The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

by Miriam Pawel

  Chavez had the votes, but the vegetable workers represented a sizable block of delegates. He could take no chances. He needed a crushing victory to discourage further challenges. Chavez dictated a new rule25 that would circumvent the delegates and effectively take away their votes. A petition signed by as few as 8 percent of the workers at a ranch could bind that ranch’s convention delegates to vote for the Chavez slate.

  Board members descended on Salinas with petitions: if you support Cesar, sign here. The paid reps were out to oust Chavez, Huerta and others told the workers. “How can they run the union?” an internal campaign memo asked, disparaging the paid reps as puppets of Ganz.26 Just as growers had once dismissed Chavez as a tool of Anglo outsiders, now he presumed farmworkers could not have initiated a significant challenge on their own.

  Tensions were high as the delegates gathered in the Fresno convention center on September 5, 1981. The dissidents had been carefully seated in the back, as far as possible from any microphones. In his opening remarks, Chavez chronicled the history of the union’s battles for survival against the growers and the Teamsters. Then he painted a dark picture of “malignant forces” out to destroy all that he had built:

  “Now we come to this 1981 convention facing yet another assault on our beloved union. An assault even more menacing than the past conventions. More menacing because it is clandestinely organized by those forces whose every wish and desire is our destruction. Obstruction by those evil forces visible and invisible who work at every chance to destroy us—the growers, the teamsters, disaffected former staff, scoundrels, and God knows who, some unwittingly trying to reach the same goal—that is to bury our beloved union.”27

  The rule to bind the delegates’ votes had been adopted by the board as an emergency measure; the constitution required that the rule be ratified by the convention. Chavez called the resolution. Bustamante barreled up to the microphone. “To me, this resolution is unjust and undemocratic,” he declared.

  Chavez called a vote. “The matter looks very split,” he said, looking at the show of hands. He postponed another vote until after lunch.

  During the break, Chavez’s team distributed leaflets accusing the dissidents of being tools of “the two Jews”—Ganz and Cohen. “Outside forces intend to force our President Cesar Chavez to resign.” A memo in Spanish, handwritten in the distinctive lettering of one board member, laid out anti-Semitic arguments:28 The Jews want to take over the union. Ganz and Cohen, and the old legal department. The Jews used our people—Jessica, Eliseo, Gilbert—to control the legal department and the negotiators. They think they are superior to Mexicans.

  When Chavez called a second vote after lunch, the measure to bind the delegates passed easily. The dissidents decided there was no point in staying. About fifty walked out. Someone shouted “Traitors,” and a chant began: “Down with the traitors.” Bustamante broke the staff on his union flag in two as he walked out with his brother Chava. “Death to the Bustamantes,” Helen Chavez shouted from the auditorium balcony.

  Chavez moved to finish off the paid reps. He sent Huerta, David Martinez, and Arturo Rodriguez to Salinas. The board members visited each vegetable company represented by the dissident paid reps and urged them to oust the traitors who were out to destroy Chavez. When workers stood by their elected leaders, Chavez fired the dissidents who served as paid reps.

  In Washington, D.C., Monsignor George Higgins grew alarmed.29 He wrote Chavez on September 21, 1981, ticking off the recent departures and allegations. “In my opinion, Cesar, even the slightest compromise on the issue of anti-Semitism would seriously endanger the movement and could conceivably destroy it . . . As I see it, the truth is that the UFW is in serious trouble and that some of this trouble is strictly of its own making.”

  Chavez waited weeks to reply. Hartmire drafted a terse answer that accused Higgins of jumping to conclusions without knowing the facts. By October, the dissident leaders had all been fired, despite their protestations that they had been elected by their peers.

