Appendices

A female striker holds a UFW eagle flag and covers her face to hide her identity during a strike in San Luis, Arizona, 1974. 

Photo courtesy of Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University; photographer Ben Garza.
This page is intentionally left blank. 
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Appendix A: Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study 

Legislation

PUBLIC LAW 110-229—MAY 8, 2008

SEC. 325. CESAR E. CHAVEZ STUDY.

 (a) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 3 years after the date on which funds are made available to carry 

out this section, the Secretary of the Interior (referred to in this section as the "Secretary") shall complete 

a special resource study of sites in the State of Arizona, the State of California, and other States that are 

significant to the life of Cesar E. Chavez and the farm labor movement in the western United States to 

determine— 

 (1) appropriate methods for preserving and interpreting the sites; and 

 (2) whether any of the sites meets the criteria for listing on the National Register of Historic Places or 

designation as a national historic landmark under— 

 (A) the Act of August 21, 1935 (16 U.S.C. 461 et seq.); or 

 (B) the National Historic Preservation Act (16 U.S.C. 470 et seq.). 

 (b) REQUIREMENTS.—In conducting the study authorized under subsection (a), the Secretary 

shall— 

 (1) consider the criteria for the study of areas for potential inclusion in the National Park System under 

section 8(b)(2) of Public Law 91-383 (16 U.S.C. 1a-5(b)(2)); and 

 (2) consult with— 

 (A) the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation; 

 (B) the United Farm Workers Union; and 

 (C) State and local historical associations and societies, including any State historic preservation 

offices in the State in which the site is located. 

 (c) REPORT.—On completion of the study, the Secretary shall submit to the Committee on Natural 

Resources of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the 

Senate a report that describes— 

 (1) the findings of the study; and 

 (2) any recommendations of the Secretary.

 (c) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.—There are authorized to be appropriated such sums 

as are necessary to carry out this section. 

 
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Appendix B: New Area Studies Act 

(112 STAT. 3501, P.L. 105-391, November 13, 1998) 

TITLE III—STUDY REGARDING ADDITION OF NEW NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM AREAS 

SEC. 301. SHORT TITLE. 

 This title may be cited as the ‘‘National Park System New Areas Studies Act’’. 

SEC. 302. PURPOSE. 

 It is the purpose of this title to reform the process by which areas are considered for addition to the National Park 

System. 

SEC. 303. STUDY OF ADDITION OF NEW NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM AREAS. 

 Section 8 of Public Law 91–383 (commonly known as the 

National Park System General Authorities Act; 16 U.S.C. 1a–5) 

is amended as follows: 

(1) By inserting ‘‘GENERAL AUTHORITY.—’’ after ‘‘(a)’’. 

(2) By striking the second through the sixth sentences of subsection (a). 

(3) By redesignating the last two sentences of subsection (a) as subsection (f) and inserting in the first of such sentences 

before the words ‘‘For the purposes of carrying’’ the following: 

‘‘(f) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.—’’. 

(4) By inserting the following after subsection (a): 

‘‘(b) STUDIES OF AREAS FOR POTENTIAL ADDITION.— 

(1) At the beginning of each calendar year, along with the annual budget submission, the Secretary shall 

submit to the Committee on Resources of the House of Representatives and to the Committee on Energy and 

Natural Resources of the United States Senate a list of areas recommended for study for potential inclusion in 

the National Park System. 

‘‘(2) In developing the list to be submitted under this subsection, the Secretary shall consider— 

‘‘(A) those areas that have the greatest potential to meet the established criteria of national 

significance, suitability, and feasibility; 

‘‘(B) themes, sites, and resources not already adequately represented in the National Park System; 

and 

‘‘(C) public petition and Congressional resolutions. 

‘‘(3) No study of the potential of an area for inclusion in the National Park System may be initiated after the 

date of enactment of this subsection, except as provided by specific authorization of an Act of Congress. 

‘‘(4) Nothing in this Act shall limit the authority of the National Park Service to conduct preliminary resource 

assessments, gather data on potential study areas, provide technical and planning assistance, prepare or 

process nominations for administrative designations, update previous studies, or complete reconnaissance 

surveys of individual areas requiring a total expenditure of less than $25,000. 

‘‘(5) Nothing in this section shall be construed to apply to or to affect or alter the study of any river segment 

for potential addition to the national wild and scenic rivers system or to apply to or to affect or alter the study 

of any trail for potential addition to the national trails system. 

‘‘(c) REPORT.— 

(1) The Secretary shall complete the study for each area for potential inclusion in the National Park System 

within 3 complete fiscal years following the date on which funds are first made available for such purposes. 

Each study under this section shall be prepared with appropriate opportunity for public involvement, 

including at least one public meeting in the vicinity of the area under study, and after reasonable efforts to 

notify potentially affected landowners and State and local governments. 

‘‘(2) In conducting the study, the Secretary shall consider whether the area under study— 

‘‘(A) possesses nationally significant natural or cultural resources and represents one of the most 

important examples 

of a particular resource type in the country; and 

‘‘(B) is a suitable and feasible addition to the system. ‘‘ 
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(3) Each study— 

‘‘(A) shall consider the following factors with regard to the area being studied— 

‘‘(i) the rarity and integrity of the resources; 

‘‘(ii) the threats to those resources; 

‘‘(iii) similar resources are already protected in the 

National Park System or in other public or private ownership; 

‘‘(iv) the public use potential; 

‘‘(v) the interpretive and educational potential; 

‘‘(vi) costs associated with acquisition, development and operation; 

‘‘(vii) the socioeconomic impacts of any designation; 

‘‘(viii) the level of local and general public support; and 

‘‘(ix) whether the area is of appropriate configuration to ensure long-term resource protection and 

visitor use; 

‘‘(B) shall consider whether direct National Park Service 

management or alternative protection by other public agencies or the private sector is appropriate 

for the area; 

‘‘(C) shall identify what alternative or combination of alternatives would in the professional judgment of the 

Director 

of the National Park Service be most effective and efficient in protecting significant resources and providing 

for public enjoyment; and 

‘‘(D) may include any other information which the Secretary deems to be relevant. 

‘‘(4) Each study shall be completed in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. 

‘‘(5) The letter transmitting each completed study to Congress shall contain a recommendation regarding the 

Secretary’s preferred management option for the area. 

‘‘(d) NEW AREA STUDY OFFICE.—The Secretary shall designate a single office to be assigned to prepare all new area studies 

and to implement other functions of this section. 

‘‘(e) LIST OF AREAS.—At the beginning of each calendar year, along with the annual budget submission, the Secretary shall 

submit to the Committee on Resources of the House of Representatives and to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 

of the Senate a list of areas which have been previously studied which contain primarily historical resources, and a list of areas 

which have been previously studied which contain primarily natural resources, in numerical order of priority for addition to the 

National Park System. In developing the lists, the Secretary should consider threats to resource values, cost escalation factors, 

and other factors listed in subsection (c) of this section. The Secretary should only include on the lists areas for which the 

supporting data is current and accurate.’’. 

(5) By adding at the end of subsection (f) (as designated by paragraph (3) of this section) the following: ‘‘For carrying out 

subsections (b) through (d) there are authorized to be appropriated $2,000,000 for each fiscal year.’’ 
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Appendix C: 2006 NPS Management Policies (Sections 

1.2 and 1.3)

1.2 THE NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM

The number and diversity of parks within the national 

park system grew as a result of a government 

reorganization in 1933, another following World War 

II, and yet another during the 1960s. Today there are 

nearly 400 units in the national park system. These 

units are variously designated as national parks, 

monuments, preserves, lakeshores, seashores, wild 

and scenic rivers, trails, historic sites, military parks, 

battlefields, historical parks, recreation areas, 

memorials, and parkways. Regardless of the many 

names and official designations of the park units that 

make up the national park system, all represent some 

nationally significant aspect of our natural or cultural 

heritage. They are the physical remnants of our 

past—great scenic and natural places that continue to 

evolve, repositories of outstanding recreational 

opportunities, classrooms of our heritage, and the 

legacy we leave to future generations—and they 

warrant the highest standard of protection. 

It should be noted that, in accordance with provisions 

of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, any component of 

the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System that is 

administered by the Park Service is automatically a 

part of the national park system. Although there is no 

analogous provision in the National Trails System 

Act, several national trails managed by the Service 

have been included in the national park system. 

These national rivers and trails that are part of the 

national park system are subject to the policies 

contained herein, as well as to any other requirements 

specified in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act or the 

National Trails System Act. 

1.3 CRITERIA FOR INCLUSION

Congress declared in the National Park System 

General Authorities Act of 1970 that areas 

comprising the national park system are cumulative 

expressions of a single national heritage. Potential 

additions to the national park system should therefore 

contribute in their own special way to a system that 

fully represents the broad spectrum of natural and 

cultural resources that characterize our nation. The 

National Park Service is responsible for conducting 

professional studies of potential additions to the 

national park system when specifically authorized by 

an act of Congress, and for making recommendations 

to the Secretary of the Interior, the President, and 

Congress. Several laws outline criteria for units of the 

national park system and for additions to the National 

Wild and Scenic Rivers System and the National 

Trails System. 

To receive a favorable recommendation from the 

Service, a proposed addition to the national park 

system must (1) possess nationally significant natural 

or cultural resources, (2) be a suitable addition to the 

system, (3) be a feasible addition to the system, and 

(4) require direct NPS management instead of 

protection by other public agencies or the private 

sector. These criteria are designed to ensure that the 

national park system includes only the most 

outstanding examples of the nation’s natural and 

cultural resources. These criteria also recognize that 

there are other management alternatives for 

preserving the nation’s outstanding resources. 

1.3.1 NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE 

NPS professionals, in consultation with subjectmatter experts, scholars, and scientists, will 

determine whether a resource is nationally 

significant. An area will be considered nationally 

significant if it meets all of the following criteria: 

1. It is an outstanding example of a particular 

type of resource. 

2. It possesses exceptional value or quality in 

illustrating or interpreting the natural or 

cultural themes of our nation’s heritage. 

3. It offers superlative opportunities for public 

enjoyment or for scientific study. 

4. It retains a high degree of integrity as a true, 

accurate, and relatively unspoiled example 

of a resource. 

5. National significance for cultural resources 

will be evaluated by applying the National 

Historic Landmarks criteria contained in 36 

CFR Part 65 (Code of Federal Regulations). 

1.3.2 SUITABILITY 

An area is considered suitable for addition to the 

national park system if it represents a natural or 

cultural resource type that is not already adequately 

represented in the national park system, or is not 
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comparably represented and protected for public 

enjoyment by other federal agencies; tribal, state, or 

local governments; or the private sector. 

Adequacy of representation is determined on a caseby-case basis by comparing the potential addition to 

other comparably managed areas representing the 

same resource type, while considering differences or 

similarities in the character, quality, quantity, or 

combination of resource values. The comparative 

analysis also addresses rarity of the resources, 

interpretive and educational potential, and similar 

resources already protected in the national park 

system or in other public or private ownership. The 

comparison results in a determination of whether the 

proposed new area would expand, enhance, or 

duplicate resource protection or visitor use 

opportunities found in other comparably managed 

areas. 

1.3.3 FEASIBILITY 

To be feasible as a new unit of the national park 

system, an area must be (1) of sufficient size and 

appropriate configuration to ensure sustainable 

resource protection and visitor enjoyment (taking into 

account current and potential impacts from sources 

beyond proposed park boundaries), and (2) capable 

of efficient administration by the Service at a 

reasonable cost. 

In evaluating feasibility, the Service considers a 

variety of factors for a study area, such as the 

following: 

size 

boundary configurations 

current and potential uses of the study area 

and surrounding lands 

landownership patterns 

public enjoyment potential 

costs associated with acquisition, 

development, restoration, and operation 

access 

current and potential threats to the resources 

existing degradation of resources 

staffing requirements 

local planning and zoning 

the level of local and general public support 

(including landowners) 

the economic/socioeconomic impacts of 

designation as a unit of the national park 

system 

The feasibility evaluation also considers the ability of 

the National Park Service to undertake new 

management responsibilities in light of current and 

projected availability of funding and personnel. 

An overall evaluation of feasibility will be made after 

taking into account all of the above factors. However, 

evaluations may sometimes identify concerns or 

conditions, rather than simply reach a yes or no 

conclusion. For example, some new areas may be 

feasible additions to the national park system only if 

landowners are willing to sell, or the boundary 

encompasses specific areas necessary for visitor 

access, or state or local governments will provide 

appropriate assurances that adjacent land uses will 

remain compatible with the study area’s resources 

and values. 

1.3.4 DIRECT NPS MANAGEMENT 

There are many excellent examples of the successful 

management of important natural and cultural 

resources by other public agencies, private 

conservation organizations, and individuals. The 

National Park Service applauds these 

accomplishments and actively encourages the 

expansion of conservation activities by state, local, 

and private entities and by other federal agencies. 

Unless direct NPS management of a studied area is 

identified as the clearly superior alternative, the 

Service will recommend that one or more of these 

other entities assume a lead management role, and 

that the area not receive national park system status. 

Studies will evaluate an appropriate range of 

management alternatives and will identify which 

alternative or combination of alternatives would, in 

the professional judgment of the Director, be most 

effective and efficient in protecting significant 

resources and providing opportunities for appropriate 

public enjoyment. Alternatives for NPS management 

will not be developed for study areas that fail to meet 

any one of the four criteria for inclusion listed in 

section 1.3. 

