The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

by Miriam Pawel

  Chavez grew agitated. He warned that illegal immigrants posed a threat to the union’s election chances, especially in areas where the Illegals Campaign had been most active. Huerta agreed: “All an employer has to do, all he has to say is, ‘If the union wins, you guys are going to be out of a job.’ And that is true. Everybody knows it’s true. We know it, they know it, the other workers know it.”

  Chavez went further, making accusations that reflected the depth of his feelings on the immigrant issue. He charged the federal government had made a deal with Mexico to look the other way and leave undocumented immigrants in the fields in order to create an informal bracero program. “It’s a union busting operation of the biggest goddamn order. And the CIA is part of it,” Chavez declared. Mexican leaders had warned the United States that if the border was sealed, “the Communists will take over Mexico,” thus triggering the involvement of the CIA.

  He offered neither substantiation nor concrete suggestions. Manuel Chavez, who had engineered the wet line to keep immigrants from crossing the border when he believed they were breaking his strike, now cheerfully switched positions. The UFW must win their votes, he declared: “I’m not afraid to have an election with illegals.”

  Manuel dismissed his cousin’s hand-wringing and accused the naysayers of looking for excuses to fail. “Let’s go at it! Let’s go fight and see if we win!” he said. “Let’s not be afraid of the people. The people will respond. If we’re a good union, they’re going to vote for us. If we’re a bad union, they’re not gonna vote for us.”

  Manuel’s bravado received support from Richard Chavez, who backed up his cousin with more down-to-earth arguments. Several field office directors had said the majority of the workers in various areas were undocumented. “If they’re the workers, we should organize them,” Richard said simply. They may have been strikebreakers in the past, he said, but now “they’re not breaking strikes because nobody’s breaking strikes. They’re the workers, and were going to go out and organize whoever’s working in those fields.”

  For Cesar, the issue was as much an emotional flash point as an organizing challenge. He dismissed the possibility the UFW might win over undocumented Mexicans, whom he viewed as a monolithic group, beholden to the grower or the labor contractor. Chavez rejected arguments that immigrants would be open to embrace the union for the same reasons as other workers. He clung to his vision of illegal immigrants as a threat, as well as a convenient scapegoat for election losses. The man who had adopted “si se puede” as his motto spoke like a defeatist.

  “What do you have if they vote for you?” he pressed. “You still don’t have a union . . . they’re not going to support you in the contract . . . Anyone here who doesn’t think that the growers are going to use the same work force to destroy the union on elections that they use on strikes has to take a real good look at themselves. It’s there. That’s what they’ve been using to break the union. You think they’re going to stop now?”

  Cohen pointed out ways the new law would help protect undocumented workers’ right to vote and urged that they focus on strategies for pressuring growers to allow workers to freely support the union of their choice.

  “Brothers and sisters, we have a real problem,” Chavez warned again. “The illegals aren’t going to vote for us just because we’re there.”

  “That’s right,” shot back Manuel. “You’ve got to work for it.”

  The split mirrored a deeper division among the union leaders—one group anticipated elections with enthusiasm, the other with trepidation. Younger organizers like Marshall Ganz and Eliseo Medina were eager for the fight, confident they had strong arguments to persuade workers to vote for the UFW and excited about the first-ever secret ballot elections in the fields. Many of the older organizers took their cues from Chavez, who voiced obvious ambivalence about the new law.

  When Cohen explained how they would challenge any elections the UFW lost, and then added, “Of course we’re not going to lose elections,” Chavez cut him off: “We’re going to lose elections. It’s going to be the hardest fight we’re ever going to have. I hope you’re just kidding when you say that. You guys get it through your head.” He spoke of workers in Coachella refusing to sign cards supporting the UFW and predicted that growers would hire experienced antiunion propaganda experts. “It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be hard getting those cards signed. Imagine what the elections are going to be like.”

