Edgar Esquivel gives a counter-history to the mythology surrounding United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez. 

Eight years ago (2014) President Barack Obama proclaimed March 31st as Cesar Chavez Day. However, Obama’s declaration was simply a commemorative holiday and not a formal national holiday like Chicano scholars and activists have long sought. But the day is a formal holiday in the US states of Arizona where Chavez was born; the bourgeois liberal states of California and Washington, and surprisingly Utah and Wisconsin. 

Much like Martin Luther King (MLK), over the past twenty-five years monuments, parks, schools and streets have been erected after the catholic zealot and pacifist labor leader’s name. To most Chicanos, Cesar Estrada Chavez (1927-1993) remains the single most representative of their movement. Chicano scholars and leaders have indeed done a tremendous job mythicizing him since the 1960s. In 2014 Hollywood further inflated the Chavez legend with a film starring Chicago born Mexican-American Michael Peña. Directed by Mexican born actor Diego Luna, Cesar Chavez is promoted as the main protagonist to heroic levels while pushing every other historical character and event to the sidelines. It promotes identity politics and the religious and bourgeois politics of Chavez as examples to follow at a time when the Civil Rights Movement had spiraled out of the control of MLK in favor of a more radical and militant approach of self-defense fueled by the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and a growing anti-Vietnam War movement in the U.S.     

The experience of Chicanos—those born in the US Southwest after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred 55% of Mexico’s territory to the United States is a very different experience to that of first generation born Mexican-Americans and even more so the undocumented immigrant experience. Such history continues to be neglected and/or dismissed by Chicano scholars today. In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) Chavez’s son Paul Chavez clearly exemplified the division among the three groups by sharing that his family had been initially concerned about Luna’s Hollywood film on his father by questioning: “a Mexicano telling a story that is really about a Mexican-American Chicano in the United States…” before finally accepting the film.¹ But it is more unfortunate that Hollywood and so-called Chicano scholars and activists have dismissed Chavez’s authoritarian flaws; undemocratic structure of his top-down bureaucratic union, his affinity to the Vatican and praise of fascist dictators—but more importantly his crusade against undocumented immigrants. This analysis will be taken from the lenses of a secular first generation born Mexican-American.    

The Making of a Catholic Zealot and Pacifist Activist

Learning his faith from his devout catholic mother, Cesar Chavez served as an altar boy in the Imperial Valley city of Brawley—one of the few towns in the agricultural region with a church. With the breakout of World War II and seeking to leave working the fields Chavez joined the Navy at the age of seventeen. After being discharged from the Navy in 1946 he sought jobs outside the fields where he admitted to being “too soft” for the laborious task.² But his efforts to find work outside the fields fell short. After his marriage to Helen Fabela—a local girl from Delano in 1948 they both moved to San Jose where Chavez’s younger brother Richard Chavez had a steady job in the apricot fields.

It was in San Jose that Chavez met the young Father Donald McDonnell—the man that would change his life forever. Father McDonnell went on to become his first political mentor and lifelong friend. Chavez blindly followed his Catholic faith to the point that when cursillismo—a four-day pilgrimage founded in Mallorca Spain by a group of non-ordained followers or laymen, he committed himself to joining it. These Cursillos de Christianidad were developed to inspire young men in preparation for a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (St. James) in Spain. The actual pilgrimages were delayed during the bloody Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) waged by a devout catholic fascist General Francisco Franco against the secular Second Spanish Republic that deposed the Spanish Monarchy and stripped the Church from government affairs. Between 1931 and 1939 the Second Spanish Republic attempted to create a workers’ republic.   

Quickly after Franco overthrew the pro-workers Second Republic in 1939, thanks to military aid provided by the fascist regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, the Nazis invaded Poland igniting World War II. Although Spain remained neutral during the second world war the pilgrimages were postponed. In the meantime at home, Franco waged open war against Spain’s most prominent intellectuals, secular education, science, liberals, anarchists, gays, lesbians and atheists. Like Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy, Franco outlawed labor unions and purged their leaders who he targeted as socialists and communists. During his thirty-five plus year reign of terror: at least 200,000 people were murdered; 400,000 imprisoned and tortured, 500,000 fled Spain for neighboring countries or Latin America and 300,000 babies were stolen from “undesirable” parents and sold to “approved” families.³ Among the most prominent casualties were Federico Garcia Lorca—Spain’s most prominent twentieth century poet who was kidnapped and brutally murdered. Till this day his body has never been found.⁴ Others like painter Pablo Picasso most famously known for his Guernica piece never returned to his home country. 

