Who He Is

Although Cesar Estrada Chavez is most famously associated with the plight of immigrant farmworkers, he was actually born a citizen of the United States in Yuma, Arizona. Chavez was politicized early in life. The family had to work in the fields, and Chavez learned firsthand not only of the hardships and mistreatment migrant workers received from wealthy farmers but also of an educational system that, he felt, was heavily prejudiced against Spanish-speaking students.

Chavez left school before he could attend high school, but remained devoted to learning. His office walls were filled with volumes of books covering a wide range of topics from economics and philosophy to biographies of people like Gandhi and John F. Kennedy.

In the early 1960s, based on his perceptions of the hardships borne by migrant workers, Chavez, along with fellow activist Dolores Huerta, founded the National Farm Workers Association, which eventually became the United Farm Workers (UFW). Chavez and the UFW used various means to alert Americans to the plight of the migrant farmworker. However, their most famous achievement was a series of boycotts of farm products produced by nonunion workers. These boycotts brought the UFW and Chavez national attention.

“Chavez died, under what some consider mysterious circumstances, in 1993, in his birthplace of Yuma. There never has been satisfactory resolution as to how he died. Many remain very suspicious to this day. ”

What made the man?

Chavez was born on March 31, 1927, near Yuma, Arizona. His father owned a small farm but was later swindled out of the land by unscrupulous white landowners. This, undoubtedly, gave Chavez his first taste of discrimination and exploitation.

His family had little choice but to become migrant farmworkers. They eventually moved to California in 1938 and settled near San Jose. He worked alongside his family in the fields. However, this, for Chavez, was not a means to eke out a living, but, rather a way out of an endless loop of poverty; he believed that if he worked hard and saved, he could eventually send his children to college and a better life.

Ironically, for a man who put a very high value on education, Chavez did not like formal schooling. He blamed this on the fact that, as a child, he spoke only Spanish and most of his teachers were Anglo. In fact, in those days it was forbidden for Latino students to speak Spanish in class and violating this rule resulted in harsh punishment.

Before he finished formal school, he had attended 37 separate schools. Some segregated the Spanish-speakers from the rest of the students. Others were integrated, though Chavez felt like he was in a cage in these schools. He dropped out of school after the eighth grade, partly due to the death of his father. To avoid having his mother work the fields, Chavez did it himself to provide an income for the family.

His exposure to discrimination did not ease when he entered the Navy in 1944, where he served for 2 years. After the war was over, and Chavez had been honorably discharged, he married Helen Fabela and settled in Delano, California. A few years after his marriage, Chavez returned to San Jose where he encountered, perhaps, the most influential person in his life: Father Donald McDonnell. Soon after, he met Fred Ross and Pete Fielding, who ran the new organization, Community Service Organization. Chavez agreed to work with Ross and Fielding and started organizing voter registration among Latinos.

After his exposure to activist politics with McDonnell and Ross, Chavez turned his skills into organizing migrant farmworkers. He knew their concerns intimately and was totally committed to getting them fair wages and helping them to pave a road to the American dream. He formed the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. By the 1970s, the organization had merged with other activist groups to become the United Farm Workers of America.

Chavez used several very effective tactics to help raise awareness of the injustices suffered by migrant farmworkers. He used symbols and education to bolster the pride of the migrant workers, telling them they were vital to the economy in general and the agriculture of California in particular. He organized strikes against specific growers. He led marches to the Texas state capital at Austin and down the Imperial and Coachella valleys to the border of Mexico.

He also organized nationwide boycotts of products grown on farms using nonunion workers, the most famous of which was the grape boycott of the late 1960S. The UFW tactics began to show success with these boycotts. By 1970, most grape growers had accepted union contracts that provided better wages and working conditions. From a small base of members at its start, the UFW had 50,000 dues-paying members by the early 1970s.

Taking a page from one of his heroes, Gandhi, Chavez used only nonviolent tactics to promote the UFW agenda. Also, like Gandhi, Chavez was willing to sacrifice himself with a series of fasts designed to prompt action by farm owners. He went on water-only fasts in 1968 and 1972. His most famous fast was in the summer of 1988 and lasted for 36 days. After he broke his fast, other activists and celebrities passed the fast along, existing on only water for several days each.

Throughout all of his efforts, Chavez and the UFW received the moral and practical support of African-American activists such as Ralph Bunche and Jesse Jackson, as well as prominent American statesmen such as Robert Kennedy, who wholeheartedly approved of what Chavez and the UFW were doing. It was thought this type of unabashed support helped immeasurably in the success of the UFW and Chavez.

The Legacy of the Man

Chavez took on his last cause shortly before his death. He had returned in April 1993 to help defend the UFW from a lawsuit by a large California producer of lettuce and vegetables. The producer wanted the UFW to pay millions in damages from a past boycott against him, and Chavez was there to plot the defense strategy and testify in court. He appeared in court on April 22, returned home afterward and then died sometime overnight of causes that were never fully identified. His official date of death is April 23,1992.

Chavez’s legacy as a man who bettered the lives of thousands of migrant workers was confirmed by the more than 50,000 mourners who honored him at the UFW field office in Delano, California, where Chavez had made his first and last public fasts. It was the largest funeral, to date, of any U.S. labor leader. Chavez was called a “special prophet of the world’s farm workers” by Cardinal John Mahoney, who presided over the funeral.

Chavez was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton in 1994. His birthday is celebrated as a paid holiday in California and Texas, and as a voluntary holiday in Arizona and Colorado. He is the only Mexican-American to be honored in this way. In addition, parks in the California cities of Sacramento, San Diego, Berkeley and San Jose have been renamed for him.

Undoubtedly, the death of Chavez was a difficult blow to the farmworker cause, but others have stepped up over the years to shoulder the load. His eldest son, Fernando, still tours the country speaking about his father’s efforts and legacy in union organizing and fighting for the rights of farmworkers. Other officials in the UFW remain dedicated to his principles of nonviolent activism to support their causes.

Cesar Chavez, who never earned more than $5,000 a year for his efforts, and continually put his life in danger to support the causes he believed in, was called one of the most heroic figures of our time by Robert F. Kennedy.

Courtesy

There are a variety of online resources on Cesar Chavez and the UFW. Many can be accessed by visiting www.ufw.org.

To read more about Chavez, look at one of the books he co-wrote, Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa, Norton, 1975. You can also read The Moral Vision of Cesar Chavez, Orbis Books, 2003; Conquering Goliath: Cesar Chavez at the Beginning, United Farm Workers, 1989; Cesar Chavez: A Hero for Everyone, Aladdin, 2003; and The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement, Harvest/HBJ Book, 1998.