The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

by Miriam Pawel

  The partnership flourished. They moved from foreclosures to high-end custom-built homes and subsidized apartment complexes. Aguilar led the UFW executive board on tours of properties in Fresno. At the 1986 UFW convention, Chavez introduced the Fresno appraiser10 as a hero who had made a lot of money but never forgot his roots.

  Homelessness had become a problem in the national spotlight, and the federal government allocated more funds for construction and rent subsidies for low-income housing. Aguilar and the UFW took advantage. Chavez shifted the focus11 of the National Farmworkers Service Center—his original entrepreneurial venture and “problem clinic”—to housing. In 1987, the real estate portfolio12 included 48 low-income apartments in Fresno and 81 apartments in Parlier, with 70 single-family homes and 226 apartments on the drawing board. Chavez and Aguilar formed American Liberty Investments, which helped shield the UFW from public exposure. To service the new apartments, Chavez and Aguilar formed Ideal Minimart Corporation, which built two strip malls and operated a check-cashing store. By 1987, Richard Chavez’s company, Bonita Construction,13 had been hired for some of the work.

  When the Fresno Bee reported that almost none of the UFW housing projects were built by union contractors, the revelation outraged the building trade unions. Construction unions had contributed thousands of dollars in the years when the UFW had survived on the generosity of organized labor. Dozens of union plumbers, bricklayers, and construction workers had volunteered time to help build projects like Forty Acres. Now the UFW, once the inspiration for a resurgent labor movement, built commercial housing with nonunion labor.

  “The 6,800 members of the California State Conference of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsman have for years supported your union, as brothers should,” the group’s vice president wrote Chavez. “I am asking that you offer an explanation to my members.14 I believe they deserve one.”

  Chavez attacked growers15 for trying to discredit the UFW and the Fresno Bee for slanted coverage. He claimed the Service Center was “a completely separate and independent organization” from the UFW. The newspaper, he said, had written about the issue because the UFW supported the Newspaper Guild in a dispute.

  Labor unions had long been wary of Chavez, and the UFW had earned a reputation for always having its hand out and doing little to help others. But outside the labor movement, the housing controversy did little to dull Chavez’s luster. The union continued to market its most valuable asset—Cesar Chavez. He found particularly receptive audiences on college campuses across the country.

  “As president of the United Farm Workers, Chavez has led a long struggle against injustice and unsafe food for over 30 years,” read a “Dear Friend” letter16 from Arturo Rodriguez, sent to college students along with a “checklist for a successful UFW speaking event.” Rodriguez had taken on more responsibilities since joining the executive board in 1981 and functioned increasingly as his father-in-law’s chief aide. The letters ticked off some of Chavez’s recent honors, including a National Hispanic Hero Award from the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Conference and a standing ovation from two thousand students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The union asked for a $5,000 honorarium for each appearance and offered suggestions on student and faculty sources to approach for contributions.

  In 1990, Chavez spoke at sixty-four events,17 earning an average of $3,800 per appearance. He talked mainly to students, plus a mix of labor groups and special fund-raisers organized by longtime supporters. In Amherst, Massachusetts, Chavez presided over a chili cook-off festival coupled with a UFW fund-raiser. Closer to home, Chavez wrote a “wine and cheese marketing plan” that targeted VIPs from labor, religious groups, academia, and community organizations. He calculated the union could raise $480,000 in five months by holding 240 fund-raisers, though they never achieved close to that number.

  In 1991, the union adopted a marketing plan18 to increase revenue as Chavez embarked on a “Public Action Speaking Tour.” The plan calculated a “strategic marketing mix” and targeted the largest and most prestigious schools. The union appealed to the desire of colleges for diverse speakers and minorities. The goal was to raise $1.2 million, plus $60,000 by selling items produced by ETG.

