Lets Honor Cesar Chavez
Put forth on January 9, 2007 by XicanoPwr
Posted in César Chávez, Raza, UFW
Sign the Petition for a National Cesar E. Chavez Holiday!
The United Farm Workers and the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation are proud to support the grassroots efforts of the Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday Coalition.
Cesar was in Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s words, “one of the heroic figures of our time.” He led the historic non-violent movement for farm worker rights and dedicated himself to building a movement of poor working people that extended beyond the fields and into cities and towns across the nation.
He inspired farm workers and millions of people who never worked on a farm to commit themselves to social, economic and civil rights activism. Cesar’s legacy, like the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., continues to educate, inspire and empower people from all walks of life. He is a role model for all Americans and for generations to come.
Please help us ensure all Americans learn about Cesar’s life and work. The Cesar Chavez National Holiday Coalition is gathering signatures on petitions asking Congress to designate March 31, Cesar’s birthday and the day the UFW was founded, as Cesar Chavez Day. Sign the petition today. Help ensure Cesar’s legacy is recognized and celebrated throughout our nation with a federal paid holiday and a day of service and learning in our public schools.
(hat tip to Stace at Dos Centavos)
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Tags: activism, César Chávez, Petition, UFW | 
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
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Signed and forwarded to my facebook group: End the “illegalization” of Humans.
Cesar Chavez was also a die hard anti-immigration person. What he and his brother did to immigrants, sometimes even using physical force against them, was unforgivable. He makes the Arizona Minute Men look like saints.
I’d rather sign a petition against a national Cesar Chavez holiday.
wow, i thought there was already a day. we have a cesar chavez festival out here in san francisco the sunday before march 31st every year. damn, i guess our celebration is not vindicated through some bearucratic process? okay, i’ll sign.
on another note: have you read about Chavez’s anti-immigrant views? i have only read what i can google on the issue.
but i am curious.
and THAT, mis amigos, is what XP does best: debunk myth and clear up the real deal to point the way toward solidarity between Latin@s. THAT is why he is an invaluable read.
There are 8 states that have an official state holiday for Cesar Chavez – Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin. Along with numerous county and city holidays.
I am very aware of the propaganda that is being passed about Cesar Chavez. I have had this discussion with a congressional candidate who would visit my site back in April, when I was blogspot. Google is a great search, but it has its flaws. For example, if you were to look it up on the web to see how many states have an office Cesar Chavez state holiday, you think 3 or 4 states did instead of eight. It is surprising that none of my posts (here, my old site, or my cross-postings) are on the top two pages where I do mention it, Honoring César Chávez – ¡Sí, Se Puede!
The problem with propaganda is that it can either be blatant or subtle with half-truths. Such as the one being used against him. Once that stage is completed, a propagandist will employ symbols (e.g., waving the flag) to stir audience’s emotions to win their approval until their agenda has been met. HispanicPundit’s comment is only partial of what is being said about Chavez. This is what is being said about him and could be found here in the comment section.
The only places that started making reference to this is from anti-immigration nativists and known racist sites, such as VDARE, American Patrol and Storm Front. This is how talking-points start. The reference comes from a guy named Steve Sailer of VDARE. This is what Sailer wrote:
Sailer is a known racist, a modern day eugenicist and founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute. He writes articles based on right-wing extremist bias. He is not in favor of interracial marriages, he also believes that African American, Native Americans and Latinos do not have high IQs. He also considers Latinos to be half-breeds.
Time to debunk -
His brother Manuel ran the first Minuteman project
This is what I mean by subtle. One, Manuel is not Cesar’s brother. Manuel is his cousin. The aim of propaganda is to make sure information is taken in sweet sounding, soothing morsels that is both brief and effective. People only focus on brother and Minute Men. The truth is, the first minuteman project began in 1977 when the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan lead by David Duke and Tom Metzger formed Klan Border Watch, a KKK vigilante border patrol in southern California. The “Klan Border Watch” claimed to stretch from Texas to California, and was part of the “battle to halt the flow of illegal aliens streaming across the border from Mexico.”
The only brother that is ever mention is his brother Richard, who happened to be the one who designed the UFW Eagle and the flag.
Second, beating people up totally goes against his commitment to non-violence. Cesar recognized the spiritual and political power of nonviolence from his studying of Gandhi’s struggle in India and that of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. He was also heavily influenced by the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi.