Despite Franco’s well known atrocious crimes against humanity, Chavez completed his cursillo in either the late 1950’s or early 1960’s according to his brother Richard.⁵ The exact time frame of his pilgrimage is still unknown.

To most Americans today, Chavez is best known as a pacifist Catholic labor leader of Mexican workers with a close relation to Robert F. Kennedy, both of which were promoted to be devout puritanical Catholics. In fact, Chavez became such an important American figure for his pacifism that the liberal media not only celebrated him but promoted his struggle and at times compared it to MLK as examples of all minorities to follow. Two years after meeting McDonnel, the clergyman turned the young Chavez to the Community Service Organization (CSO) activist Fred Ross—a heavy “red-baiter” who arrived in San Jose seeking to set up a voter registration campaign amongst Mexican-Americans. He recruited Chavez in 1952 and for at least a decade Ross became Chavez’s new mentor educating him in professional organizing. He was then introduced to Ross’s boss, Saul Alinsky. Together both Ross and Alinsky became Chavez’s most influential political mentors. 

By 1962 the CSO had succeeded in registering 400,000 Mexican-Americans in California alone and nothing like it would be seen again until the 1990s.⁶ However, the CSO was an anti-leftist organization that engaged in luring Mexican voters towards the Democratic Party’s camp. It was through the CSO that Chavez met Dolores Huerta in 1955 and initiated a relationship that would last a lifetime in spite of the devout Catholic’s trouble accepting her two divorces and the apparent neglect of her children in favor of community and labor activism.⁷ Hypocritically, Chavez turned a blind eye from his catholic principles when his brother Richard and Huerta were caught in a sinful and scandalous extra-marital affair while they both had been married. Sally, Richard’s wife was a friend of Helen’s and she complained to Cesar about the affair but could not do anything about the open liaison.[/note] According to Frank Bardacke in Trampling Out the Vintage—the most authoritative account written to date on Cesar Chavez and the UFW—Richard and Huerta married in 1972 and bore four children.       

The Delano Grape Strike of 1965 

When in 1965 the Delano Grape Strike against local growers in Kern County broke out it was transmitted in the media as Cesar Chavez’s struggle. But the Delano Strike in fact was not his struggle. The strike was initiated by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a Filipino union affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Led by the too often forgotten Larry Itliong, Filipino farm workers struck for union recognition and higher wages. This was the same right that had been granted to industrial workers after the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935—but denied to agricultural workers due in part to a guest worker program coined as the Bracero Program in 1942. The Bracero Program was an agreement signed between Washington and Mexico allowing for 250,000 Mexican men to enter the United States as guest workers to work the fields during the labor shortages created by American men fighting in World War II. 

Originally signed as a wartime agreement, the Bracero Program was due to expire in 1947. But due to its lucrative output for the growers, it was modified and extended multiple times.  Altogether the Bracero Program carried on for twenty-two years until 1964. Estimates indicate that the Bracero Program employed approximately 4.8 million Mexican nationals during its twenty-two years of existence, but actual figures show it only employed approximately 500,000 individuals since many of them renewed their contracts year after year.⁸

With at least two-thirds of the agricultural work force in California being of Mexican descent Chavez was invited by Itliong to join his 2,000 member AWOC and help conduct the strike.⁹ Chavez was at first reluctant to strike fearing that his United Farm Workers Association (UFWA) was not prepared to do so. But with much pressure brewing from the Filipinos and his own membership he finally agreed to join the work stoppage. The media of course incorrectly promoted Chavez as the acknowledged leader of the strike. 

As head of the AWOC, Itliong had been involved in labor struggles since the day he had arrived from the Philippines in 1929. He had worked as a Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) member in the 1930’s as well as other Filipino unions. Itliong was only fourteen years old when he arrived in America and quickly became a labor activist.¹⁰ He had arrived in America when great working-class upheavals had erupted across America and had the fortune to experience the historic general strikes of 1934 that paralyzed Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Minneapolis. Many of the labor organizers whom Itliong met in his early days had not only participated in these strikes but had also had ties to the Communist Party whom had exerted influence over them.¹¹ In 1959 Itliong took charge of the AWOC’s Filipino membership.   

Itliong had initially suggested that the NFWA which was not yet a labor union and simply a community association dissolve itself into AWOC. That was unacceptable to Chavez, who since 1952 had been working with the CSO in uniting the Mexican-American community. However, Chavez found AWOC’s struggle for farmworkers recognition appealing as they had lacked unemployment insurance not covered by organizing rights under the NLRA. There was also problems with Social Security coverage, child labor and minimum wage laws that he saw as a great opportunity to raise. Itliong’s Filipino strike—and the solidarity his constituents and Mexican workers exemplified against the greedy growers generated an excitement never before seen amongst the two groups.

