César Chávez

File:Cesar-chavez-USPS.jpg

2003 USPS stamp featuring Chávez and the fields whose laborers were so important to him

César Estrada Chávez (March 31,1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. His work led to numerous improvements for migrant workers. He is hailed as one of the greatest Mexican-American civil rights leaders. His birthday on March 31 has subsequently become a holiday in a handful of U.S. states, and a number of parks, libraries, schools, and streets have been named in his honor in several cities across the United States.

In 1994, César Estrada Chávez was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United State’s highest honor for nonmilitary personnel. It was accepted by his wife and long time partner, Helen F. Chávez. During the ceremony President Clinton said of Chávez:

“Born into Depression-era poverty in Arizona in 1927, he served in the United States Navy in the Second World War, and rose to become one of our greatest advocates of nonviolent change. He was for his own people a Moses figure. The farm workers who labored in the fields and yearned for respect and self-sufficiency pinned their hopes on this remarkable man, who, with faith and discipline, with soft-spoken humility and amazing inner strength, led a very courageous life. And in so doing, brought dignity to the lives of so many others, and provided for us inspiration for the rest of our nation’s history.”

The Chavez Family

Cesario Estrada Chavez, often considered the most important Latino leader in U.S. history, was born in Yuma, Arizona on March 31, 1927 to Librado Chavez and Juana Chavez. He was the second of 5 children. Young Cesar was named after his grandfather Cesario.

The Chavez family had a small farm, and ran a country store. As the Depression intensified and years of drought forced thousands off the land, the Chavez family lost both their farm and store in 1937. Cesar was 10 years old when the family packed up and headed for California. These were difficult years, sleeping by the side of the road, moving from farm to farm, from harvest to harvest. In the early 1940s the Chavez family settled in Delano, a small farm town in the California’s San Joaquin valley, where Cesar would spend his teenage years.

Cesar would attend 38 different schools until he finally gave up after finishing the 8th grade. As a youngster, he felt that education had nothing to do with his farm worker-migrant way of life. Later in life, education became his passion. The walls of his office at the United Farm Worker Headquarters in California were lined with hundreds of books ranging from philosophy, economics, cooperatives, and unions, to biographies on Gandhi and the Kennedys. He believed that, "The end of all education should surely be service to others," a belief that he practiced until his untimely death. [3]

As Cesar learned the hard lessons of life, he absorbed important values from his parents. His father Librado taught him the value of hard work and opened his eyes to the inequities of the farm labor system. His mother Juana, a deeply religious and compassionate woman, emphasized the importance of caring for the less fortunate, and the power of love. Chavez would later say: "The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being, but it is also the most true to our nature."

In 1946, 17 year-old Cesar Chavez enlisted in the Navy, spending what he would later describe as “the two worst years of my life.” When he got out of the service, he returned to Delano and married his high school sweetheart, Helen Favela. Their relationship, and the support that Helen would give him throughout his life, provided Chavez with the solid base that allowed him to devote his life to helping others. Cesar and Helen moved to San Jose, where their first child Fernando was born. Over the years the family would grow to include 7 children – Fernando, Linda, Paul, Eloise, Sylvia and Anthony.

Theory and Practice

Nonviolence

"We maintain that you cannot really be effective in anything you are doing if you are so loaded with violence that you cannot think rationally about what you have to do. We know that violence works. I’m not going to say it doesn’t work. Total violence still works and is working many places. I disagree that it has long-lasting good results. I disagree with that. But violence works only when it’s total violence, and non-violence works only when it’s total non-violence. And you can’t have anything in between." [4]

Organizing Workers

The man who would teach Cesar Chavez how to put theory into practice arrived in San Jose in 1953. Fred Ross was an organizer. He was in San Jose to recruit members for the Community Service Organization. CSO helped its members with immigration and tax problems, and taught them how to organize to deal with problems like police violence and discrimination. To Chavez, Ross’ simple rules for organizing were nothing short of revolutionary. It was the beginning of a life-long friendship between Chavez and Ross.

Chavez rapidly developed as an organizer, rising to become the president of CSO. When the organization turned down his request to organize farmworkers in 1962, he resigned and returned to Delano. From 1962 to 1965 he crisscrossed the state, talking to farmworkers. His new organization, the National Farmworkers Association (NFWA), would use the model of community service that Cesar had learned in CSO. Chavez didn’t want to call it a union, because of the long history of failed attempts to create agricultural unions, and the bitter memories of those who had been promised justice and then abandoned. [5]

United Farm Workers

"The whole idea of the union, it’s not only the union, but it represents, together with you and me, all our brothers, Chicano and white and black and everything, represents an idea that poor people can get together and win. Because they, if we build a union in agriculture today, the balance of power is going to turn around, because, in the rural areas, the growers have undisputed power, and the fight is to keep the workers from organizing so they could equal that. If we could organize the workers, without interruptions from the Teamsters Union, I bet you in 5, 6 years, we will be electing state legislators from the rural area, we’ll be electing judges, we’ll be electing city councilmen, and those workers will be taking hold of governmental agencies through their organization. That’s the fight. Because the moment the worker gets a union and feels secure with his job and his income, what is the next step that he thinks of? Automatically he thinks about politics." [6]

The Pesticide Mission

In 1944 he joined the Navy at the age of seventeen, serving a two year enlistment.

In 1948 Cesar married Helen Fabela. They honeymooned in California by visiting all the California Missions from Sonoma, to San Diego. They settled in Delano, , a town located in the grape-growing region of the San Joaquin Valley, and started their family. First Fernando, then Sylvia, then Linda, and five more children followed.

