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Chávez, Huerta, and the United Farm Workers

Chávez, Huerta, and the United Farm Workers

Dolores Huerta’s efforts at organizing poor people predated those of César Chávez. In 1955, she cofounded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization. A former schoolteacher who delivered impassioned speeches, Huerta became known as “La Pasionaria” (the Passionate One). Recognizing her dedication and communication skills, Chávez selected her to be the cofounder of the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. For more than three tumultuous decades, the two leaders had a symbiotic relationship. While Chávez was the face of the union, Huerta played a crucial role in formulating its goals and strategies. In 1965, she directed the union’s national grape boycott, and the next year, she negotiated a landmark contract between the union and the Schenley Wine Company. Although she also was known for her radical socialist ideas, she served as an effective lobbyist in Washington and Sacramento. She was arrested at least twenty-two times for participating in demonstrations and other forms of nonviolent civil disobedience.


See Also

Luisa Capetillo

Helen Fabela Chávez

Dolores Huerta

Antonio Orendain

Great Lives from History: Latinos

César Chávez

by Thomas Tandy Lewis

American union leader and civil rights activist

Chávez was the most prominent Latino civil rights leader of the period, and as founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW), he helped to promote the conditions of migrant field workers, most of whom were of Mexican ancestry. Using aggressive but nonviolent tactics, he persuaded employers to recognize the UFW as the bargaining agent for some fifty thousand workers in Florida and California.

Areas of achievement: Activism; social issues

Early Life

César Estrada Chávez (SAY-zahr CHAH-vehz) was raised in a hardworking, close-knit family that was deeply committed to the Catholic Church. His father, Librado Chávez, owned a small grocery store, pool room, and auto repair shop. After the Great Depression began in 1929, Librado lost his business, in part because he trusted a dishonest neighbor in purchasing property, and the family was forced to move into an old adobe house on the small farm owned by Librado’s widowed mother, Mama Tella. Chávez later described his life on the farm as happy and secure, and despite the poverty, he said that the family always had enough to eat.

César Chávez.

324_Chavez_Cesar.jpg

(AP Photo)

The young Chávez did not do well in school, probably because his family spoke only Spanish at home. His teachers used corporal punishment whenever he spoke his native language, but he later said that the embarrassment of making mistakes in English was worse than the spankings. When white families from the South moved into the region in 1936, there were frequent fights between white and Chicano children. Chávez resented that the principal always seemed to blame the Chicanos. Because no Catholic Church was close to the family farm, Mama Tella gave Chávez most of his formal religious training. Never a skeptic, he would later write that her lessons in Christianity provided a foundation for the moral direction of his life.

In 1937, Chávez’s father suffered a severe sunstroke, Mama Tella died, and the state took over the family farm because of unpaid taxes. Like thousands of others, the Chávezes moved to California, where they traveled from place to place in search of work picking fruits and vegetables. Wages were low, and housing conditions were miserable. Chávez attended some sixty-five different elementary schools, sometimes for only a few days. In 1942, the year that he graduated from the eighth grade, an accident left his father unable to work, forcing Chávez to leave school and work in the fields.

In 1944, Chávez joined the U.S. Navy so he would not be drafted into the Army. He disliked the regimentation and strongly resented the military’s discrimination against minorities. He later described his two years of service as the worst in his life. Although he once sailed on a crew transport to the Mariana Islands, he never participated in combat. He observed that Latinos and other minorities rarely were in positions of leadership, and while on leave he was briefly arrested for refusing to sit in a segregated area in a theater. After completing his military service, Chávez returned to California to resume working in the fields. In 1948, he married Helen Fabela. The couple settled in Delano and would eventually have eight children.

Life’s Work

In 1952, Chávez was introduced to the idea of collective organization by his parish priest, Father Donald McDonnell, who was strongly committed to the Catholic Church’s doctrines on workers’ rights. McDonnell provided Chávez with relevant papal encyclicals and books on labor history and social movements. Chávez was particularly impressed by Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of using nonviolent protests in pursuit of social justice. Shortly thereafter, Chávez met Fred Ross, a militant leader in Saul Alinsky’s Community Service Organization (CSO). Ross was urging Mexican Americans organize politically, emphasizing issues of voter registration, housing discrimination, police abuse, and public education. Chávez began working for the CSO, first as a volunteer and then as a full-time employee. By the late l950’s, he was a regional leader of the organization.