  While his staff worked frantically to collect signed cards, Chavez marched. All through July, he walked as much as thirty miles a day, attending evening rallies organized by his staff along the route. Unlike the 1966 march to Sacramento, with its striking visual imagery of farmworkers stretched out single file along the highways, the central attraction of the “1,000 mile march” was Chavez. This time he wore tennis shoes for comfort. His aides helped wash and bandage his sore feet. Security guards drove him to the rallies at night and to and from his accommodations. Instead of the Teatro Campesino and the “Plan de Delano,” each evening featured Fighting for Our Lives. As he talked with workers along the way, he did not need to mention too much about the law, Chavez told Jacques Levy midway through the march. His presence was enough. “The sacrifice, they understand,”4 he said. “Mostly women will come, some men. And they will embrace me, and they cry, and they say, “Stop walking. It’s too much sacrifice. It’s too much. Five hundred miles is just too much. We’ll do it from now on.”

  Medina saw that response when he met Chavez on the outskirts of Oxnard. Chavez had assigned Medina to handle5 elections in a Teamster stronghold—the only area where the rival union had won contracts on their own, rather than sweetheart deals signed to preempt the UFW. “You got a real fight on your hands,” Chavez told Medina. The assignment was a vintage Chavez gamble: If Medina succeeded, the victory would help the union. If he failed, the loss would dim Medina’s luster. Medina joined the march and walked with Chavez ten miles across the Oxnard plain. Tired after only half a day, Medina was impressed again with Chavez’s willingness to sacrifice.

  From Oxnard, Chavez continued to Santa Barbara, where the local paper sent a part-time photographer to cover the march. Cathy Murphy’s first impression6 was how small Chavez looked, how incongruous his body seemed with his dauntingly large mission. Then she saw the piercing, determined eyes. She went back to shoot more pictures the next day, drawn in by his power. Chavez liked her photos and invited her to join the staff. The thirty-three-year-old dropped her photojournalism studies, quit her job, sent her six-year-old son to live with his grandparents for the rest of the summer, and joined the movement. After three days on the march, her feet were so blistered that she asked permission to ride with the security guards for a day. Instead, Chavez called for a tub of hot water with salts and sat while she soaked her feet. He broke the blisters with a needle. She thought of Jesus and Mary.

  Another hundred miles north, Chavez entered the Salinas Valley in King City, where he had gone with Fred Ross in 1953 to investigate a race riot. The lettuce workers in the valley turned out in full force to cheer Chavez. He reminded them of the great struggles the union had endured in the past decade to reach this milestone, and of the fights no one had thought they could win. “It is because of these sacrifices that we have a law, and not because the politicians all of sudden wanted to give us a law,” he said. “We are involved in this campaign for one reason—At stake is the dignity of the worker.”7 Chants of “Viva Chavez!” punctuated the speech. “For the first time, the worker has come to realize that he has a lot of worth. And that realization has made him stand up and be proud and be counted.”

  Chavez timed the first part of the march to end in the second UFW convention, designed to build enthusiasm for elections. “We have survived jailings, beatings, professional goons, biased judges, racist law enforcers and the violent deaths of two of our brothers,” Chavez said in his opening speech. “We have learned to match our opponents’ riches with our blood, sweat, dedication and hard work
. For all their money and sordid influence, the growers and Teamsters have not been able to destroy our movement. Now our time has come.”8

  Several hundred boycotters had traveled back to California to join the celebration. Jessica Govea had left Toronto on a bus with about twenty boycottters at midnight on Sunday, August 10, joined up with boycotters in Detroit and then Chicago, and spent four days in a bus caravan to reach Fresno on the eve of the convention. She was known for her beautiful singing voice, and when Chavez called upon her to sing for the audience, Govea apologized for being hoarse from the long trip. Along with many of the boycotters, Govea stayed in California after the convention and joined the frenetic election preparations.

