When Enriqueta Andazola’s four sons left Sacramento to fight in World War II, her trepidation about what they might face was outshined by a stronger emotion: pride. Andazola—like other mothers of the half million Mexican Americans who fought in the war—was immensely proud of her boys for serving their country. Despite spending years in the United States enduring rampant segregation, lower wages and poor housing conditions on the home front, her patriotism never wavered.
It’s widely acknowledged now that World War II was a watershed moment for America’s Mexican and Latin American communities. After years on active duty, returning soldiers started making demands for long-overdue civil rights and previously denied respect. It must have been heartening, then, for the veterans to find that some of the groundwork for this new battle had already been laid by the women they’d left at home. One of the most impactful of them was Enriqueta Andazola.
Born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1892, Andazola first came to Sacramento in 1917 to escape the chaos and violence of the Mexican Revolution. Although she had worked as a schoolteacher in Chihuahua, her first job in California was at the Sacramento Wool Company. Andazola subsequently spent 25 years of her life working at the Del Monte cannery.
Though locked out of her profession of choice, cannery work was the primary source of income for much of Sacramento’s Chicana community at the time. Andazola found a silver lining in the camaraderie and friendships she enjoyed through work. More from anything else, after her split from husband Ignacio Ramírez, the cannery gave her a steady income on which to raise their sons Joe (née José), Edgardo, John and Paul.
Though Andazola considered herself a proud American, it was never at the loss of her own cultural identity. As her granddaughter Diana Salgado Zuñiga would later note, “If there was anything she passed on to me, it was a true feeling of pride in being a Mexican. She assimilated into the society, but she kept her sense of culture.”
