CHÁVEZ, CÉSAR ESTRADA

César Estrada Chávez, the son of Mexican American farm workers, became a well-known labor leader, founding the united farm workers (UFW) union, which led a massive grape boycott across the United States during the 1960s. Chávez won wage increases, benefits, and legal protections for migrant farm workers in the western United States and fought to have dangerous pesticides outlawed.

Chávez was born March 31, 1927, in Yuma, Arizona, one of five children in a family that lived on a small farm for a time. When he was a child, the family was pushed onto the road as migrant laborers when Chávez's parents lost the family farm during the Great Depression. Later, he often spoke of what he felt was the unjust way in which his family had lost their property through foreclosure. Chávez never went beyond the eighth grade, and he once said that he had attended over 60 elementary schools because of his family's constant search for work in the fields.

Chávez was exposed to labor organizing as a young boy, when his father and uncle joined a dried-fruit industry union during the late 1930s. The young Chávez was deeply impressed when the workers later went on strike. At age 19, Chávez himself picketed cotton fields but watched the union fail in its efforts to organize the workers.

After serving in the U.S. Navy during world war ii, he returned to California, where he married a woman named Helen Fabela. In 1952, the Los Angeles headquarters of organizer Saul Alinsky's Community Service Organization (CSO) decided to set up a chapter in San Jose, California, to work for civil rights for the area's Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants. A parish priest supplied several names to CSO organizer Fred Ross, including that of Chávez, who was then living in one of San Jose's poorest and toughest neighborhoods—Sal Si Puedes (leave, if you can). Ross believed that Chávez could be the best grassroots leader he had ever encountered, so he sought Chávez out and eventually convinced him to join the group's efforts. Chávez began as a volunteer in a CSO voter registration drive and a few months later was hired as a staff member. He spent the next ten years leading voter registration drives throughout the San Joaquin Valley and advocating for Mexican immigrants who complained of mistreatment by police officers, immigration authorities, and welfare officials.

Chávez believed that unionizing was the only chance for farm workers to improve their working conditions. He resigned in 1962, increasingly frustrated because the CSO would not become involved in forming a farm workers' union. He immediately established the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the UFW, an affiliate of the american federation of labor and congress of industrial organizations (AFL-CIO). At the UFW's first meeting in September 1962, in Fresno, California, Chávez's cousin, Manuel Chávez, unveiled the flag that he and Chávez had designed for the new union—a black Aztec eagle in a white circle on a bold red background. The banner soon became the symbol of the farm workers' struggle.

When Chávez founded the UFW, field workers in California averaged $1.50 per hour, received no benefits, and had no methods by which to challenge their employers. Under Chávez's leadership, the UFW won tremendous

wage increases and extensive benefits for farm workers, including medical and unemployment insurance and workers' compensation.A strict believer in nonviolence, Chávez used marches, boycotts, strikes, fasts, and civil disobedience to force growers in California's agricultural valleys to the bargaining table. In 1968, Filipino grape pickers in Delano, California, struck for higher wages; several days later, the UFW joined the strike and initiated a boycott of California grapes. More than 200 union supporters traveled across the United States and into Canada, urging consumers not to buy California grapes. The mayors of New York, Boston, Detroit, and St. Louis announced that their cities would not buy nonunion grapes. By August 1968, California grape growers estimated that the boycott had cost them about 20 percent of their expected revenue. The boycott brought Chávez to the attention of national political leaders, including U.S. Senator robert f. kennedy, who sought the democratic party nomination for president before his assassination in 1968. Kennedy described Chávez as a heroic figure. In 1970, after its successful boycott, the UFW signed contracts with the grape growers.

"Our struggle is not easy … But we have something the rich do not own. We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons."
—CÉsar ChÁvez

In 1975, Chávez had a great success when the strongest law ever enacted to protect farm workers, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (Cal. Lab. Code § 1140 et seq. [West]), was passed by the California Legislature. This law gave workers the right to bargain collectively and the right to seek redress for unfair labor practices. Other regulations banned the use of tools that caused crippling back injuries, such as the short-handled hoe, and required growers to give workers breaks and to provide toilets and fresh water in the fields. Chávez was among the first to link workers' health problems to pesticides. He negotiated union contracts that prohibited growers from using DDT, and he targeted five leading pesticides that cause birth defects or kill upon contact.