Cesar went to San Jose where he met and was influenced by Father Donald McDonnell. They talked about farm workers and strikes. Cesar began reading about St. Francis and Gandhi and nonviolence. After Father McDonnell came another very influential person, Fred Ross.

Cesar became an organizer for Ross's organization, the Community Service Organization - CSO. His first task was voter registration.

Career as a labor leader

Chávez was taught and trained by Pete Fielding, and started working as an organizer in 1952 for the Community Services Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group. Chávez urged Mexican-Americans to register and vote, and he traveled throughout California and made speeches in support of workers' rights. He became CSO's national director in the late 1950s. Four years later, however, Chávez left the CSO. He co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) with Dolores Huerta. In 1965, Filipino farm workers - Phillip Veracruz Mariano Laya Armington, under their organization the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), initiated the Delano grape strike on September 8 to protest in favor of higher wages.

Six months later, Chávez and the NFWA led a strike of California grape-pickers on the historic farmworkers march from Delano to the California state capitol in Sacramento for similar goals. Through the recognition of common goals and methods, and the realization of the strengths of people formation, Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, Filipinos, and Filipino Americans jointly formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), which would eventually evolve into the United Farm Workers of today. In addition to the strike, the UFW encouraged all Americans to boycott table grapes as a show of support. The strike lasted five years and got national attention. When the U.S. Senate Subcommittee looked into the situation, Robert Kennedy gave Chávez his total support. This effort resulted in the first major labor victory for U.S. farm workers.

These activities led to similar movements in South Texas in 1966 where the UFW supported fruit workers in Starr County, Texas, and led a march to the Texas state capital, Austin, in support of UFW farm worker's rights. In the Midwest, César Chávez' movement inspired the founding of two Midwestern independent unions: Obreros Unidos in Wisconsin in 1966. The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Ohio in 1967. Former UFW organizers would also found the Texas Farm Workers Union in 1975].

Also traveled to Hood River, Oregon, to protest the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable President while he was delivering a speech at a high school.^{[citation needed]}

In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valley to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of illegal aliens as temporary replacement workers during a strike. Joining him on the march were both a Reverend Ralph Abernathy and a U.S. Senator Walter Mondale. Chávez and the UFW would often report suspected illegal aliens who served as temporary replacement workers as well as those who refused to unionize to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

In the early 1970s, the UFW organized strikes and boycotts to protest for, and later win, higher wages for those farm workers who were working for grape and lettuce growers. During the 1980s, Chávez led a boycott to protest the use of toxic pesticides on grapes. He again fasted to draw public attention. UFW organizers believed that a reduction in produce sales by 15% was sufficient to wipe out the profit margin of the boycotted product. These strikes and boycotts generally ended with the signing of bargaining agreements.

Legacy

César Chávez died on April 23, 1993, of unspecified natural causes. He is celebrated in a bill to create a paid state holiday in his honor. The holiday is celebrated on March 31, Chávez's birthday. Texas also recognizes the day. Also, in both Arizona and Colorado, it is an optional holiday. It is the first and only holiday honoring a Mexican-American in the United States.

His eldest son Fernando Chavez tours the country, speaking about his father's legacy of union organizing and fighting for workers' rights. Many cities have also paid respect by renaming or naming streets, schools, and buildings for Chávez.

The California cities of Sacramento, San Diego, Berkeley, and San José have renamed parks after him, and in Amarillo, Texas a bowling alley has been renamed in his memory. In Los Angeles, César E. Chávez Avenue extends from Sunset Boulevard and runs through the heart of the city. In San Francisco, a street called César E. Chávez Boulevard is named in his memory, and in Austin, Texas, one of the main central thoroughfares was changed to Cesar Chavez Boulevard. In 2004, the United States Postal Service honored him with a postage stamp. In 2005, a Cesar Chavez commemorative meeting was held in San Antonio, honouring his courageous acts for the sake of immigrant farmworkers and other immigrants.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Levy, Jacques E. and Cesar Chavez. Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa. New York: Norton, 1975. ISBN 0-393-07494-3
• Dalton, Frederick John. The Moral Vision of César Chávez. Maryknoll, N.Y. Orbis Books, 2003. ISBN 1-57075-458-6
• Ross, Fred. Conquering Goliath : Cesar Chavez at the Beginning. Keene, California, United Farm Workers: Distributed by El Taller Grafico, 1989. ISBN 0-9625298-0-X
• Soto, Gary Cesar Chavez: a Hero for Everyone. New York: Aladdin, 2003. ISBN 0-689-85923-6 and ISBN 0-689-85922-8
• Ferriss, Susan and Ricardo Sandoval. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997. ISBN 0-15-100239-8
• Holmes, Robert L. Nonviolence in theory and practice Belmont, Calif. Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1990. ISBN 0-534-12180-2
• Prouty, Marco G. Cesar Chavez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers' Struggle for Social Justice, Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 2006. ISBN 0-816-52555-2

External links

• "The Story of Cesar Chavez" United Farmworker's official biography of Chavez - Observed Dec. 22, 2006
• "Cesar Chavez Timeline", Napa Valley Register, March 30, 2006.
• Cesar Chavez - County of Los Angeles Public Library- Observed Dec. 22, 2006
• Spectrum Biographies - Cesar Chavez Observed Dec. 22, 2006
• Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy in Washington, DC Observed Dec. 22, 2006
• "The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworker's Struggle"; PBS Documentary Observed Dec. 22, 2006
• Cesar E. Chavez Foundation Official Website - Observed Dec. 22, 2006
• A Musical inspired by the life of Cesar Chavez Observed Dec. 22, 2006
• Cesar Chavez Student Center at S.F. State University Observed Dec. 22, 2006
• Handbook of Texas History, Online Edition Observed Dec. 22, 2006

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