  On October 24, 1981, Chavez addressed a group of leaders of the United Church of Christ, reminiscing about how important they had been in the early years of the struggle. He thanked John Moyer for being a strong supporter ever since the minister came to Delano in 1965. Chavez recalled the visit of the “Coachella 95” during the Teamster fight of 1973 as the “single most powerful example of the church’s solidarity.” Then he addressed the present. He was relieved by recent changes, Chavez said, though he did not mention the charges of anti-Semitism or the rebellion by the paid reps. “Our most serious and important internal struggle is over—at least for now,” he said. At last, he said, he had an executive board that shared his vision, after four difficult years and bitter fights. The union had survived its early years “thanks to the sacrifices of the workers, and the genius and courage of a group of heroic lone rangers,” in which he included Medina, Ganz, Drake, and Cohen. But the era of the lone ranger was over, Chavez said. The executive board had adopted his new approach, which he called TMT—top management team. “It is a great relief30 to me.”

  There was one more significant departure that tumultuous fall. Scott Washburn had been organizing farmworkers who lived in the canyons of northern San Diego, burrowed into the hillsides under tarps and in makeshift shacks. A few days before the Fresno convention, some of Washburn’s organizers were called to a meeting with executive board member Frank Ortiz. Washburn went along. Ortiz was campaigning against the paid reps. He railed against Ganz and Cohen and said the Jews were out to take over the union.

  Word got back to La Paz and Chavez asked for an explanation. Ortiz’s clarification31 hardly helped: “I said, ‘Too bad these two guys had to be two Jews because our best support all across the country comes from the Jewish people and organizations, also, that the Jewish people through all of history have been the most discriminated in the world and now we had Marshal[l] and Jerry working against us.’”

  When Washburn saw the anti-Semitic flyers at the convention, he felt sick. He had watched his best friend, Joe Smith, be purged in 1976, had driven Jim Drake to the airport when he left the union, had listened in shock to Eliseo Medina announce his departure after a string of victories in the citrus orchards, and had seen Fred Ross grit his teeth as he tried to convince Gilbert Padilla not to resign. The anti-Semitic slurs were the last straw.

  Chavez came to a meeting at the San Diego ALRB office in late October 1981. Washburn nervously pulled him into a conference room. He told Chavez that he, too, was leaving the union. Chavez did not mention all the other union leaders who had left in recent months. He just looked at Washburn and said, “They’ll all be back.”32

  Chapter 36

  Playing Defense

  We’ve been part of a very controversial organization since we started. We’ve been investigated up and down. I can truthfully say we’ve never been found lacking in any respect.

  Outside the Salinas UFW office where they once worked, the farmworkers whom Chavez had fired from their leadership posts staged a fast in protest. “We’re only doing what Cesar taught us,”1 Mario Bustamante said during the eight-day fast. “To fight for justice.”

  The dissident farmworkers did not go quietly; unlike others who had been purged over the years, the workers had no incentive to keep silent and no place to go. Chavez had effectively blackballed them with both union and nonunion growers. The paid reps filed complaints with the Agricultural Labor Relations Board; state officials said the ALRB lacked jurisdiction. The workers filed internal charges against UFW board members; the executive board exonerated the leadership. The paid reps found an Oakland lawyer who specialized in union democracy and took their case pro bono. Nine farmworkers sued Cesar Chavez in federal court, claiming he had no right to fire them from positions to which they had been elected by their peers.

  “The union has always been run according to the views of the President, Cesar Chavez. It became unable to deal with dissenting opinions,” Bustamante said in his
deposition. “There can be no doubt that the other plaintiffs and I were removed because Cesar perceived us to pose some kind of threat2 to his stronghold on the UFW, not because we failed to do our jobs.”

  The paid reps accused Chavez of using union funds to campaign for his slate on the executive board. He produced checks to show the union had been reimbursed for election-related expenses. The first check had been deposited after the paid reps had complained. They circulated a flyer claiming they had forced Chavez to repay the money. He sued for libel3 and slander, seeking $25 million in damages from nine farmworkers. In an unguarded moment with a reporter, Chavez acknowledged the suit was an effort to intimidate4 their lawyer.

