September 11 is a day of spectacular meaning for all of us. It reminds us of the fragility of life and of the creations of man. We never know when an ordinary day of just going off to work will inspire us to heroic acts. Most of us reach the peak of our heroism by showing up to the job we choose. Extraordinary circumstances can provoke a person into heroic behavior. Sometimes the quite ordinary circumstances of birth will create a hero.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy called Cesar Chavez “one of the heroic figures of our time.” Chavez was a second-generation American born on his family farm in Arizona March 31, 1927. From his early childhood he experienced the cruelties of racism and class discrimination in America. Speaking only Spanish at home, he was punished for using his language at school. He said he felt like a monkey in a cage in integrated schools.
There are several different versions of his childhood circumstances: 1. When Cesar was ten years old he saw his father, Librado, swindled out of their family home by unscrupulous businessmen. His father had an agreement to clear 80 acres of land in exchange for 40 acres along with their little adobe house. The owner broke their agreement and sold to another man. A lawyer advised Librado to borrow money to purchase the land. When he was unable to make the payments the lawyer then purchased the land and resold it to the original owner. 2. Librado worked on the family farm and also in a small store and the family of six children lived above the store. or 3. He lost the farm because of the Great Depression when a long drought set in.
At this point the family became migrant farm workers. Cesar attended 37 different schools while they followed the crops from Arizona to California. His father was injured and unable to work in the fields, so Cesar and his older brother left school to work and support their family after Cesar finished the eighth grade.
Note: My poor computer skills prevent me from posting here the excellent photographs of this time provided here courtesy of the California Museum. Please go see them. Here is a quote from their exhibit:
“I do not want to see the condition arise again when white men who are reared and educated in our schools have got to bend their backs and skin their fingers to pull those little beets…. You can let us have the only class of labor that will do the work, or close the beet factories, because our people will not do it, and I say frankly I do not want them to do it.”
– Sugar beet growers’ spokesman (1920s)The men in this photograph are bent double at the waist while harvesting crops by hand. These Mexican or Mexican American men were photographed in 1935 performing the kind of back-breaking “stoop labor” that California farmers claimed white men could not (and even should not) be hired to do. California farmers claimed that Asian and Mexican workers were physically suited for hard farm labor because they were used to stooping, crouching, and bending, while white people were accustomed to standing up straight. White public opinion quickly embraced the racist idea that white people would be lowered and degraded by such work.
Woody Guthrie tried to tell us how it felt:
I ain’t got no home,
I’m just a-roamin’ ’round,
Just a wandrin’ worker,
I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.Was a-farmin’ on the shares, and always I was poor;
My crops I lay into the banker’s store.
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.Now as I look around, it’s mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin’ man is rich an’ the workin’ man is poor,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.
Cesar escaped this life at age 17 when he joined the US Navy and served in the Pacific from 1944 to 1946. When he returned home he was disgusted to see that nothing had changed for the migrant workers, and vowed to dedicate his life to their service.
Soon he married Helen Fabela and took her on a honeymoon trip visiting all the California Missions. They settled in the San Joaquin Valley to start a family which would grow to include eight children. At this time Cesar began his study of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and non-violent resistance. He became an organizer for the Community Service Organization, beginning with registering voters.
Unable to convince the CSO leaders of the need for a union for farm workers, he used his life savings to start the National Farm Workers Association, which became the United Farm Workers union.. Cesar traveled California and Arizona meeting with farm workers to convince them that their power lay in a shared unity of purpose.
Five years of boycotts and strikes in the 1960’s led to contracts and agreements between farm owners and workers. In 1969 he led a march of grape pickers through the California central valley to the capital in Sacramento which grew larger with every town it passed through. Grapes became the real forbidden fruit for every American. Cesar’s union brought fair wages, medical coverage, pension benefits, dignity and respect to the workers. He attracted the attention of Congress and inspired investigations into civil rights violations against his people. He said “The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being, it is also the most true to our nature.”
Despite opposition within the union, Cesar continued to promote strikes and boycotts, even undertook hunger strikes himself to focus national attention on the bad treatment of agricultural workers. A comfortable and complacent American middle-class responded to his efforts. He taught us all that slavery had not vanished from our country.
Because of Cesar’s efforts in 1975 California’s legislature passed the groundbreaking Agricultural Labor Relations Act to protect the rights of farm workers.
Befriended and admired by the rich and famous, Cesar shunned the life of celebrity and materialism that so many find tempting. He saw media attention as a tool to be used in service to people who suffered. He never earned more than $6,000 a year, never owned a house, continued to live simply, learning and working for the benefit of mankind. At age 61, five years before his death in 1993, he endured a 36-day “fast for life” to highlight the harmful impact of pesticides on farm workers and their children.
Cesar Chavez brought Steinbeck’s Tom Joad to life: “…And when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build. I’ll be there too.” Cesar lived a humble life of devotion and sacrifice – he walked the walk. There is no more noble heroism than his.
Cesar’s life came full circle when he was buried close to his birthplace in Arizona. 50,000 people attended his funeral services in California. His family started the Cesar Chavez Foundation to educate people about his life and work. Please visit their website.
We continue to honor his memory when we tell each other “Si se puede.” Yes, it can be done. We can do what we must with the inspiration of Cesar and other such leaders.