A mass meeting was called by the NFWA on September 16—Mexico’s Independence Day. The event was chaired by one of Chavez’s closest lieutenants and co-founder of the UFWA Gilbert Padilla. The event gathered between 800 to 1500 attendees and rallied the members into various Vivas: Viva la Causa! Viva la Huelga! Viva Cesar Chavez!¹² At the event the Mexican workers agreed to join the Filipino strike. The strike however set for four days later appeared to be poorly planned with just approximately two months left in the 1965 harvest season. A month later it became clear that the strike was not strong enough to force the growers to capitulate to the workers demands. The growers had an advantage of replacing their striking workers with scabs, which mostly consisted of undocumented workers from Mexico. 

Over the next five years a few hundred of the original strikers remained as many parted to other parts of the country in search of work. But many of those who migrated to urban and suburban growing centers in search of work outside agriculture went on to become participants of the greatest and most successful boycott in American history. In the midst of their struggle, in 1966 Itliong’s AWOC and Chavez’s UFWA merged to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC)—also referred to as the UFW.    

Cesar Chavez’s War Against Undocumented Immigrants

The UFW’s original position towards undocumented immigrants is an embarrassing one for Chicanos and an inhumane one for undocumented immigrants and their children. Chicano defenders and activists of Cesar Chavez have attempted over the past decades to divert this embarrassing moment. They will defend that Chavez and the UFW stood against strike breaking undocumented workers but that is just not true. The fact is that between 1962 and 1975 the UFW was for keeping all undocumented workers out of the California fields whether they were breaking strikes or not.¹³ By 1964 California’s farm work population was made up in majority of braceros, Filipinos, whites, blacks, Texas migrants, Mexican migrants, Mexican-American migrants and settled Mexican-Americans.¹⁴ The majority of these Mexicans were those who’s grandparents and/or parents had migrated to the U.S. in the 1920s and they had of course grown concerned that undocumented Mexicans from border cities would be used to suppress their already low wages.

In 1973 the UFW organized pickets outside the Immigration Naturalization Services (INS) offices of Fresno and Indio totaling 1,500 participants protesting their failure to arrest and deport undocumented workers.¹⁵  When a reporter from the Riverside Press-Enterprise asked Chavez if the UFW could win the strike in Coachella he angrily replied, “A lot depends on how much cooperation we get from the Border Patrol. They are between us and victory at this point. There are at least ten locations of where “wetbacks” are staying.”¹⁶ But these were the typical remarks of a frustrated Chavez that were common throughout his life—always exaggerating figures and circumstances. More importantly Chavez and his UFW did not allow undocumented immigrants to join their union.     

Beginning in the spring of 1974 Chavez led a systematic attack on undocumented workers coining his crusade as the “Campaign Against Illegals.” Chavez’s UFW campaign circulated a petition calling for the Department of Justice (DOJ) and INS to enforce immigration laws and to “remove the thousands of illegal aliens now working in the fields.”¹⁷  Frustrated with the INS’s lack of action, the UFW had volunteers that tracked down illegals and informed the INS of their places of unemployment and homes. By the summer of 1974 the UFW had reported more than 5,000 undocumented workers to the INS. Despite the UFW’s efforts the Border Patrol reported the arrest and removal of only 195 “illegals.”¹⁸ 

Furthermore, the UFW formed a militia coined as the “Wet Line” to guard the Arizona-Mexico border with a few hundred goons in which they claimed to have semi-succeeded in policing several miles. The militia was headed by Chavez’s own unscrupulous cousin Manuel Chavez.  Manuel who was a bully and never succeeded in anything other than being a good brawler and thug often saw himself as a superior Chicano. According to Gilbert Padilla, Manuel had spent some time in jail for his violent temper. After World War II he ventured along the Mexican border where he engaged in petty theft and con man. He did some time in county jails for assaults, disturbing the peace, public drunkness, auto theft and nearly two years in federal prison for selling marijuana. His cousin Cesar however came to his rescue and hired him as a UFW “organizer,” but Manuel simply served as the union’s “enforcer” of problems. The Wet Line lasted until at least 1975 where the militia men roamed freely intercepting undocumented immigrants and beating them. Chavez did everything in his power to hold back the mighty wave of undocumented immigrants from Mexico because as the Fresno Bee reported, by 1974 perhaps more than half of California’s field workers were undocumented.¹⁹ 