  The open dissension attracted the first prolonged spate of negative publicity for Chavez in two decades. Reporters from major news organizations asked about the paid reps, the departure of high-profile figures such as Marshall Ganz and Jerry Cohen, and the Synanon Game. Their inquiries were fielded by Chris Hartmire, who had resigned from the farmworker ministry to work full-time as Chavez’s assistant. Hartmire’s move to La Paz pleased Chavez, who was sensitive to the recent exodus. Hartmire had long been skilled in interpreting and justifying Chavez’s actions. Now he used those talents in a more public forum. Unwittingly, some former staff might be “helping the enemy,” Hartmire told the Los Angeles Times. He took notes5 on the messages he was to deliver: Jessica Govea sabotaged the medical plan. Marshall Ganz was trying to start his own union. Anti-Semitism was not tolerated in the union.

  New York Times reporter Wayne King showed up at the La Paz gate and was turned away,6 but that did not deter him. Celebrity lawyer Melvin Belli threatened legal action on behalf of Chavez before the Times story appeared. King’s front-page story7 focused on the “quashed rebellion” by the Salinas dissidents and allegations by former UFW officials that Chavez had become preoccupied with clandestine plots and traitors, at the expense of building the union.

  When CBS television’s 60 Minutes expressed interest in profiling Chavez, aides coached him on how to counter charges of autocratic control. Chavez must take care not to appear hostile or aloof. He must rebut the idea that the union had not “lived up to the dreams8 and vision that people remember from the 1960s.”

  In a Salinas garage, 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley interviewed the paid reps who had sued their onetime leader. They, too, tried to be low-key, following their lawyer’s advice. Finally, Bustamante could not help himself. Until 1979, he said, Cesar had been a good leader. “Now he is . . . dictador!”

  Sitting outdoors at La Paz, the verdant hills as backdrop, Bradley asked Chavez9 how he felt being called a dictator. “Of course it bothers me,” Chavez said, his expressive eyes looking pained. “But I think that our union is one of the most democratic unions in the country. They have a right to say whatever they want to say. That’s the game. But I don’t think too many people listen to them.”

  Of the top leaders who had left the union in recent months, only Gilbert Padilla talked to 60 Minutes on camera. For more than two decades, Padilla had followed Chavez’s lead. Padilla was on the first NFWA board. He and Chavez had shared rooms, cigarettes, and picket duty. In the last few years, Padilla had struggled to understand Chavez’s behavior. Padilla had gone to all the other top leaders and said, Cesar’s gone nuts. No one wanted to hear that. In October 1980, at a credit union board meeting, Huerta attacked Padilla and told him he should resign. He knew how Chavez operated. Padilla called Chavez and resigned the next day. Chavez had always been a dictator, Padilla told 60 Minutes: “And we let him. Because we needed him.”

  Chavez shrugged off Padilla’s criticism: “If he left without justifying, he’d be called a quitter.”

  Padilla and Govea were among several former union leaders who had found temporary work with California Rural Legal Assistance, the agency that Chavez had picketed in 1970 when he felt the group had become competition. After the 1981 convention, Cesar’s son Paul led pickets at a CRLA office where Chava Bustamante worked. CRLA leaders were eager to stay on good terms with Chavez. Govea’s and Padilla’s contracts were not renewed.

  In multiple arenas, Chavez found himself in the position he always tried to avoid: on the defensive. In the past, he had excelled at turning attacks to his advantage. When adversaries had lashed out at Chavez, their attacks boomeranged; the more vicious the attack, the more powerful Chavez appeared. When the Teamsters stole UFW contracts, the UFW became the sympathetic victim, standing up to bullies. When growers fired workers unjustly, farmworkers were heroes. When judges threw strikers in jail, the UFW’s image soared. This time was different. Chavez found himself attacked for his own actions. With no external enemy to blame, he fingered the enemy within—traitors.

  A story in Reason, a conservative magazine, charged the farm worker movement had improperly spent almost $1 million in federal funds. The story had a small audience, and the author had ties to the agricultural industry. But federal investigators and national reporters found that many of the magazine’s conclusions checked out.

  NBC correspondent Jack Perkins arrived at La Paz10 to interview Chavez and found an audience of fifty people. Perkins realized the welcome banners signaled anything but. Perkins could interview anyone he wanted, Chavez said—in front of the whole community. “We’re not refusing an interview,” Chavez repeated. The reporter explained he needed to speak with Chavez and other officials one-on-one. “Just do it in front of us,” Chavez said. “What’s wrong? What are you hiding? . . . You want an interview, I’ll give you an interview. You’re not going to tell me who’s going to be around when the interview’s done. They want to see, they have a right to see.”

