Cesar Estrada Chavez
...ans, Chavez married. Reflecting the high postwar birthrate, him and his wife Helen Fabela, had eight children between 1949 and 1959. With a growing family to support Chavez returned to the migrant life, traveling up and down the state with his parents, bride, and their children. The forming and founding of organizations with a purpose to challenge prejudice and injustice brought upon by wartime social tensions, was becoming a trend in the 1950s. One of these many associations was the Community Service Organization. It was established in LA, in 1947, with the backing and financial support of The Industrial Areas Foundation, in which was based in Chicago. The CSO worked hard to make registration campaigns, citizenship drives, educational improvements, better municipal services and curbing police brutality. “With the success in LA, the CSO looked to other parts of California and Arizona to establish new chapters and build memberships. Organizing campaigns were launched in urban centers and agricultural towns such as San Jose and Stockton. In San Jose, CSO organizer Fred Ross recruited an initially reluctant Cesar Chavez. Beginning as a volunteer and then as a paid organizer, Chavez eventually rose to director of the group in 1958.” (American Decades CD ROM) In the late 1950s and early 1960s Chavez turned his attention to the plight of men, women, and children who labored in the fields. When the CSO policy board rejected his proposal for organizing agricultural workers, he resigned from the organization in 1962. In 1962 Chavez formed the Farm Workers Association. He centered his efforts in Delano, aided by his bother Richard, and supported by his wife, who worked in the fields and raised their family. In 1965 the Agricultural Workers Organization Committee (AWOC) approached Chavez to honor his strike against Delano grape growers. The membership of the renamed National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) voted to respect the walkout, thus inaugurating “la huelga”, the well-known Delano grape strike. In 1966 the AWOC and the NFWA merged and became known as the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC). From 1965-1970 they battled the California wine grape, and later, table grape producers. Frustrated with the futility of picketing miles of fields and facing the local power of corporate agriculture, the UFWOC resorted to civil rights era tactics of massive protest marches, boycotts, hunger strikes by Chavez, and civil disobedience. Fitting this civil rights activism with appeals to unity based on Mexican Catholism, liberation theology, and a sense of cultural pride, Chavez won contracts with wine growers vulnerable because of high visible labels. The UFWOC then trained its resources against table grape growers. Under the charismatic leadership of Chavez, striking farm workers families united with many diverse people and organizations to build an international boycott to force concessions from agribusiness. After 5 years Chavez’s farm workers union finally negotiated the historic grape contracts with a majority of California grape producers in Delano in 1970. In the late 1970s, a new boycott arose for Chavez and his union. Growers of lettuce, in which didn’t have union contracts, brought upon this incident. In 1973 many grape growers did not renew their contracts, causing Chavez to lead a new grape boycott. Also, in 1973, the union once again changed its name to the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). In 1978, both boycotts of lettuce and grapes were ended. Chavez was one with political allies in the Democratic Party. During the election of 1974, Chavez and his allies turned to Sacramento, in search of a solution to end the constant turmoil in the fields. The joining of Chavez and his allies working together paid off. There was finally a legislative agreement made between the union and corporate agriculture. The Agricultural Labor Relations Act introduced the first Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB). “For the first time in California’s history, farm workers engaged in government-supervised collective bargaining.” (Carnes 453) With the ALRB in place in 1975, Chavez’s farm workers seemed on the verge of embarking on a new era of agricultural labor relations. The UFW did, in fact, win the majority elections. But strife in the fields was not over, as Teamster organizers mounted campaigns and growers mobilized their political power in Sacramento to end funding for the ALRB. Proposition 14, backed by Chavez and the UFW, to make the ALRB a permanent party of the California constitution, failed in 1976. The 1980 victory of pro-agribusiness former California governor Ronald Regan over presidential incumbent Democr...