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 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 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 death. [6]

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, 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. [7]

Theory and Practice

Nonviolence

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

"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 in 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."

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|barrio]-based self-help group sponsored by Chicago-based Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. [8] 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. 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), which he co-founded together with Dolores Huerta, 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.

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.

The Pesticide Mission

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. 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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