At its peak during the 1970s the UFW had over 70,000 members. During the early 1980s, the UFW's influence began to wane and union membership dipped below ten thousand. Chávez blamed the decline in part on the election of Republican governors, who sided with the growers. In addition, Chávez decided to turn his efforts toward conducting boycotts rather than organizing workers, a move that was widely criticized and caused a split among the union's members. Chávez was also forced to defend himself against lawsuits stemming from UFW actions taken years before. In 1991, the union lost a $2.4 million case when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear its appeal. The case stemmed from a 1979 Imperial Valley strike in which a farm worker was shot and killed (Maggio, Inc. v. United Farm Workers of America, 227 Cal. App. 3d 847, 278 Cal. Rptr. 250 [Cal. App. 1991], cert. denied, 502 U.S. 863, 112 S. Ct. 187, 116 L. Ed. 2d 148 [1991]).

In April 1993, Chávez returned to San Luis, a small town near his native Yuma, Arizona, to testify in the retrial of a lawsuit brought by Bruce Church, Inc., a large Salinas, California–based producer of iceberg lettuce. At the time Chávez testified, Bruce Church had extensive landholdings in Arizona and California, including the acreage east of Yuma that Chávez's parents had once owned. The company had won a $5.4 million judgment for alleged damage caused by union boycotts, but an appellate court over-turned the judgment and sent the case back to the trial court (Bruce Church, Inc. v. United Farm Workers of America, 816 P. 2d 919 [Ariz. App. 1991]). On April 22, Chávez finished his second day of testimony in Yuma County Superior Court. He returned to spend the night at the home of a family friend and died in his sleep.

Following Chávez's death, Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, described the leader as instrumental in organized labor's efforts to improve the lot of the worker. "Always, César had conveyed hope and determination, especially to minority workers, in the daily struggle against injustice and hardship," Kirkland said. "The improved lives of millions of farm workers and their families will endure as a testimonial to César and his life's work."

In a 1984 speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Chávez said, "Regardless of what the future holds for our union, regardless of what the future holds for farm workers, our accomplishment cannot be undone. The consciousness and pride that were raised by our union are alive and thriving inside millions of young Hispanics who will never work on a farm."

further readings

Etulain, Richard W., ed. 2002. Cesar Chavez: A Brief Biography with Documents New York: Palgrav.

Houle, Michelle, ed. 2003. Cesar Chavez. San Diego, Calif: Greenhaven Press.

Matthiessen, Peter. 1969. Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution. New York: Random House.

Tracy, Kathleen. 2003. Cesar Chavez. Bear, Del.: Mitchell Lane.

cross-references

Agricultural Law; Labor Union.

Chávez, César 1927-1993

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Of Mexican American ancestry, César Estrada Chávez was born in Yuma, Arizona, with deep roots in the American Southwest. He was the second-born child of Librado Chávez and Juana Estrada, whose families were displaced from their land, much like many other Mexicans who were tricked by attorneys, had their loans rejected because others coveted their land, or lost their land as a result of owing back taxes. On August 29, 1937, the Arizona state government took possession of the Chávez family’s land, and later auctioned it off to the bank president who had refused the elder Chávez a loan to reclaim his property (La Botz 2006, p. 7; see also Montejano 1987 for a discussion of land displacement). The loss of their land forced the family to work in the agricultural fields of Arizona, and later in California’s San Joaquin Valley, beginning when César was just a child of ten. As migrants, the family struggled under the most difficult of conditions, including grossly substandard pay. Despite having only an eighth-grade education, Chávez served in the Navy during World War II (1939-1945). After two years of service, he returned to grueling agricultural work; there was not much else available for a man who lacked a formal education and whose employment options were limited by racism.

Chávez’s organizing career began as a result of a stint with the Community Services Organization (CSO), where he worked under the guidance of Fred Ross and Father Donald McDonnell in San José, California. After two years of struggle with CSO’s board, who refused to support many of his proposals, Chávez set out on his own to organize the agricultural workers’ union, using strategies he developed through his work with CSO, and guided by insights gained from personal experience of oppressive work conditions. Chávez patiently and systematically devised nonviolent strategies, such as the secondary boycott, which targeted specific businesses that bought goods from growers who refused to negotiate with or recognize the union. He also used fasting to highlight the shameful conditions under which farmworkers labored.

