Chavez called a special meeting for twelve noon on Monday, February 19, assembling the strikers as well as the office staff and families, and talked for an hour and a half about nonviolence. He discussed Vietnam, wondering aloud how so many of his listeners could deplore the violence in Asia, yet promote it in the United States. He said that the Mexican tradition of machismo—of manliness proved through violence—was in error: la causa must not risk a single life on either side, because it was a cause, not just a union, dealing with people not as green cards or social security numbers but as human beings, one by one.
“Cesar took a very hard line,” Leroy Chatfield says. “We were falling back on violence because we weren’t creative enough or imaginative enough to find another solution, because we didn’t work hard enough. One of the things that he said in the speech was that he felt we had lost our will to win, by which he meant that acting violently or advocating violence or even thinking that maybe violence wasn’t such a bad thing—that is really losing your will to win, your commitment to win. A cop-out. This seems like a very idealistic position, but there’s truth in it. Anarchy leads to chaos, and out of chaos rises the demagogue. That’s one of the reasons he is so upset about la raza. The same Mexicans that ten years ago were talking about themselves as Spaniards are coming on real strong these days as Mexicans. Everyone should be proud of what they are, of course, but race is only skin-deep. It’s phony, and it comes out of frustration; the la raza people are not secure. They look upon Cesar as their ‘dumb Mexican’ leader; he’s become their saint. But he doesn’t want any part of it. He said to me just the other day, ‘Can’t they understand that that’s just the way Hitler started?’ A few months ago the Ford Foundation funded a la raza group and Cesar really told them off. The foundation liked the outfit’s sense of pride or something, and Cesar tried to explain to them what the origin of the word was, that it’s related to Hitler’s concept. He feels that la raza will destroy our union faster than anything else, that it plays right into the growers’ hands; if they can keep the minorities fighting, pitting one race against another, one group against another . . . We needed that Ford money too, but he spoke right out. Ford had asked him if he wouldn’t be part of that Southwest Council for La Raza, or whatever it is, and he flatly refused. I mean, where would Mack Lyons be if we had that kind of nonsense? Or where would I be? Or the Filipinos?”
In his speech on February 19, 1968, Chavez discussed the civil rights movement and how its recourse to violence had made black people suffer; black homes, not white, were being burned, and black sons killed. The Union, he said, had raised the hopes of many poor people; it had a responsibility to those people, whose hopes, along with all the Union gains, would be destroyed after the first cheap victories of violence. Finally, he announced the fast. It was not a hunger strike, because its purpose was not strategic; it was an act of prayer and love for the Union members because as their leader he felt responsible for their acts as individuals. There would be no vote on the fast, which would continue for an indefinite period, and had in fact begun the week before. He was not going into seclusion, and would continue his work as best he could; he asked that his hearers keep the news entirely to themselves. Since it was difficult to fast at home, and since the Forty Acres was the spiritual home of the Union, he would walk there as soon as he had finished speaking, and remain there until the fast was done. Throughout the speech Chavez quoted Gandhi and the Epistles of St. Paul. “His act was intensely personal,” Leroy recalls, “and the whole theme of his speech was love. In fact, his last words to us before he left the room and started that long walk to the Forty Acres were something like ‘I am doing this because I love you.’”
Helen Chavez followed Cesar from the hall, and everyone sat for some time in stunned silence. After that, as Marion Moses notes, “A lot was said, most of which, as far as I am concerned, had little or nothing to do with what Cesar was really saying to us.” The meeting was taken over by Larry Itliong, who said straight out that Brother Chavez should be persuaded to come off the fast. Manuel Chavez then declared that Cesar was an Indian and therefore stubborn, and that once he had made up his mind to do something, nothing anyone could say was going to stop him. In that case, Leroy Chatfield said, in the most impassioned speech of all, every precaution must be taken to guard Cesar’s health—good bed, blankets, and so forth—and to insure quiet, no cars were to be permitted on the Forty Acres until the fast was over.