In cases where a study area’s resources meet criteria 

for national significance but do not meet other 

criteria for inclusion in the national park system, the 

Service may instead recommend an alternative status, 

such as “affiliated area.” To be eligible for affiliated 

area status, the area’s resources must (1) meet the 

same standards for significance and suitability that 

apply to units of the national park system; (2) require 

some special recognition or technical assistance 

beyond what is available through existing NPS 

programs; (3) be managed in accordance with the 

policies and standards that apply to units of the 

national park system; and (4) be assured of sustained 

resource protection, as documented in a formal 

agreement between the Service and the nonfederal 

management entity. Designation as a “heritage area” 

is another option that may be recommended. Heritage 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

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areas have a nationally important, distinctive 

assemblage of resources that is best managed for 

conservation, recreation, education, and continued 

use through partnerships among public and private 

entities at the local or regional level. Either of these 

two alternatives (and others as well) would recognize 

an area’s importance to the nation without requiring 

or implying management by the National Park 

Service. 
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Appendix D: National Historic Landmark Criteria

Sec 65.4 

The criteria applied to evaluate properties for 

possible designation as National Historic Landmarks 

or possible determination of eligibility for National 

Historic Landmark designation is listed below. These 

criteria shall be used by NPS in the preparation, 

review and evaluation of National Historic Landmark 

studies. They shall be used by the Advisory Board in 

reviewing National Historic Landmark studies and 

preparing recommendations to the Secretary. 

Properties shall be designated National Historic 

Landmarks only if they are nationally significant. 

Although assessments of national significance should 

reflect both public perceptions and professional 

judgments, the evaluations of properties being 

considered for landmark designation are undertaken 

by professionals, including historians, architectural 

historians, archeologists and anthropologists familiar 

with the broad range of the nation’s resources and 

historical themes. The criteria applied by these 

specialists to potential landmarks do not define 

significance nor set a rigid standard for quality. 

Rather, the criteria establish the qualitative 

framework in which a comparative professional 

analysis of national significance can occur. The final 

decision on whether a property possesses national 

significance is made by the Secretary on the basis of 

documentation including the comments and 

recommendations of the public who participate in the 

designation process. 

(a) Specific Criteria of National Significance: The 

quality of national significance is ascribed to 

districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects that 

possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or 

interpreting the heritage of the United States in 

history, architecture, archeology, engineering and 

culture and that possess a high degree of integrity of 

location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, 

feeling and association, and: 

1) That are associated with events that have 

made a significant contribution to, and are 

identified with, or that outstandingly 

represent, the broad national patterns of 

United States history and from which an 

understanding and appreciation of those 

patterns may be gained; or 

(2) That are associated importantly with the 

lives of persons nationally significant in the 

history of the United States; or 

(3) That represent some great idea or ideal of 

the American people; or 

(4) That embody the distinguishing 

characteristics of an architectural type 

specimen exceptionally valuable for a study 

of a period, style or method of construction, 

or that represent a significant, distinctive 

and exceptional entity whose components 

may lack individual distinction; or 

(5) That are composed of integral parts of the 

environment not sufficiently significant by 

reason of historical association or artistic 

merit to warrant individual recognition but 

collectively compose an entity of 

exceptional historical or artistic significance, 

or outstandingly commemorate or illustrate 

a way of life or culture; or 

(6) That have yielded or may be likely to yield 

information of major scientific importance 

by revealing new cultures, or by shedding 

light upon periods of occupation over large 

areas of the United States. Such sites are 

those which have yielded, or which may 

reasonably be expected to yield, data 

affecting theories, concepts and ideas to a 

major degree. 

(b) Ordinarily, cemeteries, birthplaces, graves of 

historical figures, properties owned by religious 

institutions or used for religious purposes, structures 

that have been moved from their original locations, 

reconstructed historic buildings and properties that 

have achieved significance within the past 50 years 

are not eligible for designation. Such properties, 

however, will qualify if they fall within the following 

categories: 

(1) A religious property deriving its primary 

national significance from architectural or 

artistic distinction or historical importance; 

or 
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(2) A building or structure removed from its 

original location but which is nationally 

significant primarily for its architectural 

merit, or for association with persons or 

events of transcendent importance in the 

nation’s history and the association 

consequential; or 

(3) A site of a building or structure no longer 

standing but the person or event associated 

with it is of transcendent importance in the 

nation’s history and the association 

consequential; or 

(4) A birthplace, grave or burial if it is of a 

historical figure of transcendent national 

significance and no other appropriate site, 

building or structure directly associated with 

the productive life of that person exists; or 

(5) A cemetery that derives its primary national 

significance from graves of persons of 

transcendent importance, or from an 

exceptionally distinctive design or from an 

exceptionally significant event; or 

(6) A reconstructed building or ensemble of 

buildings of extraordinary national 

significance when accurately executed in a 

suitable environment and presented in a 

dignified manner as part of a restoration 

master plan, and when no other buildings or 

structures with the same association have 

survived; or 

(7) A property primarily commemorative in 

intent if design, age, tradition, or symbolic 

value has invested it with its own national 

historical significance; or 

(8) A property achieving national significance 

within the past 50 years if it is of 

extraordinary national importance. 

 
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Appendix E: National Historic Trail Criteria 

From the National Trails System Act (P.L. 90-543, as amended through P.L. 111-11, March 30, 2009)(also found in 

United States Code, Volume 16, Sections 1241-1251): 

SEC. 5. [16USC1244] (a) National scenic and national historic trails shall be authorized and designated only by Act 

of Congress... 

SEC. 5. [16USC1244] (b) (11) To qualify for designation as a national historic trail, a trail must meet all three of the 

following criteria: 

(A) It must be a trail or route established by historic use and must be historically significant as a 

result of that use. The route need not currently exist as a discernible trail to qualify, but its location 

must be sufficiently known to permit evaluation of public recreation and historical interest 

potential. A designated trail should generally accurately follow the historic route, but may deviate 

somewhat on occasion of necessity to avoid difficult routing through subsequent development, or 

to provide some route variations offering a more pleasurable recreational experience. Such 

deviations shall be so noted on site. Trail segments no longer possible to travel by trail due to 

subsequent development as motorized transportation routes may be designated and marked onsite 

as segments which link to the historic trail. 

(B) It must be of national significance with respect to any of several broad facets of American 

history, such as trade and commerce, exploration, migration and settlement, or military campaigns. 

To qualify as nationally significant, historic use of the trail must have had a far reaching effect on 

broad patterns of American culture. Trails significant in the history of native Americans may be 

included. 

(C) It must have significant potential for public recreational use or historical interest based on 

historic interpretation and appreciation. The potential for such use is generally greater along 

roadless segments developed as historic trails and at historic sites associated with the trail. The 

presence of recreation potential not related to historic appreciation is not sufficient justification for 

designation under this category. 
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Appendix F: Historical Context, Cesar Chavez and the 

Farm Labor Movement

Introduction 

This appendix describes the historic context for 

identifying resources associated with Cesar Chavez 

and the farm labor movement. The purpose of this 

historic context is to assist in the identification and 

evaluation of properties associated with César 

Chavez and the farm worker movement in the 

American West. It provides an historical overview 

intended to illustrate the relevance, general 

relationships, and national, regional, or local 

importance of associated properties. 

This historic overview has been adapted from the 

2004 draft document titled, “Cesar Chavez and the 

Farmworker Movement in the American West Theme 

Study” prepared for the NPS by the Preservation 

Planning and Design Program in the College of 

Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of 

Washington (Rast, Dubrow and Casserly 2004). In 

2009 and 2010, the COPH identified and evaluated 

84 sites in California and Arizona with historical 

significance related to Cesar Chavez and the farm 

labor movement in the American West. Many of the 

sites were identified through primary sources 

archived within the online Farmwoker Movement 

Documentation Project, including books, essays, oral 

history interviews, declassified FBI surveillance files, 

back issues of the United Farm Workers of America 

(UFW) newspapers, and published secondary 

sources. COPH conducted field research to locate, 

evaluate, and document the sites, properties, and 

march routes identified through this archival work. 

Historic Context

This overview of historic contexts provides an 

historical overview intended to illustrate the 

relevance, general relationships, and national, 

regional, or local importance of properties associated 

with Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) and the farm labor 

movement in the American West. 

During the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, 

the structure of the agricultural industry in the 

American Westdominated by corporate growers 

and supported by government agencieshindered the 

efforts of farm workers to form the attachments to 

place that most Americans take for granted. Noted 

Chicano historian Rudy Acuna has explained that 

“when you are [a migrant farm worker] in a rural 

area, you are very vulnerable, especially if you are 

living from hand to mouth. There is very little 

integration of other ideas that’s taking place when 

you’re constantly moving . . . [you] never form a 

sense of place.” The structure of the agricultural 

industry, and the subordinate position of agricultural 

labor within that structure, required most farm 

workers to sacrifice attachments to place in order to 

focus simply on survival. “You’re constantly 

worrying if you’re going to have enough money to 

pay [for] the gas, or if you’re going to have enough 

money to buy the food,” Acuna explained. “It’s a 

tremendous feeling of isolation [and] fear,” one that 

transforms mobility into a necessity and transforms 

rootednessa sense of attachment to a placeinto a 

luxury. 

The emergence of the United Farm Workers (UFW) 

during the 1960s, gave farm workers the opportunity 

to create meaningful places in California and 

elsewhere in the American West and form permanent 

attachments to them. Some of these attachments 

came as farm workers claimed public places, if only 

temporarily, through direct actionpicketing ranches 

and supermarkets, marching down streets and 

through valleys, occupying the steps of courthouses 

and capitol buildings. For farm workers living 

transient lives, properties owned by the UFW such as 

the Forty Acres and Nuestra Senora Reina de La Paz 

came to represent the strength and permanence of 

their union. 

Cesar Chavez appealed to Mexican Americans and 

Mexican immigrants regardless of class, generation, 

ideology, or regional identity. Social leaders such as 

Martin Luther King, Jr., welcomed Cesar as a brother 

in the shared “struggle for freedom, for dignity, and 

for humanity,” and Senator Robert Kennedy counted 

Cesar as an ally and a friend. National labor leaders, 

including UAW President Walter Reuther, 

recognized Chavez as an important force in the labor 

movement. Chavez has also been the subject of a 

wide range of scholarly work. During his lifetime, 

Chavez became the subject of more published work 

than any other Latino leader, past or present. Even 

Chavez’s strongest opponents acknowledged that 

farm workers’ lives and working conditions had 

improved as a result of his efforts. 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 222 

Facing seemingly insurmountable odds, Chavez led a 

movement of thousands of farm labor families and 

their supporters as they created the nation’s first 

permanent farm workers’ union. Chavez then steered 

that union to a series of unprecedented victories: 

contracts that covered more than 100,000 workers 

and created union-run hiring halls, provided 

healthcare plans, established grievance procedures, 

raised farm workers’ wages above the poverty level, 

mandated the provision of clean drinking water and 

hand-washing facilities in the fields, and regulated 

the use of pesticides. Under Chavez’s leadership, the 

union established dozens of service centers providing 

credit unions, health clinics, co-op stores, and child 

care, and it created the nation’s first pension plan for 

farm workers. Most notably, Chavez’s advocacy and 

the power of the farm labor movement as a whole 

helped secure the first law governing farm labor in 

the continental United States (the California 

Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975) and the 

legal banishment of el cortito (the short-handled hoe) 

from the fields of California. 

What Chavez and other farm labor movement leaders 

accomplished extends well beyond contracts and 

labor laws. Cesar Chavez cultivated a life-long 

commitment to bringing respect, dignity, and 

democracy to all of the nation’s sociallymarginalized groups. He focused first on farm 

workers, inspiring them to look their employers in the 

eyes, to stand up for their rights, and to take active 

roles in creating their union and wielding its power. 

He then broadened his focus to include all Latinos, 

serving them as a symbol of what could be 

accomplished in this country through unified, 

courageous, and nonviolent action. And yet he 

refused to settle for the racial nationalism ascribed to 

him by those who identified him as a leader of La 

Raza. What Chavez fought forrespect, dignity, and 

democracyhe wanted all of humanity to share. 

Before the end of his lifetime, Cesar Chavez was 

recognized as much more than a leader of farm 

workers. He was one of the most important civil 

rights leaders in the U.S.; he was a spiritual leader 

whose faith inspired fellow Catholics and other 

Christians; he was a pioneering leader in the modern 

environmental movement; and he was a staunch 

advocate for the poor. 

I. Cesar Chavez’s Early Life and 

Formative Experiences in the 

American West, 1927-1952 

The story of Cesar Chavez’s boyhood and early 

adulthood reveals much about why he became a 

successful labor organizer and social leader. The 

experiences Chavez faced and the lessons he learned 

during his youth would serve him well during his 

long struggle to build a farm workers’ union. 

THE CHAVEZ FAMILY HOMESTEAD

Cesar’s grandfather, Cesario, came to the U.S. in the 

1880s from Chihuahua, Mexico. Fleeing the 

injustices of the hacienda system, Cesario crossed 

into El Paso, Texas, and found work on the railroads 

and in the fields of Arizona. By 1888, Cesario had 

saved enough money to send for his wife, Dorotea, 

and their fourteen childrenincluding Cesar’s father 

Librado, then two years old. Cesario decided in the 

late 1890s to homestead in the North Gila Valley, 

twenty miles north of Yuma, Arizona. With 

Librado’s help, Cesario also built a sturdy adobe

farmhouse with thick walls, wood floors, and a flat 

roof made of elm and cottonwood beams and a layer 

of dirt on top. 

