Profiles in Character: Cesar Chavez Fights for the Rights and Dignity of Farmworkers
On April 28, 1993, tens of thousands of mourners walked past a simple pine coffin in Delano, California to honor Cesar Chavez. As chronicled in Miriam Pawel’s biography, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, ten thousand chairs for his memorial service at Forty Acres, the headquarters of the United Farm Workers (UFW), accommodated less than a quarter of the crowd.
Born into poverty, taught in a school where he was not allowed to speak Spanish and mocked by fellow students, little in his youth foreshadowed the heights he would reach. At 15 he went to work in the fields, where he returned at 21 after a stint in the Navy, unable to use the GI Bill for college because he had not graduated high school. Yet hardship strengthened him.
Under the fortunate mentorship of Fred Ross’s Community Service Organization (CSO), he registered voters and established a chapter in San Jose. With the guidance of Father Donald McDonnell he learned about St. Francis of Assisi’s life of poverty and Gandhi’s methods for achieving Indian independence. These experiences shaped his determination to demand better lives for Mexican Americans.
His early organizing methods were the house meeting and the problem clinic. In the home of a local resident he listened to concerns of farmworkers and enlisted people to offer their homes for future meetings. In the problem clinic he helped people resolve issues as varied as dealing with social welfare agencies, traffic tickets and deportation orders. Yet by 1962 he was frustrated with the CSO’s struggles for money and clout.
That spring he, his wife and their eight children moved to Delano, in the heart of the California grower fields. As David, he would take on Goliath. As Pawel describes it; “For all the physical hardship, worst was the loss of dignity. . . . Children were told there was no point continuing to high school . . . Daily insults in the fields burned. Fathers were dressed down and humiliated in front of their children; women were taunted and sexually harassed in front of their husbands.”
By May, Chavez formed the Farm Workers Association and its slogan: “Viva La Causa.” In September its first convention unveiled its black eagle flag. Over the next few years, it became the National Farm Workers Association and eventually the UFW. At first it offered a life insurance program and a credit union, providing some financial security to low-paid farmworkers. Later health insurance was added. Chavez developed a philosophy: gain power through organizing, use nonviolent protest, demand voluntary service to la Causa and show a personal willingness to sacrifice. That philosophy was tested in the grape fields.
On September 16, 1965 Chavez invited Mexican workers to join a strike initiated by Filipinos. “If we can keep our great strike peaceful, nonviolent and strong, we cannot lose” he told them, drawing on the philosophy of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. The strike would weaken once grapes were harvested, so Chavez added a boycott which eventually extend nationwide to all table grapes. Farmworkers were sent to major cities to share their plight and foster public resentment against grocery chains and stores that still sold grapes.
In March 1966, Robert F. Kennedy visited a labor camp in Delano and Chavez told him “We need to be recognized not just in a union sense, but as human beings with human rights.” Then Chavez, learning from the Selma march for voting rights, announced a three-hundred mile march from Delano to Sacramento. By the time he reached the state capitol, cheered along the route and by a crowd of thousands once he arrived, he gained national prominence and political support. Over time, he also adopted Gandhi’s commitment to fasting in order to pump energy into the movement and remind his followers of their commitment to sacrifice and nonviolence.
By the late 1960s, the UFW had gained members, won labor contracts and legislation - California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975. Its slogan si se pueda (“yes we can”) symbolized Chavez’s vision (and would later be used by presidential candidate Barack Obama).
Success brought challenges. Contracts had to be managed and workers’ concerns addressed. Yet Chavez was more dedicated to fostering a broader movement for social justice than day-to-day union operations. Unwilling to relinquish authority, contract management suffered. His response – to berate or ostracize those whose help he needed – led to losing contracts and dissension grew.
Despite that, Mexican Americans were gaining cultural and political power in California and young Chicanos began to believe in themselves and their ability to forge a better future.
As he told a group of students in June 1973 at La Paz, the community compound he developed in California’s Tehachapi Mountains:
“ instead of being all that competitive, instead of being all that worried about the new house, the new car, the new clothes and all those things” care about “Things like concern for people who suffer. Concern for people who are discriminated against. Concern for social justice. These kind of things that are really important in life.”
Photo Credit: commons.wikimedia.org
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