In 1962, Chávez resigned from the CSO because of its refusal to organize a union devoted to improving the conditions of farm laborers. He joined with Dolores Huerta to establish the National Farm Workers Association, which became the United Farm Workers (UFW) three years later. For the organization’s logo, Chávez chose the colors red and black, and his brother Richard designed an Aztec eagle without wings, which was easy to draw on homemade flags. One of the major challenges of the union, which was primarily composed of poor Chicano workers, was to collect enough dues to pay for its activities.

Chávez and the UFW captured national attention for the first time during a five-year grape strike in the region of Delano, California. Shortly after the strike began in 1965, Chávez led a twenty-one-day, 250-mile protest march from Delano to Sacramento. In December, Chávez called for a national boycott of grapes produced by the two largest grape-growing corporations in Delano. In 1968, when many strikers became impatient with Chávez’s nonviolent tactics, he went on a twenty-five-day hunger strike in order to persuade his followers not to resort to violence. The widely publicized fast, which lasted from February 15 to March 11, was quite successful in gaining sympathy for the UFW. On the day that Chávez broke the fast, a rally of six thousand supporters, including Senator Robert F. Kennedy, assembled in Delano. The strike ended in 1970, when the UFW finally reached a collective bargaining agreement with the grape-growing corporations, covering more than ten thousand workers.

By the 1970’s, the UFW was generally recognized as the nation’s vanguard union of farmworkers, and it continued to organize strikes and boycotts. In 1972, Chávez undertook a twenty-four-day fast to protest an Arizona law that outlawed secondary boycotts. Although the fast failed to achieve its objectives, it succeeded in prompting the registration of thousands of Latino voters. The UFW’s activities helped convince California’s legislature to pass the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which provided the right of collective bargaining to farmworkers in the state. Because growers often hired undocumented workers from Mexico as strikebreakers, the UFW supported stricter enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws.

During the 1980’s, Chávez changed his position on immigration and became an outspoken proponent of immigrants’ rights. He also began to concentrate much of his attention on the health hazards posed by pesticides. To publicize the issue, he held a thirty-six-day fast, which was accompanied by nightly masses with thousands of sympathizers. Before he finally ended the fast, doctors warned that he had begun to burn muscle tissue and could experience kidney failure.

Chávez faced growing frustrations and challenges during the early 1990’s. The UFW experienced internal dissent and was beset with serious financial difficulties, especially after two lawsuits that required it to pay more than $7 million. Chávez was forced to increase the number of fund-raising rallies. At the same time, he stepped up efforts to increase membership. On April 23, 1993, while in Arizona on UFW business, he began another fast but was convinced to call it off because of his deteriorating health. That night, he died in his sleep.

Significance

Although most farmworkers continued to receive low wages and live in poverty, Chávez’s activities within the UFW promoted greater sympathy for their plight and achieved at least some amelioration for union members. After his death, he became a symbol of heroic personal sacrifice in pursuit of greater social justice. His birthday has been declared a state holiday in California and Texas and an optional holiday in Arizona and Colorado.

Further Reading

1 

Collins, David. César Chávez. Minneapolis, Minn.: Lerner, 2005. A good summary that is written primarily for young readers, presenting Chávez as an inspiration and positive role model.

2 

Etulain, Richard W., ed. César Chávez: A Brief Biography with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. Primarily a supplementary text for college courses, this useful book includes a chronology, bibliographical essay, and collection of original documents.

3 

Giswold del Castillo, Richard, and Richard A. Garcia. César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. A relatively short biography that is well-written, balanced, and based on abundant research.

4 

Jensen Richard, and John Hammerback. The Words of César Chávez. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002. A collection of Chávez’s speeches and correspondence organized into major periods, with chapter introductions emphasizing rhetorical analysis.

5 

Levy, Jacques E. César Chávez: Autobiography of La Causa. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974. The author has taken selections from Chávez’s taped interviews, producing an unsurpassed primary source of personal insights into the man and his life until the early 1970’s.

6 

Pawel, Miriam. The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in César Chávez’s Farm Worker Movement. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009. Written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, this book presents a poignant account of the movement and the people who made it, including both accomplishments and failures.

7 

Stavans, Ilan, ed. César Chávez. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood, 2010. A collection of essays that captures the multiple aspects of a complex person and his career.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "César Chávez." Great Lives from History: Latinos, edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLL_10013240015801001.
APA 7th
Lewis, T. T. (2012). César Chávez. In C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "César Chávez." Edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.