated with the broader United Farm Workers until 1986), which organized Latino farm workers in the Yakima Valley. The Collective led several hop harvest strikes and a successful grape boycott. In 1986, Villanueva became the first president of the United Farm Workers of Washington State. He continued to fight for farm workers’ rights through marches, strikes, boycotts, and political lobbying. Villanueva’s work helped farm workers in Washington attain minimum wage, unemployment insurance, child labor standards, and better health and safety measures.

This image shows Tomás Villanueva at a press conference at the Seattle Labor Temple. He was calling for a commission to investigate advertisements which drew thousands of migrant farm workers to Washington with promises of well-paid work on a record apple harvest. Many more workers arrived than were needed, and many were stranded in Washington with little money and no available work. Villanueva claimed the recruitment was an intentional attempt to fight unionization efforts among farm workers.

Caption information source: “Tomás Villanueva,” Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, retrieved from https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/villanueva.htm
Caption information source: “Tomás Villanueva: A life well spent fighting for dignity,” by Jeff Johnson, the Stand, retrieved from https://www.thestand.org/2014/06/a-life-well-spent-fighting-for-dignity/
Caption information source: “Migrant workers ask probe,” by Mary Rothschild, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 30, 1987, page E10