Not only did he practice it himself, in 1965 strikers took a pledge of non-violence. Why would Cesar be willing to sacrifice his own life by fasting so that the union would continue and to make sure violence is not used, yet, then go out and beat up immigrants? This does not make any sense at all. In 1968 Cesar went on a water only, 25 day fast. Again in 1972 for 24 days, and again in 1988, for 36 days. In his own words:
All UFW archives can be found at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit.
I have spent countless hours researching on this issue and I have come to the conclusion this propaganda is intended to one, be used against the undocumented and two, create a split between native- and foreign-born Latinos. The fact that nobody questions it only strengthens the nativists goal.
As for being against the undocumented it is a pour myth. Cesar has represented more undocumented workers than anyone in the country and his 1969 march was NOT a march against the undocumented it was about strike breakers. The ONLY thing he was against was strike breakers, documented or undocumented.
I will tooth and nail to protect the legacy of Cesar Chavez and his commitment to La Causa and against any nativist pundit who continues to spin his 1969 march for their racist agenda.
One more thing, I just want HispanicPundit to know my comment/rant was not meant to be an attack against him. We may disagree politically, the fact is, we both want the same thing for la raza, to achieve. In fact, I was happy that he (and luisa) brought it up, had I thought differently, it would have remained in moderation with all the other racist BS I have received. (Yeah, I am talking about you ProudAmerican, I know you are reading site. So the day you stop referring to us as “beaners” and every other racial epithet in your comments, your comments will be released from moderation.)
The reason I was happy that HispanicPundit and luisa brought, it goes to show how fast this vicious rumor is spreading. Once it enters into both political parties’ vocab, people start to accept it as fact, no questions asked. Keep in mind, this is the same way the whole Mexican invasion rumor stated too.
Thanks Nueza, I might just take that comment and make a whole post about it. This is something that must be told.
Wow, thanks xicanopwr!
That was interesting information. There is a lot of bs flying around about Chavez. i hope you post about it so we can discuss.
Excellent debunk. As I was reading, I thought, this is his best yet, and here it is buried in a comment. I’m glad to hear it might make the front page.
that comment definitely needs a place on the front page.
I haven’t forgotten. I do plan to post it, I am cleaning it up, adding little more unknown facts about Chavez. I just felt a little bit under the weather, just hoping I didn’t catch my father’s flu. And believe me, if you could see him, it looks like the walking dead. Thanks y’all for the support. Just wanting to give a heads up.
XP,
Thanks for chiming in. Also, thanks for the kind words, igualmente amigo.
Though, about Chavez, while there certainly are distortions of Chavez’s record, there is also much truth to the accounts against him.
I quote from an old Ruben Navarrette article (though moderately right, still pro-immigration) on Chavez:
Okay, so it wasn’t his brother, it was his cousin, and it wasn’t the creation of the minute men project, it was the emulation of them. Distinctions yes, but distinctions worthy enough to change your views of him? I don’t think so.
It goes without saying that we want to know the truth. That’s one of the reasons why HispanicPundit is willing to criticize a man who it’s not popular to criticize. And if Cesar Chavez used violence against anyone, we should know.
However, I will need a lot of convincing. Chavez is a hero of mine, not simply because of his goals and work, or the results of that work, but also because of his commitment to nonviolence and the “sheer morality of it’s claim.” And when the source telling me that Chavez was xenophobic and nativist goes out of his way to make connections between Chavez and the Minutemen, I am left believing that rather than reconsidering my admiration for a hero, Navarrette probably simply has an axe to grind.
In other words, I’m open to considering criticism, but not from Navarrette.
A couple of comments. First, nobody is claiming that Chavez himself used violence, only those intimately involved in his cause. Second, the claims I make above are widely accepted, even by pro-chavez supporters (for example, Susan Ferris and Ricardo Sandoval, two Chavez scholars and supporters, among others). It is agreed, and easy to understand, that Chavez was strongly against immigration precisely because, as XP alluded to above, they were the most likely to become ’strike breakers’ (atleast XP didn’t call them scabs, a common term used to describe ’strike breakers’).
There is a constant tension between unions, who want to artificially raise wages above market levels, and immigrants, who are willing to work at lower wages – Chavez sided with the unions, and in doing so, harmed non-union immigrants. This is good news for those who support unions, but for those of us who support immigrants more, Chavez is not someone to be celebrated.
