César Chávez

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.”

When Chavez died in April 1993, more than 30,000 people came from all over the United States to pay their last respects. In his funeral mass, Cardinal Roger M. Mahoney described Chávez as, "a special prophet for the world’s farm workers. For us all."

The Chavez Family

Cesario Estrada Chavez, often considered the most important Latino leader in United States history, was born in Yuma, Arizona on March 31, 1927 to Librado Chavez and Juana Estrada 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 California’s San Joaquin valley, where Cesar would spend his teenage years.

Cesar attended 38 different schools until he finally had to quit after finishing the 8th grade in order to help support his family. As a youngster, he could not understand the importance of school and what it had to do with the life of a migrant farm worker. 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 Mohandas K. Gandhi and memebers the Kennedy family. He believed that, "The end of all education should surely be service to others," a belief that he practiced until his death. [14]

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 United States 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, Anna and Anthony.

The Shaping of His Beliefs

During his teenage years, César personally encountered the conditions of the migrant worker. He saw the despair in the migrant camps, witnessed the exploitation of farm workers, survived on the meager wages, and experienced the pain of racism. As a result of these experience, one of his objectives was to make working conditions for the migrant worker more tolerable.

The migrant camps in which the workers were forced to stay were deplorable. Most had no indoor plumbing and few had electricity. When the workers were not in tents, the cabins available were wood and often were drafty and damp. The migrant families had no choice but to stay at these places, renting from and purchasing food and necessities from company-owned stores, most often highly priced, but all that was available to them.

During his teenage years in the 1940s, Chavez encountered stinging racism which made a lasting impression on his conscience. He came to understand that segregation destroys a person’s worth in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. Reflecting later in his life, he said, “I still feel the prejudice, whenever I go through a door. I expect to be rejected, even when I know there is no prejudice there.” Throughout his life, he did everything he could to include and embrace others, so that they did not feel like outsiders.

Chavez's mother and grandmother saw to it that he and his siblings had a strong religious upbringing. All of them learned what it meant to be a strong Roman Catholic. He thus became a man who relied on his faith to give him strength and direction, understanding that religion unified and strengthened people. César was always true to his spiritual beliefs; they guided his everyday life as well as his political action.

Theory and Practice

Nonviolence

In San Jose Chavez met a local priest, Father Donald McDonnell, who introduced him to the writings of Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi, and the idea that non-violence could be an active force for positive change. Chavez once summed up his beliefs thus:

""Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don't understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it is easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way."

Learning to Organize

The man who would teach Cesar Chavez how to put theory into practice arrived in San Jose in 1953. Fred Ross was an organizer for the Community Service Organization, a barrio-based self-help group sponsored by Chicago-based Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. [15] Ross 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.

Within several months Cesar was a full-time organizer with CSO, coordinating voter registration drives, battling racial and economic discrimination against Chicano residents and organizing new CSO chapters across California and Arizona. He rapidly developed and quickly rose to become the president of CSO.

César worked with the CSO for three years and, in this capacity, came to see the problems that urban minorities were suffering. Life in the cities for minorities had its own set of challenges and César came to understand that all people needed to be helped. Through his work for the CSO he formed many valuable political friendships. One of these early associates was Dolores Huerta, who became one of César’s strongest supporters. Still, his heart was with the migrant worker.

The CSO felt that its mission was in the cities; César felt that his was in the fields. In one of many acts of conscience, César decided to do what he felt was the best thing for the migrant workers. When the CSO did not agree with his request to form a labor union, Chavez resigned from the CSO in order to organize farmworkers.

His new organization, the National Farmworkers Association (NFWA), which he co-founded together with Dolores Huerta, would use the model of community service that Cesar had learned in CSO. Chavez hesitated 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.

United Farm Workers

In 1965 The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a mostly Filipino union, struck when the Delano grape growers cut the pay rates during the harvest. Chavez asked his organization to join the strike, and quickly became its leader. Within months, 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.

The strikers faced odds that could not be overcome by traditional labor tactics. Under Chavez’ leadership, the struggle became defined in new terms. They would do battle non-violently, since they could never match the growers in physical force. They were a poor movement, so they would emphasize their poverty. For many years every organizer and volunteer from Chavez down would be paid room and board and $5 a week. Although there were picket lines in the fields, the real focus moved to the cities where grapes were sold. Hundreds of students, religious workers and labor activists talked to consumers in front of markets, asking them to do a simple thing: “Help the farmworkers by not buying grapes.” At its height, over 13 million Americans supported the Delano grape boycott.

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). In addition to the strike, the UFW encouraged all Americans to boycott table grapes as a show of support. The strike lasted nearly five years until, in 1969, the Delano growers signed historic contracts with the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee, which would later become the United Farmworkers Union (UFW).

Chavez had inspired an organization that did not look like a labor union. His vision didn’t include just the traditional bread and butter issues of unionism; it was about reclaiming dignity for people who were marginalized by society. What had started as the Delano grape strike came to be known as La Causa, the Cause. Whether they were farmworkers fighting for a better life, or middle class students trying to change the world, those who were drawn to the farmworkers movement were inspired by Chavez’ example to put aside their normal lives and make exceptional sacrifices. .