In 1924 Librado married Juana Estrada. Soon after 

their first daughter (Rita) was born in 1925, Librado 

and Juana purchased a business that included a 

grocery store, an auto repair shop, and a pool hall 

located about one mile from the Chavez homestead 

north of Yuma. The couple made their home in the 

same building as the grocery store and there, on 

March 31, 1927, Cesario Estrada Chavez was born. 

With a growing family, Librado decided to expand 

his business. The family borrowed money and 

purchased forty acres of land surrounding the 

property. Late in 1932, Librado’s debts forced him to 

sell his property and move the family back with his 

mother on the Chavez homestead, where they would 

live for the next six years. 

During these boyhood years in the North Gila Valley, 

Cesar learned lessons that would stay with him for 

the rest of his life. Many of these came from his 

mother, who frequently told her children cuentos

(stories with moral lessons), offered them consejos

(advice), and taught them dichos (proverbs) that dealt 

with virtues such as honesty and obedience. Juana’s 

lessons helped inspire Cesar’s life-long commitment 

to nonviolence. Juana taught her boys that “It’s 

better to say that [a man] ran from here than to say 

that he died here” and that “It takes two to fight” 

(Levy 1975). Later in life, Cesar recalled the words 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 223 

his mother told him whenever he needed to drive 

points home to his fellow farm workers. 

Cesar’s mother and grandmother also passed on their 

devout Catholicism. Dorotea Chavez told her 

grandchildren stories about saints, explained Church 

teachings, and prepared the children for their first 

Communion. As the Depression years wore on, 

Juana increasingly sent Cesar and his siblings to find 

trampitas who could use a plate of food and a cup of 

coffee. Juana impressed upon Cesar the importance 

of sacrificing and sharing even the most meager 

resources with others who had less (Levy 1975).

As an adult, Cesar would look back on his childhood 

years on the Chavez farm with fondness. He 

remembered long summer days working with his 

father, having barbecues in the evening, and staying 

up into the night as his parents and relatives talked 

about life in Mexico. Cesar learned lessons from 

these stories as well. “There were stories . . . about 

the haciendas,” he recalled, “how the big landowners 

treated the people, about the injustices, the cruelties, 

the exploitation.” Such stories made him appreciate 

the life his family had struggled to build in the U.S. 

all the more. 

Cesar’s childhood was not idyllic. Like most 

Mexican-American families in this time period, the 

Chavez family spoke Spanish at home. Cesar 

discovered, however, that his language and his 

appearance marked him as a “dirty Mexican” at the 

public school in Yuma. Chavez’s teachers rapped his 

knuckles with a ruler whenever they heard him 

speaking Spanish. On one occasion a teacher 

reprimanded Chavez for saying that he was Mexican. 

The teacher tried to convince him that he was just as 

American as his white classmates, but Cesar had 

trouble reconciling this explanation with the fact that 

Mexican Americans were viewed differently and 

treated unfairly in school. Not surprisingly, Cesar 

fared no better with his classmates, especially those 

whose families poured into Yuma in the mid-1930s 

as construction of the Imperial Dam on the Colorado 

River began. Fights between white and MexicanAmerican boys began to break out at school, and 

Chavez remembered with bitterness how the 

principal routinely blamed the Mexican-American 

students for any conflict. Such experiences with 

racism taught Chavez how discrimination made its 

targets feel excluded and inferior. Biographers 

Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard Garcia 

explain that, as a result, “one of the main tenets of 

[Chavez’s] later organizing philosophy was that 

neither racial nor ethnic prejudice had a place within 

a farm workers’ union movement” (Griswold del 

Castillo and Garcia 1996). 

LIFE AS MIGRANT FARM WORKERS

During the years of the Great Depression, Cesar also 

became aware of the consequences of his family’s 

marginal economic status. A grace period on back 

taxes owed by his father ended in 1937 and the state 

took legal possession of the Chavez homestead in 

August 1937. Librado forestalled eviction for 

another year and a half. During that time, Cesar 

gained his first exposure to life as a migrant farm 

worker. Late in the summer of 1937 his father joined 

the stream of “Okies” and other migrants heading to 

California, hoping to earn enough money to save the 

family’s land. After finding a job in Oxnard and a 

dilapidated house to rent in the local barrio (then 

known as “Sonoratown”), Librado sent for Juana and 

the children. In California, Chavez discovered the 

realities of life that migrant workers and their 

families faced every day. 

The family managed to raise enough money to move 

on to Brawley. The family worked feverishly in the 

summer cotton harvest in Brawley to earn enough 

money for rent, food, and gas. It became clear that 

Librado’s plans for returning to Yuma with money to 

save the farm would not work out, and the family 

went back to the homestead penniless (Levy 1974). 

In March 1939 a grower bought the Chavez farm at 

public auction. A few days later a deputy sheriff 

delivered the final eviction notice and the new owner 

immediately began bulldozing the property. The 

force with which Chavez later fought to help farm 

workers gain economic stability can be traced, in 

large part, back to his childhood memories of the day 

that a tractor bulldozed the trees, irrigation ditches, 

and outbuildings he knew so well (Daniel 1987). 

The Chavez family returned to southern California 

and began to feel the full impact of the racism faced 

by Mexican Americans amidst a larger stream of tens 

of thousands of white migrants. In California, racism 

often was more abrasive than in Arizona as Mexican 

Americans were routinely accosted by border 

patrolmen, interrogated and searched by police 

officers, kicked out of restaurants and movie theaters, 

and cheated by employers who considered them too 

docile to object (Griswold de Castillo and Garcia 

1995). 

After spending most of the summer of 1939 in and 

around San Jose, the Chavez family found work 

picking walnuts near Oxnard. When that harvest 

ended, the family again had no work and no place to 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 224 

live. A fellow farm worker allowed Librado and 

Juana to set up a tent behind her house, but the winter 

was wet and cold, and thick fog from the ocean kept 

the family and their meager possessions constantly 

damp. With a lack of shoes or decent clothes, Cesar 

recalled the taunting he and Richard received, but he 

also pointed out that the school in Oxnardone of 

about thirty-seven he would attend off and on before 

quitting after the eighth gradewas among the least 

of his concerns as they focused on working to 

supplement the family’s income. Their work 

included sweeping out the local movie theater, 

shelling walnuts, chopping wood, running errands, 

collecting cigarette foil and empty bottles to sell, 

shining shoes, and selling newspapers. Cesar and his 

brother worked hard, following the examples set by 

their parents and older sister, but the family 

continued to earn barely enough to avoid starvation, 

and they often relied on the charity of others for 

shelter, gas money, and clothes. 

Librado and Juana did not accept the harsh realities 

of their new situation. “We were probably one of the 

strikingest families in California, the first ones to 

leave the fields if anybody shouted ‘huelga!’ 

[strike!]” Cesar recalled with pride. “If any family 

felt something was wrong and stopped working,” he 

continued, “we immediately joined them even if we 

didn’t know them. And if the grower didn’t correct 

what was wrong, then they would leave, and we’d 

leave.” The family’s militancy stemmed in part from 

their somewhat unique position as former landowners 

with strong social ties. As early as 1941, Chavez was 

exposed to the labor movement’s efforts to organize 

farm workers in California. A few organizers 

working with the United Cannery, Agricultural, 

Packing and Allied Workers of America 

(UCAPAWA) came to the Chavez home to speak 

with Cesar’s father and uncle. Librado joined 

UCAPAWA and ended up paying dues to several 

different unions throughout the 1940s and ’50s. As 

historian Cletus Daniel concludes, Librado’s strong 

conviction that unionism was a manly act of 

resistance made a lasting impression on his young 

son (Terkel 1986, Daniel 1987, Levy 1975). 

In the meantime, as the Chavez family spent the next 

several years developing their annual route through 

California, Cesar became increasingly familiar with 

the conditions of migrant life. Like most farm 

workers, the Chavez family cycled through many of 

the same valleys, towns, and labor camps every year. 

They spent winters in Brawley, tending and picking 

carrots, peas, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, and 

watermelons with el cortito, the short-handle hoe that 

forced farm workers to twist and stoop as they moved 

down the rows of crops. By springtime the family 

would decide whether to move to Oxnard to work 

beets, to Beaumont for cherries, or to the Hemet area 

for apricots. Through the middle of summertime they 

worked lima beans, corn, and chili peppers and often 

moved to grapes, prunes, cucumbers, and tomatoes 

by August. And in October every year the family 

would look for work in the cotton fields near Delano 

(Levy 1975). 

It was in Delano that Cesar met his future wife, Helen 

Fabela. The Chavez family found space in a tent city 

in McFarland, and Cesar went into Delano to look 

around. When Cesar met Helen, they had much in 

common. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, 

Helen was born in Brawley in 1928. Her parents set 

her to work in the fields when she was seven years 

old, and her mother and four siblings felt the pinch of 

poverty even more after Helen’s father died in 1940. 

Cesar and Helen soon began courting, but 

interruption was unavoidable as the Chavez family 

returned to Brawley to work the fields there (Ferris 

and Sandoval 1997, Levy 1975).

DISCRIMINATION IN THE U.S. NAVY

In 1944 Chavez decided to leave the fields and 

volunteer for the Navy. Hundreds of thousands of 

young Mexican Americans, motivated by patriotism, 

machismo, or poverty, enlisted during World War II. 

Military service opened up a new world for Cesar, 

providing him with his first visit to a medical doctor, 

training in San Diego, and time in the Mariana 

Islands and Guam. But Chavez ultimately regarded 

his experience in the Navy as two of the worst years 

of his life. He chafed against the regimentation and 

discovered that the same racist sentiment that 

prevailed at home prevented African Americans, 

Filipinos, and Mexican Americans from learning 

trades that would allow them to escape unskilled 

labor upon returning to the U.S. 

After two years in the Navy, Chavez received an 

honorable discharge and returned to his family in 

Delano. Two years later, Cesar and Helen were 

married. Following a Church ceremony in San Jose 

on October 22, 1948, the young couple took a twoweek honeymoon and toured all of the Franciscan 

missions in California. Cesar was drawn to the 

missions as places to relax and contemplate his 

religious heritage. Later, the missions would serve as 

architectural models for his efforts to develop 

headquarters for the farm workers’ union. Cesar and 

Helen moved back to Delano, where Cesar again 

found himself working the grape and cotton harvests. 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 225 

When Cesar failed to find steady work in the spring, 

the couple agreed to join Cesar’s parents in 

sharecropping, growing strawberries outside San Jose 

for a company that provided land, two small homes, 

electricity, water, fuel, and twenty-five dollars a 

week for groceries. The arrangement promised to 

free the Chavezes from the endless cycle of 

migration. However, the soil was poor in quality, the 

work was exhausting, and almost all of the meager 

profits went to the company. With two children and 

one on the way, Cesar and Helen decided to follow 

Cesar’s brother Richard into lumber work in Crescent 

City, four hundred miles north of San Jose. Chavez 

loved the forests of northern California, but the 

difficulty of the work was exacerbated by relentless 

wind and rain. Early in 1952, the family decision to 

move back to San Jose put Cesar on a path that soon 

would intersect with those of Father Donald 

McDonnell and Fred Rosstwo men who would 

change the course of his life (Levy 1975, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Taylor1975). 

With the birth of their fourth child in 1952, Cesar and 

Helen were on the verge of falling permanently into 

the cycle of poverty that had trapped many farm labor 

families. Cesar was frustrated by his situation, but 

his efforts to improve it had been stymied. Three 

years prior, Chavez had participated in a San Joaquin 

Valley cotton strike called by the National Farm 

Labor Union. Cesar and his parents supported the 

strike, and the family agreed that Cesar would 

participate while everyone else worked the grape 

harvest. Cesar joined the rallies, and eventually 

found his way into the daily planning meetings. He 

wanted to help, but Cesar was only offered menial 

tasks. When the strike ended after two weeks, 

Chavez rejoined his family. 

Cesar’s experience in the strike had been, in a certain 

way, unsettling. He saw the effort as disorganized 

and he wanted to learn how to avoid the mistakes he 

felt the NFLU had made, but there was no one to help 

him at this time (Taylor 1975, Griswold del Castillo 

and Garcia 1996). 

II. Development of the Agricultural 

Industry, Agricultural Labor and 

Agricultural Labor Activism in 

California and the American West 

Before 1960 

This section examines the development of agriculture 

in California, the evolution of the agricultural labor 

force, and the recurrent efforts during the first half of 

the twentieth century to organize migrant farm 

workers. In doing so, it reveals that farm labor 

leaders such as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, 

Gilbert Padilla, Larry Itliong and other members of 

the farm labor movement owed a part of their success 

to the struggles and the development of strategies that 

had taken place during the decades leading up to the 

1960s and to the evolving historical context within 

which they worked. 

THE AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY IN 

CALIFORNIA

Spaniards began colonizing southern California in the 

late-eighteenth century by establishing a series of 

pueblos, missions, and presidios. These settlements 

functioned only with the well-regulated labor of 

Spanish peasants and American Indians. Private land 

grants in California were rare under Spanish rule, but 

they increased dramatically after Mexico declared its 

independence in 1821. In an effort to spur settlement 

and increase tax revenue, the Mexican government 

dispensed more than eight hundred land grants 

containing eight million acres of land between 1833 

and 1846. American forces conquered California in 

1846 and officially took possession of the territory 

two years later. 