Chávez forged alliances with Filipinos and other workers of color and their families to organize the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, which later became the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA). His ability to work in coalition with people of other faiths and political persuasions created lifelong partnerships, including with Gilbert Padilla and Dolores Huerta, who like him had been influenced by the pragmatic philosophy of Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. Together the three organized the first table boycott and negotiated a contract with the Schenely Corporation, signed on April 7, 1966. This agreement marked the success of a national campaign that was carried out by the farmworkers themselves. Their effort also pointed the way toward the formation of national alliances with Democratic and liberal politicians, and drew the support of the United Auto Worker’s Union, as well as competition from the Teamsters Union, after the Schenely Corporation brought Teamsters to the negotiating table. Later, the Teamsters would vie for contracts against the UFW.

Through his life work, Chávez created a revolution in agriculture and inspired the birth of the Chicano civil rights movement. His tireless support of American agricultural workers made him oppose governmental agreements such as the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican workers to work in U.S. fields, and led him to fight against the use of undocumented workers, because they weakened unionization and adversely impacted the wages of Mexican Americans. Chávez was harshly criticized for these positions and lost the support of those who believe in workers’ rights regardless of origin, especially when he later sided with conservatives who pushed for immigration restrictions in the 1980s. Still, Chávez maintained enough support to achieve the first agricultural workers law in a nation that had not allowed the unionization of farmworkers in the past. This was the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, signed by Governor Jerry Brown in 1975, which established the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) to oversee elections and to settle appeals.

Because of Chávez’s willingness to confront racism and poverty in the agricultural fields, conditions for workers improved. The fruits of his labor included the eradication of the dreaded short hoe, the availability of portable toilets, the accessibility of drinking water, the creation of a hiring hall, the foundation of a service center and health clinic, and improvement of wages and benefits. A believer in nonviolence, Chávez continued to use legal means in his pursuit of social justice until the end. He passed away in Yuma, Arizona, working to fight a lawsuit against the UFW brought by Bruce Church Incorporated, the largest producer of lettuce and vegetables in Salinas, California. This was perceived as a move to destroy an already weak union; Church was suing the UFWA for millions of dollars in damages resulting from the 1980s lettuce boycott. In death, Chávez has become an icon, as a result of his activism and commitment to the struggle for farmworkers’ rights and social justice, a commitment he selflessly carried out to the end as he sought to improve the lives of those who feed the nation. For his extraordinary efforts and to mark the legacy of his accomplishments and his service to humanity, President Bill Clinton awarded Chávez with a posthumous Medal of Freedom in 1994. As Paul Chávez remarked in the San Jose Mercury News, “when history writes its final chapter, [César Chávez] … will be remembered as a man who lived by his principles and who wasn’t afraid of taking uncomfortable positions” (1993, p. 1A).

SEE ALSO Agricultural Industry; Migrant Labor

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acuña, Rodolfo. 2004. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Chávez, Paul. 1993. A ‘Warrior for Justice’ Mourned Nationwide. San Jose Mercury News (April 24): 1A.

Griswold del Castillo, Richard, and Richard A. Garcia. 1995. César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

La Botz, Dan. 2006. César Chávez and La Causa. New York: Pearson Longman.

Levy, Jacques E. 1975. César Chávez: Autobiography of La Causa. New York: Norton.

Matthiessen, Peter. 1969. Sal Si Puedes: César Chávez and the New American Revolution. New York: Random House.

Méndez-Negrete, Josephine. 1994. We Remember César Chávez: A Catalyst for Change. San José Studies 20 (2): 71-83.

Montejano, David. 1987. Mexicans and Anglos in the Making of Texas, 1937-1986. Austin: University of Texas Press.

United Farm Workers Web site. The Story of Cesar Chavez. http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc+history/07.html.

Josephine Méndez-Negrete

CÉsar ChÁvez

Born: March 31, 1927
Yuma, Arizona
Died: April 22, 1993
San Luis, Arizona
Hispanic American labor leader and champion of migrant worker rights

César Chávez was an Hispanic American labor leader who organized the first effective union of farm workers in the history of California agriculture.

