Last Wednesday marked the birth of a man who, more than any
other individual in California, has generated an immense polarity
of respect as well as loathing throughout the Golden State.
Last Wednesday marked the birth of a man who, more than any other individual in California, has generated an immense polarity of respect as well as loathing throughout the Golden State.
On March 31, 1927, Cesar Estrada Chavez was born on his grandfather’s Gila Valley farm near Yuma, Ariz. In his childhood years during the Great Depression, he witnessed white farmers and lawyers swindle the family farm away in a crooked land deal.
That event planted the seeds of social justice in the young boy that would one day bloom to effect the politics and history of the American West.
In June 1939, the young Cesar moved with his parents and siblings to the East San Jose barrio of Sal Si Puedes (Spanish for “get out if you can”). His father was a migrant farm worker who traveled throughout the state.
As is common for many children of migrant workers, Chavez did not have a stable life as his family followed the seasonal crop harvests. He attended a total of 37 schools before graduating with an eighth grade academic education.
Due to his family’s poverty, he could not continue with high school but was forced to begin work in the fields alongside his father. The teenager did not give up on his learning, however, and taught himself by reading books.
Chavez was especially influenced by biographies telling how the great leader Gandhi used non-violent means to break the yoke of British rule over India.
After serving a two-year stint in the Navy at the end of World War II, he married. In 1952, Chavez moved his wife and children to San Jose, where he worked in a lumber mill as well as in the apricot orchards of Santa Clara County. The family made their home in the barrio of Sal Si Puedes that Chavez had known as a child.
This time marked an important turning point in his life. He met Father Donald McDonnell, a Catholic priest who worked with farm workers.
McDonnell helped spark in the young Chavez an interest in the Church’s doctrines of social justice.
Chavez became an organizer for Saul Alinsky’s Community Service Organization, a group established to inform migrant workers of their legal rights.
In 1962, at the age of 35, Chavez devoted himself to the task of organizing the farm workers into a union. Half a year later in Fresno, the National Farm Workers Union (later called the United Farm Workers) held its first meeting. This marked the true advent of “La Causa.”
During this turbulent decade, Cesar Chavez helped design the union’s flag to inspire courage in the farm workers. He chose the Aztec eagle, which invoked the courageous spirit of that brave people who lived in Mexico before the exploitation of the conquistadors.
“A symbol is an important thing,” he said of the flag. “That is why we chose an Aztec eagle. It gives pride… When people see it they know it means dignity.”
The movement expanded over the next few years, and by 1965, because grape growers wouldn’t acknowledge the union’s demands, the workers went on strike.
Grapes rotted on the vines, and stores that sold grapes were boycotted. Among the first of these was a Safeway supermarket in East San Jose on the corner of Alum Rock Avenue and South King Road, not far from where the Chavez family had once lived.
Following his hero Gandhi’s methods, Chavez chose non-violent means to pursue justice for California’s farm workers. To gain media attention, he led marches in farm towns as well as a 340-mile march from Delano to Sacramento. He organized non-violent pickets of stores selling grapes. And he went on month-long fasts to draw national attention to the cause.
Over time, the UFW won collective bargaining agreements that allowed for better pay as well as safer working conditions such as more stringent controls over dangerous pesticides.
Chavez died in the village of San Luis near the farm of his birth on April 23, 1993. The next year, his wife Helen Chavez accepted the Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony for her late husband’s work to promote social justice.
A few years later, the Plaza Park at the heart of the city of San Jose was renamed Cesar Chavez Plaza in his honor.
When I was a boy growing up in Hollister, Chavez led a UFW march through the downtown’s San Benito Street. From the cliff of my childhood home on Park Hill, I watched him riding in a station wagon as he gave a speech into a microphone attached to a public address system on the vehicle’s roof.
I didn’t understand the politics of the occasion, but I realized it had great emotional significance. People along the sidewalks were both cheering loudly and yelling obscenities at the marchers.
During the mid-1980s when I worked as teenage grocery bagger at Hollister’s K&S Supermarket, UFW members picketed the store. Whenever I went out to gather shopping carts during those hot summer, I saw them silently walking the sidewalk in front of the store. They held up their signs to draw attention to their cause.
Sometimes, grocery shoppers would drive past them holding bunches of grapes out the windows, honking their horns and yelling rude remarks. I never once saw the picketers lose their dignity.
At this point in time, Chavez remains a controversial figure. I know people who despise him and speak of his cause with distain. Some call him “diabolical.”
Then there are others who respect his non-violent means to achieve social justice. They consider him the Gandhi of the American West. Whether you respect his cause or loath it, no doubt remains that Cesar Chavez made a major impact on our local history.
Martin Cheek is the author of ‘The Silicon Valley Handbook.’
