Killing Machines
Starting in the late nineteenth century with the invention of the massive mechanical wheat combines indirectly referenced in early science fiction, big growers in California have imagined agricultural machinery as weapons aimed at reducing labor costs by displacing some workers and disciplining others. Particularly after the massive farm-worker strikes of the 1930s and in the wake of the World War II̵era ramping up of production, agribusiness invested in mechanization as a means of replacing striking workers and controlling others with deskilling, reduced wages, and the threat of replacement. An important component of agribusiness futurism, the framing of farm machines as weapons in a war on labor is strikingly depicted in The Border Incident (1949) where Mexican and US secret agents team up to investigate an Imperial Valley grower who is murdering braceros.
While the Mexican agent (undercover as a bracero) and his bracero companion look on, the grower’s henchmen murder the US agent by running over him with a tractor-drawn diskharrow. In contrast with forms of agribusiness futurism that imagine weaponized farm technology as part of a brighter tomorrow, here it is given a noir treatment that foregrounds its relationship to violence and death.
| Previous page on path | Agribusiness Futurism, page 7 of 11 | Next page on path |
Discussion of "Killing Machines"
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...