Chavez’s self-proclaimed “Campaign Against Illegals” was a complete failure and his UFW would never recover from it. His war against “wetbacks” sowed the divisions between Chicanos, first generation Mexicans born in the US and undocumented immigrants that are still relevant today. The latter two have since the mid-1970s referred to Chicanos as pochos—a term commonly used to demonstrate distrust and ridicule Chicanos for their inability to master their ancestral tongue, and further depict a confused identity in limbo between two cultures. The late Mexican laureate Octavio Paz in his masterful analysis The Labyrinth of Solitude for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature correctly describes the Chicano for “his hybrid language and behavior reflect a physic oscillation between two irreducible worlds – North American and the Mexican – which he vainly hopes to reconcile and conquer. He does not want to become either a Mexican or a Yankee.”²⁰        

The Undemocratic and Top-Down Structure of the UFW Bureaucracy 

When the UFW finally was formed in 1966 the shy and ineffective public speaker Cesar Chavez quickly made sure to usurp power. As members of the new National Executive Board, Chavez chose himself and his three close friends going back to the CSO days – Gilbert Padilla, Dolores Huerta and Antonio “Tony” Orendain. Since the UFW was an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, organizer Bill Kircher chose Filipino leaders: Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz from AWOC and added Filipino businessman Andy Imutan to the board. The AFL-CIO approved the new union and set it up with a million-dollar fund.²¹ Itliong became Chavez’s assistant director.

As head of the UFW and at the request of Fred Ross and Kircher at the CIO, Chavez did everything to purge the union from any radical elements or socialist sympathizers. He personally presided over what was published in the UFW’s unofficial newsletter El Malcriado who he prohibited from running anti-Vietnam War stories. Ironically the FBI at one point accused the newsletter of being a communist newspaper. By 1971 Chavez had become a control freak micro-managing every aspect of the union and even accusing some staff members of being subversive leftists. Chavez’s behavior greatly frustrated Itliong that in October 1971 he resigned as the assistant director of the UFWOC. Privately to other Filipino compatriots he complained about how they were being treated in the union but more so of Chavez’s unwillingness to listen to criticism.²² 

In short, the UFW was completely a centralized union with no locals or elected officers in control of their own budgets like is traditional of most labor unions. In other words, the UFW was an undemocratic union who’s members had no right to exercise a vote for their union officials. Hence, Chavez stood firmly against the formation of local chapters and local elections.²³ In the 1970’s as the UFW lost organizing drives in the fields to the Teamsters, Chavez belligerently blamed the losses on Republican policies and undocumented immigrants. When the UFW finally held its First Constitutional Convention in 1973 a total of 350 farm workers gathered in Fresno. At the convention Chavez reshuffled and even expanded the executive board from seven to nine officers—moving Gilbert Padilla to Secretary-Treasurer and even adding his brother Richard to the board. He also added a liberal community organizer and son of a rabbi, Marshall Ganz who had no experience working in the fields. Only two Filipinos served on the board, Philip Vera Cruz and Pete Velasco.     

Under Chavez the UFW worked as a political machine for the Democratic Party and in California for Governor Jerry Brown. Preoccupied with national politics half of the farmworkers that had voted to join the union in the mid 1970’s remained without bargaining agreements. Chavez of course falsely claimed that companies were stonewalling negotiations but the UFW was simply preoccupied in Democratic party politics where many of the union’s staff members had actually became party delegates. In July 1976 Chavez was even given the “honor” to nominate Gov. Brown as candidate for U.S president at the Democratic National Convention in New York City. Overall, the year 1976 was a bad one for the membership as the UFW put more resources into regional, state and national politics than the fields.

By 1979 Chavez had changed completely entering into a state of hysteria and paranoia.  He had embraced conspiracy theories and had gone mad. Worse yet, after losing the support of the Filipino community he decided to tour the Philippines as a guest of fascist dictator Fernando Marcos who like Franco in Spain had the full support of the Vatican. Marcos led a twenty-year regime (1966-1986) that bolstered the military by huge numbers, curtailed public discourse, took over the media and imprisoned political opponents, labor activists and students. In a crushing blow to organized labor, work stoppages were also outlawed under Marcos’ rule. 

When Chavez mentioned the tour to the UFW executive board—Filipinos Philip Vera Cruz and Pete Velasco quickly opposed the idea. Vera Cruz told Chavez he did not approve of his visit to the Philippines as he opposed the repressive Marcos regime where thousands of political prisoners had been purged.²⁴ For his disapproval a paranoid Chavez accused Vera Cruz of betrayal and being part of a “leftist” and “communist” conspiracy against the union.²⁵ Vera Cruz was eventually pushed out of the union for his refusal to comply with the demands of an autocratic Chavez. 

