Cesar Chavez was one of the leading activists for Chicano Civil Rights in the 1960s and 70s. Chavez was a Mexican American farmworker turned labor leader and activist who dedicated his entire life to improving conditions for field workers in America by peaceful means such as boycotts, strikes, and pilgrimages, among others. His efforts shed light on the plight of Mexican American migrant workers and inspired the Chicano movement to advocate for social and political reform. This research paper will provide background information about Cesar Chavez, founder 1. It will then take some of Chavez’s significant activism efforts, such as the Delano grape strike and boycott, among other labor campaigns. Lastly, the paper will analyze Chavez’s legacy and how his work blew into a broader movement, allowing Mexican Americans in politics to gain political, social, and cultural power during the 1960s-70.
Cesar Chavez was born in 1927 into an American culture within a family that had lost their farm during the Great Depression and became migrant workers on farms (United Farm Workers p.1). Having been laboring in the fields since he was a child, Chavez knew that exploitation and misery awaited migrant wage workers who worked all day without breaks for minimal pay. After a brief service in the navy during the Second World War (WWII), Chavez returned to California, where he married Helen Fabela in 1948 (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica p.2). As a Community Service Organization (CSO) community organizer, Chavez started rallying migrant workers’ support for voting rights, education reforms, and protection against discrimination.
In 1962, after he departed from CSO, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (UFWA)) toW champion farm workers’ rights. It did it by improving working conditions and pay standards, to mention a few. Chavez employed nonviolent activist methods used by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. These methods included peaceful marches, consumer boycotts, pickets, and strikes coupled with starvations to generate public awareness and pressure agricultural companies. Then Dolores Huerta, an influential co-leader and organizer, joined him shortly after. One of the most notable victories was negotiating a farmworker union contract with Schenley Wine Company in 1966 after striking and marching within California’s confines contracted to that effect(United Farm Workers p.5). It focused more on national attention to the plight of migrant workers. The group reached fifty thousand members by 1978 and, after a significant grape strike, merged its power with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become what is referred to today as the United Farm Workers (UFW) union led by Chavez (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica p.4).
In September 1965, Chavez led the NFWA that organized Mexican American grape pickers in Delano for a strike against poor working conditions and unjust wages. With the predominantly Latino strike coalition not recognized or negotiated with by the agricultural industry, Chavez organized a national boycott of California table grapes authorized by student activists and labor groups nationwide. They walked, went on hunger strikes, and picketed stores to force them out of their shelves of grapes. Millions stopped buying grapes five years later to bring the industry down and negotiate (United Farm Workers p.11). The strike in Delano thus turned into the longest strike conducted throughout the United States. It compelled local and national political leaders to start addressing the exploitation of migrant workers. It acted as one of the dominant civil rights issues along with black, feminist, and antiwar protests throughout the 1960s in America, according to the historian Griswold Del Castillo.
Despite the accomplishment of a landmark farm laborer union contract in 1970 that would improve wages and working conditions for thousands teaming with Mexican migrant farm workers, there was continuous worker unrest. It demonstrated just how poor agricultural corporations, along with lawmakers, were to give these predominantly Mexican American migrants their complete labor rights plus protection from exploitation. Nevertheless, Delano represented the increased political consciousness of organized farmworkers nationally.