  Volunteers who hosted and facilitated Chavez’s visits received detailed checklists19 with directions on how to set up the podium, how many cars to have available to shuttle Chavez between appearances, and what foods to have on hand for his macrobiotic diet: miso, tamari, tofu, garbanzo beans, adzuki beans, lentils, brown rice, buckwheat noodles, burdock, carrots, rutabaga, kale, collard greens, radishes, shallots, and parsnips. Two recipes for miso soup were also included in the packet, along with a reminder not to use salt in cooked food.

  In his standard speech, Chavez talked about the problems of farmworkers, the dangers of pesticides, and the nefarious alliance between Republicans and the agriculture industry. He also spoke more broadly about social ills and his disillusionment with the political system. Government would never address problems of poverty, racism, or sexism, he said in an address at Harvard University. Even good candidates become corrupted by lobbyists. He had soured on the idea that voter registration was the key to power, because the votes of the poor did not count. “The more you own,20 the more your vote counts.”

  Only action like boycotts and marches would achieve social change, he told students. “If you take public action, you don’t need 51 percent to win, and the polls never close,21 and you can vote more than once.”

  He was relaxed with student audiences, the master teacher in a new setting—mentoring in the halls of privilege rather than the fields of poverty. The nation’s best and brightest called him a hero and role model, and Chavez graciously accepted their earnest accolades. He smiled and patiently answered questions. What would you do differently if you were starting out all over? “I’d use computers.” How can we address the really big problems, like nuclear disarmament? “Stop paying taxes.” Did he admire any politicians? “My friend Jerry Brown.”

  Students gave him standing ovations, spoke of their admiration for his dedication, and promised not to buy grapes. He said the question he was asked most often was how he stayed with the cause. “Very simple. Just stay with it. I have nothing else to do.22 Nothing else to do. I don’t own a house, and I don’t own a car. I don’t have a bank account. I have nothing. But I have ideas, and I love to raise hell.”

  In 1988, the farm worker movement had grown to include eighteen nonprofit and commercial entities,23 in addition to the UFW. The entities grew more financially intertwined. The Service Center paid the Education and Legal Defense Fund to provide social services at the field offices. The UFW paid La Union de Pueblo Entero to monitor grievance boards set up under contracts. The UFW, pension fund, and RFK plan paid rent to the Service Center. The other entities paid the union for computer services and printing. The Service Center bought $100,000 worth of stock in ETG, which paid 10.5 percent in royalties on sales to the UFW.

  The older entities that still delivered services to farmworkers limped along. Health care and pension plans, ambitious and once-revolutionary ideas, suffered with few participants. By 1989, the RFK plan covered only between two thousand and four thousand workers per month, depending on the season. In 1983, Chavez had made a round of appearances to hand out the first pension checks.24 “At last, farm worker dignity is being recognized,” he said in Oxnard. “No longer are they being put in the junk pile and forgotten.” But with fewer contracts, the number of workers who could qualify dropped. The pension plan struggled to locate eligible beneficiaries, inching up from 690 retirees in 1989 to about 1,000 by 1992.

  The fate of the Martin Luther King Jr. trust fund illustrated the trajectory of Chavez’s movement over less than two decades. When he negotiated the first table grape contract with Lionel Steinberg in the spring of 1970, Chavez wanted to start an economic development fund. Steinberg’s attorney suggested a trust fund jointly administered by appointees of the union and the growers. The trust fund
, originally called the Farm Worker Fund, began with a 2¢-per-hour contribution for each worker at Steinberg’s Coachella vineyard. In later contracts, the company contribution increased to 5¢ an hour.

  In 1973, Chavez asked Coretta Scott King for permission to name the fund after her late husband. The nickel-an-hour MLK contribution became standard in UFW contracts. MLK would offer services for all farmworkers, but those under contract, who were sacrificing from their paychecks, would be the primary beneficiaries.

  For the next decade, the MLK fund operated service centers, health clinics, and day care centers. Much of the money went unspent, accumulating interest. In the fall of 1983, Celestino Aguilar and Cesar Chavez spoke to the MLK board about the potential of investing in real estate. Soon the fund was investing millions of dollars in Aguilar’s projects.