When California entered the Union in 1850, it had an 

agricultural economy dominated by massive estates 

whose large landowners were prohibited from using 

slaves but were free to maintain peon labor forces. 

The discovery of gold on the American River set off 

an unprecedented wave of emigration and subsequent 

commercial development in California; however the 

state’s economic growth during the next fifty years 

was based primarily on the exportation of wheat and 

other agricultural resources (Jenkins 1985, 

McWilliams 1935). 

As courts upheld the legal validity of almost six 

hundred land grants and as railroad magnates and 

speculators accumulated additional millions of acres 

of land, the trend toward concentrated landholdings 

and capitalist development became clear. By 1900, 

almost two-thirds of all arable acreage in the state 

was concentrated in fewer than five thousand estates, 

each of them larger than one thousand acres (Jenkins 

1985, Kushner 1975). 

This concentration of landin the hands of 

individuals who, according to historian Carey 

McWilliams, were “growers” rather than “farmers” 

and operated their farms as “factories in the 

field”did not go uncontested. During the last third 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 226 

of the nineteenth century, thousands of emigrants 

worked to carve out relatively modest landholdings 

(Vaught 1999). By 1900, three-fourths of all farms in 

the state were less than 175 acres in size. If the 

operators of industrialized farms saw themselves as 

businessmen and eagerly utilized labor contractors, 

foremen, gang labor, and piece rates in order to 

maximize profits, small-scale farmers saw 

themselves as “horticulturists” or “orchardists” who 

were motivated by economic success but also by their 

roles in the development of small, virtuous 

communities. Still, these farmers most often were 

forced onto marginal, arid lands, and their abilities to 

maintain their farms’ economic viability would be 

challenged even more during the twentieth century as 

large-scale landowners shifted their operations away 

from livestock and wheat and toward labor-intensive 

specialty-crop productiona shift that required 

access to vast amounts of irrigation water, 

rationalized and regulated markets, and large pools of 

inexpensive, migrant labor, all of which, in turn, 

required the support of politicians and government 

policies (McWilliams 1935). 

Government policies regulating markets were slow to 

develop. Prior to the 1930s, large-scale growers 

formed cooperatives to negotiate with their suppliers, 

wholesalers, and shippers; to create grading systems 

that would legitimize claims to produce quality and 

to stabilize prices by avoiding market gluts during 

peak harvest times. During the Depression years, 

however, the California Legislature and then the U.S. 

Congress intervened in the market on behalf of 

growers. Under amendments to the Agricultural 

Adjustment Act passed in 1938, the federal 

government was empowered to organize growers’ 

associations, which would market products 

cooperatively and regulate shipments based on 

market condition reports supplied by the Federal 

Marketing Service. This worked to the advantage of 

the largest growers (Jenkins 1985, Gregory 1989). 

THE AGRICULTURAL LABOR FORCE

Perhaps one of the most important conditions for the 

development of the agricultural industry in California 

and throughout the American West was the existence 

and regulation of large pools of migrant labor. The 

need for agricultural labor in California remained 

moderate until after the worldwide collapse of the 

wheat market in the 1870s, after which, large-scale 

growers began to shift their operations to the 

production of specialty crops. The transcontinental 

railroad and the development of refrigerated cars 

allowed growers to get their perishable crops to 

eastern markets, but growers faced a new need for 

workers who would accept low wages, poor working 

conditions, and erratic employment. Government 

policiesespecially those governing foreign 

relations and immigration, freedoms of speech and 

assembly, and rights to organize unionswould help 

provide and regulate those workers (McWilliams 

1935, Kushner 1975). 

Growers turned initially to Chinese immigrants. 

Most Chinese immigrants originally worked for 

mining operations or railroad companies but, the 

completion of the transcontinental railroad left more 

than ten thousand Chinese laborers without work. 

Large-scale growers saw this newly available pool of 

workers as an opportunity to meet their needs. In the 

view of growers, Chinese farm workers were cheap, 

hardworking, and docile (meaning they would not 

strike). However, their perceived willingness to 

accept conditions that white workers would not 

tolerate, their foreignness, and the fact that they 

enabled large-scale growers to cut labor costs made 

the Chinese targets of attacks from organized labor, 

nativists, small-scale farmers, and other groups. 

Anti-Chinese sentiment reached new heights with the 

passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and 

resulted in a violent effort to drive Chinese farm 

workers from the fields (McWilliams 1935, Kushner 

1975, Daniel 1981). 

As the number of Chinese laborers declined, growers 

turned to Japanese laborers who were willing to work 

for very low wages, did not ask for housing or board, 

and accepted even the most arduous tasks in the 

rapidly expanding sugar beet fields. By 1910, more 

than thirty thousand Japanese immigrants, more than 

one third of the total farm labor force, were working 

in California’s agricultural industry. Japanese farm 

workers also began to acquire land of their own. In 

1910, Japanese farmers owned almost 17,000 acres of 

farmland in the state and controlled (contracted for, 

leased, or shared) an additional 178,000 acres. The 

Japanese immigrants’ ability to thrive in the 

agricultural industry made them targets for racist 

attacks. The nation’s first Alien Land Act, denying 

property rights to Japanese immigrants, was passed in 

California in 1913. Mounting racist hostility, the 

passage of Alien Land Acts in other western states, 

and restrictions on Japanese immigration led to a 

decline in the Japanese farm labor force (Daniel 

1981, McWilliams 1935, Kushner 1975, Jenkins 

1985, Almaguer 1994, Garcia 2001). 

Growers had identified this decline by the 1920s and 

began turning toward Filipino and Mexican laborers. 

Filipino farm labor was appealing to growers for 

several reasons. As a result of American imperialism 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 227 

in the Philippines, Filipinos were classified as U.S. 

“nationals” and free from immigration restrictions; 

however, Filipinos could not vote, own land, or apply 

for citizenship. They were considered, moreover, to 

be hard-working, docile, and willing to accept low 

wages. The first large group of Filipino immigrants, 

ninety-four percent of whom were male, came to 

California in 1923 and by 1930, thirty thousand 

Filipinos resided at least part of the year in 

California. This group of immigrants again helped 

meet growers’ needs for labor, but racist hostility and 

economic downturn made them, like their 

predecessors, targets of attack. Years later, UFW 

Vice-President Philip Vera Cruz described the 

difficulties that Filipinos faced in a typical California 

town during the 1930s: 

“In those depression years, Filipinos were blamed 

for taking the Anglos’ jobs. Racist growers and 

politicians picked on the Filipino minority as . . . 

[an] easy target for discrimination and attack. 

Filipinos were harassed and driven from their jobs. 

. .In those race riots staged in their camps, some 

were hurt and one was shot.” 

As Vera Cruz explained, Filipinos were forced from 

the fields, but “the sad thing was they didn’t have 

anywhere to go.” Most Filipino farm workers 

responded to racist attacks by banding together even 

tighter, establishing a pattern of union organization 

that would strengthen Filipino farm workers’ resolve 

to begin the Delano grape strike thirty years later 

(Maram 1996, Kushner 1975, McWilliams 1935). 

By the eve of the Depression, Mexican farm workers 

already greatly outnumbered Filipinos in California. 

Mounting anti-Filipino sentiment further fueled the 

turn toward Mexican labor. Large-scale growers had 

begun recruiting farm workers from Mexico in the 

1910s when social and economic instability caused 

by the Mexican Revolution fueled immigration, but 

demand for Mexican laborers grew even more after 

the Immigration Act of 1924 began to curtail 

Japanese immigration. As with Chinese, Japanese, 

and Filipino laborers, the pattern held: growers 

viewed Mexican immigrants as the “perfect solution” 

to their perennial demand for farm workers deemed 

cheap and docile. One industry observer crowed that 

the Mexican farm worker “is the result of years of 

servitude, has always looked upon his employer as 

his padron, and himself as part of the establishment.” 

Between 1924 and 1930, approximately 150,000 

Mexican men, women, and children worked in the 

California agricultural industry annually. As the 

Great Depression deepened during the following 

decade, however, increasing numbers of Mexicans 

were forced to return to Mexico. With hundreds of 

thousands out of work and with state and local relief 

funds nearly exhausted by the early 1930s, calls for 

Mexican “repatriation”, a euphemism for expulsion, 

swelled. Beginning in February 1931, thousands of 

Mexicans, many of them American citizens, were 

deported to Mexico. 

As in decades past, white workers and their demands 

for jobs fueled hostility toward Mexican laborers. 

Historian James Gregory’s history of “Okie” 

emigration to California reveals that the economic 

push during the 1930s came with unprecedented 

force. Facing declining agricultural markets, drought 

and Dust Bowl conditions, hundreds of thousands of 

whites and African Americans from Oklahoma, 

Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri flooded California 

looking for work. In this context, Mexican migrants 

were seen as unwelcome competitors for agricultural 

work that could be taken by displaced white 

Americans (Gregory 1989). 

These emigrants from Oklahoma and elsewhere were 

the first migrant farm workers to gain sympathy from 

American society at large. But the conditions of the 

migrant farm worker that Dorthea Lange, John 

Steinbeck, and other observers brought to the 

attention of the nation were the same conditions that 

Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, and other 

agricultural laborers had enduredand 

protestedfor decades: pitiful working and living 

conditions, a corrupt labor contracting system, and 

poor wages (Gregory 1989). 

Migrant farm labors’ living and working conditions 

throughout the first half of the twentieth century were 

brutal. The work was exhausting, and it required 

considerable amounts of skill, dexterity, efficiency, 

and stamina. Cesar Chavez recalled the particular 

agony of thinning crops with el cortito, the shorthandle hoe, which he described as, “like being nailed 

to a cross. You have to walk twisted, as you’re 

stooped over, facing the row, and walking 

perpendicular to it,” he explained. Farm workers also 

had to contend with summertime heat, and they had 

to provide their own drinking water. When their 

water jug was empty, a family member had to walk to 

a water pump to get more, losing as much as an hour 

of work and pay to do so. During the winter, farm 

labors’ primary challenge was staying warm and dry, 

but the fields often were damp and muddy, making 

the task impossible. Growers were not obligated to 

provide toilet facilities, so laborers had to leave the 

fields or, more likely, improvise (Levy 1975). 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 228 

After a long day in the fields (or driving from field to 

field without finding work), farm workers were lucky 

if they could return to a tent or tarpaper-and-wood 

cabin in a crowded labor camp to eat a dinner of 

beans and potatoes. Even then, they were unlikely to 

have electricity or indoor plumbing. Farm workers 

considered themselves lucky to find space in these 

camps. Their only alternatives were squatters’ 

camps, barns and abandoned buildings, or sleeping 

under a bridge or in a car, if they owned one (Levy 

1975). 

Such conditions were exacerbated by unscrupulous 

labor contractors, who often owned or managed labor 

camps, deducted rent before giving workers their pay, 

and ran company stores that charged exorbitant 

prices. Labor contractors found numerous ways to 

cheat or exploit workersthey spent workers’ pay 

and then blamed its absence on the grower; they 

over-recruited workers and then lowered their 

promised wage; they short-weighed baskets of 

produce and pocketed the difference; they demanded 

sexual favors from women in exchange for giving 

them or their families work. Convinced that “labor 

contracting is nothing more nor less than a remnant 

of the system of peonage,” Cesar later made the 

replacement of labor contractors with union-run 

hiring halls one of his top priorities (Griswold del 

Castillo and Garcia 1996, Levy 1975). 

ORGANIZING AGRICULTURAL LABOR

Farm workers facing such living and working 

conditions began organizing in the American West as 

early as 1884, the year in which Chinese hop pickers 

at the Haggin Ranch in Kern County, California, 

went on strike for higher pay. Efforts such as these 

occurred sporadically among Chinese farm workers, 

but they were too isolated to have any broader 

impact. Japanese farm workers, however, developed 

much greater sophistication and proficiency in 

organizing. Japanese farm workers formed labor 

“associations” that initially served as contracting 

agencies. The associations accepted far less than 

prevailing wages in order to drive other workers out 

of the area. Once a local labor market was under 

their control, Japanese farm workers would form a 

list of demands and present them to growers just 

before harvest time, threatening to strike if they were 

not met. Japanese labor leaders also called for work 

slow-downs and utilized blacklists of obdurate 

growers when necessary. In some areas, cooperative 

agreements between Japanese crews functioned so 

well that the labor market effectively became a 

closed shop (London and Anderson 1970, Daniel 

1981). 

The first attempt to forge a multi-ethnic alliance 

emerged just after the turn of the century. In 1903, 

approximately eight hundred Japanese and Mexican 

beet-field workers in Oxnard united to organize the 

Japanese-Mexican Labor Association (later renamed 

the Sugar Beet and Farm workers’ Union of Oxnard). 

They elected a president, recruited several hundred 

more workers, and successfully struck for recognition 

and better wages; however, the union failed to secure 

the institutional and financial support it needed to 

survive. 

Union secretary J. M. Lizarras wrote to American 

Federation of Labor (AFL) President Samuel 

Gompers requesting a charter “under which we can 

invite all the sugar beet and field laborers in Oxnard 

without regard to their color or race.” As he had on 

other occasions, Gompers flatly refused to include 

Japanese workers under the AFL umbrella (Almaguer 

1994). The AFL had been attempting to organize 

farm labor in the West since the late 1880s, but the 

federation’s attempts were half-heartedpoorly 

organized, insufficiently funded, or prompted only by 

challenges from more radical organizations. The 

AFL’s strict focus on organizing along craft lines and 

its racism weakened their attempts further (London 

and Anderson 1970). 