César Chávez' movement inspired the founding of two Midwestern independent unions: Obreros Unidos in Wisconsin in 1966 and The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Ohio in 1967. Former UFW organizers would also found the Texas Farm Workers Union in 1975.

Chavez' Leadership

Cesar Chavez on leadership:

“There are many reasons for why a man does what he does. To be himself he must be able to give it all. If a leader cannot give it all he cannot expect his people to give anything.”

Chavez' philosophy was to lead by example. He placed harsher demands on himself than on anyone else in the movement.

The March

Chavez planned a march from Delano to Sacramento in March 1966. The reason for the march to Sacramento was to get the support of the Governor of California, Edmund “Pat” Brown, while also getting increased exposure to the union’s cause. It was termed a pilgrimage because it was as much a unification effort as it was a protest march. Chavez marched the entire way, gathering more supporters the farther he went. It was a procession of many nationalities, all fighting for the same cause. They carried the banners of the union, the flags of the United States and Mexico, and a flag with the image of the Virgin de Guadalupe. As the march came closer to Sacramento, César was called to an emergency meeting with the head of the grower’s association. The owners conceded to the demands of the Union. The farm workers had won. It was the first union contract between growers and a farm workers’ union in United States’ history.

The Fast

Like most farmworkers, Chavez was a devout Catholic. His vision of religion was a progressive one, that prefigured the “preferential option for the poor” of liberation theology. In the UFW, the attendance to the Catholic Mass was a call to action as well as a rededication of the spirit.

In 1968 Chavez began the first of several fasts over his lifetime. In many ways the fast epitomized Chavez’s approach to social change. On one level it represented his spiritual values, his willingness to sacrifice and do penance. At the same time, he and his lieutenants were extremely aware of the political ramifications of his actions, using the fast as a way of both publicizing and organizing for their movement.

This 1968 fast became a national event and marked the beginning of Chavez’ emergence on the national political scene. Letters of support came from all over the country. Leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy sent him encouragement. The entire country became aware of what César stood for: nonviolence, unity, and La Causa. Kennedy came to Delano to break bread with Cesar at the end of his fast. Chavez responded by committing UFWOC to campaign for Kennedy in the California primary. Their voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts would provide Kennedy’s margin of victory in California.

Chavez decided to end the fast after 25 days. The fast ended with an outdoor Roman Catholic Mass. Although too weak to stand or speak, César had a friend read a message he had written earlier which expressed his powerful spiritual reasons for his fast. These are perhaps the words that best epitomized Chavez' life:

“Our struggle is not easy. Those that oppose our cause are rich and powerful, and they have many allies in high places. We are poor. Our allies are few. But we have something the rich do not own. We have our own bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons. When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determine what kind of men we really are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving of our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men.”

Politics and Political Support

Over the years the UFW would become a significant political force, demonstrating that Mexican-Americans could and would participate in electoral politics when their concerns were at stake. Chavez’ understanding of the relationship between economic issues and political participation was the starting point for a growing wave of Latino activism and electoral activity, that would eventually lead to the election of thousands of Latino officials and a major shift in the American political landscape.

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 Reverend Ralph Abernathy and 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.

Broadening Goals, Visions and Strategies

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, Chavez’ goals and vision began changing. He began to focus on the dangers of pesticides, which had always been a major source of illness among farmworkers. It was a subject that drew a positive response from an environmentally conscious public. He led a boycott to protest the use of toxic pesticides on grapes. He again fasted to draw public attention.

Instead of continuing to use volunteers, he relied more and more on direct mail. He built low-cost housing for farmworkers, and considered starting an urban organizing campaign in Mexican-American communities. He became interested in modern management techniques and group dynamics, including the group therapy techniques of Synanon, a drug rehabilitation program.

Legacy

Chávez’s concern for his people continued until the end of his life. He continued to organize political action into the early 1990s. He continued to coordinate strikes and spoke at rallies and colleges, continually spreading the message that the battle for human rights and human safety was not yet over. He battled in the Courts, as growers tried to use legal loopholes like switching ownership rights to void previous contracts with the union. He went from town to town in the effort to convince consumers not to eat grapes until grapes were pesticide-free.

Although questions were raised about his effectiveness in later years, Cesar Chavez had become a remarkable symbol — for Latinos, community activists, the labor movement, young people, and all who valued his values and commitment. He had accomplished something that no one else had ever been able to do; build a union for farmworkers. In the process he trained a generation of activists who would apply their skills in other communities and struggles.

César’s body finally gave out in April, 1993. When he died in his sleep of natural causes, he was in the middle of defending the union in a court action. He was sixty-six years old. His funeral took place on April 29, 1993. More than 30,000 people came from all over the United States to pay their last respects. In his funeral mass, Cardinal Roger M. Mahoney described Chávez as, “a special prophet for the world’s farm workers.”

The body of Cesar Chavez was taken to La Paz, the UFW's California headquarters, by his family and UFW leadership, where he was laid to rest near a bed of roses, in front of his office.

Chavez's successor, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez, stated, "Every day in California and in other states where farm workers are organizing, Cesar Chavez lives in their hearts. Cesar lives through the Americans he inspired to work nonviolently for social change." [16]

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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