Tony Orendain said sourly that the meeting need not concern itself with Cesar’s blankets; the brothers should get back to work. Other members made many other comments: Epifanio Camacho, for example, dismissed the whole business of striker violence as grower propaganda, and therefore saw no reason for the fast. Camacho, as well as other Protestants and agnostics, white and brown, still resented the Catholic aura of the Sacramento march and now felt offended all over again. They were supported by those Catholics who felt that the Church was being exploited, and also by most of the white volunteers, and the Jews especially, who disliked any religious overtone whatsoever.
For the first week after the announcement, before the press arrived, almost the whole board of directors, led by Orendain, were boycotting the fast and refused to attend mass at the Forty Acres. On the other hand, the membership, largely Catholic, accepted the fast in apprehensive faith. “If Cesar thought it was right,” Richard says, “then they did too.” Fred Ross, like Chatfield, was worried that Cesar might be damaging his health, but they soon realized that nothing was going to stop him.
The Franciscan priest, Mark Day, later announced that he would offer mass at the Forty Acres every night of the fast, and Marion Moses went there after the meeting to help clear out the storeroom for the service. “Nick and Virginia Jones,” she wrote, “pitched a little pup tent and stayed there the first night, and gradually there were more and more tents at the Forty Acres. It looked like a mining settlement in the Old West. We built a fireplace and we had chocolate every night. The masses were beautiful. On the first night Leroy and Bonnie made an offering of a picture of JFK, and Tony Mendez gave a crucifix. About 100 people came to the first mass and probably 200 will come tonight. It really looks good—the huge banner of the Union is against the wall, and the offerings the people make are attached to the banner: pictures of Christ from Mexico, two crucifixes, a large picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe—the whole wall is covered with offerings. There is a permanent altar there (a card table) with votive lights, almost like a shrine. It’s impossible to describe the spirit of what is happening.”
The people obeyed Cesar’s request that no one try a fast of sympathy on their own, but he learned later, from the open annoyance of their wives, that three young men had taken a vow of chastity for the duration of the fast, and held to it. He speaks of this sacrifice with regret, but it seemed to him a convincing proof of the farm workers’ new spirit.
The resentment of the young wives was not the only obstacle Chavez had to deal with: many other people had serious doubts right to the end. “When we visited Cesar in his little room at the Forty Acres,” Leroy says, “he would point at the wall and say, ‘See that white wall? Well, imagine ten different-colored balls, all jumping up and down. One ball is called religion, another propaganda, another organizing, another law, and so forth. When people look at that wall and see those balls, different people look at different balls; each person keeps his eye on his own ball. For each person the balls mean many different things, but for everyone they can mean something!’ My ball was propaganda, and I kept my eye on that; I could therefore be perfectly comfortable, and understand the fast completely in those terms, and not negate the other nine balls—organization, say. And as matter of fact, we never organized so many people in such a short time, before or since. The fast gave the lie to the growers’ claim that we have no following. Some people came every night to that mass at the Forty Acres, came sixty-five, eighty-five miles every night. People stood in line for an hour, two hours, to talk to him. He saw it as a fa
ntastic opportunity to talk to one man, one family at a time. When that person left he went away with something; he’s no longer a member, he’s an organizer. At the Sunday mass we had as many as two thousand people. That’s what the growers don’t understand; we’re all over the state. In fact, there’s nowhere in this state or anywhere in the Southwest where the people don’t know about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. And they say, ‘When is he coming? Are we next?’”
People close to Chavez like to envision a national farm workers union, but if Chavez has any such idea, he keeps it to himself. UFWOC now has offices in Texas, with sympathetic organizations in Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Ohio, New York, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Michigan. The Texas strikes, led by Gilbert Padilla, operate mostly in Starr County, which echoes Kern and Tulare counties in its cries of outraged patriotism. Although Texas can claim more paupers than any state in the nation, and although Starr County residents, mostly Mexican-Americans, had an average per capita income of $1,568 in 1966, a Starr County grand jury has called the strike effort “unlawful and un-American . . . abusive of rights and freedoms granted them as citizens . . . contrary to everything we know in our American and lawful way of life.” It is just this spluttering hypocrisy, of course, in a country that is surely the most violent and unlawful on earth, that has alienated the best of the nation’s young people and a growing minority of their parents. How much closer to what we were taught was the true spirit of America is the spirit of an elderly migrant, one of the objects of Starr County’s righteous wrath: “I have lived in poverty and misery all my life and I live in poverty during the strike . . . but now I can walk with dignity.”