  As the union lost contracts, MLK’s income came primarily from interest on investments. By 1986, contributions from workers’ salaries fell significantly below the one-third threshold required for the fund to quality as a public charity. On the advice of counsel, the MLK fund became a private foundation. The joint employer-union board was dissolved. Federal tax law required that the foundation spend its interest income each year.

  By 1989, the Martin Luther King Jr. fund was a private foundation with $8 million25 in principal, effectively accountable to no one but Cesar Chavez. Each year, MLK doled out between $600,000 and $700,000 to other UFW-related enterprises. Money earned by a generation of farmworkers, who had been told their sacrifice would provide services for all farmworkers, had become a subsidy for a growing bureaucracy increasingly removed from the fields.

  Chapter 39

  The Last Fast

  We built this union twice.4 We are now trying to build the union one more time.

  As the union’s twenty-fifth anniversary approached in 1987, Chavez obsessed over the smallest details of the celebration. Chris Hartmire was in charge of the festivities, and the minister grew annoyed at Chavez’s intense interest and penchant to overrule decisions at the last minute. The celebration took on outsized importance for the movement’s leader, who would turn sixty years old on Founder’s Day. Hartmire found Chavez’s focus disturbingly self-important.

  “Come Join Us, Again, in Delano,”1 began the invitation sent to 140,000 people, an appeal to history and nostalgia. Like all the union’s fund-raising letters, the mail was targeted. Attorneys received a letter that stressed how important lawyers had been to the UFW’s success, while the appeal to politicians featured a support committee of elected officials. Religious leaders, environmentalists, Hollywood celebrities, and former volunteers each received a separate pitch. All were invited to join the “Eagle Club”—$5,000 bought Gold Eagle status and a full-page ad in the glossy seventy-six-page Commemorative Journal; smaller contributors were listed as Silver, Bronze, and Black Eagle sponsors.

  On May 23, 1987, thousands paid the $25 admission fee to enter a large tent erected on the grounds of Forty Acres. Fred Ross chatted with Jacques Levy. Dozens of guests stopped by Juana Chavez’s chair to pay respects to the family matriarch. Relatives of the five union martyrs2 planted trees in their honor as five bunches of red balloons were released into the sky. Luis Valdez and the Teatro Campesino drew cheers as they played familiar huelga songs. ETG sold anniversary shirts and hats, wineglasses, and commemorative programs. Mariachis played all evening as the crowd ate barbecue and danced until midnight.

  The cast of religious and labor luminaries was noticeably thinner than in earlier years. There was little in the UFW’s recent past to celebrate. The union had won elections or fought off decertifications at thirty-two ranches in the past five years—and lost at thirty-nine. Chavez vowed to intensify the grape boycott and force growers back to the negotiating table. He summoned visions of the historic 1970 contract signing with John Giumarra that had taken place in the room where they partied: “We’re predicting3 that growers will again come to this hall and sign sooner than they think.”

  Newspaper stories pegged to the anniversary painted a starkly different picture. “Twenty-five years after raising the plight of California’s farmworkers to an international concern, Cesar Chavez has all but left the fields,” began a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Having fought so fervently to win collective-bargaining rights and the nation’s first agricultural labor law, Chavez’s United Farm Workers union now is nearly dormant, with past victories in wages and improvements in working conditions rapidly fading.”

  Reporters visited agricultural valleys around the state and found no sign of the UFW. Farmworkers had never seen union representatives. CRLA, Chavez’s old adversary, held seminars to educate workers about minimum wage, overtime, and their rights to bathrooms and work breaks. Recent federal legislation had enabled undocumented immigrants to legalize their status, and growers had set up a $1 million program to help their workers qualify. “If I were Cesar Chavez and I had a law like this, under the amnesty I would try to get all my people back,” said Imperial Valley grower John Vessey. “And he’s doing nothing. He’s off on some tangent regarding pesticides and the grape boycott that is going to put his workers out of work.”

  Chavez’s response defiantly acknowledged the decline in the union’s membership: “We built this union twice. We are now trying to build the union one more time.”

