The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

by Miriam Pawel

  Delano lies near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, a farming town with streets laid out in alphabetical order, bisected by the tracks of the Southern Pacific. Founded as a railroad outpost in 1873, the city was named in honor of Columbus Delano, secretary of the interior under President Grant. Almost a century later, fewer than twelve thousand people lived in wood-and-stucco homes on streets that trailed off into vineyards and cotton fields. In 1962, the city was largely segregated, just as it had been when the Chavez family lived there two decades earlier. On the west side, where the Mexicans lived, was the Fremont School, Our Lady of Guadalupe church, and People’s Market. For most everything else, residents had to cross the tracks.

  When Chavez had plotted his next move during his final months with the CSO, he had focused on Oxnard, where he had established a base. Oxnard’s temperate climate and nearly year-round growing conditions had advantages over the sweltering summers and cold, foggy winters of central California. But after Chavez resigned from the CSO and spurned the financial offer from Katy Peake, she put her money into a new enterprise called the Oxnard Farm Service Center and hired Chavez’s former assistant. Oxnard was out.

  The choice of Delano, dictated by personal considerations, profoundly shaped the farm worker movement. The city in the heart of the table grape industry anchored Chavez to the vineyards and nurtured a sentimental connection to the people who worked in the grapes. Vines were not like lettuce or tomatoes, seasonal crops planted in one field this year and in a different place the next. In Delano, growers and workers shared an attachment to their land, often the only common bond. The permanency of the grapevines appealed to Chavez. Even in winter, the desolate vines made a good backdrop for strikes and protests.

  From his base in Delano, Chavez had access to thousands of farmworkers who tilled millions of acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley. He had crisscrossed the valley many times during his CSO years. He could call on a network of contacts scattered across towns where he had once set up chapters—Bakersfield, Hanford, Madera, Arvin, Lamont, Corcoran, Parlier, Mendota, Firebaugh.

  Three days after arriving in Delano, Chavez held his first house meeting. He had already discovered some sobering facts: Delano growers paid the highest wages in the valley, $1.10 an hour during the grape harvest, a dime more than in other areas. Young men working piece rate on jobs like girdling vines could earn as much as $25 working from five in the morning until noon. A dozen labor contractors worked the area, middlemen whose ability to control their workers would make Chavez’s quest even more difficult. “I’m beginning to think that if there ever was one place not to start4 in, this was it,” he wrote to Ross.

  Chavez became a prolific correspondent during his early months in Delano. He was not a fluid or comfortable writer, but he turned to Ross for both financial and emotional sustenance. Isolated and on his own, driven by his vision, by turns hopeful, overwhelmed, and scared, Chavez wrote Ross almost every week. Ross’s encouragement offered a lifeline. “Sure happy to receive your letter this morning,” Chavez wrote on May 2, 1962. “Cheque or no cheque,5 your letters will give me that hope which I need so badly right now.”

  Chavez’s focus and work ethic kicked in. To start his census, he prepared a short explanation on a borrowed mimeograph machine. He distributed the flyer through the “leaflet committee”—his kids, plus his nieces and nephews. “The Farm Workers Association is conducting an extensive drive to register all of the Farm Workers in the San Joaquin Valley,” his leaflet read. “The purpose to the census is to determine the exact number of workers in each community throughout the valley. In this Census information is being asked to find out from you, the Farm Worker, what ought to be the minimum hourly wage . . . to register with the association you must fill out the white card.”

  He chose four-by-six-inch index cards, inexpensive and easy to fill out. He scrapped the lengthy forms he had used in Oxnard and asked for only five pieces of information—name, address, permanent address, birth date, and number of dependents. He asked two questions: “In your opinion,6 what should be the minimum wage paid Farm Workers?” and “Would you be interested in a newspaper to inform the Farm Workers about their rights under the labor laws?”