Cesar Chavez was against illegal immigration you people do not know your own history. Here is a paper I wrote on Chavez and illegal’s it sums up his views very clearly.
Cesar E. Chavez:
A Leader for Border Security
Cesar Chavez, a Mexican American Civil Rights leader, and farm labor activist, formed a union called United Farm Workers, which was a union of Mexican Americans and illegal workers that used the strategy of nonviolence to better the condition of Mexican American farm workers in the Untied States. His legacy is legendary, and he is very similar to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Many of Chavez’s boycotts were toward big agricultural businesses and were successful in the beginning years of his leadership. Wages for the UFW increased dramatically and the safety for Chavez’s workers was improved. However, the problem of big agri-businesses, using illegal aliens as workers to break Chavez’s strikes, was always a problem for the UFW. On numerous occasions, when Chavez’s union would go on strike, protesting the abuse from agri-businesses, illegal immigrants were hired as strikebreakers by those big farming corporations. These businesses would always defeat Chavez in latter part of his union’s history and the United States government did very little to help the UFW. It was because of this abuse from agri-businesses that Chavez became extremely critical of illegal immigration and the employers that abused illegal workers. History’s record on Chavez’s views on illegal immigration showed that he was against it, wanting a strict enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border, so that illegal immigrants could not break the UFW’s strikes.
In the late 1950s, in Oxnard, California, agri-businesses were using illegal alien workers to work in the fields, exploiting them savagely. Chavez was against this, saying: “The Jobs [that illegal Mexican immigrants had] belonged to local workers…Braceros [or illegal Mexican immigrants] didn’t make any money, and they were exploited viciously, forced to work under conditions the local people would not tolerate” (Ferriss and Sandoval 56). Here, Chavez had empathy for what the illegal aliens were going through, but he felt that the jobs they had were for American citizens only. The UFW, on the other hand, did embrace anyone regardless of residency that wanted to go through the union process, but many illegal immigrants refused to join, trying to make it out on their own as scab labor. Chavez would protest the bracero program and end it, securing jobs for local residents. After the end of the bracero program, Chavez lobbied for strict control of the U.S.-Mexico border (Gutierrez 197). He felt that if this was done, wages would improve for his workers in the UFW, and illegal immigrant scab labor would not exist due to border enforcement. However, Chavez failed in trying to get the U.S.-Mexico border enforced and agri-businesses continued to encourage illegal immigration, hiring illegal aliens as scabs.
When the 1960s were drawing to a close, illegal immigration would continue to be thorn in the side of Chavez and the UFW. Chavez, one time, made a statement to the Subcommittee on Labor of the Senate Committee on April 16, 1969, saying that: “Our potential competition appears almost unlimited as thousands upon thousands of green carders pour across the border during peak harvest seasons. These are people who, though lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence, have not now, and probably never had, any bona fide intention of making the United States of America their permanent home. They come here to earn American dollars to spend in Mexico where the cost of living is lower. They are natural economic rivals of those who become American citizens or who otherwise decide to stake out their future in this country. In abolishing the bracero program, Congress has but scotched the snake, not killed it. The program lives on in the annual parade of thousands of illegal and green carders across the United States-Mexico border to work in our fields. To achieve law and order in any phase of human activity, legislators must pay need to other laws not made by man, one of which is the economic law of supply and demand. We are asking Congress to pay heed to this law in the light of some hard facts about farm labor supply along our southern border. Otherwise, extension of [the National Labors Relations Act] coverage to farm workers in that part of the country will not produce much law and order. What we ask is some way to keep the illegals and green carders from breaking strikes; some civil remedy against growers who employ behind our picket lines those who have entered the United States illegally, and, likewise those green carders who have not permanently moved their residence and domicile to the United States” (Chavez 8). Chavez, knowing economics, felt that illegal immigration made the job market more competitive for American citizens, feeling that illegal immigrants did not want to become U.S. citizens, and that they will be used to break UFW strikes.