To avoid opposition and maintain greater control of the UFW—Chavez with the support of Dolores Huerta continued to oppose the expansion of the union outside California or creation of local chapters. By 1981 all these problems went on to destroy the UFW as the days of mass participation, strikes and boycotts came to an end.  A civil war within the executive board further dealt blows to the union followed by the resignations of Gilbert Padilla and Jerry Cohen. Of course both Chavez and Huerta accused everyone for the union’s downfall but themselves. When Chavez and Huerta felt challenged they were quick to use the race and religious card to play victims of evil “communists” and “jews.” When non-English speaking farmworkers challenged Chavez they were also ridiculed and purged.  

By the late 1970’s and early 1980’s a huge flow of not only Mexican immigrants but also Central Americans made their way to the U.S. The 1982 Mexican peso collapse and the Central American civil wars ushered a massive wave of new immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and to a lesser degree Honduras. By the end of the 1980’s approximately three million Central Americans had fled their conflicts at home for the U.S.²⁶ Following Mexico’s 1982 debt crisis by 1986 there was 3.2 million undocumented people living in the U.S. Great concern over the growing undocumented population grew so much in the first half of the 1980’s that in 1986 Congress was forced to pass the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). In totality IRCA enabled 2.7 million immigrants to legalize their status, 70% of them Mexican²⁶ of which the parents of this author were part of. The UFW however failed to capitalize on the opportunity to recruit them into the fields and ranks—further continuing the present division between Chicanos and undocumented immigrants. 

When Cesar Chavez died of cancer on April 23, 1993 he left his son-in-law Artie Rodriguez as principal officer of the United Farm Workers.

Edgar Esquivel is a first generation born Mexican-American in Orange County CA to undocumented immigrant parents from Michoacan who gained legal status under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. He holds a Master’s Degree in History from Cal State University-Fullerton with an emphasis in Modern Latin America, labor movements and Marxist historiography. He has served as an adjunct professor of History at both Mt. San Antonio College and Santa Ana College in Southern California and has written for New Politics, Oakland Socialist and Socialist Worker.      

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1. Carolina Gonzalez, “Cesar Chavez Film Faces Criticism for Not Being Chicano Enough,” National Public Radio, April 5, 2014.
2. Ronald B. Taylor, Chavez and the Farm Workers, (Beacon Press: Boston, 1974), 66.
3. Omar G. Encarnacion, “Spain’s Dictator is Dead, but the Debate About Him Lives On,” Foreign Policy, July 27, 2018.
4. Alan Woods, Spain’s Revolution Against Franco: The Great Betrayal, (Wellred Books: London, 2019), XV.
5. Joan London and Henry Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap: The Story of Cesar Chavez & Farm Workers’ Movement, (Thomas Y. Cromwell: New York, 1970), 143.
6. Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers, (Verso Books: London, 2012), 87.
7.  Manuel G. Gonzales, Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States, 2nd Ed., (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 2009), 201.
8. Gilbert G. Gonzales, Guest Worker or Colonized Labor? Mexican Labor Migration to the United States, (Paradigm Publishers: Boulder CO, 2006), 2.
9. Manuel G. Gonzales, Mexicanos, 201.
10. “UFW, ALRB, Unions,” Rural Migration News, UC Davis, January 2013.
11. Matt Garcia, From the Jaws of Victory, The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement, (University of California Press, 2014), 37.
12. Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out the Vintage, 160.
13. Frank Bardacke, “The UFW and the Undocumented,” International and Working-Class History No. 83, (Spring 2013), pp. 162-169.
14. California Assembly Committee on Agriculture, The California Farm Workforce: A Profile, (California, 1969).
15. “Farm Workers Picket Border Patrol to Protest Alleged Illegal Alien Use,” Riverside Press-Enterprise, July 10, 1973.
16. Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out the Vintage, 443.
17. “Illegals Campaign,” August 17, 1974, I&R, Box 38, Folder “Illegal,” Walker P. Reuther Library, (Wayne State University, Detroit).
18. Frank Bardacke, “The UFW and the Undocumented.”
19. “Illegal Aliens: A Growing Labor Force,” Fresno Bee, September 9, 1973.
20. Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings, (Grove Press: New York, 1985), 18.
21. Sam Kushner, The Long Road to Delano: A Century of Farmworkers’ Struggle, (International Publication: New York, 1975), 157.
22. Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out the Vintage, 405.
23. Ibid., 525.
24. Craig Scharlin and Lila Villanueva, Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farm Workers Movement, (UCLA Labor Center: Los Angeles, 1992), 116.
25. Frank Bardacke, Trampling Out the Vintage, 569.
26. Aviva Chomsky, Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence and the Roots of Migration, (Beacon Press: Boston, 2021), 219.