  A flummoxed Perkins gave in. He would make clear that this was a stunt, he said. “You haven’t met one like this, huh?” Chavez said with satisfaction as he got his way.

  He gained little from the maneuver, however, since the facts were not on his side. Chavez feigned ignorance on details. He did not know whether the credit union had been computerized, how many health clinics existed, or locations of the union’s service centers. The projects were all “coming along,” he said. He casually informed Perkins at the conclusion of the interviews that the union might sue NBC for libel. “We’ve been part of a very controversial organization since we started,” Chavez said. “We’ve been investigated up and down. I can truthfully say we’ve never been found lacking in any respect.”

  Chavez again unleashed a preemptive attack11 before the broadcast aired. He tried to deflect attention and discredit the report by attacking its sources and motivation. He alleged a grower conspiracy, threatened libel, and called for a White House investigation into improper ties between NBC and the Farm Bureau.

  NBC did not mince words.12 Chavez’s movement had been granted $796,000 to develop a microwave system to help the rural poor by connecting health clinics and service centers—but no health clinics existed and many service centers were shuttered. The credit union had been granted $349,115 to computerize and expand but had no computer or satellite offices.

  Roger Mahony, now bishop of Stockton, watched the Prime Time report and recalled the early warnings from Jerry Cohen and AFL-CIO organizing director William Kircher about the need for professional staff. The controversy “will cause much misery and grief13 for the union that could have been avoided,” Mahony wrote to Monsignor George Higgins.

  Jimmy Carter, whose administration had been eager to fund Chavez’s projects, had lost his reelection bid in 1980 to Chavez’s old nemesis, Ronald Reagan. Reagan administration auditors concluded federal funds had been improperly used14 to support the UFW instead of nonprofit entities. A separate $347,529 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor for English classes was spent on students who did not qualify because they were not full-time farmworkers, earned too much money, or were undocumented. The government asked the union to return more than $255,000.

  Chavez had brushed aside earlier warnings about sloppy bookkeeping and long operated as if rules did not apply. For
years he had blurred the lines between the labor union and the nonprofit entities. When he needed money for the UFW, Chavez arranged transfers15 without regard to legal restrictions. One of the charities loaned the union $300,000 to buy computers, jeopardizing the charity’s tax-exempt status. He had always bluffed his way past problems. Now the mistakes began to catch up with him. On top of the government’s request that he return a significant portion of the grant, the IRS ruled that the union staff members were not legally volunteers. The UFW owed $390,00016 in back social security and federal unemployment taxes.

  Chavez also found himself on the defensive in the political arena at home. Here, too, the damage was self-inflicted. He had increasingly played the games he once abhorred. The union’s fate was tied to the ALRA, and he needed political support to ward off attempts to water down the law. Huerta had returned to Sacramento as the UFW lobbyist. Instead of working on a shoestring, as she had decades earlier for the CSO, she had thousands of dollars in campaign funds. “Dolores should be able to hand the politicians the check,17 and then go see them in Sacramento for favors,” Chavez said.

  Assemblyman Howard Berman, a Los Angeles Democrat, had sponsored the ALRA. When Berman challenged Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy for leadership of the house, Chavez relished an opportunity to pay back McCarthy for his role in defeating the UFW’s Proposition 14. The UFW endorsed Berman’s bid to oust McCarthy at the end of 1980. The union’s political committee contributed thousands of dollars to Berman plus a $30,000 loan.18

  Neither McCarthy nor Berman prevailed. Instead, the fight marked the ascension of one of California’s most powerful and colorful politicians, Willie Brown, who cobbled together a bipartisan coalition. Chavez’s move had backfired: key Republicans threw their support to Brown because they feared that Berman would be beholden to Chavez. “I think it was an extremely dangerous threat to agriculture,” said Assembly Republican leader Carol Hallet, explaining her support for Brown.