Professor Knapp
March 8th 2012
“Happy are those who dream dreams and a re ready to pay
the price to make them come true” - Joseph Suenens.
“When the world
says, "Give up," Hope whispers,"Try it one more time"
- Unknown
|
Throughout
history there have always been people that were willing to pay any price to see
their dream come true. We look at many of them with great admiration because
they were determined to fight for justice, rights, and freedom. Martin Luther
King is a great example. He fought for the rights of African Americans, but he
also paid a really high cost for it, his life.
Although there are people that
always want to keep everyone on the bottom there’s always someone from the
bottom that is always willing to step up and take a risk for change. Cesar Chávez
was one of these people. He was willing to step up and put an end to the
suffering of the migrant farm workers. Of course this had to be paid and done through
suffering, sacrifice, perseverance, and unity. Thanks to Chavez, now billions
of people in this country, specially farm workers, have equal rights and are
able to have a decent life.
Cesar Chavez
had a tough life since he was a child. He was born on March 31, 1927, near
Yuma, Arizona. Two years after he was
born, the great depression started in the U.S. and also the hard times began
for the Chavez family. When Cesar Chavez was eleven years old, he experienced
an injustice when his family lost their own farm. Chavez’s dad agreed to clear
part of the land and in return he was going to get paid half of the revenue
obtained. But the agreement was violated and broken when the land was sold.
Chavez’s dad tried to look for help and went to a lawyer who advised him to
borrow money and buy the land. Later when Cesar's father could not pay the
interest on the loan the lawyer bought back the land and sold it to the
original owner. Cesar learned a lesson about injustice that he would never forget.
Later, he would say, “The love for justice that is in us is not only the best
part of our being but it is also the most true to our nature” (“United Farm
Workers”). This caused the Chavez family to become migrant farm workers looking
for a job. They moved to Oxnard, California, but then moved back to Arizona and
after a few months came back to California. This time to northern California,
they moved to San Jose in a barrio called Sal Si Puedes (get out if you can). In
his early life he did not like school. According to “United Farm Workers”
Chavez remembered how the teacher -most of them Anglos- would punish the kids
that would speak Spanish since it was forbidden by the school to speak other
languages. He also remembered racism and segregated schools. Chavez attended thirty
seven schools up to 8th grade. After he graduated from eighth grade
he started working in the field because his father had had an accident and he
didn’t want his mother to be working on the field so he just became a migrant
farm worker (“United Farm Workers”).
When he was
nineteen years he joined the U.S. Army, still segregated at that time, and
served for two years. When he came back he married Helen Fabela. In San Jose,
Chavez met father Donald McDonnell and Fred Ross, with whom later Chavez would
be working with. Ross trained and recruited Chavez to his Community Service
Organization “the most prominent and militant Latino civil rights group of its
time” (“Cesar Chavez Foundation”). But Chavez still had the farm workers on his
mind, so he told the CSO’s members if they would agree to a project for farm
workers, but his salary would be paid by workers themselves. They thought that
the timing was perfect and that the CSO board would agree. But when they
proposed it at the convention it was turned down. Most of the members wanted to
keep the focus on the ones that had left the fields behind, it was then when
Chavez resigned the CSO. He worked as the CSO’s executive director for ten years
and that was the only stable job that he had throughout his life. Cesar was
scared and nervous because he did not know what was coming ahead, but if he was
sure of one thing, it was that he had to help the farm workers. Cesar and his
wife Helen knew that leaving SCO meant even more sacrifice. Chavez and his wife
only had a thousand dollars saved, but neither of them had an idea of how to
support their eight children other that working in the fields, so they moved to
Delano.
Chavez knew that the farm workers
wanted change, but he also was aware of the past attempts that had failed.
Chavez himself had and heard a lot of discouraging and negative comments. One
time a Chicano farm worker remembered how previous attempts of making a change
for farm workers had ended tragically, all of them had failed, so he warned
Chavez “They come and they go good organizers and would-be-organizers. But one
thing they all have in common, is that all of them have failed and all will
fail” (Ferriss and Sandoval 66) but Chávez wouldn’t listen, he was persistence
and he kept on trying and trying. While Helen, his wife, was at work he would
drive miles and miles while babysitting his kids to organize and inform people
by handing out fliers with questions because “Chavez wanted to build his union from the
fields themselves, rather than listen to what some remote labor chief thought
was best” (Ferriss and Sandoval 70). Later
on, Dolores Huerta joined Chavez after finding union organizers from the AWOC
chatting amiably with contractors. They announced a meeting on Sunday September
30, in Fresno. They gathered on a theater and hold the first convention with
about two hundred farm workers and their families. There Chavez and Huerta read
a proposed plan of action. The farmworkers that assisted the reunion accepted,
approved and supported the ideas with their votes (72).
Chavez, his wife, his kids and many of his
family and friends had to sacrifice themselves in order for the union to stay
alive. One time Helen had won a hundred dollars at Safeway, and she was so
happy because finally their kids were going to have enough food, but César said
that it was more important to pay for the credit card bill that they used for
the gas while driving up and down the valley, trying to recruit members. Also,
his brother Richard owned a house that was worth three thousand and seven
hundred dollars. César convinced Richard to let him borrowed the money his
house was worth, putting the house as collateral for the money they borrowed.