Early years

César Chávez was born on March 31, 1927, near Yuma, Arizona. He was the second of Librado and Juana Estrada Chávez's six children. His parents owned a store and worked on a farm of over one hundred acres that Chávez's grandfather, Césario Chávez, had established. The Chávez family was kicked off its land for failing to pay its taxes during the Great Depression of the 1930s (when nearly half the industrial workers in the United States lost their jobs, leading to lower demand for goods and services). The family then joined the many migrant (traveling) laborers streaming into California.

Chávez quit school while in the seventh grade to work full-time in the fields, but he was not really educated even to that level—he could barely read and write. In 1944 he joined the U.S. Navy and served for two years. Since he was never allowed to advance beyond low-level jobs, he continued as a farm worker in California upon completing his service. In 1948 he married Helen Fabela of Delano, California. Migrant farm workers at that time worked long hours in the fields for very little money. Sometimes their employers would not pay them at all, and there was nothing they could do—nowhere to turn. Many of the farm workers were not U.S. citizens. In an interview with the Farm Worker Press, Chávez remembered, "When I was nineteen I joined the National Agricultural Workers Union. But it didn't have any more success than any of the other farm workers' unions."

Organizing and boycotting

As Chávez worked in the vineyards (land containing grapevines) and fruit orchards of California, he used his free time to educate himself. He read about famous labor leaders and became interested in the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948), the Indian leader who preached nonviolent resistance in his country's struggle for independence. Chávez, after a couple of failed strikes by his fellow workers, realized that better organization was needed. In 1952 he met Fred Ross, who was organizing Mexican Americans in California's barrios (mainly Spanish-speaking cities or towns) into the Community Service Organization (CSO). The organization concentrated on voter registration, citizenship classes, and helping Mexican American communities obtain needed facilities (such as schools and medical care) in the barrios. The organization also helped individuals with typical problems such as getting welfare, dealing with crooked salesmen, and police injustice.

Chávez's work in the voter registration drive in Sal Si Puedes ("Get out if you can"), a rough San Jose, California, barrio, was so effective that Ross hired him as an organizer. Over the next ten years Chávez rose to become national director of CSO. In 1962, when the CSO rejected his proposal to start a farm workers' union, he quit the organization. At thirty-five years of age, with $1,200 in savings, he took his wife and eight children to Delano to begin the slow, step-by-step organizing process that grew into the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). Three years later, when members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) went on strike against the vineyards in Delano, they asked for support from Chávez's NFWA.

Thus began the great California table-grape strike, which lasted five years. In 1966 the two unions merged to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) of the AFL-CIO, headed by Chávez. During the struggle to organize the vineyards, Chávez began an international boycott (to join together in refusing to deal with an item, person, or company in an effort to change practices) of California table grapes. This boycott brought such pressure on local grape growers that most eventually signed with Chávez's union. The boycott ended in September 1970. Soon after this victory Chávez started another boycott, this time against lettuce growers who used nonunion labor. Chávez became the first man ever to organize a farm workers' union in California that obtained signed contracts from the agricultural industry.

Believed in nonviolence

Chávez was an outspoken believer in Gandhi's idea of social change through nonviolent means. In 1968, to prevent violence in the grape strike, he fasted (went without eating) for twenty-five days. The fast was broken at an outdoor mass attended by some four thousand people, including Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968). Chávez fasted on several other occasions, including twenty-four days in 1972 to protest antiunion laws in Arizona and for thirty-six days in 1988 to call attention to the continued poor treatment of vineyard workers. Chávez grew dangerously weak after this fast. Another protest involved Chávez leading a two-hundred-mile march from Delano to Sacramento, California, to call attention to the demands of the farm workers.

In July 1970 Chávez's union faced one of its most serious challenges, when the Teamsters Union signed contracts that applied to farm workers with some two hundred growers in California. Chávez met the challenge head on: within three weeks the largest agricultural strike ever to hit California had spread along the coastal valleys. About seven thousand farm workers went on strike to win recognition of Chávez's UFWOC as their bargaining agent, with the national boycott again used as the weapon. However, the union gradually lost its strength. From 1972 to 1974, membership decreased from nearly sixty thousand to just five thousand. But Chávez's efforts had made a difference. From 1964 to 1980, wages of California migrant workers had increased 70 percent, workers received health care benefits, and a formal policy for handling worker grievances (complaints) was established.