THE WHEATLAND RIOT

The AFL’s conservatism, craft unionism, and racism 

opened the door for the rise of the International 

Workers of the World (the IWW, or Wobblies) 

formed in 1905. The Wobblies hoped to overcome 

the pattern of racial discrimination and segregation 

that divided white, Japanese, Mexican, East Indian, 

and other laborers in order to pull all of them (and 

their counterparts in other industries) into “One Big 

Union.” The Wobblies’ promotion of inter-racial 

solidarity was a response to the racism of the AFL 

but also to growers’ divide-and-conquer tactics 

through which growers would segregate workers 

along racial lines into separate work crews and labor 

camps (Garcia 2001). 

Between 1905 and 1913, the Wobblies demonstrated 

their growing strength in California, especially in 

free-speech campaigns in San Diego and Fresno. 

IWW locals began to proliferate, but in 1913 the 

Wobblies counted only five thousand members in the 

state. Still, the influence of the IWW outspread its 

numbers. As Carey McWilliams observed, 

“whenever ‘labor trouble’ occurred in the fields . . . it 

was usually discovered that a ‘camp delegate’ had 

been on the ground.” Such was the case at the Durst 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 229 

Brothers’ hop ranch near Wheatland in August 1913. 

Ralph Durst’s advertisements throughout the state 

promising work to anyone who wanted it attracted 

almost three thousand farm workers, twice as many 

as he needed. Durst neglected to provide 

accommodations for these arrivals, many of whom 

were destitute. The water supply quickly ran out and 

few provisions had been made for sanitation resulting 

in stench around the camp and dysentery. Durst 

ignored these conditions, though, hoping that workers 

would leave without collecting wages withheld as an 

end-of-harvest “bonus.” Within a few days, two 

IWW organizers had mobilized the hop pickers and 

formed a list of demands. Durst ignored most of the 

demands and, on August 3, arrived at the camp with 

the Yuba County sheriff and several deputies to break 

up a mass meeting. A gunshot “to quiet the mob” 

touched off a riot, leaving the district attorney, two 

deputies, and two workers dead and dozens more 

injured (McWilliams 1935, London and Anderson 

1970). 

The Wheatland Riot was one of the most significant 

events in the history of the farm labor movement. It 

drew unprecedented levels of attention to the plight 

of agricultural laborers, led to the creation of the 

California Commission of Immigration and Housing, 

and gave the movement its first martyrs. This fallout 

also propelled further IWW organizing efforts. In 

1915, IWW began sending organizers directly into 

the fields to recruit farm workers. Creating locals 

throughout the West and Midwest, the union counted 

one hundred thousand members by 1917. By then, 

however, the political winds were shifting. A wave 

of raids and arrests by the federal government 

crippled the IWW, and the climate of wartime 

patriotism encouraged the public to turn against any 

activity or agitation that might hamper (in one 

official’s words) “the effectiveness of the country’s 

efforts” (London and Anderson 1970, McWilliams 

1935, Daniel 1981, Dunbar and Kravitz 1976). 

FARM LABOR ORGANIZING (1920-1950)

Organizing efforts among the farm workers of 

California became sporadic again until the late 1920s, 

when Mexican farm workers attempted to forge an 

ethnically-defined solidarity. In 1928, Mexicans 

belonging to the Los Angeles Federation of Mexican 

Societies established the Confederacion de Uniones 

de Obreros Mexicanos (CUOM), an organization 

whose three thousand members dedicated themselves 

to promoting unionism among Mexican workers and 

fighting in particular to reform the agricultural 

industry’s labor contracting system. 

Later that same year, Mexican farm workers in the 

Imperial Valley made such an attempt. On the eve of 

the cantaloupe harvest in May 1928, Mexican 

laborers formed La Unión de Trabajadores del Valle 

Imperial (the Imperial Valley Workers’ Union) and 

succeeded in attracting twelve hundred members. 

The union’s leaders presented a list of requests to 

growers. Union leaders had no intention of calling a 

strike, but when growers ignored the workers’ 

requests, a few dozen members of the rank-and-file 

walked out just as the harvest was beginning. 

Growers and local authorities smashed the strike, but 

they drew a clear conclusion: Mexican farm workers 

were not the simple, docile laborers whom growers 

thought they were hiring. The union’s failure offered 

lessons for farm labor organizers as well. Most 

important, the failure of the strike hinted at the 

consequences of the union’s decision not to reach out 

to Filipino farm workers in the Imperial Valley, many 

of whom already embraced a reputation for militant 

labor activism (Daniel 1981, London and Anderson 

1970). 

Two events that occurred the following year 

coincided to give organizing efforts among farm 

workers their strongest push yet. First, the 

Communist Party USA created the Trade Union 

Unity League (TUUL). Second, the crash of the 

stock market triggered the Great Depression. 

Communists had been quietly active in the fields of 

California throughout the 1920s, but the party formed 

the TUUL in September 1929 with the expressed 

mandate of organizing farm labor. Their first effort 

came in January 1930, when a walk-out by a few 

hundred Mexican and Filipino lettuce workers near 

Brawley turned into a full-fledged strike involving 

five thousand farm workers across the Imperial 

Valley. Communist organizers from the TUUL soon 

arrived in Brawley and formed a front organization, 

the Agricultural Workers Industrial League (AWIL). 

They wrested leadership of the strike away from the 

Mexican Mutual Aid Society, but this contest split 

the rank and file and gave the growers an opening to 

decry “Bolshevism.” Growers easily mobilized 

community opposition and enlisted the aid of local 

authorities. Within a few weeks, the strike collapsed 

(London and Anderson 1970). 

Over the next couple of years, AWIL leaders 

regrouped. They changed the union’s name to the 

Agricultural Workers’ Industrial Union (AWIU) in 

1931 and, after working to organize striking cannery 

workers in the Santa Clara Valley later that year, 

renamed it the Cannery and Agricultural Workers 

Industrial Union (CAWIU) the name that the 

organization would retain as it grew into the strongest 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 230 

agricultural workers’ union in California during the 

early 1930s. By 1933, thirty-seven major strikes 

erupted and the rejuvenated CAWIU led twenty-four 

of them. The CAWIU’s San Joaquin Valley cotton 

strike was the largest, longest, and most dramatic 

including at least twelve thousand farm workers from 

a string of cotton fields stretching 114 miles down the 

valley (London and Anderson 1970, Daniel 1981, 

Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1996, McWilliams 

1935, Ruiz 1998). 

One of the CAWIU’s first acts was to establish a 

strike headquarters and camp on forty acres of rented 

land outside of Corcoran. The striking farm workers 

also recruited and received community support and 

public sympathy grew after growers resorted to 

increasingly brutal strikebreaking tactics, including 

deadly violence. After three weeks, a mediation 

board created a resolution. Neither the union nor 

growers could claim a clear victory, but both sides 

accepted. 

The CAWIU remarkably could claim at least partial 

victories in twenty out of twenty-four strikes its 

members participated in during 1933. The union’s 

strategies of inter-racial organizing, reliance on 

grassroots organizing, recruitment of women, and 

emphasis on orderly, nonviolent conduct contributed 

to the union’s success and helped explain how the 

union could command the fierce loyalty of at least 

fifteen thousand San Joaquin Valley farm workers in 

October 1933. However, the union failed to win 

formal recognition from a single grower, and it failed 

to replace labor contractors with union-run hiring 

halls. As a result, the CAWIU lost its membership 

and began to crumble. 

The demise of the CAWIU left a legacy that would 

be inherited by the United Cannery, Agricultural, 

Packing, and Allied Workers of America 

(UCAPAWA), founded in July 1937 and chartered 

by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) 

soon thereafter. The union’s founders wanted an 

organization that was decentralized and inclusive and 

their constitution guaranteed local autonomy and 

local control of at least fifty percent of union dues. 

Moreover, union leaders deliberately recruited 

diverse organizers, many of whom climbed into the 

ranks of union leadership themselves. Rank and file 

members of the union pledged “never to discriminate 

against a fellow worker because of creed, color, 

nationality, religious or political belief; to defend 

freedom of thought . . . [and] to defend [their fellow 

members] on all occasions.” By 1940 the union’s 

national membership totaled more than 124,000 

workers, 40,000 of whom worked in the fields. 

Librado Chavez became a new recruit in 1941 (Ruiz 

1987, Kushner 1975). 

UCAPAWA was the most prominent union in the 

fields of California between 1937 and 1940. Its 

greatest achievement came in November 1939, when 

Local 307 of Visalia negotiated a contract with the 

Mineral King Farm Association. This contract was 

perhaps the first ever signed by a grower and a union 

in the history of California’s agricultural industry. 

The contract with the Mineral King Farm Association 

was a significant achievement, but the limited victory 

in the Madera cotton strike that same year was a 

more typical outcome of UCAPAWA’s efforts. On 

October 12, 1939, as many as one thousand white, 

Mexican, and African American cotton-field workers 

in Madera County went on strike, demanding an 

increase in wages. Led by the Associated Farmers, 

an anti-union vigilante group, growers repeatedly 

attacked pickets with fists and rubber hoses. On 

October 26, three hundred growers descended on 

striking families attending a rally in Fresno’s Madera 

Park and beat them with axe handles. State highway 

patrolmen reportedly stood back and watched before 

deciding to fire tear gas into the crowd to “quiet the 

melee.” UCAPAWA eventually won the strike, but, 

like so many farm workers before them, they failed to 

gain formal recognition from the growers. The 

following year, UCAPAWA leaders decided to 

withdraw from the fields in order to focus the union’s 

resources on cannery and packinghouse workers. 

The National Farm Labor Union (NFLU) also 

contributed to the foundation upon which Cesar 

Chavez began building during the 1950s. The NFLU 

was an outgrowth of the Southern Tenant Farmers 

Union, founded in Arkansas by Harry Leland 

Mitchell in 1934. The union focused for many years 

on protecting the rights of sharecroppers, but in the 

1940s redirected its energy toward agricultural wage 

workers. In 1945, the union was renamed the NFLU 

and rechartered with the AFL. Two years later, 

NFLU leaders decided to move west, and they began 

establishing locals throughout California. As this 

work was getting underway in the summer of 1947, 

they became aware of the impoverished conditions of 

farm workers employed by the Di Giorgio Fruit 

Company (Grubbs 1975). 

By the summer of 1947, the 27-year old Di Giorgio 

Fruit Company was a giant in the agricultural 

industry that had amassed sixteen thousand acres of 

farmland across Kern County and had generated 

eighteen million dollars a year in gross revenue from 

the sale of fruits, vegetables, wines, and processed 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 231 

foods. More than eight hundred people, most of 

whom were Okies, worked year-round in the 

company’s Kern County fields and orchards, packing 

sheds, and winery. The company hired an additional 

sixteen hundred farm workers, most of them Mexican 

Americans and Mexican immigrants, at harvest time. 

The company’s operations as they existed in the 

years after World War II were massive. As Ernesto 

Galarza explained, the showpiece was Di Giorgio 

Farms in Arvinan enterprise of eleven thousand 

acres devoted to grapes, fruit orchards, and 

vegetables valued in the late 1940s at twenty-four 

million dollars. Sierra Vista Ranch, twenty-five 

miles north near Delano, was “less spectacular, but 

equally prosperous. The five-thousand-acre ranch 

was a self-contained community with its own 

volunteer fire department, restaurant, recreational 

facilities, dormitories, and police force.” With 

additional operations at Borrego Springs and 

elsewhere in California and Florida, the Di Giorgio 

Company was a giant in the agricultural industry. 

The company as a whole was the second largest 

producer of wine in the United States. 

Joseph Di Giorgio was among the strongest 

opponents of unions in California and one of the 

chief supporters of the “Associated Farmers” 

vigilante group. Knowing this, NFLU leaders 

Mitchell and Hasiwar made Di Giorgio’s company 

their first target. If they could gain recognition from 

Di Giorgio, they thought, others surely would fall in 

line. By September 1947, the NFLU had enlisted a 

majority of the company’s full-time employees and 

formed a list of demands (Galarza 1970, London and 

Anderson 1970). 

When the company refused to acknowledge the 

union’s existence, the local membership voted to 

strike at the Grange Hall in Weedpatch on September 

30, 1947. More than one thousand striking workers 

spread out to picket Di Giorgio Farms. Like some of 

its predecessors, the union appealed for support from 

around the state and the nation, and it drew the 

endorsement of prominent individuals. The union 

also activated an immediate boycott of all Di Giorgio 

products, including table grapes. The union’s rising 

leader, Ernesto Galarza, pioneered the idea of 

picketing grocery stores such as Safeway in order to 

educate consumers and raise support for farm 

workers. This was one of several ideas that Chavez 

and the UFW later would adopt. The union’s 

members were well organized, and the Di Giorgio 

strikelabeled by historian Donald Grubbs “the 

most significant farm worker strike prior to La 

Huelga”would persist for another two and a half 

years (Grubbs 1975, Meister and Loftis 1977, 

Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1996). 

The strike ultimately collapsed because the NFLU 

had no means of cutting off Di Giorgio’s supply of 

labor. The Bracero Programbegun during World 

War II to import seasonal contract laborers from 

Mexicoallowed Di Giorgio to hire as many 

workers as the company needed for its harvests every 

year. Until the program was terminated in the mid1960s, growers could continue to ride out strikes 

simply by (falsely) claiming the existence of a labor 

shortage, replacing their workers with braceros, and 

protecting them with sheriff’s deputies and company 

guards. 