  Dolores Huerta was still on the CSO payroll, but her allegiance was to Chavez. She drove to Delano from her Stockton home at the north end of the valley and spent a day and a half with Cesar and Helen, mapping out the registration campaign. They spread out an atlas of the San Joaquin Valley, eight sprawling counties that ran 220 miles from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River delta south to the Tehachapi Mountains, which separated the valley from Los Angeles. Cesar, Helen, and Dolores marked all the small towns they would visit and divided up the territory. From Stockton, Huerta would register farmworkers in the northern part of the valley. “She, Helen and I decided on the name of the group: ‘Farm Workers Assn.,’” Chavez wrote to Ross. “Decided to go ahead and use a name and try to take advantage of whatever publicity7 we may get during the registration drive.”

  Each week, Chavez drove all over the valley, forming small committees of workers who promised to circulate the registration cards and mail them back. He went into labor camps, including the one where Ross had worked in the 1930s. In Reedley, he followed three teenagers to the local swimming hole to talk to their friends, then waited an hour on the riverbank until the men emerged from the water. Usually, he surveyed a barrio and waited until around five-thirty, after dinnertime. He approached small groups at random, explained his mission, and handed out registration cards. Most times he found volunteers to set up a committee in one evening, left them with cards, and moved on to the next town.

  By June, Chavez was printing cards by the thousands. “The local office supply store is running in circles trying to keep me supplied with white cards,” he wrote Ross. “I know the guy wants very badly to find out8 what in the hell I’m doing.” The cards began to pile up in his rented post office box. The average age of workers registering was thirty-six and a half. The demand for a newsletter was high. The expectations of a fair wage were disappointingly low.

  Chavez started to define his target audience more narrowly. He divided farmworkers into categories, much as Father McDonnell had done a decade earlier in San Jose—migrants, temporary workers, guest workers, and “true workers.” Chavez was not interested in braceros, unemployed construction workers or students earning extra money in the fields. “I tell them I’m looking for the true workers9 who depend 100% on farm work to make a living . . . I say that this worker is not recognized because he is white, brown or black but is recognized because his back aches with the tortures of farmwork and his shoulders are stooped with the weight of injustice.”

  Fear and hopelessness were his biggest hurdles. Chavez pondered what combination of psychological and practical incentives would persuade workers to pay money to join an organization that challenged the status quo, risking the ire of their employers on the chance that the new group might succeed. He vacillated between idealistic and pragmatic approaches. He wanted only the most committed workers who would willingly labor for the benefit of all. He was determined to demand sacrifice, to charge dues, and to avoid the mistakes of the CSO. “Otherwise we will be kidding ourselves and will again become slaves10 of those we are trying to help and will not be able to be effective.”

  By August, after three months in Delano, Chavez had settled on his approach. For the first time, he used the word “movement” to describe his work:

  My pitch has finally developed so that I don’t have to be changing around everytime I give it . . . This is what I tell the workers when we get together. I start out by thanking whomever is responsible for setting up the meeting and also those present. Also tell them that this is not a union and that we are not involved in strikes. Make sure they don’t think I’m against the unions or strikes, but tell them that the way things have been handled by the unions makes me feel that unless they change their approach they’ll never get anywhere. I start out by
telling them this is a movement11 (un movimiento) and that we are trying to find the solution to the problem.

  In a May 28, 1962, letter to Ross, Chavez first closed with the salutation that would come to be known worldwide as the slogan of his movement: “viva la causa.” He had defined his undertaking not as a job or a mission but as a cause.

  As Chavez pursued his cause throughout the San Joaquin Valley, his family survived on savings, unemployment checks, work in the fields, and help from friends and relatives. When Chavez filed for unemployment in Bakersfield, his initial interview took three hours because he argued over how to classify his previous job at the CSO. The unemployment official tried “clerk,” then “playground supervisor,” then “intermediate 3rd class social worker with a second language.” Chavez refused all three. He made them search all the code books and finally, with nothing close to “community organizer,” he acquiesced to “public relations administrator, Class A.” He was reasonably sure they would not succeed in finding him a job in that category. His checks began arriving on May 8, 1962.

  As Chavez’s project became better known, he received more offers. Katy Peake again offered financial support.12 On July 31, 1962, he was offered a job with the Peace Corps. He rejected both. He was still collecting unemployment, though he narrowly escaped a job selling used TVs after a store manager turned him down for lack of experience. The Chavezes moved next door, into a larger house owned by the same landlord. They paid the same $50-a-month rent for 1221 Kensington—856 square feet plus a screened-in porch where some of the children could sleep.

