Chavez, Cesar Estrada

Called by some “the American Gandhi,” Cesar Chavez (1927–2003) was an extraordinary labor organizer who created the United Farm Workers Union after a protracted struggle with the agricultural industry in California's San Joaquin Valley. Chavez grew up in Gila Bend, Arizona, the son of a small store owner. With the Great Depression, Chavez's father had to abandon the store and the family took to a life of crop picking to survive.

Young Chavez's school days were a painful reminder to him of racism against Mexican Americans; he and his brother were subjected to racial epithets, and students were punished if they spoke Spanish. The camps where the family had to live were primitive, lacking in running water, heating, or electricity. He and his sister slept in the family automobile because she was afraid of snakes and spiders. Chavez had many bitter memories of life in the fields. He recalls being cheated by labor contractors who would not weigh the sacks of fruit that were picked or withheld bogus deductions to cheat the workers of their pay.

Chavez served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and once, while on leave in Delano, California, he chose to sit in the White section of a movie theatre and was arrested and put in jail. He married his high school sweetheart, and after two children found he was making $1.00 to $1.50 a day picking string beans. He then encountered the Community Service Organization (CSO), founded by the great activist Saul Alinsky. It was through CSO that Chavez learned how to organize people and how to confront power. Finally, in 1962, Chavez organized the National Farm Workers Association in an abandoned movie theatre in Fresno, California. With $82 in the treasury, the union went into battle with a pledge of nonviolence. In a lengthy labor struggle in which Chavez's union had to ward off the Teamsters, his union prevailed. Chavez had succeeded where no other organization had managed. To keep his union members from resorting to violence, he resorted to fasting, as had Gandhi for the same reasons. Chavez understood the power and use of cultural/religious symbols in the battle to bring dignity to the lives of Mexican laborers. The power of the union was that it became an instrument to restore a sense of honor to hardworking people who were largely powerless. Cesar Chavez has become a symbol of a leader of a highly oppressed people who can prevail against great odds if organized properly.