Part 6
Mama slowly begins to mend, and Esperanza tends her with fierce care, even mashing avocado to soothe her own work-cracked hands and Mama’s dry skin. She keeps saving, hiding money orders in a can, dreaming of the day she can send for Abuelita. But the camp is boiling over. Led by Marta, angry workers plan a strike, demanding higher pay and fairer treatment from the growers who profit while families go hungry. They press everyone to walk out, and those who keep working are branded traitors. Esperanza is torn: she believes the strikers are right that the pay is unjust, yet she cannot stop working — Mama’s bills and Abuelita’s ticket depend on every wage. She chooses her family and keeps picking. Then the strike breaks in the asparagus fields, and the growers answer with terrible force: immigration officers sweep through, arresting strikers and loading them onto buses to be deported to Mexico — even some who were born United States citizens. It is the era of the great repatriation, when Mexican families were driven out to free up jobs. Marta is in danger, and Esperanza, who once might have scorned her, helps hide her from the raids. The strike collapses, crushed not by argument but by the threat of deportation — and Esperanza sees, up close, how little power the workers truly hold.
| Section | What you will practice |
|---|---|
| Vocabulary | Labor words: strike, protest, deport, injustice, traitor… |
| Literary Elements | Esperanza’s hard choice, a moral gray area, and unexpected mercy |
| Cross-Curricular | 1930s farm strikes and the Mexican Repatriation |
| Ch. | What happens |
|---|---|
| Los Aguacates | The Avocados — Mama slowly mends; Esperanza soothes cracked hands with avocado and keeps saving for Abuelita, while Marta leads a growing push to strike. |
| Los Espárragos | The Asparagus — the strike erupts; immigration officers deport the strikers, even U.S. citizens, in the great repatriation; Esperanza hides Marta and watches the strike collapse. |
Reading “Words of Protest and Power” as a word map reveals how the language of Los Aguacates & Los Espárragos follows the part’s turning point. Readers can infer strike, used as a noun, to mean a work stoppage to demand better terms; this scene supplies the clue: The workers planned a strike for higher pay. Readers can infer protest, used as a noun, to mean a public objection to something unfair; this scene supplies the clue: The strike was a protest against low wages. Readers can infer deport, used as a verb, to mean to force a person out of a country; this scene supplies the clue: Officers came to deport the strikers. Readers can infer injustice, used as a noun, to mean unfair or unequal treatment; this scene supplies the clue: The workers spoke out against injustice. Across the episode, the selected language converts conflict into a developing verbal texture.
ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.
Careful sequence reading reveals the textual evidence, the structural pivot, and the resulting consequence in Los Aguacates & Los Espárragos. Mama slowly begins to mend, and Esperanza tends her with fierce care, even mashing avocado to soothe her own work-cracked hands and Mama’s dry skin. She keeps saving, hiding money orders in a can, dreaming of the day she can send for Abuelita. But the camp is boiling over. Led by Marta, angry workers plan a strike, demanding higher pay and fairer treatment from the growers who profit while families go hungry. They press everyone to walk out, and those who keep working are branded traitors. Esperanza is torn: she believes the strikers are right that the pay is unjust, yet she cannot stop working — Mama’s bills and Abuelita’s ticket depend on every wage. Reading evidence around the pivot turns “The Strike and the Choice” into meaningful convergence.
- Esperanza chooses to keep working for her family.
- Mama slowly begins to mend.
- Immigration officers deport the strikers.
- Marta leads a push for a strike over low pay.
- The strike erupts in the asparagus fields.
The pressure of Los Aguacates & Los Espárragos is crafted through complexity, moment, and irony working in combination. Part 6 hands Esperanza a genuine dilemma — a choice where BOTH sides have a real claim. The strikers are right that the pay is unjust and that only unity can force change. But Esperanza is also right that her sick mother and her distant grandmother depend on wages she cannot afford to lose. Ryan refuses to make this easy: Esperanza is not a coward for working, and the strikers are not fools for striking. This is moral complexity — when a story presents a problem with no clean answer — and it is a sign the book trusts its readers. That authorial design makes “A Choice With No Clean Answer” a lesson in deliberate perspective.
Historical or scientific grounding matters here because strike, buses, and farm change how the conflict can be judged. The events of Part 6 grow straight out of 1930s history. As the Depression drove wages down, farm workers across California organized strikes, demanding better pay and conditions from powerful growers — and those strikes were often broken by force. At the same time, a darker campaign was underway: the Mexican Repatriation. Blaming Mexicans for taking jobs during hard times, authorities across the United States pressured, arrested, and deported hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent to Mexico — and, shockingly, an estimated majority of them were actually U.S. citizens by birth. Growers could crush a strike simply by having its leaders deported and replacing them with new desperate workers. This context turns Part 6 from a private adventure into a broader question of empathy.
Think back over these chapters. A mother breathing easier at last; a daughter rubbing avocado into hands cracked by work, guarding a can of coins like a promise. In the fields, voices rise — Marta and the others calling everyone to walk out, to stand together against wages that keep families hungry. And a girl who believes they are right, and still bends to her work, because a sick mother and a far-off grandmother cannot eat justice. Then engines and shouting: officers moving through the camp, loading the strikers onto buses bound for a border, taking even those born on this side of it — while the girl who was once called a useless princess pulls her scorner into hiding.
The strike in Esperanza’s camp is drawn from real history. During the 1930s, as the Great Depression pushed farm wages lower and lower, workers across California organized strikes — refusing to pick until growers agreed to fairer pay and conditions. These strikes took real courage, because the workers had almost no power and the growers had a great deal. Growers could evict striking families from company camps, hire replacements from the flood of desperate newcomers, and call on the authorities to break up the protests by force. Again and again, strikes that began with hope were crushed within days or weeks.
One weapon was especially cruel. Through the same decade, the United States carried out the Mexican Repatriation: blaming Mexicans for taking scarce jobs, officials pressured, arrested, and shipped hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent across the border to Mexico. Astonishingly, historians estimate that a majority of those forced out were actually U.S. citizens — many of them children born in this country. For a grower facing a strike, the threat was simple and brutal: strike leaders could simply be reported and deported, their protest ended by a bus instead of a bargain. Understanding both the strikes and the repatriation explains the trap the workers were in — and why Esperanza’s camp is crushed not by losing an argument, but by fear.
This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!
Writing Task — Part 6 “A Hard Choice”
Esperanza believes the strikers are right, yet she keeps working because her family needs the wages — a choice with no easy answer. Write about a time you faced a decision where both choices had something good and something hard about them. What were the two sides, what did you choose, and why? 6–10 sentences. End with how you feel about the choice now.
No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.
Part 6 Complete!
You finished Los Aguacates & Los Espárragos of Esperanza Rising.
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Your writing was checked automatically for length, spelling, grammar, and whether you included the key parts of the scene. Scroll back to Part 5 anytime to read your feedback and improve your work.
Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Pam Muñoz Ryan. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Pam Muñoz Ryan’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.