Although organizing strikes on farmworker efforts was at the center of Chavez’s advocacy, he also actively championed and merged with other civil rights issues that sought to advance additional goals under the Chicano movement agenda. For instance, he worked with and promoted the Chicano student group MECHA’s (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán) initiatives. It was to create studies programs and widen outreach to college access. He also supported Hispanic political candidates like Senator Jose Angel Gutierrez of Texas. Chavez additionally created connections with black civil rights leaders to emphasize intersecting worker injustices across races and bring about togetherness. They introduced people like Martin Luther King Jr and Jesse Jackson to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). They publicly supported King’s 1968 Poor People‘s Campaign for Economic Justice. They inherited a UFW flag from his wife, Coretta Scott King, after his assassination here (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica p.7). Chavez also connected to activist and union organizer Dolores Huerta, who helped found the UFW alongside him and would deliver blazing speeches with a call for social change. Towards the end of his career, Chavez staged a life-threatening thirty-six-day hunger strike in order to renew and recommit himself and their members as well as the Latino community at large. He demanded that nonviolent activism embrace the intensified frustrations of workers concerning ongoing injustices within fields. It was not until Chavez asked President Clinton to protect union organizing and worker’s rights for the vulnerable immigrant workforce that he ended his fast. Although a problematic opposition campaign against unionization movements from the agriculture lobby efforts, it quickly symbolized Chavez’s ceaseless nonviolent advocacy to bring such a political change(United Farm Workers p.13).
While organizing farmworker strikes and Latino community activism throughout California, Cesar Chavez drove the second half of this intellectual movement from the Second Phase of Civil Rights to the late 1980s (CSUSM p.7). His potential to unite the migrant farmworkers in a mass revolt demanding better field conditions and wage rates added energy to mobilizing Mexican American political activism. It was for the necessary socioeconomic needs of this marginalized group. The civil rights fought for in the Delano grape boycott, and the strike defined political efforts. It was a coalition of Latino Civil Rights groups, religious organizations, and the association’s labor federation to address exploitation and discrimination through nonviolent resistance. Although Chavez mainly focused on improving conditions for migrant workers, he managed to reorganize the movement. It opened the floodgates to more prominent arguments for empowering Hispanic people, such as calls by activist student groups like MECHA advocating changes in curriculum reform and better representation of political leaders (Mario T., and Ellen Pg.78). They could bring change from city halls through Congress. Even though ongoing injustices prevailed until his death in 1993 as migrant workers still had to work under harsh field conditions, today, Chavez gave Mexican Americans an iconic leader. He showed the effectiveness of community organization and nonviolent activism for realizing social change. His solidarity boycotts, picketing, and even fasting tactics became a model for many Hispanic leaders who made Cesar Chavez somewhat of an icon of the labor movement and West Coast Chicano civil rights. Although there is much work yet to be done today, the mass mobilization and awakening of Latino activism Chavez’s strikes brought about launched Mexican Americans. They claim their rights and higher political, social, and socioeconomic power across national boundaries.
Among the most legendary labor and civil rights leaders of the twentieth century, Cesar Chavez devoted his life to supporting America’s alienated migrant farmworkers, mostly Mexican-Americans. Using mass mobilization and strikes, such as the historic multi-year Delano grape boycott, along with community organizing and alliances with other leaders, Chavez brought exploitation of Hispanics. He brought them to national attention as a socioeconomic matter that demanded compensation. The unionization of agricultural workers proved very important as it signaled the rising power of Latinos as a political force and enabled future organizations to continue their work on behalf of that group.
Even though Chavez concentrated mainly on farmworkers’ struggles, his legacy united and inspired the movement of all people eager to obtain political, educational, social, and cultural rights for Hispanics throughout America. While migrant workers today still face discrimination and poor work conditions, Cesar Chavez became a civil rights icon due to his grassroots activism that led to powerful nonviolent resistance. His durable passion helped stimulate Mexican Americans throughout California and the nation to demand change and more political blows among influential voting blocks. Chavez provided one of the defining symbols and leaders for the civil rights era Chicano Movement to march behind for support.
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Mario T., García, and McCracken, Ellen. I am rewriting the Chicano Movement. 2021, www.researchgate.net/profile/Omar-Valerio-Jimenez/publication/349931128_LA_CARAVANA_DE_LA_RECONQUISTA_The_Brown_Berets_Contest_Memories_of
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The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Cesar Chavez | Biography & Facts.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 Dec. 2023, www.britannica.com/biography/Cesar-Chavez.
United farm workers. “The Story of Cesar Chavez.” UFW, United Farm Workers, 2017, ufw.org/research/history/story-cesar-chavez/.