They suffered a lot financially, since the only one supporting the eight kids
was Helen, and she was also working in the fields. Also Chavez’ kids were
threatened by kids at their school -mostly Anglos- because of what their dad
was doing. Cesar said that they didn’t even know what the other kids were
telling them, but they knew it was something bad. (Ferris and Sandoval 74-76) Even
with all they suffered, they never gave up. They would be more close to each
other, his brother, his wife and kids, all supporting the cause.
Although it was hard for Chavez to
organize the union from just farm workers, because most of them did not want to
join the union, he persevered until he made them understand that everything was
finally going to change, but only if they were united. Chávez had a hard time
keeping the workers from competing against each other for work. Although the
majority were Mexicans and Chicanos, they were the ones who heard the most.
Cesar wanted them to be united and to not have any kind of rivalry or
competition for work within the farm workers, but instead to be organized, to
support each other and to show that it was time for change and that they all
needed to stay together and help each other out.
One of the reasons the AWOC was fighting for was
for the salary to be raised as well as to have the right for a break time and
lunch time. They were also trying to have the farm owner provide them with
clean water, not dirty water that ran through the field that the workers
usually drank from. In addition, Fusco and Horwitz, state that they also wanted
to stop child labor and stop the use of pesticides and chemical growth
stimulants and have fair working hours. Along with this they were also trying
to protect the people- mainly the women that barely started working on the
fields, because most of the time they were raped by the farm owner. They were
also asking to be provided with adequate toilet facilities. These were just the
main issues for them going on a strike.
Although Chávez had the support of
the labor unions, he was not happy with just their support. According to
Ferriss and Sandoval, Chávez began to go to the universities and churches and
talking to students and worshipers that were curious and wanted to know more
about the movement and the strike. Chavez asked them for support like food,
money, and clothing, and for one more thing, to go to Delano and see for
themselves how the life of the farm workers was and the conditions they were
living in. César got a lot of support from public figures like the president J F
Kennedy and a lot of celebrities that joined the cause.
The Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee and the National Farm workers Association joined together to make a
stronger impact. Together they went on Guelga-“strike”. The farm workers and
their supporters would go outside the stores and hold banners that would say
“Do Not Buy California Grapes, Help Farmworkers help themselves” (Ferriss and
Sandoval 125). The majority of the time they would go up to the people that
were buying grapes or another fruit they were buying, and tell them not to buy it.
Farmworkers would explain to them the cause of their strike, and would tell
them how the farm workers were living, and how they suffer in order to have
those fruits in the store. Many people supported them after knowing the reasons
of the strike. According to Ferriss and Sandoval, to César it wasn’t enough all
that they had done, he wanted to do more to catch more attention, so he decided
to fast for twenty five days, from February 15 to March 10. He wanted to get
his message of nonviolence across. Like this fasting there was a second one,
and also a third, but this last one lasted thirty one days. In the spring of
1969 Chavez declared a boycott to Safeway, which was who they sold twenty
percent of the grapes to. Not enough
with the strikes, boycotts, and fastings; Chávez and the farmworkers, along
with other unions fighting for the same cause “needed to do something really
public and dramatic to show the world the farm workers were far from dead”
(192) so they decided to marched to Modesto which they called The Gallo March
where the largest wine company was based. They also marched from Delano to
Sacramento on March of 1966 “The marchers wanted the state government to pass
laws which would permit farm workers to organize into a union and allow collective
bargaining agreements” (“United Farm Workers”).
After their fight for justice and
rights, the farm workers started seeing change. After all the fight and the
attention that César Chavez and the farm workers got, they then saw the door of
equality open and they could see their rights rising. Contracts from land
owners began to appear, and little by little the farm workers started having
rights. They had breaks and lunch time, and access to clean water and many more
benefits, but mainly they had the UFW to look and fight for them. They were not
alone anymore, they were now all united.
Nowadays, thanks to Chavez and the
courageous farm workers that fought together with this brave man to build a
better future for us, now many people can enjoy freedom and equal rights, therefore
we all have the opportunity to enjoy what before was all a dream. Currently, we
all have the same privileges and rights. All kids have the right for an
education and can go to school, and all workers get paid a decent amount. All
this thanks to the courage and perseverance of César Chávez. Without the
dreaming of this man and the desire of helping his people, the life of many in
America wouldn’t be the way it is right now. This man had a tremendous impact
in the lives of many. Chávez was a great man who taught many people that with
unity, perseverance, sacrifice and suffering, we can all fight together and
make our dreams come true.
Work Cited
Ferriss, Susan, Ricardo Sandoval, and Diana Hembree. The
Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. San Diego, CA:
Harcourt Brace, 1998. Print.
Fusco, Paul, and George D. Horwitz. La Causa;
the California Grape Strike. New York: Collier, 1970. Print.
"UFW: The
Official Web Page of the United Farm Workers of America." UFW: The Official
Web Page of the United Farm
Workers of America. Web. 18 May 2012.
<http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?inc=history/07.html>.
"CESAR
CHAVEZ FOUNDATION." CESAR CHAVEZ FOUNDATION. Web. 18 May 2012.
<http://www.cesarechavezfoundation.org/_page.php?code=00100100
