For decades in the Salinas Valley, the short-handle hoe, known as “El Cortito,” was used for weeding and thinning rows of crops that kept farmworkers stooped over for long hours each day.

Workers were only able to stand and stretch when they reached the end of a row, finishing each workday with stressed and strained spines. Over many years, the stoop labor was not only physically debilitating, often resulting in permanent back injuries, but also reflected a systemic disregard for the health of the farmworkers.

The workers referred to “El Cortito” as “the devil’s arm” in Spanish and its use was not about efficiency or productivity. It was about control. Keeping workers stooped meant keeping them under constant supervision, a silent assertion of dominance embedded in the fields.

For years, farmworkers protested its use. But their cries went ignored. But in 1969, a group of agricultural workers in Soledad, including Sebastian Carmona, complained to a young attorney named Maurice “Mo” Jourdane of the California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) office in Salinas. They wanted justice. Labor leader Cesar Chavez, who attributed his own chronic back pain to the tool, also urged Jourdane to take the case.

At first, Jourdane was skeptical about whether the courts would outlaw the tool whose widespread use dated to the Depression Era. It was not until CRLA community worker and former farmworker Hector De La Rosa challenged Jourdane to attempt working with the tool for a single day.

After just a couple of hours, Jourdane felt sharp excruciating pain down his spine and his shoulder became numb from the challenging, repetitive movement. What had once been a legal question became a moral obligation.

With Salinas CRLA’s Director Marty Glick, Jourdane would begin a six-year legal fight. Their first step was to petition the California Industrial Safety Board. Eleven physicians testified that the tool aged workers’ bodies prematurely – men in their 30s and 40s resembled 70-year-olds with advanced arthritis. But in 1973, the Gov. Ronald Reagan-appointed board rejected their petition writing, “…the hoe is not an unsafe hand tool and the cost in discarding hundreds of thousands of hoes outweighs the harm resulting from their use.”

Undeterred, CRLA took the fight to the California Supreme Court. They had to not only prove “El Cortito” was an unsafe hand tool, but that there were viable alternatives, such as using a long handle instead. Sebastian Carmona became the lead plaintiff and was joined by other courageous Salinas Valley farmworkers, including Isabel Cardena, Raymundo Daniel, Eligió de Haro, Emilio Garcia, Juan Lopez, Jose Romero, and Jesús Serrano.

The legal battle to outlaw the use of El Cortito finally came to an end on April 7, 1975, after the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of CRLA and the farmworkers.

But the victory represented more than just a ban on an unsafe tool. It was a breakthrough and represented a new era in the farmworker rights movement. It proved the courts could be an ally when lawmakers and regulators refused to act. For CRLA, it was a turning point in their legal advocacy. For the workers, while justice was delayed, justice was ultimately not denied.

Reflecting on the case, Glick said, “We just told their story to the court. When people are suffering as much as the workers have been with the short hoe, you don’t need much law to have a court of honest men, like our Supreme Court, to say ‘we will not permit the injustice to continue.’”

On June 10, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors will be commemorating the 50th Anniversary of this landmark case. It remains a powerful reminder of what happens when farmworkers, lawyers and local leaders unite to challenge adverse working conditions that have dire health consequences. We also hope it empowers the next generation of Californians to recognize that they too have the power to change the course of history and confront injustice.

Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, Ph.D is a historian and works in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University, and Luis Alejo is a former State Assemblymember and serves as a Monterey County Supervisor, representing the City of Salinas.