The fast was also a warning to the growers that after a century of exploitation—the first anti-Mexican vigilantism occurred in 1859—the brown community was as explosive as the black, and that Chavez could not control his people indefinitely. If his nonviolent tactics failed, he would be replaced by more militant leaders, and there would be sabotage and bloodshed. Already minor violence had been committed by Union people or their sympathizers, and the threat of further violence was the main reason for the fast. Without question, the fast worked. It taught the farm workers that Chavez was serious about nonviolence, that it wasn’t just a tactic to win public support; and it taught them what nonviolence meant.
Chavez spoke a lot about the fast during the Sunday walk. Although he had fasted twice before, for periods of four days and ten, he had had no idea, when he began, how long this one would last. “I told everybody that it should be kept as secret as possible, but that the people could come to see me day or night, and the strike should go on as usual. But it didn’t; there was a lot of confusion.
“When I disappeared, there was a rumor that I had been shot, and then everybody said that I was very sick, and finally we had to tell the press the truth, but we still said we didn’t want any interviews or pictures or anything. I didn’t talk to the newsmen, didn’t want to, I just wanted to continue working.” He laughed. “I did more organizing out of this bed than I did anywhere. It was really a rest, though; to me, it was a vacation.
“As soon as the word got out, the members began to come. Just people! From all over the state! We estimated that ten thousand people came here during the fast—we never turned anybody away. Anyway, everything went beautifully. The Filipinos came and began to paint these windows, and all kinds of little things began to appear. They weren’t artists, but the things looked beautiful”—he spoke this last word with real intensity, turning to look at me. “I think the fast was a sort of rest for the people, too. You know? Oh, I could go on for days about the things that happened in the fast that were really great! I guess one time I thought about becoming a priest, but I did this instead, and I’m happy to be a part of it. For me, this work is fun, it’s really fun! It’s so great when people participate. Mexico is such a poor country, and I could never understand how, after the Revolution, they could produce all that beautiful art. But now I see it in our own strike, it’s only a very small revolution, but we see this art beginning to come forth. When people discover themselves like this, they begin to appreciate some of the other things in life. I didn’t understand this at first, but now I see that art begins in a very simple way. It’s very simple—they just go out and do things.
“Then they began to bring things. Offerings, you know, religious pictures, mostly. Some people brought a hundred-and-fifty-year-old Christ of the Miners, handmade out of silver down in Mexico, and there were some other real valuable pieces. We’ve got everything safe, and we’ll put it on display one day here at the Forty Acres.
“Something else very beautiful happened. For years and years the Mexican Catholics have been very discriminatory against the minority Mexican Protestants. They didn’t know anything about them, they were just against them. Well, we used to hold mass every day in the store across from my room, we made it into a kind of chapel. And about the fifth day a preacher came, he works out there at Schenley and he has a little church in Earlimart. And I said, ‘How would you like to come and preach at our mass?’ He said, ‘Gee . . . no . . .’” Chavez shrank back, imitating his voice. “‘Sure!’ I said. I told him this was a wonderful time to begin to repair some of the damage that had been done, the bad feeling, but he said, ‘I can’t preach here, I’ll get thrown out.’ I said, ‘No, if that happens, I’ll go out with you.’ So he said, ‘All right, fine.’ And when he came, I introduced him, gave the full name of his church and everything so there would be no room for doubt about where he came from. And he did it in great form, and the people accepted him. There was a great spirit; they just took him in. So three days later I asked another one to come, and he came, and he was also great, and then a Negro minister came—it was beautiful. So then the first one came again with his whole group, and they sang some real great Mexican Protestant music that we’re not familiar with because of that prejudice. And now our Franciscan priest has gone and preached out there, in that little Protestant church in Earlimart!”