Chávez continued to fight for the rights of workers up until the day of his death on April 22, 1993. He had had nothing but a few glasses of water in the six days before his death. He was elected to the Labor Department's Hall of Fame in 1999 for his work toward improving the treatment of farm workers.

For More Information

Cedeño, Maria E. Cesar Chavez: Labor Leader. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1993.

Collins, David R. Farmworker's Friend: The Story of César Chávez. Minneapolis, MN.: Carolrhoda Books, 1996.

Ferriss, Susan, et. al. The Fight in the Fields: César Chávez and the Farmworkers Movement. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997.

Gonzales, Doreen. César Chávez: Leader for Migrant Farm Workers. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, 1996.

CHAVEZ, CESAR 1927-1993

Labor leader; founder and president of the united farm workers of america

Migrant Years

The son of Mexican immigrants, Cesar Chavez saw his parents lose their small farm in Yuma, Arizona, in the late 1930s. With no other possibilities, the family headed for California and joined the ranks of migrant workers traveling throughout the state picking such crops as apricots, figs, grapes, lettuce, peas, or tomatoes. But once knowing the independence of owning a farm, the Chavez family was not as docile as many other field laborers. Chavez remembered: "We were probably one of the strikingest families in California, the first ones to leave the fields if anyone shouted Huelga (Spanish for strike)!" The migratory life was hard on the young Chavez; constant travel made education difficult, and many of the Anglo teachers openly disdained such children. Together, these factors forced Chavez to drop out of school after the end of the eighth grade. Wishing to get off the land, he joined the navy during World War II, but racism kept him in menial jobs. Out of the service in 1946, Chavez returned to the only life he knew—migrant farm work in Delano, California (in the state's Central Valley).

Early Organizing

In 1952 Chavez landed a job in a San Jose lumberyard, and he and his young family took up residence in Sal Si Puedes (get out if you can), the Mexican barrio of the city. Here Chavez was introduced to the ideas of social justice by Father Donald McDonnell and the self-help social-service group, the Community Service Organization (CSO). By the end of that year he was a full-time organizer for the CSO. Just six years later Chavez was appointed its general director. Under his leadership the CSO became the most powerful Mexican-American political organization in the state. While establishing a CSO chapter in Oxnard, California, Chavez became convinced that work issues were most important to the Chicano community. When the CSO rejected his idea of forming a farmworkers union, he broke with the association in 1962.

National Farm Workers to United Farm Workers

Now thirty-five years old, Chavez created the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). After three years of organizing, he led his small union to strike in a show of solidarity for Filipino grape pickers in September 1965. This Delano strike soon spread from its origins against table-grape growers to include many of California's leading wineries, and Chavez's use of nonviolent tactics brought the conflict national attention. Because traditional picketing could not keep scabs out of the fields, Chavez adopted another strategy—the economic boycott. To keep his movement in the public eye, Chavez staged a grueling three-hundred-mile march from Delano to Sacramento, and later he fasted for three weeks to rededicate the union to nonviolence. In 1966 his NFWA merged with an AFL-CIO affiliate to establish the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC). After five years of struggle the economic impact of the boycott pressured the growers to settle. The UFWOC obtained contracts with twenty-six growers; this accounted for nearly two-thirds of the California grape crop.

Aftermath

Soon after his victory over the grape growers Chavez again employed the boycott against lettuce growers who were using nonunion labor. Here he attained only limited success, however, largely because the Teamsters were now competing with the UFWOC (in 1972 the AFL-CIO upgraded its status from an organizing committee to a full-fledged affiliate, the United Farm Workers of America) for members. From 1972 to 1974 membership dwindled from nearly sixty thousand to only five thousand. But Chavez continued to work long hours for La Causa (as the farmworkers' movement became called), and his efforts were rewarded. From 1964 to 1980 real wages of California migrant workers increased 70 percent, health-care benefits were provided, and a formal grievance procedure was established. By 1975 he also helped obtain passage of the country's first agricultural-labor-relations act in California. This legislation guaranteed farm laborers the right to organize and bargain collectively. Although membership was up again by the 1980s, the UFWs star seemed to be fading. Yet Cesar Chavez remained important; he had organized the once-thought-unorganizable migrant Mexican-American farmworkers, brought them national attention, and won for them the rights enjoyed by other American workers.

