The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

by Miriam Pawel

  After eighty-six days and 14,867 miles, Chavez was ready to formalize his organization. He called a convention for September 30, 1962, in Fresno, the center of the valley. “Check the letterhead,24 paid for by my relatives, and which will be used for the credentials for the Fresno mtg,” Chavez wrote to Ross on September 18, showing off his new Farm Workers Association stationery.

  To help set up the convention and run the new organization, Chavez called on one of his most trusted accomplices—Manuel Chavez, the cousin he considered a brother. Manuel was not an easy recruit. He was working as a salesman25 at Guarantee Chevrolet in San Diego, where he bragged he earned as much as $2,000 a month, working four-hour days. Cesar first appealed to his cousin’s sense of outrage, reciting the ways they had been cheated and humiliated as farmworkers by conniving labor contractors. Then Cesar reminded Manuel, who had had his share of encounters with law enforcement, how the police mistreated Mexican Americans. Still Manuel resisted. “Hell, let the farmworkers get out like I did,” Manuel recalled telling Cesar. “He said, ‘That’s why the farmworkers don’t get organized; all the farmworkers that get out of farmwork, they say the same thing once they get a good job.’” Manuel agreed to give it a try, and moved to Delano. Built like a wrestler, Manuel was smooth, charming, funny, and a natural salesman. He had a talent for making things happen and a hustler approach to life that complemented Cesar’s strategic mind.

  Even as he issued invitations to the Fresno convention, Chavez harbored doubts about the viability of his new venture. But he was clear in his expectations and unwavering in his demands. “As for me if the people in Fresno should vote not to pay dues and not to incorporate then I shall move out of state and begin the same thing in Arizona,” Chavez wrote Huerta, who was helping plan the convention.

  If the workers vote to incorporate then I’ll demand dues to live on and to hire more people and do a job. I will not be contented to have a large membership or to simply serve the people. I want something meaningful as soon as possible and I need the time in which to work at it. The dues and the membership and the ser-vice programs and the rest are only accessories to the main purpose of establishing some definite and concrete gains via collective bargaining contracts with employers. This sounds crazy26 but it is the ultimate goal and toward that goal I must work unflinchingly.

  He realized he needed to offer something to make dues worthwhile. He decided to follow a suggestion from Ross and suspend the collection of dues until the association could deliver life insurance as a benefit “to inspire27 the workers to pay,” he wrote to Ross.

  Ross told Chavez that he couldn’t attend the convention while on the IAF payroll, “but I’ll be keeping all 10 fingers crossed28 and calling upon the saints of all good agnostics to bring you luck and success.” Four days later, Ross decided he just couldn’t stay away. He booked a flight arriving in Fresno on September 29 at four-thirty and “will stay over for the meeting if they let striking gabachos29 in.”

  Chavez had invited each of the small committees he had formed in towns around the valley to elect two convention delegates. About 150 workers and their families gathered at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday30 at the Edison Social Hall at 1405 California Street in Fresno. Huerta led the pledge of allegiance. Hartmire offered welcoming remarks, one of the few speeches in English. Chavez reported they had registered more than twenty-five thousand farmworkers. He thanked contributors, singling out several CSO chapters, Abe Chavez, and Fred Ross. Then he gave a short tutorial in parliamentary procedure—speeches should not exceed five minutes, no one should leave the hall during the meeting, only delegates could vote. He asked for a motion to formally organize the Farm Workers Association, which passed unanimously, followed by a lengthy debate on whether the name should be in English, Spanish, or both. Orendain, an immigrant more comfortable in Spanish than English, argued that they must use English in order to be inclusive of other ethnic groups. His motion carried the day.

  The debate over dues was most heated. Proposals ranged from $1 to $3.50, and in the end the motion to assess $3.50 a month passed with the understanding that dues would not be collected until an insurance policy was offered. Jesus Martinez, an older farmworker from Sanger, delivered an impassioned speech about the need to levy sufficient dues to pay staff to carry out the work. On the strength of his oration, the little-known Martinez became the association’s first president. His election would be the last time anyone in the farmworkers union spontaneously won office in an unscripted nomination. Chavez was elected general director. He had a commitment of $75 a week in salary and expenses, once the treasury had cash.

  The dramatic highlight of the meeting was the unveiling of the association’s new flag. The genesis of the black eagle exemplified Chavez’s ability to meld Ross’s attention to detail with a soaring vision. Chavez wanted an emblem that would be immediately recognizable, easily reproduced, and visually stunning. He thought about this for months. He studied marketing in grocery stores, cigarette packages, and advertisements on billboards. He researched which color combinations were most visually arresting and why Hitler chose the swastika and the Nazi flag. Chavez concluded that his flag, too, must be black, red, and white because the color combination attracted the most attention. He came up with the idea of an eagle31 from the “Blue Eagle,” the New Deal–era symbol that was used to signify compliance with the standards of the National Recovery Administration, created by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.

  To execute the flag, Chavez turned to his brothers. He asked Richard, the craftsman, to sketch an eagle. Richard drew the thunderbird, with squared-off wings and feet so simple anyone could draw the symbol. Then Chavez asked Manuel, who could always find money to get things done, to produce a giant flag, large enough to dominate a meeting hall. Cesar wanted a black eagle on a red and white background.