  The last word in the Union-Tribune series went to Eliseo Medina, who was organizing immigrant janitors in San Diego for the Service Employees International Union. “Organizing is always going to mean risks,” Medina said. “The UFW was willing to take them in the early days. They need to go back to organizing.5 That’s what they did best. There’s a void, and if the UFW doesn’t fill it, somebody else is going to step in.”

  Some months later, Chavez stopped by a fiftieth-birthday party in San Diego for the movement entities’ longtime counsel, Frank Denison. Chavez stayed only a few minutes. Manuel Chavez told Denison6 that Cesar left when he saw Medina; he would not stay in the same room.

  What Vesey called a “pesticide tangent” had become the center of the union’s boycott, educational campaign, and fund-raising efforts. Decades before the organic food movement, Chavez argued that all pesticides were dangerous to farmworkers and consumers. He had expressed concern about pesticides in the earliest negotiations, and the 1970 UFW contracts banned the use of DDT—more than two years before the federal government outlawed the chemical. Pesticides had been a secondary issue for the union during the height of its organizing years. But in the mid-1980s, as he searched for a new villain, Chavez seized on pesticides as a way to again raise the national consciousness about farmworkers. Environmental disasters such as Love Canal, federal Superfund sites, and suspicions about ties between chemicals and disease had increased public awareness. Pesticides drifted from field to field, Chavez pointed out, and seeped into the ground, the water, the fruit, and the workers’ clothes and skin. “We maintain that there are no safe pesticides,”7 he said in a stump speech, “because the sole purpose of a pesticide is to kill living things.”

  Marion Moses, who had played an early and important role in Delano as Chavez’s nurse and confidant, had graduated from medical school, specialized in occupational health, and returned to work for the UFW. Pesticides became her cause, and she helped Chavez identify five organophosphates to target in his campaign. Volunteers were given fund-raising scripts8 to use for phone-banking to solicit donations. The UFW raised more than $100,0009 to build its own pesticide lab, and Moses obtained thousands of dollars of donated equipment. The facility never opened.

  Back in the summer of 1983, parents in the small San Joaquin Valley city of McFarland had become alarmed about an unusual number of childhood cancers. They met with local and state officials and demanded an investigation. Cancer clusters had become an emotional debate around the United States, fueled by high-profile media stories. Experts differed widely on the dangers but agreed that proving a cause-and-effect correlation was difficult. In the fall of 1986, county officials a
nnounced McFarland was safe, a conclusion that pleased no one. Chavez saw an opportunity to humanize the pesticide issue and ratchet up the boycott.

  Cancer was complicated, he said, but the suffering of small children was easy to understand. “These cancer clusters10 come because of the unregulated use of cancer-causing pesticides,” Chavez said. The union prepared a seventeen-minute video called The Wrath of Grapes, narrated by actor Mike Farrell. The film featured some of the young victims, including five-year-old Felipe Franco, born without arms and legs. The pictures of Felipe were taken from a television broadcast and used without his parents’ permission. Grape growers, outraged by Chavez’s assertions and concerned about the economic impact, encouraged parents to protest the use of their children’s images. Several parents sued the UFW and demanded the union stop showing the film. “Chavez has been exploiting our children11 to raise money for his troubled union,” Connie Rosales, one of the mothers, wrote to universities where Chavez was scheduled to speak. “Although we respect the right of anyone to speculate, the UFW had crossed the line of speculation into exploitation.”

  Chavez asserted the union’s First Amendment right to show the video and intensified his rhetoric. “The use of pesticides and the misuse of pesticides is the cause of all the problems in McFarland, and there is no other cause,”12 Chavez said. Fred Ross conducted a house meeting campaign in McFarland, and Chavez addressed a community meeting. “The growers are using the pesticides to kill our people,” he said. In nearby Earlimart, more cases of childhood cancer surfaced. At a press conference with several affected families, Chavez compared their plight to that of the canaries sent to die in the coal mines: “Farmworkers and their children are society’s canaries.”