Biography
Joe Varela was imprisoned at San Quentin State Prison during the era of California's criminal-syndicalism prosecutions, which sent more than a hundred IWW members and labor radicals to San Quentin and Folsom on one-to-fourteen-year terms. He appears on the International Labor Defense's rosters of American class-war prisoners in Labor Defender (1926-27) with inmate number 38133; like most of the rank-and-file labor prisoners of the period, little else about his case entered the historical record. Serving four years for organizing workers into the IWW, by his own account in the magazine.
The International Labor Defense holiday roster in the December 29, 1925 Daily Worker lists this prisoner, printed as Joe Varella, at San Quentin California. Its printed identifier is 38133; this is a prison number or mailing designation, not a year or a custody date. This documents confinement at the roster’s reporting time, without establishing an admission, transfer, release, new conviction or complete duration. Existing independently sourced custody chronology remains separate. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n297-NYE-dec-29-1925-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5
The birthday list identifies Joe Varela, San Quentin number 38133, birthday July 30 without a birth year. This documents the source’s contemporary custody context without establishing a new admission, precise release or completed-service total.