  Chavez left the convention to complete the last lap of his walk through the San Joaquin Valley. As critical questions arose, staff members had to drive to find him on the march and walk with Chavez to discuss the issues. Cohen was already frustrated by Chavez’s lack of interest in the strategic details. The two men had testified at a hearing on proposed regulations, and when the meeting was simultaneously translated into Spanish, Chavez became overwhelmed with emotion. He teared up at the sign of respect and told Cohen they had won a great victory. Cohen, intent on lobbying to get symbols on the ballot because many workers could not read, was dismayed by Chavez’s lack of interest in the nitty-gritty decisions.

  In the field offices, nitty-gritty decisions had become all-consuming. The evening before the ALRB was to spring to life, a crowd of workers gathered outside the board’s Salinas office. A priest said mass and the workers settled in for an all-night vigil to make sure they would file the first, historic petition. When the doors opened and a state agent tried to escort a Teamster representative into the building, a near-riot ensued. The start was every bit as chaotic as Cohen had predicted.

  Workers who had never cast a ballot in their life lined up to vote for “la union de Cesar Chavez,” marking an X next to the picture of the eagle. In Oxnard, Medina’s staff assembled cards from twenty-two companies he had targeted, half of which had Teamster contracts. In Salinas, Cohen’s second in command, Sandy Nathan, was in the board office every day, screaming at the state agents about unfair access for Teamsters and demanding that they protect workers from retaliation. When police and immigration agents raided a labor camp a week before elections and tried to deport thirty-two undocumented workers who supported the UFW, Nathan went to find them in the detention center. He ended up under arrest, handcuffed to Ganz. The workers who had been in danger of deportation were allowed to cast ballots.

  For weeks, the results of many elections remained secret because growers persuaded state officials to seal the ballots pending legal challenges. State agents were untrained, many unfamiliar with agriculture, and none accustomed to the feverish pace. In the first month, more than thirty-thousand workers voted in 194 elections.

  The union hired five hundred organizers, many of them farmworkers, for $100 a week. Chavez decided where to throw resources based in part on the Teamsters and in part on what he called psychological reasons. He poured resources into losing campaigns at Gallo and Giumarra, the vineyards that had been poster children for the boycott. In private, Chavez regretted the decision, which he blamed for diverting resources that hurt in Delano, where the union lost all but a handful of contests. “This one breaks my heart,9 Delano,” Chavez said sadly, as he reviewed the record. In public, Chavez blamed Teamster-grower collusion for the union’s defeats. “There is now a reign of terror,10 especially in the Delano area,” he said. “There are no free elections in Delano.” He claimed UFW supporters refused to vote out of fear, despite the secret ballots.

  Chavez called the executive board to a meeting at La Paz to plan a different kind of campaign, one where he felt on sure ground: an attack on the new state agency. Many of the three dozen state board agents had been making decisions that favored growers and Teamsters. Chavez wanted to expose the conspiracy between growers and the board, he said, calling the past two weeks “the most frustrating in the history11 of the union,” with the sort of hyperbole that had become second nature.

  His view was not universally shared. In Oxnard, Medina had won eight elections to the Teamsters’ two, taking companies away from the opposition’s strongest organizers. In Salinas, Ganz had successfully adjusted his tactics in response to the growers, who had initially advocated a “no union” vote and then switched to supporting the Teamsters. Ganz urged that union leaders evaluate their own performance. “It’s not a depressed scene,” he told Chavez. In San Diego, Scott Washburn won five out of six elections. The competition with the Teamsters forced UFW organizers to articulate reasons why workers should vote for the black eagle. The successful organizers applied the lessons they had learned from Chavez: listen to the workers and respond to their needs.

  Chavez dismissed their victories. If a grower supported the Teamsters, the UFW could not win, Chavez told the group. “Harder, but not impossible,” Ganz countered. “Impossible,” Chavez repeated. “A miracle,” Huerta added.

  Chavez interrupted the meeting to take a call from Roger Mahony and warned the bishop that the UFW would attack the board and the governor if the situation did not improve. “I told him, we’re working fulltime. We don’t want to win elections any more. We want to prove to you and everybody else that the whole thing stinks.”

  “We’re better at that anyway,” Jim Drake replied, and everyone laughed.