Sources:

Cletus Daniel, "Cesar Chavez and the Unionization of California Farm Workers," in Labor Leaders in America, edited by Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987);

Dick Meister and Anne Loftis, A Long Time in Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America's Farm Workers (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977).

Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) was a Mexican-American labor leader who organized the first effective union of farm workers in the history of California agriculture.

Cesar Chavez was born on March 31, 1927, near Yuma, Arizona. His grandfather had homesteaded some 112 acres there in 1904, but the family lost the ranch during the Depression in 1939, when they could not pay the taxes. The family then joined the migrant laborers streaming into California.

Early Organizing

Chavez quit school after the eighth grade to work fulltime in the fields, but in 1944 he joined the U.S. Navy. He served for two years in the Pacific, but racism kept him in menial jobs, so upon discharge he rejoined his family and continued as a farm worker in California. In 1948 he married Helen Fabela of Delano, California.

In 1952 Chavez met Fred Ross, who was organizing Mexican-Americans in the barrios (quarters) of California into the Community Service Organization (CSO). They concentrated on voter registration, citizenship classes, and helping Mexican-American communities obtain needed facilities in the barrios as well as aiding individuals with such typical problems as welfare, contracts signed with unscrupulous salesmen, and police harassment.

Chavez's work in the voter registration drive in Sal Si Puedes, the notorious San Jose barrio, was so effective that Ross hired him as an organizer. Over the next 10 years Chavez rose to national director of CSO. In 1962, when the CSO rejected his proposal to start a farmworkers union, he quit the organization. At 35 years of age, with $1,200 in savings, he took his wife and eight children to Delano to begin the slow, methodical organizing process which grew into the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). When, three years later, members of Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) struck the vineyards in Delano, they asked for support from Chavez's NFWA.

Thus began the great California table-grape strike, which lasted five years. In 1966, the two unions merged to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) of the AFL-CIO, headed by Chavez. During the struggle to organize the vineyards Chavez initiated an international boycott of California table grapes that brought such pressure to bear on local grape growers that most eventually signed with his union. The boycott ended in September 1970. Soon after this victory, Chavez again employed the boycott strategy, this time against lettuce growers who used non-union labor. Chavez became the first man ever to organize a viable farm workers' union in California that obtained signed contracts from the agricultural industry.

Believed in Non-Violence

Chavez was an outspoken advocate of social change through nonviolent means. In 1968, to avert violence in the grape strike, he undertook a 25-day fast; the fast was broken at an outdoor Mass attended by some 8,000 persons, including Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Chavez also led a 200-mile march from Delano to Sacramento to dramatize the demands of the farm workers.

In July 1970 Chavez's union faced one of its most serious challenges when the Teamsters' union signed contracts that applied to farm workers with some 200 growers in California. Chavez met the challenge head on: within 3 weeks the largest agricultural strike ever to hit California had spread over 180 miles along the coastal valleys. About 7,000 farm workers struck to win recognition of Chavez's UFWOC as their bargaining agent, with the national boycott again used as the weapon.

From 1972 to 1974, membership in the union dwindled from nearly 60,000 to just 5,000. But Chavez's efforts were rewarded. From 1964 to 1980, wages of California migrant workers had increased 70 percent, health care benefits became a reality and a formal grievance procedure was established. Chavez continued to fight for the rights of workers up to the day of his death on April 22, 1993.

Further Reading

Collins, David R., Farmworker's Friend: The Story of Cesar Chavez Carolrhoda Books, 1996.

Ferris, Susan, et al, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement, Harcourt Brace, 1997.

Gonzales, Doreen Cesar Chavez: Leader for Migrant Farm Workers, Enslow Publications, 1996. □

Chávez, César E.
FOUNDER OF UNITED FARM WORKERS OF AMERICA (1927–1993)

César Estrada Chávez was born near Yuma, Arizona, on March 31, 1927. Eleven years later, his family lost their farm and joined several hundred thousand other migrants working California's crops under terrible conditions. By the time of his death at 63, Chávez had organized farmworkers, improved their wages and living conditions, shaped public awareness, and prompted government regulations that reduced their exposure to dangerous pesticides.

After dropping out of school and serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II (1944–1945), Chávez did farm work for seven years. Beginning in 1952, he registered voters and organized chapters of the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Mexican-American equal rights movement, in California. He left CSO in 1962 to establish a separate union that eventually became the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) in 1973.