The NFLU operated on additional fronts during the 

late 1940s and early 1950s. In September 1949 the 

union led a two-week strike of cotton field workers in 

the San Joaquin Valley. The union won its demand 

that an announced pay cut be rescinded, but no 

further organizational gains were made. Cesar 

Chavez participated in this strike, but the experience 

left him wishing that the leaders had set higher goals 

and worked more effectively to achieve them. The 

NFLU’s last major victory in the fields came three 

years later with a strike on the five-thousand-acre 

ranch of the Schenley Corporation outside of Delano 

which brought modest victories (London and 

Anderson 1970). 

After winning the Schenley strike in 1952, Ernesto 

Galarza helped keep the NFLU alive for seven more 

years, renaming it the National Agricultural Workers 

Union (NAWU). Born in southern Mexico in the 

city of Tepic, Nayarit, Galarza came to California 

with his family in 1910. With a doctorate in 

sociology from Columbia University and eleven 

years of experience with the Pan American Union in 

Washington, D.C., Galarza returned to California, 

settled his family in San Jose, and joined the 

leadership of the NFLU as Director of Research and 

Education. Galarza shifted his energies to defeating 

the Bracero Program. Galarza became convinced 

that the NFLU’s fightand that of all farm 

workerswas not against a single grower like Di 

Giorgio, but against a system in which corporate 

farms were intricately linked with petroleum 

companies, power companies, water suppliers, and 

financial institutions. Galarza concluded that these 

other industries applied great economic pressure on 

growers and the primary way that growers could 

generate profits was to keep their labor costs low and 

their workers powerless. 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 232 

The most effective means that growers found to 

minimize the power of labor was the perpetuation of 

the Bracero Program. Established by Congress in 

1942, the program was designed to provide growers 

with a reliable source of labor at a time when military 

industries offered American workers much higher 

wages and better working conditions. As Galarza 

understood, the “experiment” was an unmitigated 

success for growers. In creating the program, 

Congress promised the Mexican government that 

growers would pay braceros prevailing wages, 

provide transportation and cover living expenses, and 

only hire braceros when local labor shortages 

developed (not to break strikes). Although all of 

these promises were broken by the growers Congress 

extended the program to 1950 and, following the 

outbreak of the Korean War, formalized the program 

and extended it indefinitely. 

Galarza made termination of the program his 

mission. His efforts to bring the Bracero Program to 

an end contributed greatly to the foundation upon 

which Chavez built. Indeed, the termination of the 

Bracero Program in 1964 cleared a path for the farm 

workers’ successes of the 1960s and ’70s. The 

NFLU demonstrated the importance of recruiting a 

coalition of supporters, and it introduced to the farm 

labor movement tactics such as the consumer boycott 

of grapes and the secondary boycott of grocery 

stores. The union showed that agribusinesses giants 

such as Di Giorgio were not too big to confront. The 

lessons Chavez learned from the NFLU and other 

farm labor union victories and defeats would inform 

and inspire his own efforts. 

III. Cesar Chavez’s Education as a 

Community Organizer in 

California and the Emergence of 

Dolores Huerta, 1952-1962 

CESAR CHAVEZ AND THE COMMUNITY 

SERVICE ORGANIZATION (CSO)

As Ernesto Galarza was making a home in San Jose 

and beginning his battle against the Bracero Program, 

Cesar Chavez and his growing family were settling 

into their rented house on Scharff Avenue in San 

Jose’s Sal Si Puedes barrio. Near the end of the 

Chavezes’ first summer in Sal Si Puedes, Cesar took 

an organizing job with the Community Service 

Organization and begin moving his family up and 

down the San Joaquin Valley. Over the next decade, 

Cesar would gain his education and training as a 

social activist, and form friendships and alliances 

with Father Donald McDonnell, Fred Ross, Dolores 

Huerta, Gilbert Padilla, and farm workers who would 

join him in the struggle to form an effective farm 

labor union. 

Soon after moving to Sal Si Puedes in 1952, Cesar 

met Donald McDonnell, a young Catholic priest in 

San Jose. Along with Father Thomas McCullough, 

McDonnell had lobbied the San Francisco 

Archdiocese to create a “mission band” of roving 

priests who would minister to braceros and other 

migrant farm workers. Basing his operations in Sal 

Si Puedes, McDonnell began his mission by 

knocking on doors in the barrio and asking Catholics 

if they would support the opening of a new church in 

the neighborhood. Chavez, a devout Catholic, was 

highly receptive and relayed to the priest that he and 

his family felt unwelcome in a church across town. 

Cesar and McDonnell began talking about problems 

facing farm workers who lived in the barrio, and 

Chavez revealed an interest in labor organizing that 

had stayed with him since his experience in the San 

Joaquin Valley cotton strike three years earlier. The 

two men talked late into the night about social 

justice, the Church’s stand on farm labor and 

readings from the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII in 

which he upheld labor unions (Levy 1975, Taylor 

1975). 

McDonnell introduced Cesar to a world of ideas that 

would shape his personal philosophy, his approach to 

labor organizing, and his commitment to social 

justice, including the writings of Mohandas Gandhi. 

Chavez learned that Gandhi spoke about “the 

complete sacrifice of oneself for others” and “the 

need for self-discipline and self-abnegation in order 

to achieve a higher good.” Chavez also remembered 

reading “three or four volumes on agriculture, 

describing the Associated Farmers, their terror and 

strikebreaking tactics, and their financing by banks, 

utilities, and big corporations.” All of these books 

taught Cesar a great deal, but they could not teach 

him everything about building a union (Griswold del 

Castillo and Garcia 1995, Ferriss and Sandoval 

1997). 

Like McDonnell, Fred Ross was drawn to Sal Si 

Puedes by his desire to help Mexican Americans 

improve their lives. A community organizer working 

for social activist Saul Alinsky, Ross went to Los 

Angeles in 1947 to organize the Community Service 

Organization (CSO) and train its members to deal 

with issues related to civil rights, voter registration, 

housing discrimination, and police brutality. Ross 

decided to expand the CSO with a new chapter in San 

Jose and was looking for residents who could help 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 233 

him. Chavez agreed to host a house meeting with 

Ross and a dozen or more people from the barrio on 

June 9, 1952 (Levy 1975, Taylor 1975). 

At the meeting Ross explained that he saw the 

conditions of Sal Si Puedes in other Mexican 

American communities and what the CSO had 

accomplished in Los Angeles. Cesar talked with the 

organizer for two hours and then offered to drive him 

to his next meeting that night. Fred was just as 

excited about meeting Cesar Clearly, Ross 

recognized Chavez’s potential as a community 

leader. His diary entry that night went straight to the 

point: “I think I’ve found the guy I’m looking for” 

(Ross 1989, Levy 1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, 

Matthiessen 1973, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 

1995). 

In 1952, Cesar became a deputy registrar and then the 

chairman of the CSO voter-registration drive in San 

Jose. He continued to work during the day at the 

lumber mill and in the fields, and then at night he 

would work to recruit voters. Instead of recruiting 

college students as Ross had done, Chavez called on 

his friends. Chavez realized that organizing would be 

accomplished more effectively through social 

networks. By election night of November 1952 he 

had registered nearly six thousand new voters. More 

important, the campaign provided Chavez a 

formative experience in linking his emergent interest 

in labor organizing with civil rights activism and 

political mobilization (Taylor 1975, Matthiessen 

1973, Levy 1975, Daniel 1987). 

Chavez’s success in the voter-registration drive was 

gratifying, but the campaign exposed him to a sudden 

host of adversaries and accusations. During the early 

1950s, almost anyone who organized communities 

and fought for political rights, labor rights, or the 

rights of racial minorities in America might be 

suspected of being a Communist. On the national 

level, Senator Joseph McCarthy was conducting 

investigations of the government in search of 

Communists. The House Un-American Activities 

Committee (HUAC) and similar committees at the 

state level investigated, and blacklisted hundreds of 

suspected radicals– including those in movie studios, 

universities, and labor unions– but countless 

individuals suffered from an atmosphere of political 

repression (Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995, 

Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

When newly registered Mexican-American voters 

were intimidated at the polls, Chavez sent a letter of 

complaint to the U.S. attorney general. This move 

raised undue suspicions that Chavez might be a 

Communist. FBI agents began questioning Cesar, 

and the local newspaper ran stories implying that he 

worked for the Communist Party. These accusations 

drew the attention of the very people Chavez was 

trying to organize into a CSO chapter, but 

accusations of Communist affiliation were 

inconsistent with Chavez’s Catholic conservatism. 

The Catholic Church was in the forefront of the 

anticommunist movement in the early 1950s, and 

Cesar wisely turned to McDonnell and other priests 

to defend him against suspicions and accusations 

(Levy 1975, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995, 

Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

After the successful voter-registration drive, Chavez 

saw that a good amount of organizing work in Sal Si 

Puedes remained. Cesar opened an office that could 

serve more as a service center and give the residents 

of Sal Si Puedes a place where they knew they could 

go with their problems. Such a central location 

would be especially important for the migrant farm 

workers who moved in and out of the area. Cesar 

found space to rent and set up the San Jose CSO 

office and service center on East Santa Clara Street 

(Levy 1975). 

Chavez’s success in registering voters and 

establishing the San Jose CSO chapter helped Fred 

Ross convince Alinsky to hire the twenty-five year 

old as a CSO staff member. Ross assigned Chavez to 

finish an organizing campaign in nearby Union City 

(then named De Coto), freeing Ross to move on to 

King City and other towns in the Salinas Valley. 

Cesar did well in Union City and was sent to Oakland 

to orchestrate his own campaign. Cesar already 

sensed that social organizing was to be his life’s 

work, and, with his experience in Oakland, he proved 

that he could succeed at it (Levy 1975, Etulain 2002). 

DOLORES HUERTA’S RISE AS A 

COMMUNITY ORGANIZER

In 1955 Ross made plans to organize a chapter in 

Stockton, where one of his first contacts was Father 

McDonnell’s colleague in the “mission band,” Father 

Thomas McCullough. McCullough had located his 

mission in Stockton and began moving through 

bracero camps exploring ways to meet the needs of 

migrant farm workers. McCullough based his 

mission out of St. Gertrude’s Catholic Church, where 

one of the brightest parishioners was twenty-fiveyear-old Dolores Fernandez Huerta. When Ross 

asked McCullough to put him in touch with potential 

CSO organizers, the priest introduced him to Huerta 

(Taylor 1975). 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 234 

Dolores Huerta had grown up in Stockton, but like 

both of her parents, she was born in Dawson, New 

Mexico, in 1930. Huerta’s father worked as a miner 

in northern New Mexico and pursued farm work as 

far north as Wyoming, but the Depression forced the 

family to move up and down the Pacific Coast 

looking for work. Huerta’s parents divorced in 1933 

and two years later her mother, Alicia Fernandez, 

moved the family to Stockton. Huerta’s mother 

worked in a cannery and waited tables until she saved 

enough money to buy a restaurant and seventy-room 

boarding house in which she always made room for 

unemployed farm workers (Coburn 1976, Rose 1990, 

Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995, Baer 1975, 

Huerta 1975, Baer and Matthews 1974, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997). 

Fernandez’s influence on her daughter was profound, 

showing her children that women could be strong, 

independent, and successful. “I was raised with two 

brothers and a mother,” Huerta explained, and “there 

was no sexism. My mother was a strong woman and 

she did not favor my brothers. There was no idea 

that men were superior.” Huerta elaborated: “At 

home, we all shared equally in the household tasks.” 

Fernandez made unconventional choices throughout 

her life, and she encouraged Dolores to do the same. 

Huerta followed that advice as she became 

increasingly active in the farm labor movement (Rose 

1990, Baer 1975, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 

1995). 

Dolores’s mother also provided her children with 

middle-class aspirations and a strong sense of racial 

equality. In her elementary school, MexicanAmerican, African-American, and white children 

“were all thrown in together,” but in high school, 

Dolores confronted increased economic and racial 

segregation. Huerta took her education very 

seriously and did quite well, but she continued to 

develop a strong sense of the ways in which 

economic and racial injustice pervaded American 

society. A trip to Mexico City with her mother 

heightened her racial pride and further convinced her 

that the racist treatment directed at Mexicans in the 

U.S. was deplorable. Upon returning home Huerta 

began to consider leading a life of social activism 

(Huerta 1975). 

After a failed marriage to her high school boyfriend 

left her to raise three children, Huerta moved back in 

with her mother and enrolled in community college 

courses in Stockton (where she was the only Chicana 

student). By 1955, the year in which Fred Ross 

arrived in Stockton, Dolores had earned her teaching 

credentials from the College of the Pacific. She also 

married Ventura Huerta and had four more children. 

But she had not given up her desire to find a way to 

fight social injustices. Ross would offer her the 

opportunity she sought (Baer 1974, Huerta 1975). 

When Ross met with Huerta and other members of 

Stockton’s Mexican-American community, he shared 

the ideas that he had discussed at house meetings in 

Sal Si Puedes and elsewhere. She was skeptical as 

Ross shared stories of their successes in San Jose and 

elsewhere, but just as he had done with Cesar, Fred 

won Dolores over. Dolores, like Cesar, credited Ross 

with changing the course of her life. Ross assigned 

Huerta to a voter-registration campaign and she threw 

herself into the work. With the registration drive 

underway, Huerta joined Ross in efforts to reform the 

police department, to get better treatment for 

Mexican Americans at the county hospital, and to 

have sidewalks built in the barrio (Huerta 1975). 