  They hung the flag at the front of the Fresno hall, hidden behind a curtain. Just before lunch, Manuel dramatically pulled off the paper to reveal the banner. Cheers drowned out a few gasps. Manuel was unprepared when asked to explain the significance, but he made up an answer on the spot: black was for the workers’ desperation, white was for their hope, and red was for their sacrifice. The founding members of the Farm Workers Association shouted out the motto they had unanimously adopted: “Viva la causa!”

  Ross could not have been prouder. “Well mijo, you’ve really done a fantastically wonderful job!”32 he wrote to Chavez three days later. “I know there’s a long way to go, but with that marvelous maña (skill, cunning) of yours, and judging by the glory I saw pouring from the eyes of the farmworkers sitting around that table all afternoon, and with luck, you’ll make it. I’m absolutely sure of it.” Then Ross headed for a three-week rest at a favorite hotel in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, his “spiritual home.”

  “The last day of September 1962 may well go down in California history33 as the beginning of a new era for the lowest-paid, worst-abused and the most unjustly treated group of people in our economy—the farm workers,” read a press release announcing the official formation of the association. No member of the press yet evinced any interest in a meeting of farmworkers in Fresno. But Chavez had begun to shape the story of the movement, and of himself.

  Who is organizing the FWA? the handout asked. “The Farm Workers, themselves. It all began in the mind of a man named Cesar Chavez, who at 17 left California’s fields to go to war, came out and worked in a lumber yard in San Jose, helped build the civic action Community Service Organization (CSO) among the Mexican-Americans of that city . . . and finally in April 1962 resigned that job and went back to the fields in order to carry out his lifelong dream, organization of the state’s Farm Workers for economic and legislative action.” From then on, Chavez would backdate his navy service by two years, claiming he signed up in 1944 rather than in 1946, a small change reflecting his calculation that war veteran would prove a useful embellishment.

  Who finances the organization? was the next question on the handout. “The answer to that on
e is brief and incredible: nobody. Nobody, that is, except two or three of Cesar’s buddies who send him a buck occasionally, and Cesar and his wife, Helena, who are now working in the fields from 6 am to 2 pm picking cotton to support themselves and their 8 kids. The rest of the day and half the night Cesar devotes to organizing.” In fact, his occasional field work did not support the family, the convention had approved a modest salary, and he would soon seek various additional sources of income.

  Whatever details he bent and blurred, Chavez did not overstate the event’s historic importance. The first successful union for farmworkers was launched in a Fresno social hall on September 30, 1962, along with the legend of Cesar Chavez.

  Chapter 10

  Chavez in Command

  We must take risks if we are going to move forward.

  In the beginning, Cesar Chavez said, only three people truly believed he could succeed: his wife, Helen; his mentor, Fred Ross; and Dolores Huerta, who became his indispensable, lifelong ally.

  Huerta was fearless, loyal, and fanatical—qualities Chavez prized. She was a single mother of seven, living on $80 a month in child support from two former husbands and sporadic income from the CSO. Her car broke down, her babysitter vanished, the utility threatened to shut off water and power, but the Farm Workers Association always came first. When Huerta faced a choice between her work and her children, the children suffered. When her stepfather took back his typewriter, she wrote Chavez in pencil. When she landed in the hospital and needed a blood transfusion, she apologized because the illness interfered with her job collecting dues.

  In many ways, she complemented Chavez. He was quiet, disarming, occasionally self-conscious about his lack of formal education, and not comfortable moving among the affluent. Huerta was assertive, voluble, college-educated, and always sought center stage. Her quick wit and charm attracted admirers and helped her weave social and political networks useful to Chavez.

  Huerta was three years younger than Chavez. Born in Dawson, New Mexico, Dolores Fernandez was raised in California after her parents divorced when she was a young child. Her father served briefly in the New Mexico state legislature. Her mother was the third generation of a family that emigrated from Spain; Dolores’s great-great-grandfather Marshal St. John served in the Union cavalry during the Civil War. After the divorce, Dolores’s mother worked in Stockton as a waitress, ran a luncheonette, and then took over a boardinghouse after the hotel’s Japanese managers were interned during the war. Dolores grew up conflicted about her identity. She took music lessons and earned Girl Scout merit badges, but lived in the run-down El Dorado Hotel, on the edge of skid row. Her mother’s family hated the “Indians” and made no distinction between Indians and her father’s Mexican ancestry. Her mother’s second husband, an Irishman, voiced equal hostility toward Mexicans. Dolores credited a trip to Mexico with her mother after high school for helping her avoid a nervous breakdown. “I saw a whole nation of Mexicans1 who weren’t ashamed to be Mexicans,” she recalled.

  She started college2 but dropped out after she married Ralph Head, a high school classmate. They had two children, and she went to work for the county sheriff’s office, using her bilingual skills. The couple divorced in 1952. Three years later, Dolores married Ventura Huerta. They shared an interest in community organizing. But her first allegiance was to her work, and he preferred that she stay home with the family. By the time she became involved with the Farm Workers Association, the marriage had ended. She kept her married name at the urging of Chavez; huerta means “orchard,” and he told her she had a pretty and appropriate name: sorrows of the orchard.