After Chávez led a series of migrant worker strikes against vineyards, most grape growers signed contracts restricting dangerous pesticides as a result, long before comparable government restrictions were put in place. Chávez continued the struggle because most growers persisted in their abusive pesticide practices and refused to renew their contracts with proactive migrant workers.

When research found that 300,000 people in central California suffered from pesticide-related illnesses, and there was a high incidence of cancer among children in the same region, Chávez initiated another grape boycott in 1984. He fasted for a life-threatening thirty-six days in mid-1988 to augment his antipesticide protest. Ultimately, his controversial nonviolent strategies significantly raised American awareness of farm pesticide dangers, changed public policies, and concentrated his union's efforts well into the 1990s.

In 1994 President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded Chávez the U.S. Medal of Freedom. Days later, Governor Pete Wilson signed a bill making Chávez's birth date an official holiday in California. In carrying out his life's mission, Chávez exemplified a unique blend of beliefs, behaviors, and commitments along with nonviolence, egalitarianism, political activism, volunteerism, solidarity/unity, and respect for all cultures, religions, and lifestyles.

see also Activism; Labor, Farm; Pesticides.

Bibliography

Griswold Del Castillo, Richard, and García, Richard. (1995). César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit. Tulsa: University of Oklahoma Press.

Ferriss, Susan, and Sandoval, Ricardo. (1997). The Fight in the Fields—César Chávez and the Farmworker Movement. Orlando, FL: Harcourt and Brace.

Matthiessen, Peter. (1997). Sal Si Puedes (Escape If You Can)—César Chávez and the New American Revolution Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ross, Fred. (1989). Conquering Goliath–César Chávez at the Beginning. La Paz, CA: El Taller Grafico Press.

Internet Resources

San Francisco State University, César E. Chávez Institute for Public Policy Web site. Available from http://www.sfsu.edu/~cecipp.

United Farm Workers Web site. Available from http://www.ufw.org.

José B. Cuellar

Chavez, Cesar (1927–1993), labor activist, founder and president of the United Farm Workers of America.Chavez spent his early childhood on his grandfather's homestead near Yuma, Arizona. After losing the farm in the late 1930s, the Chavez family joined California's migratory farm‐labor force. Following military service, Chavez in 1945 resumed work as a farm laborer in California. After marrying in 1948, Chavez and his family relocated to San Jose's notorious “Sal Si Puedes” (literally “get out if you can”) barrio. Becoming involved in Mexican‐American political and social action, Chavez established the National Farm Workers Association in Delano, California, in 1962 (it was rechristened the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in 1966 and the United Farm Workers of America [UFW] in 1972). His new union gained prominence in 1965, when, together with another union of Filipino farmworkers backed by the AFL‐CIO, it embarked on a campaign to organize growers of table grapes in California. The five‐year campaign became a cause célèbre in the United States and abroad, bringing Chavez to national and international prominence.

Chavez's approach to worker activism sought social and racial justice and employed not only strikes and boycotts but also mass marches, fasts, and nonviolent civil disobedience. He won a fiercely dedicated following of young Chicano and Anglo organizers and the support of Hollywood celebrities, political luminaries, and social reformers. Unprecedented union victories against leading wineries and table‐grape producers caused anti‐union employers, in collusion with the teamsters’ union, to block Chavez's further advance. In response, Chavez turned to political action. In 1975, with the help of a sympathetic liberal governor, Chavez won passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act granting the state's farmworkers the organizing rights long denied them under federal law. By the late 1970s, UFW membership approached fifty thousand. By the early 1980s, however, employer opposition, surplus labor, and internal dissension diluted most of the UFW's earlier gains. Increasingly insular and eccentric, Chavez invested the UFW's dwindling resources in ineffectual boycotts and direct‐mail fund‐raising efforts. He nevertheless ranks as the most influential Mexican‐American leader of his generation and arguably the most important in the nation's history.
See also Agriculture: Since 1920; Hispanic Americans; Labor Movements; Migratory Agricultural Workers.

Bibliography

Jacques E. Levy , Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa, 1975.
Richard Griswold del Castillo and and Richard A. Garcia , Cesar Chavez: A Triumph of Spirit, 1995.