As Dolores’s involvement in the CSO continued, she 

heard more and more about Cesar. Ross was so 

impressed by him, she had little choice. When she 

finally met Chavez, she was initially unimpressed 

due to his reticence. Given time, though, Huerta came 

to know her CSO colleague quite well. By the end of 

the decade, Huerta’s path had crossed Chavez’s so 

many times that she had come to know him, trust 

him, and admire him for his remarkable skills as an 

organizer and a leader. A common bond developed 

between the two activists (Rose 2002, Etulain 2002, 

Taylor 1975 Matthiessen 1973). 

While Huerta remained involved with the Stockton 

CSO chapter during the mid-1950s, Chavez 

continued the assignment Ross had given him after 

his Oakland campaign: organizing the towns of the 

San Joaquin Valley. Cesar approached this 

assignment with great eagerness, for it brought him 

back to the towns he had known as a teen-age 

migrant. More important, it gave him the opportunity 

to hone his skills as an organizer of Mexican 

American farm workers. But Cesar grew 

increasingly committed to helping farm workers and 

figuring out how to organize them so that they might 

be empowered to help themselves (Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997). 

CHAVEZ’S TRANSITION FROM COMMUNITY 

ORGANIZER TO LABOR ORGANIZER

Perhaps Chavez’s greatest discovery during these 

years working in the fields for the CSO was that 

assistance to farm workers could be used as an 

organizing tool. When Chavez was organizing a new 

CSO chapter, he would set up a service center like 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 235 

that in Sal Si Puedes. Through these service centers 

he would be able to help the people who came to him 

with personal problems. Not surprisingly, he 

attributed this willingness to the example his mother 

set for him as a young boy. And then “one night it 

just hit me,” Chavez explained: 

“Once you helped people, most became very loyal. 

. . Once I realized helping people was an 

organizing technique, I increased that work. I was 

willing to work day and night and go to hell and 

back for peopleprovided they also did something 

for the CSO in return. . . . For a long time we didn’t 

know how to put that work together into an 

organization. But we learned after a whilewe 

learned how to help people [commit to an 

organization] by making them responsible.” (Levy 

1975) 

Chavez was effectively synthesizing lessons he had 

learned about labor organizing, community 

organizing, and civil rights activism with the lessons 

about sacrifice, service to others, and inclusiveness 

that he had carried with him since his childhood 

(Levy 1975). 

Cesar’s dedication to building a solid, powerful 

organization for farm workers piqued the interest of 

Chicanos such as Gilbert Padilla. The son of migrant 

farm workers, Padilla was born in a labor camp in the 

late 1920s. He grew up in the fields and tried to 

escape the life of the migrant farm labor by enlisting 

in the military. After his army discharge in 1947, Gil 

found himself returning to Los Banos in California’s 

central valley with his brothers and being offered a 

lower wage than that of the braceros. Increasingly 

disgusted with the racist treatment received in the 

fields, Padilla found work in a dry-cleaning business 

and started a civil rights group, Club Mexico. In 

1957 he was back in the fields of Kings County, and 

two years later, he met Cesar Chavez and soon joined 

his CSO efforts. He would go on to volunteer for the 

organization from 1957 to 1961 and then joined 

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta as the 

organization’s only paid staff members (Taylor 1975, 

Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

The year after he recruited Padilla into the CSO, 

Chavez accepted an assignment that proved to be one 

of the most significant in his transition from 

community organizer to labor organizer. During the 

summer of 1958, the United Packinghouse Workers 

union offered Saul Alinsky and the CSO twenty 

thousand dollars to organize a chapter in Oxnard 

where the Chavez family had lived during the winter 

of 1938. The union was trying to organize the field 

and packing-shed workers and asked Chavez to open 

a CSO office in Oxnard (Daniel 1987, Levy 1975, 

Matthiessen 1973). 

Chavez held numerous house meetings in Oxnard 

during the fall of 1958 in order to further the CSO 

agenda, but local Mexican Americans kept bringing 

up one issue: growers were giving their jobs to 

braceros. One of the largest bracero camps in the 

country, the Buena Vista Camp which housed as 

many as 28,000 Mexican farm workers, was located 

in Oxnard. As Chavez began to investigate the 

abuses of the Bracero Program in Oxnard, he 

discovered how growers, working with corrupt Farm 

Labor Placement Service officials, blocked local farm 

workers from getting jobs and then claimed the 

existence of a labor shortage so that they could 

import braceros. Cesar continued to work on 

organizing a CSO chapter and dedicated most of his 

thirteen months in Oxnard to attacking the Bracero 

Program. 

Chavez began by gathering evidence to prove that 

growers abused the Bracero Program by 

accompanying farm workers to the Farm Labor 

Placement Service office, where officials made them 

spend several hours filling out referral cards. By the 

time they would arrive in the fields, growers would 

tell them that all the jobs were taken. Chavez 

retained their referral cards to verify their efforts. A 

second part of the campaign, a boycott of local 

merchants, was designed to apply indirect pressure 

on growers. A third technique was a sit-down strike, 

first used at the Jones Ranch in April 1959. Chavez 

and his companions would find a crew of braceros in 

a field and sit down across from them. The braceros 

usually stopped working and, when the foremen 

arrived with local police, Chavez would demand that 

the braceros be taken back to the labor camps so that 

local farm workers who accompanied him could have 

their jobs. Chavez also put pressure on public 

officials. Cesar called the Department of 

Employment offices every day for a month, before he 

finally got the director on the telephone. One night in 

the spring of 1959 a sympathetic official from the 

Bureau of Employment Security called to tell Cesar 

that “these people don’t want any investigations. . . . 

They don’t want any publicity . . . and you’ve got 

everybody shook up.” Cesar began formulating a 

fifth tactic. The next morning Oxnard farm workers 

began to march in the streets and to the fields (Levy 

1975, Taylor 1975). 

Farm workers and CSO volunteers implemented 

Chavez’ plan to get all of the publicity they could. 

Meanwhile, Cesar led seventy farm workers to the 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 236 

employment office where they filled out hundreds of 

referral cards. More farm workers joined them later 

and, by the time they began marching to the Jones 

Ranch, farm workers driving fifty cars, numerous 

policemen, and several reporters had joined them. 

When the assembly arrived at the ranch Chavez 

delivered a speech culminating with a condemnation 

of the referral cards, burned his card, and watched as 

other farm workers followed suit. The farm workers 

began to realize their strength, and Chavez 

discovered the importance of symbolic acts of 

commitment (Ross 1989, Levy 1975). 

The following month Chavez led a march through the 

streets of Oxnard . Volunteers created signs and one 

woman brought a banner of the Virgin de Guadalupe, 

who Cesar decided should lead the march. As the 

march left the CSO office and spilled into the street, 

hundreds of people started joining in, taking up signs 

and singing marching tunes and hymns. On that day, 

Chavez “discovered the power of the march. We 

started with a couple of hundred people in la 

colonia,” he told writer Jacques Levy. “[B]y the time 

we got through, we must have had ten thousand 

people” (Levy 1975). 

One of their biggest victories came after the march 

when the growers agreed to hire people at the CSO 

office which became a hiring hall. The CSO chapter 

office in Oxnard became a model for the hiring halls 

created by the United Farm Workers the following 

decade. Growers now came directly to the CSO 

office to request workers. With more than one 

thousand members, most of whom were farm 

workers, the CSO chapter had become an agricultural 

labor union in everything but name. As the summer 

of 1959 drew to a close, Chavez was eager to 

establish a union and to sign contracts with area 

growers (Levy 1975, Taylor 1975). 

The AFL-CIO, which had just begun its own effort to 

organize agricultural labor in California, pressured 

the CSO board of directors to reject Chavez’s plan to 

establish a farm labor union in Oxnard. A number of 

developments had coincided to push the AFL-CIO 

into the fields and led the organization to see 

Chavez’s plan as detrimental to its own. Ernesto 

Galarza’s NAWU (formerly the NFLU) folded in 

1959, but Galarza’s campaign against the Bracero 

Program succeeded in focusing national attention on 

the plight of migrant farm workers and the unchecked 

power of western growers. A group of religious 

leaders, labor leaders, and progressive politicians 

formed the National Advisory Committee on Farm 

Labor and began to lobby AFL-CIO President 

George Meany. When Father Thomas McCullough 

failed to persuade Meany to act,, he returned to 

Stockton, and with the help of Dolores Huerta 

organized the Agricultural Workers Association 

(AWA). 

Internal politics of the AFL-CIO influenced its 

decision to become active in organizing farm labor. 

Meany knew AFL-CIO Vice President Walter 

Reuther had an increasing interest in organizing 

agricultural labor, and, as the two men fought for 

control of the AFL-CIO, Meany hoped to prevent 

Reuther from turning farm workers into a personal 

power base (Ganz 2000, Levy 1975, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997). 

In February 1959, Meany decided to charter the 

Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee 

(AWOC). Meany allocated funding to the AWOC, 

but his appointment of Norman Smith (a former 

organizer of mid-western autoworkers) as director 

combined with his insistence on quick results at the 

local level did not bode well for the organization’s 

long-term success (Ganz 2000, Ferriss and Sandoval 

1997). To Smith’s credit, he recognized the talent of 

Dolores Huerta, who rose to the position of AWOC 

secretary-treasurer after the AWA became a part of 

the AWOC. Huerta, in turn, recruited Larry Itliong, a 

Filipino farm worker who had risen to a position of 

leadership in UCAPAWA during the late 1930s. 

Still, the AWOC’s top leadership demonstrated a 

poor understanding of the complexities of farm labor 

organizing in California; they often ignored the 

advice of Huerta (who left the union within a year) 

and that of Ernesto Galarza (who served on the 

AWOC staff until he quit in frustration). They also 

failed to gain a following among Mexican American 

farm workers, the single largest group of farm 

workers in California. By the early 1960s, the 

faltering AWOC leadership would begin to view 

Chavez as a serious rival (Ganz 2000, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997). 

Chavez had been angered and frustrated by the 

CSO’s fear of a territorial dispute with the AFL-CIO 

over the organization of Oxnard farm workers. 

Although he began to think about leaving the CSO, 

his appointment in 1959 as executive director, with 

its promise of greater influence over the CSO agenda, 

convinced Chavez to stay. Chavez moved into the 

CSO headquarters in Los Angeles. His experiences 

in Oxnard confirmed his desire to dedicate himself to 

the farm workers’ struggle, and convinced him that 

he would be capable of organizing a farm labor union 

when the next opportunity arose. The techniques he 

used in Oxnardthe boycott, sit-down strikes, 

marches behind religious images, the use of media, 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 237 

and the lobbying of public officialsrepresented 

both old and new community-organizing and labororganizing tactics (Levy 1975, (Ganz 2000, Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1997). 

During his three year tenure as executive director of 

the CSO, Chavez guided the organization to 

continued gains, developed relationships with 

members of the Mexican American Political 

Association and other civil rights activists, and 

earned a reputation as one of the most important civil 

rights leaders in the American West. By 1962, the 

CSO had grown to twenty-two chapters, helped tens 

of thousands of Chicanos register to vote, led 

thousands of Mexican immigrants through the 

naturalization process and provided Chicanos with a 

sense of power within the political system (Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1997, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 

1997). 

Chavez continued to unsuccessfully lobby the CSO 

board of directors to support his plans for a farm 

workers’ union. Displeased with continued 

opposition from the board and with the general drift 

of the CSO away from the working class and the 

fields, Cesar “started a revolt” (Jensen and 

Hammerback 2002). 

In the winter of 1962, the CSO board of directors 

finally agreed to support a pilot project to organize 

farm workers, but with two conditions: that Chavez’s 

salary be paid from farm workers’ dues and that a 

majority of the CSO membership vote to endorse the 

project. The membership considered the proposal at 

the annual convention in March 1962 but voted 

against it, wanting to maintain the CSO’s focus on 

urban and civic issues, not on the plight of rural 

labor. On the final day of the convention, Chavez 

resigned. A couple of weeks later, Cesar moved his 

family from Los Angeles to Delano to begin the 

creation of a viable agricultural labor union (Levy 

1975, Taylor 1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

IV. The Organization of the Farm 

Workers Association in California, 

1962-1965

Although Cesar’s decision to leave the CSO came as 

a surprise to almost everyone involved with the 

organization, he had discussed the idea with Helen 

Chavez in advance. He warned her that the task of 

forming a union would require a great deal of work 

and sacrifice and the prospects were daunting. 

Despite numerous attempts over the previous eighty 

years, farm workers in California had been unable to 

overcome the obstacles set up by growers and the 

politicians, courts, and law enforcement officials who 

supported them. They had been unable to form a 

union strong enough to counterbalance the power of 

the agricultural industry. In confronting this history, 

Chavez was challenging a deeply entrenched way of 

life, a system that benefited growers but denied farm 

workers a larger share of the industry’s wealth, a 

measure of security for their families and even 

challenged their dignity.

More immediately, Cesar and Helen had no income 

and eight children to support; nonetheless Chavez 

had decided to move forward with his plans. 

Between 1962 and 1965 he worked to build the 

National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), a 

forerunner to the United Farm Workers (UFW). As 

this section of the study reveals, Chavez had help. 