  They all agreed that the ignorance of many board agents posed impediments, and organizers wanted to pressure the state to correct egregious favoritism toward growers and Teamsters. The process needed to be streamlined so that results and appeals were handled expeditiously. If workers had to wait months for justice after they were unfairly punished or fired, confidence in the new law would erode.

  “What the hell are we going to do?” Chavez asked. “Boycott the elections? Cry? Continue to cry about what they’re doing to us?”

  “Go after the board,” Ganz responded.

  “Go after Brown,” Cohen said. “Fuck Brown.”

  “Brown, Brown, Brown,” chanted Chris Hartmire. “Get him! . . . It’s a big feather in his cap. Let’s put mud all over it!”

  Chavez liked the idea of attacking the governor. He wanted a villain, and he found one—Walter Kintz, general counsel of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB), who supervised board agents in the regional offices. They must force Kintz out, Chavez declared. His mood brightened. He was back in his element, planning a campaign. He told Hartmire to organize religious observers to visit and document abuses. Chavez would go on television, hold press conferences, and demand Kintz’s resignation. The union would organize a letter-writing campaign to Brown, and if necessary stage sit-ins to increase the pressure. The governor was contemplating a run for president; Hartmire suggested they could tarnish his reputation around the country. “Get a few people who want to run for president to come here,” Chavez added.

  Chavez spent a day in San Francisco for media appearances in which he attacked Kintz. He persuaded Meany to send several top AFL-CIO officials to Delano to witness the problems. Hartmire brought two religious delegations. Brown appointed a task force to investigate the problems and report back, but Chavez was dubious that would achieve real results. Farmworkers picketed an appearance by Kintz, and Chavez warned that the governor would face pickets, too, unless he removed Kintz. Huerta suggested they enlist legislators from East Los Angeles and other heavily Chicano areas to pressure Brown. “If we can just get the Chicano community12 on his ass, that’s all we need to do,” Chavez agreed.

  When the governor did not relent, Chavez sent Washburn with a delegation of farmworkers who had been fired from jobs in San Diego to stage a vigil outside Brown’s Sacramento office. More than fifty workers camped out, first on the floor and then on couches in the governor’s reception area. When Brown returned to the office around midnight on the third night of the sit-in, he spoke with the group for three hours, and they finally dispersed.
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  The task force corrected many of the problems. During its first three months of operation, the ALRB conducted 329 elections,13 handed down fifteen formal opinions, and scheduled three hundred hearings around the state. Of the 38,164 ballots cast, only 16 percent were for no union. In head-to-head contests, the Teamsters outpolled the UFW, but overall the UFW won more elections than it lost.

  Winners and losers also became clear among the union staff. During the boycott, no one had known if an organizer failed to set up picket lines one weekend or fudged his numbers. “When it comes to elections, you win them, or you lose14 them,” Ganz said during an argument over the competence of certain staff members. “You either do the work, or you don’t. There’s no bullshit about it.” Mistakes were glaring, and costly. One error could have statewide ramifications. The winners were those who applied all they had learned from Chavez to navigate the new state rules. The losers were those who had always counted on Chavez to tell them what to do; they looked to him for guidance, but he struggled to find his footing.

  Much as he loved a fight, Chavez never mastered the new game. He was immersed in the smallest details about the administration of La Paz, but not the minutiae essential to winning elections. He was uncomfortable playing by someone else’s rules; his past successes had depended on the ability to spring surprises, pivot 180 degrees on a moment’s notice, and make outrageous demands and bluffs. Elections called for methodical organizing. The best organizers could predict election outcomes within a handful of votes.

  “We knew that the new legislation was going to have an impact on the union, but we had no way of knowing how big it would be,” Chavez said in an interview. “It changed everything.15 It affected everything we do, even our way of thinking . . . We now are faced with trying to find out how to maintain the vitality we had, so that it goes beyond just shouting, ‘Viva la huelga.’ . . . We have to find a way of enduring.”