Jesse

The first five chapters of Jesse introduce Jesse’s family background, dreams, and beliefs. Chief among these beliefs is Jesse’s faith. He is an avid believer in God and maintains his faith in the Catholic Church as a moral code and means of hope. Jesse turns to God to contextualize his hardships and pain, as suffering is a part of the Catholic understanding of faith. While many external conflicts challenge Jesse, such as a stepfather who abuses alcohol, , poverty, prejudice, and an uncertain future, faith helps him manage his emotions. While Jesse can’t control the external conflicts that make his life challenging, he can rely on faith to inspire his continued resilience.

Jesse thinks of God often, except when he’s working, in which case he thinks of César Chávez. This connection frames the labor organizer as a god—a natural leader, a beacon of hope. Chávez was a labor and civil rights activist prominent in the 1960s for establishing the National Farm Workers Association and successfully lobbying the American government for worker protection for migrant workers. He advocated for fair work opportunities and health benefits to protect farm laborers from unsafe working conditions. Especially for the time period, Chávez serves as a role model, a necessary leader for people like Jesse who have internalized society’s prejudices against them.

Manual labor is time-honored work, especially in American culture. Founded on Jeffersonian agricultural ideals, the United States is a country with a long-standing connection to the farming and tilling of land. Jesse’s job as a cotton picker harkens back to these ideals, but Gary Soto also subverts them and compares the job to slavery. American slaves notoriously picked cotton for plantation owners for centuries, labor that damaged the back and hands. Jesse even hums songs he believes are former slave songs, alluding to slavery and creating a connection between his work and the brutal work conditions. Jesse tries to maintain his dignity in the face of this dehumanizing work by evoking God, thinking of Chávez, being grateful for the money he earns during his weekends in the cotton field, and defending the work as honest labor.

Jesse’s Mexican heritage and labor are intertwined. He worries about the economy and his job prospects, having internalized his society’s prejudice—that there are too many Mexicans “taking” jobs from Americans. Jesse being Mexican and American puts him in a precarious position, as he doesn’t embrace the Chicano identity of some of his peers, but nonetheless deserves the opportunity to work and live out his dreams. Notably, Jesse’s work in the fields is mostly with people from Mexico. Rather than support the claim that Mexicans are taking jobs from others, Soto implies that Mexicans are the only ones willing to take on such difficult labor.

The agricultural wellbeing of the American economy relies on Mexican labor. But Jesse’s connection to his Mexican heritage is not as strong as others. He and his brother’s Spanish is noticeably slower than their fellow fieldworkers, and Jesse feels inauthentic when he discusses Chicano identity or Chávez’s politics with other Mexican Americans. In picking cotton and fruit, Jesse is taking advantage of a job opportunity, one he desperately needs as he and his brother are poor. The job makes a stereotype of Jesse, but he tries not to think too deeply about it. However, Soto foreshadows that identity politics will become prevalent in Jesse’s mind as he considers Chávez’s mission.

“Chicano” is an important term in the novel. It is often used by people who were born in the United States and are descendants of Mexicans. The Chicano Movement of the 1960s, also referred to as “El Movimiento”, was a radical uprising of Mexican Americans who wanted to reclaim their culture from the stereotyped version of predominately white society. Chicanos of the movement advocated for social and political representation and change; Jesse is technically Chicano but doesn’t yet feel tied to the movement. He agrees to go to Chávez’s demonstration out of curiosity and guilt that he doesn’t care more about the movement. Soto foreshadows that the movement will play an important role in Jesse’s character development.