I asked him if his concept of the fast derived from Gandhi.
“Well, partly. In India, fasting is part of the tradition—there’s an Indian engineer here who is a friend and comes to see us, and he says that in India almost everybody fasts. But Mexicans have the Catholic concept of sacrifice; the penitencia is part of our history. In Mexico, a lot of people will get on their knees and travel for five miles.
“I didn’t know much about it, so I read everything I could get my hands on, Gandhi, and I read some of the things that he had read, and I read Thoreau, which I liked very much. But I couldn’t really understand Gandhi until I was actually in the fast; then the book became much more clear. Things I understood but didn’t feel—well, in the fast I felt them, and there were some real insights. There wasn’t a day or a night that I lost. I slept in the day when I could, and at night, and I read. I slept on a very thin mattress, with a board—soft mattresses are no good. And I had the peace of mind that is so important; the fasting part is secondary.”
During the fast Chavez subsisted on plain water, but his cousin Manuel, who often guarded him and helped him to the bathroom, was fond of responding to knocks on the door by crying out, “Go away, he’s eating!” I asked if, in the fast, he had had any kind of hallucinations.
“No, I was wide awake. But there are certain things that happened, about the third or fourth day—and this has happened to me every time I’ve fasted—it’s like all of a sudden when you’re up at a high altitude, and you clear your ears; in the same way, my mind clears, it is open to everything. After a long conversation, for example, I could repeat word for word what had been said. That’s one of the sensations of the fast; it’s beautiful. And usually I can’t concentrate on music very well, but in the fast, I could see the whole orchestra and everything, that music was so clear.
“That room, you know, is fireproof, and almost soundproof—not quite, but almost. It’s a ten-inch wall, with six inches of poured concrete. There were some Mexican guitars
around, this was about the nineteenth day, and I turned to Helen and my brother Richard and some of my kids, and said, ‘I hear some singing.’ So everybody stopped talking and looked around: ‘We don’t hear anything.’ So I said, ‘I’ll bet you I hear singing!’ This time they stopped for about forty seconds: ‘But we don’t hear anything!’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I still hear singing.’ Then my sister-in-law glanced at Richard, her expression was kind of funny, so I said, ‘We’d better investigate this right now, because either I’m hearing things or it’s happening.’ They said it was just my imagination, and I said, ‘Richard, please investigate for me, right now, because I won’t feel right if you don’t.’ So Richard went outside, and there were some guys there across the yard having a drink, and they were singing.” He laughed. “Then, toward the end, I began to notice people eating. I’d never really noticed people eat. It was so . . . so . . .”—he struggled for words to express fascination and horror—“well, to use what we call in Spanish a mala comparación, like animals in a zoo! I couldn’t take my eyes off them!”
I asked Chavez what had persuaded him to end the fast.
“Well, the pressure kept building, especially from the doctor. He was getting very concerned about the acids and things that I didn’t know anything about—a kind of cannibalism occurs, you know, the acid begins to eat your fat, and you have to have a lot of water to clear your kidneys. First of all, I wouldn’t let him test me. I said, ‘If you declared me physically able to begin the fast, then it’s not a sacrifice. If you find out that I’m ill, there will be too much pressure not to do it. So let me begin, and after I’ve started, then we’ll worry about what’s wrong with me.’ But I forgot that the doctor was responsible for me, that if something went wrong with me, he would get it. So I argued, and he worried. Finally, after the twelfth day, I let him check my urine, and about the seventeenth day I let him check my heart, and he said, ‘Well, you’re fit.’ And I said, ‘I know I’m fit, I knew it when I got into this.’ And after the fast they gave me a complete analysis, blood and all that stuff, and do you know something?” He smiled his wide-eyed smile, shaking his head. “I was perfect!”
Sal Si Puedes (Escape if You Can) Page 21