Cletus Daniel

CHAVEZ, CESAR 1927-1993

Labor organizer

United Farm Workers

Cesar Chavez was the most effective labor leader of the 1970s, rising from poverty as a Hispanic migrant worker in Arizona to international celebrity as the leader of the United Farm Workers Union. In 1962 Chavez left his job as director of the Community Service Organization in California to establish the National Farm Workers Association. His success with Hispanic and Filipino farm pickers led to the formation of the United Farm Workers (UFW) in 1966.

Democratic Support

Supported by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther, and other prominent liberals, Chavez adroitly used church meetings, sit-ins, picket lines, consumer boycotts, and media propaganda to win a bitter strike against twenty-six California table-grape growers. The growers signed a contract with the UFW in July 1970, and in 1972 he negotiated a contract with the agribusiness giant Minute Maid in Florida.

Nonviolence

Chavez promoted social change by nonviolent tactics at a time when protest violence was becoming endemic, thereby earning public admiration. He also organized workers and supporters across ethnic, class, gender, and racial lines while the country became more segregated and stratified. In 1970 his chief assistant, Dolores Huerta, was elected vice-president of the UFW, demonstrating that the UFW could also overcome sexist barriers under the charismatic leadership of Chavez.

A Moral Example

His self-imposed poverty (he was paid only five dollars a day like all UFW organizers), humility, courage, and insight inspired respect and admiration. His popularity and prestige transcended the southwestern Chicano community, and more than 14.5 million Hispanic-Americans in 1979 looked to Chavez for leadership and moral example.

Sources:

Peter Matthiessen, Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution (New York: Random House, 1969);

Ronald B. Taylor, Chavez and the Farm Workers (Boston: Beacon, 1975).

Cesar Estrada Chavez , 1927–93, American agrarian labor leader, b. near Yuma, Ariz. A migrant worker, he became involved (1952) in the self-help Community Service Organization (CSO) in California, working among Mexicans and Mexican Americans; from 1958 to 1962 he was its general director. In 1962, he left the CSO to organize wine grape pickers in California and formed the National Farm Workers Association. Using strikes, fasts, picketing, and marches, he was able to obtain contracts from a number of major growers. In 1966 his organization merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO. Chavez also launched (1968) a boycott against the table grape growers, mobilizing consumer support throughout the United States. In 1972 the United Farm Workers (UFW), with Chavez as president, became a member union of the AFL-CIO. Chavez expanded its efforts to include all California vegetable pickers and launched a lettuce boycott, as well as extending his organizational efforts to Florida citrus workers. His successes in California were sharply diminished, however, as the result of a jurisdictional dispute with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters over the organization of field workers. In 1973 the Teamsters cut heavily into UFW membership by signing contracts with former UFW grape growers, but Chavez renewed the grape workers' strike. In 1977, the two unions signed a pact defining the types of workers each could organize. Membership in the UFW later fell, in part due to disputes between Chavez and his followers, some of whom accused him of nepotism.

Bibliography: See J. E. Levy, Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa (1975); R. Franchere, Cesar Chavez (1988).

Chavez, César Estrada (b. 31 Mar. 1927, d. 23 Apr. 1993). US labour union organizer Born on a farm near Yuma, Arizona, of Mexican emigrant parents, he spent his childhood living and working in Chicano migrant labour camps in Arizona and California. After serving in the US navy he returned to California and began to organize migrant farm labor. In 1962 he created the National Farm Workers' Association (NFWA), which in 1971 became the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). From 1965 he led a five-year grape-pickers' strike in California, which won much public support. During the early 1970s the UFW was competing with the Teamsters for members, but in 1977 it won an agreement to have the sole right to organize field labour. During the 1980s Chavez somewhat compromised his reputation by his preoccupation with faith healing and holistic religion. An abundance of labour also reduced the UFW's bargaining power, and its membership declined dramatically. Chavez is remembered as one of the most prominent Chicanos in US history, who did much to boost the position and self-esteem of American Chicanos.

Chávez, Cesar Estrada (1927–93) US labour leader. Born of Mexican-American parents, Chavez migrated to California as a field worker. In 1962 he founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which in 1966 merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO, to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. In 1968–70, he led a successful national boycott of California grapes, and later a lettuce boycott. Disputes over farm labourer representation continued into the l980s.