  Huerta’s relationship with Chavez was tempestuous from the start, but their commitment to the cause trumped all else and grew into a mutual dependence that survived decades of discord. Huerta managed to be both subservient and assertive. She addressed Chavez as her leader, jefe, and general, deferred to his judgment, and routinely apologized for her poor performance and occasional outbursts. “I deserve the recriminations,”3 she wrote Chavez after he apologized for critical remarks. “Furthermore I think I am still ahead when it comes to losing tempers.”

  She did not hesitate to voice complaints, particularly when she felt left out of discussions. “I am not the quiet long suffering type,”4 she wrote Chavez, rather an understatement. “I also resent it when you are not honest with me . . . I do not mind playing the part of the heavy if I know why and when I am supposed to take on this role—please remember this for any future conspiracies. This is what I mean by your ‘honesty’ or sincerity if it sounds nicer that way.”

  Chavez delivered most of his criticism in private, but during an early meeting of FWA leaders he berated Huerta in public for the first time, ostensibly for her failures as a bookkeeper. He had planned the confrontation, Chavez explained to Ross a few years later: “I said, ‘I run the show and I don’t give a damn what you think or anyone thinks. I’m gonna run it the way I want to run it, and you don’t like it, too bad. Get out!5 I don’t want to argue with you. If you don’t want to take orders from me, then get out. I’ve had it!’” People around Chavez soon grew accustomed to such public confrontations.

  In the end, Huerta would always put aside her anger and her own travails and do whatever Chavez asked, whether dunning members for dues or selling motor oil. When Chavez broached the idea of selling engine oil in one of his early attempts at a cooperative venture, she replied in characteristic fashion: “On the oil, so help me I do not know what you are talking about. I gather that you have some oil that can be sold for 22 cents a quart. Yes I am game6 but will it be too expensive to send via Greyhound? You figure that out.”

  Chavez relished the freedom to figure things out and make decisions. He was in charge of his own organization and carefully set out to build the union he wanted. He assembled his tight-knit team of family and friends and added to the small circle for specific missions. He was determined to avoid the mistakes of the CSO.

  This time the board would follow his direction, rather than the other way around. Chavez’s closest associates had not run for office at the founding convention on the theory that this organization, unlike CSO, would be run by the staff and the officers were largely ceremonial. They proved so ceremonial that several—including the president—never showed up again. Early in 1963, Chavez called a second convention.7 A smaller group of delegates, representing roughly the same communities as the first convention, met in the hall of Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Delano, which Chavez rented for $15. He would recall the date many years later because the January 20 convention fell on the day before Helen’s thirty-fifth birthday. The delegates scrapped the office of president. Chavez remained general director and Manuel Chavez was elected secretary-treasurer.

  Chavez handpicked the rest of the board. He wanted two close allies as vice presidents, Huerta and Gilbert Padilla. But the constitution—which Chavez had written—required all the board members to be farmworkers. So he asked for, and obtained, a waiver.

  “Padilla was my discovery,”8 Chavez said a few years later, recalling how he found the dapper organizer working as a dry cleaner in the San Joaquin Valley city of Hanford. Like Chavez, Padilla came from a farmworker family. He was an army veteran and felt a visceral anger at conditions in the fields. Padilla was quick-witted, a natural mimic and storyteller, easygoing, heavy-drinking, and committed to both Chavez and the cause of helping farmworkers. Padilla’s gifts for organizing impressed Ross, who arranged several stints for him working for the CSO. In Padilla, Chavez had a loyal friend on the board to back him up, and a strong voice for seconding any initiative.

  Chavez’s first focus after assembling the board was to find an insurance policy that would allow him to collect dues. Determined to avoid the CSO debacle, he made more pragmatic decisions. In the CSO, he had been unwilling to endorse life insurance that kicked people out at age seventy. He now faced the reality that the association would have to exclude any members older than fifty if he wanted to obtain insu
rance for farmworkers at an affordable cost.

  “I hope I don’t make the same mistake twice,”9 Chavez wrote Ross. “In CSO, remember all the plans that were made (mostly by me) which were dependent on the success of our new membership dues and the insurance and so forth. Well, here too I’m planning (dreaming) of having enough money to get help on the organizing of the workers. And as before, everything depends on the insurance program and the credit union, at least to begin with.”

  Liberated from the constraints of working for the CSO board, Chavez plunged ahead. Right or wrong, he acted decisively. He did not waste time on lengthy consultations and deliberations. By the end of January 1963, he had hit bottom financially. He decided to start collecting dues even though the insurance would not start until March—if he finalized a deal. He borrowed ten dollars from his brother Richard to buy stamps to mail bills. When he ran out of stamps, Chavez instructed Huerta to call on members in the northern end of the valley and tell them to send in dues. He realized he was asking members to pay dues on faith, but he had no choice. “I know this is the risky part10 of the whole damn thing,” he wrote Huerta, “but we must take risks if we are going to move forward.”