  Helen worked in the fields to support the family. She thinned onions, ten hours a day, for a dollar an hour. She hated every minute. Her sister pulled strings to get Helen hired picking grapes at the DiGiorgio ranch, where she had worked as a teenager. Her sister was a crew boss and had more latitude at work, so she often was able to take care of three-year-old Anthony during the day. Helen woke up before dawn, made breakfasts and lunches for the older children, then left for work. In the afternoon she cleaned, cooked, did laundry, and took care of the eight children, ages three to thirteen. With Cesar seldom home, she tried to summon the energy to focus on the older children13 and respond to their stories about school.

  Cesar occasionally worked in the fields when they ran short of money, labor that helped burnish his credibility with workers. In summer, Fernando went to work picking grapes at $1 an hour, earning $36 his first week. “This is his first big money,”14 Cesar wrote to Ross. “The girls call him King and kid him about their willingness to take off his shoes and do anything for him, little favors. He came home and gave Mama all of the money and told her how it should be spent. Then he waited up for me until I came in and wanted to know how old I was when I earned my first $36 in one week.”

  The first winter was the hardest. Unemployment ran out, and bills piled up. They ate powdered eggs and beans. The kids began to show signs of malnutrition. Fred Ross’s wife got angry when he told her how the children were hurting.

  Chavez was determined that dues would eventually pay his small salary, or the organization would not succeed. In the interim, when he ran out of money, he relied on friends. He took Ross up on an offer to coordinate fund-raising. “Never thought the time would come when I would treasure a lousy piece of mimeo paper or a 4×6 card as much as I do now,” Chavez wrote Ross. “As much as I didn’t want to accept outside help, it is looking very much like I’ll have to. Both Helen and I can’t quite accept the idea of begging but it looks as if we will have to. So back to your gracious plan. We do need help if for nothing else but to buy material and pay for the gas expenses. I’m sure you know this. I will feel a lot better if you did the begging15 on my behalf.”

  The first person Ross appealed to was Alinsky. Ross outlined Chavez’s plan,16 estimated the costs at $600 a month, asked for IAF support, and a personal contribution from Alinsky. Alinsky did not respond. Ross cobbled together a coalition of financial backers, mostly old-time CSO supporters. He extricated promises of monthly support—$5 here, $15 there—and sent Chavez encouraging notes along with contributions which he called “units of supply.”

  Among Chavez’s most faithful supporters were Abe and Anna Chavez (no relation), who had founded the CSO chapter in Salinas during the 1950s, when he worked as a counselor at Soledad prison and she taught kindergarten. Abe had a master’s degree from Berkeley and a state job as a parole commissioner. They had hosted Chavez, Ross, and Alinsky many times, and had grown to admire Chavez’s special talents. At first he had impressed Abe and Anna only as quiet and unassuming. Then they watched him take command, soft-spoken, not particularly articulate, but so sincere and sure of himself. His presence made people listen to what he said, and want to help.

  “Heard about your project17 and am pleased you have the guts to attempt that type of approach to help the farm workers,” Abe wrote to Cesar. “I can only say that you deserve all the luck in the world and may you be able to put your idea across. I am sending a small check to help your luck, that’s the least I can do. Will send something each week. Keep up the good work.” In appreciation, Cesar gave Abe and Anna rosebushes, courtesy of farmworkers at a nearby nursery. Their roses were the envy of the block, Anna Chavez reported.

  In communities where Chavez had admirers from his CSO years, word spread that he was working without pay. CSO members offered money for gas and food. “I remember how hard I used to find it to tell the people that I was being paid to organize CSO chapters,” Chavez wrote Ross. “Now, I’m finding it much harder to tell them I’m not being paid. Most of the evenings someone somewhere will offer me food, and I take it right away. Sometimes I don’t get any invitation so have to wait until I get home. Talk about being hungry.”18

  He poured out frustrations and fears to Ross with unusual candor and awkward analogies (“Trying to determine who the Farm Worker is is about as hard as it once was to isolate the atom.”19). He wrote with elation when a young CSO member passed up a vacation in Mexico to help with the census and pride when his brother Richard organized a card-signing blitz in Delano. Two weeks later, Chavez was despondent. Committees had disintegrated, house meetings had fallen apart: “Dear Fred, All is not well.20 I’m going too fast and am having difficulty covering my tracks.”