In the early 1970s, the U.S. government tried passing two laws that would penalize employers who hired illegal aliens. The two laws were named the Arnett act and the Rodino bill. These two laws could both be used separately to make it illegal for employers to hire illegal workers. Chavez supported these two laws, wanting both laws enforced (Gutierrez 197). He felt that these laws would stop the flow of illegal aliens coming from Mexico, Central America, and South America. However, in March 27, 1973, members of the UFW made it known that they opposed the Rodino bill, which was the newest of the two bills and the harshest (Del Olmo 3). The UFW felt that the Rodino bill would not solve the solution of strikebreaking. What they really wanted was a bill that would penalize employers who hired strikebreakers and a law that regulated and restricted farm labor contractors who provided the labor crews for agri-businesses. They mentioned that they did not have a problem with illegal aliens as long as they were not breaking any strikes. This action by the UFW was done due to pressure from Chicano activists, and it created unity among the UFW and Chicano militants by opposing the Rodino bill.
Nevertheless, in October of 1973, shortly after the UFW issued their opposition to the Rodino bill, a violent incident happened between UFW members and illegal aliens. It started when Cesar sent his cousin Manuel to manage a contract with citrus farm-workers near Yuma, Arizona. While doing this, Cesar planned a strike in Yuma, and it was successful, until the growers started recruiting illegal aliens to break the strike. The union responded by setting up a “wet-line,” which was a series of UFW outposts near the U.S.-Mexico border, where UFW officials tried to persuade illegal aliens not to cross into the U.S. Manuel ended up being in charge of the “wet-line.” At first, Manuel, and other UFW members, tried peacefully to persuade illegal aliens not to cross. However, these illegal workers did not listen, wanting to cross the border, and, because of this, the UFW called the INS to arrest and deport them. When the INS did not respond, Manuel, and other UFW members, attacked the illegal workers (Ferriss and Sandoval 244). After this incident was over, it was literally condemned by Mexico and Hispanic immigrant rights groups in America. Cesar, on the other hand, defended his cousin, saying that the reports of the violence were exaggerated. It also showed that whatever unity the UFW created in the Chicano community by opposing the Rodino bill was short lived.
The U.S. government never really came up a solution to help the UFW’s problem of preventing illegal aliens from breaking their strikes. Therefore, Chavez, on more than one occasion, traveled to Mexico, and personally tried to persuade Mexican officials to stop the flow of illegal workers that came to the United States, so they could not be employed as strikebreakers (Etulain 18). He was being a real warrior by this act, doing whatever it took to help the UFW. His efforts ended up in vain. Chavez even tried to workout a solution that pleased militant Chicano groups over the issue of illegal immigration, but failed in doing so. Jerry Cohen, Chavez’s lawyer, said that: “We [Chavez and Cohen] never worked out a solution with [Chicano] immigrants rights groups…We [Chavez and Cohen] were saying we wanted immigration laws enforced, and that meant dealing with the INS, which is like dealing with the devil…” (Ibid., 243). Hispanic militants had a tendency to be for open borders and illegal immigration, Chavez, having empathy for illegal workers too, tried his best to make peace with militant Chicanos, but, the idea of wanting immigration laws enforced, and calling the INS to deport illegal aliens that were strikebreakers, fell on deaf ears to all Hispanic immigrant rights groups. When Chavez remained alive he would always remain an unpopular figure among Hispanic activists who thought he was a sell-out.
The record of history on Cesar E. Chavez’s views on illegal immigration clearly showed that he was against it, wanting immigration laws enforced. He felt that illegal immigration was bad for the U.S. economy and economists will tell people that Chavez was correct. If a country has an extremely large pool of illegal aliens, it will prevent legal workers to unionize, having no ability to lead a successful strike for better wages, and improve working conditions. Chavez, as leader of the UFW, fought for most of his career to stop illegal immigration, so illegal aliens could not be hired in America as strikebreakers. His views against illegal aliens were purely economic and not racial. He felt that people who fought against illegal immigration to preserve their culture were not making any sense. Nevertheless, illegal immigration continues to go on to this day, getting so out of control that illegal aliens may become the majority in the Untied States. If only the United States government had listened to Chavez, cracking down on illegal immigration sooner, they would not have had this problem today. However, the U.S. government isn’t cracking down on illegal workers, repeating the same mistakes made in the past over this issue, having learned nothing from history.
Bibliography
Chavez, Cesar. Statement of Cesar E. Chavez 1969.
Del Olmo, Frank. “Chavez’s Union Does Turnabout, Opposes Alien Worker Bill.” Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1973. http://www.calstatela.edu.
Etulain, Richard. W. Cesar Chavez: A Brief Biography with Documents.
Ferriss, Susan and Ricardo Sandoval. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement.
Gutierrrez, David. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity.
Do any of you know how CESAR CHAVEZ die? I need it for a school project
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