  Ross was not the only one Chavez counted on for support. One of his early and most steadfast disciples was Chris Hartmire, the recently arrived director of the Migrant Ministry. Hartmire sent money regularly and stopped by Kensington Street whenever he passed through Delano. He became an important source of counsel, and the relationship offered Chavez an alliance with a religious group, which he knew would be important.

  For Hartmire, the connection to Chavez had already been life-changing. The minister had arrived in California in late 1961, reluctantly leaving his urban East Coast roots and doubtful whether he could last two years. He had grown up in Philadelphia, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton in engineering, then entered the seminary to do good. He was arrested during the Mississippi Freedom Rides and arrived in California seeing no connection between the civil rights movement of the South and problems of migrant farmworkers. Then he met Chavez and Ross. Hartmire was entranced by their vision of organizing. A month-long stay in the Stockton boardinghouse owned by Huerta’s mother gave him exposure to the CSO methods. He began to transform the Migrant Ministry, working closely with Chavez. Once Chavez left the CSO, Hartmire shifted his allegiance to the Farm Workers Association.

  Hartmire invited Cesar and Helen to Migrant Ministry staff retreats to explain their plans and enlist support. He donated a mimeograph machine, which Chavez installed on his back porch, where the ink leaked in the triple-degree summer heat. Then Hartmire assigned his newest staff member, the Reverend Jim Drake, to work with Chavez. Drake came with a little red Renault, a credit card for gas and food, and an infectious spirit. He and Chavez hit it off immediately.

  Chavez drew on political capital he had built up across the valley during his decade with
the CSO. Several chapters donated money, and CSO leaders became the core of Chavez’s committees throughout the valley—Roger Terronez in Corcoran, and Gilbert Padilla in Hanford. In Bakersfield, David Burciaga held house meetings and registered about fifteen workers a day. In Hanford, Antonio Orendain helped with the census and scrounged reams of mimeograph paper. At the annual CSO convention in July 1962, partisans offered a resolution to support the “Chavez plan,” and opponents argued the farmworker census might interfere with AWOC, the AFL-CIO union, which was active in several areas of California. Ross sent Chavez a blow-by-blow account21 of the convention: Tony Rios accused Ross and Alinsky of listening to the “lies of a bunch of snakes.” Alinsky berated the delegates for their shabby treatment of Ross. Huerta lobbied for the Chavez plan. Orendain became so incensed by an AFL-CIO official’s objections to the census that he waved a registration card in the man’s face and “told him he didn’t care what [he] or anyone else said, the Farm Workers were going to be organized ‘with CSO or without CSO.’”

  Chavez’s efforts to downplay suggestions that his association might function as a union didn’t stop the questions, which gave him opportunities to emphasize his differences with AWOC. He felt that strikes were often called by unions prematurely, at the expense of workers. AWOC exemplified that model—a union that called strikes it could not win “because they don’t really care about the people and will sacrifice the workers22 on strikes before they are actually ready,” he wrote.

  Leaders of AWOC remained suspicious of Chavez’s claim that he was merely conducting a farmworker census. AWOC opened a large office in Delano, and Norman Smith, the former UAW organizer sent to run AWOC, arrived to preside over an open meeting. Chavez packed the room with supporters. “I told the people there that the drive was to get information directly from the workers and find out how they feel on some of those questions that outsiders have been deciding for the workers for too damn long now,” he recounted. Chavez was questioned by one of AWOC’s strongest organizers, Larry Itliong, a cigar-chomping Filipino who headed the Delano office. Itliong asked if Chavez was conducting the drive around the state. Was he aware that a labor union was already organizing the workers? Did he oppose that? Chavez dodged the questions. “I’m almost sure though that Smith doesn’t realize what we are really up to,” Chavez concluded. “I’m sure he thinks we are still just conducting a little survey.”23