His wife and children made sacrifices large and 

small, and Helen eventually accepted a position 

working for the union. Dolores Huerta and Gilbert 

Padilla left the CSO not long after Cesar did in order 

to become co-leaders of the effort. They were joined 

by Cesar’s brother Richard, his cousin Manuel, Rev. 

Jim Drake, and others. Just as important, Chavez had 

developed a vision for the union built on a solid grasp 

of the history of efforts to create and sustain an 

agricultural labor union. This vision was turning into 

a reality when Filipino farm workers affiliated with 

the AWOC unexpectedly began the Delano grape 

strike in 1965. 

When Cesar decided to leave the CSO, he and Helen 

chose Delano for a number of reasons. Their family 

network in Delano provided them with the support to 

take the risks required to organize a farm workers’ 

union. Chavez also had tactical reasons for picking 

Delano. He knew that the nature of agricultural 

production in the area had enabled the stabilization of 

Delano’s agricultural labor force. By the 1960s, the 

area’s vast acres of grapes (which require constant 

tending) provided year-round employment for several 

thousand Mexican-American and Filipino farm 

workers (London and Anderson 1970, Dunne 1971, 

Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Hammerback and Jensen 

1998). 

The roots of the Delano grape industry reach back as 

far as 1873, the year in which the Southern Pacific 

Railroad reached Delano and provided a connection 

with urban markets. The cultivation of grapes on a 

large scale began in the 1920s when Joseph Di 

Giorgio bought thousands of acres of land and drilled 

hundreds of feet into the earth to tap the water table 

with powerful electric pumps. During the late 1930s, 

Delano also attracted dozens of smaller-scale 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 238 

Yugoslavian growers, most of whom came from 

families that had tended grapes along the Adriatic 

Sea. These smaller-scale growers set the tone for 

civic and social life in Delano (Dunne 1971, Kushner 

1975, Scharlin and Villanueva 2000). 

The completion of Highway 99 through Delano 

reinforced the town’s social and spatial divisions 

previously marked by the railroad tracks. By the 

time Cesar and Helen returned to Delano in 1962, the 

town of fourteen thousand residents had come to 

resemble other towns up and down the valley in its 

social order and spatial form. Delano had a small 

business district that ran parallel to the highway. 

The north and east sides of Delano were the middleclass residential areas where most of the town’s white 

population lived. This part of town also included the 

high school, the municipal park, the hospital, an 

International Harvester retailer, a branch of the Bank 

of America, a furniture store, and the Stardust Motel. 

Across the tracks to the west sat the last of the honkytonk bars, several cheap hotels and boardinghouses, 

liquor stores, and draw-poker parlors. Further west 

were the working-class residential areas where most 

Mexican Americans, Filipinos, African Americans, 

Puerto Ricans, and Arab Americans made their 

homes (Dunne 1971). 

Among those living on the west side of Delano were 

many of the area’s farm workers, those who worked 

for Di Giorgio and other growers. Because this work 

required a stable, year round and semi-skilled work 

force, vineyard workers were able to command 

higher wages than migrant farm workers received and 

achieve a measure of economic security. Chavez felt 

that Delano-area farm workers were in a better 

position to support organizing efforts and would be 

easier to hold together as a bargaining force 

(Hammerback and Jensen 1998, Dunne 1971, 

Matthiessen 1973). 

FORMATION OF THE NFWA

When Cesar and Helen arrived in Delano in April 

1962, the cheapest house they could find to rent was 

a wood-frame house on the east side of Delano on 

Kensington Street. The house was modest in size, 

and its appearance made it stand out against middle 

class section of town’s tidy homes. The Chavez 

family lived in the house for eight years, during 

which time Cesar first articulated his vision for a 

farm workers’ union. The Chavez’s, Dolores Huerta, 

other organizers, and thousands of farm workers 

made sacrifices to create what would become the 

United Farm Workers (Matthiessen 1973, Griswold 

del Castillo and Garcia 1995, Taylor 1975, Coplon 

1984). 

Chavez’s vision for a farm workers’ union had 

developed during his years with the CSO, but his 

ideas also were shaped by his understanding of 

agricultural labor history and his desire to create a 

viable alternative to the AWOC. Cesar wanted his 

organization to be built through the community 

organizing techniques he had developed in the CSO, 

blending elements of the ethnic labor associations 

and mutualistas (mutual-aid societies) prevalent in 

barrios and colonias throughout the West and 

Southwest (Ganz 2000, Griswold del Castillo and 

Garcia 1995). 

Chavez admired organizers and farm workers who 

had suffered through poverty and violence in their 

efforts to form unions, but he recognized many of 

their mistakes. He concluded, for example, that the 

first weeks of a strike were crucial. More important, 

Chavez saw that most organizers thought that they 

couldn’t organize unless they struck at the same time 

(Levy 1975). Chavez became convinced of the 

importance of organizing firstdeveloping a real 

community of farm workers and providing mutual 

benefits to strengthen itbefore pushing for 

contracts and calling for strikes. In this sense, he 

translated the CSO’s community-organizing tactics 

into a labor-organizing strategy. 

During the first eighteen months of its existence in 

1959 and 1960, the AWOC led more than 150 strikes 

and gained some wage increases, but due to a lack of 

foundation among farm workers, the union lacked the 

strength to sustain strikes and secure contracts. As 

part of the same strategy, the AWOC organized by 

going through labor contractors rather than going into 

the fields among farm workers themselves. As 

Dolores Huerta later pointed out, this was one of 

AWOC’s biggest mistakes (Levy 1975, Jensen and 

Hammerback 2002, Ganz 2000, Ferriss and Sandoval 

1997, Dunne 1971, Majka and Majka 1982). 

“Once in Delano,” Chavez recalled, “the first thing I 

did was draw a map by hand of all the towns between 

Arvin and Stockton, eighty-six of them, including 

farming camps” (Levy 1975, Taylor 1975). Cesar 

decided to visit all of them, crisscrossing the San 

Joaquin Valley in his old station wagon, talking to 

farm workers and gauging their reactions to his idea 

of a union. As he had done during his days as a CSO 

organizer, Chavez spent a lot of time on the road and 

saw little of his family. “It’s very difficult to ask 

your wife and children to make a sacrifice,” Cesar 

acknowledged. “...but I had no difficulty in that 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 239 

decision, [because] Helen wanted to do it” (Levy 

1975, Taylor 1975). 

Indeed, Helen Chavez’s willingness to work in the 

vineyards and fields while also taking care of eight 

children helped make Cesar’s work possible. Helen 

remembered working ten-hour days, five days a 

week, earning about eighty-five cents an hour. From 

her perspective, “the beginning of the union was the 

roughest time we had.” Still, she tried to shield Cesar 

from her worries and frustrations. 

Cesar and Helen struggled to make ends meet during 

the first months of organizing the new union which 

was called the Farm workers Association (FWA), but 

family, friends, and new supporters became 

committed to La Causa. Even though Cesar’s brother 

Richard worked full-time as a carpenter, he helped 

out when he could and offered construction work 

when Cesar was short on money. Cesar’s sister Rita 

and her husband mortgaged their home and loaned 

Cesar and Helen some money. And his cousin 

Manuel gave up a job as a car salesman in San Diego 

in order to join Cesar in Delano. Manuel’s 

impatience with being poor and hungry led the men 

to the doors of strangers, asking for food. Cesar 

quickly realized that this way of meeting farm 

workersseeking and accepting their 

hospitalityoffered another organizing tool (Levy 

1975, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995). 

This discovery led Cesar to the home of Julio 

Hernandez, a farm worker from Corcoran who 

quickly became one of the FWA’s strongest 

advocates and most successful organizers, eventually 

becoming a union vice-president. Like other farm 

workers whom Chavez met in the early 1960s, 

Hernández initially was skeptical, but Cesar won him 

over and the enthusiastic organizer went on to draw 

more than three hundred farm workers into the union, 

more than any other recruiter in the valley. Fred 

Ross continued to give Cesar his support, and the two 

often met to discuss problems and strategies. Dolores 

Huerta and Gil Padilla, Cesar’s colleagues on the 

CSO staff agreed to leave their positions with the 

CSO to become co-founders of the FWA (Levy 1975, 

Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Taylor 1975). 

Huerta had become prominent as a CSO staff 

member and as one of the nation’s foremost Chicana 

trade-union activists by the early 1960s holding 

positions on the California Welfare Commission and 

on an AFL-CIO advisory commission. Federal 

officials often consulted her about issues of race and 

poverty. Cesar asked her to join him in founding the 

FWA, but he expected her to give up her CSO salary 

and to move with her seven children from Stockton to 

Delano. Like Gil, Dolores remained on the CSO staff 

after Cesar resignedshe would have had no income 

otherwisebut she began to organize for the FWA 

on the side. Cesar pressured Huerta to leave the 

CSO, but he could not offer her any pay. Huerta 

wanted to leave the CSO and work full-time for the 

FWA. She had misgivings over the conflict of 

interest presented by her employment with the CSO 

which refused to support the work of organizing 

agricultural labor. Dolores decided to sacrifice her 

salary, join Cesar full-time and moved to Delano in 

1964 (Taylor 1975, Rose 2002, Levy 1975). 

Another of Cesar’s contacts from his CSO days was 

Rev. Chris Hartmire, the director of an 

interdenominational group known as the California 

Migrant Ministry (CMM). The CMM had a long 

history of doing charitable work among the state’s 

farm workers, and Hartmire encouraged Cesar’s 

efforts. More important, he decided to assign Rev. 

Jim Drake and his wife Susan to work with Cesar in 

Delano and continue to pay Drake’s full salary. The 

minister’s increasingly avid outreach efforts among 

Protestants and his administrative assistance would 

prove invaluable (Levy 1975, Griswold del Castillo 

and Garcia 1995). 

Many individuals helped shape the FWA, but six of 

themCesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Gil Padilla, 

Manuel Chavez, Julio Hernández, and Jim 

Drakeformed the team that created the union. As 

Cesar explained, this small group “began to form this 

really close, really tight community. We began to set 

rules, not written, but understood. We wanted only 

people with a real commitment” (Levy 1975). 

Dolores’s commitment paralleled Cesar’s. In the 

mid-1970s she observed that her thirteen years of 

organizing, disregard for her personal life, and 

constricted involvement in the lives of her children 

resulted in her life being the union. Huerta’s 

commitment took time and a great deal of struggle 

and sacrifice. After her second divorce in 1961, 

Huerta fought for custody of her children,. 

Fortunately, family members and friends offered their 

help. Huerta took on translation and teaching work 

and even harvest-time work in the fields in addition 

to her work for the FWA. Yet this sometimes was 

not enough to provide what she needed. Still, 

Dolores embraced her work and her leadership role in 

the FWA (Dunne 1971, Levy 1975, Rose 1990a, 

Rose 1990b, Rose 2002, Fujita-Rony 2002, Baer and 

Matthews 1974, Coburn 1976). 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 240 

By the end of the spring of 1962, the team had begun 

to develop a strategy for promoting the FWA. First, 

they chose to call their organization an “association” 

and focused on the services it would provide. This 

reflected Chavez’s theory of organizing and his firm 

belief that support would be rewarded with loyalty. 

Second, they produced hundreds of thousands of 

fliers with a questionnaire that asked farm workers 

for their names, addresses, and wages they thought 

they deserved. As the questionnaires began coming 

in, they provided contacts for setting up house 

meetingsthe final part of Chavez’s organizing 

strategy. Cesar ran these house meetings differently 

than he had as a CSO organizer because he wanted 

farm workers to tell him what their concerns were 

and what services they needed. Chavez was 

committed to creating a union that would be guided 

from the bottom-up. This meant delaying any 

thoughts of strikes and contracts. At the house 

meetings, farm workers felt free to talk about 

economic matters such as wages and the price of 

staples such as rice and beans, which they often had 

to purchase from company stores. They also aired 

frustrations about work conditions and the abuses 

they suffered at the hands of labor contractors 

(Taylor 1975). 

Chavez and the other members of the organizing 

team began to plan for a founding convention and 

continued to recruit farm workers, attend house 

meetings, and help solve problems throughout San 

Joaquin Valley. Soon they were helping farm 

workers deal with police harassment, nonpayment of 

wages, workmen’s compensation issues, and poor 

service at county hospitals. By the fall of 1962, 

Chavez and the other organizers had built support 

among enough farm labor communities to anticipate 

a successful convention (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, 

Levy 1975). 

The convention was held in Fresno where the team’s 

plan was presented. The Farm Workers Association 

would lobby the governor’s office to establish a 

minimum wage for farm labor of $1.50 an hour and 

to recognize farm workers’ right to unemployment 

insurance. The FWA would avoid promoting itself as 

a union, but it would advocate for collective 

bargaining rights. It would establish services such as 

a life insurance plan, a credit union, a co-op, and a 

hiring hall. The FWA would adopt a constitution and 

elect officers, and it would set dues at $3.50 per 

month. The 287 convention participants embraced 

this plan and elected Cesar Chavez to the office of 

president; Dolores Huerta, Gil Padilla, Julio 

Hernández, and Rodrigo Terronez to the office of 

vice-president; and Antonio Orendain to the office of 

secretary-treasurer. They also accepted the proposed 

level of dues. The only real debate revolved around 

the union’s flag. When Manuel unveiled the 

proposed flagwith its simple black thunderbird set 

against a white circle on a red flagmany 

convention participants gasped. Some thought the 

flag was Communistic, others that it too closely 

resembled the Nazi flag, and all of them clamored for 

an explanation. Finally Manuel told them that the 

black eagle represented the dark situation of the farm 

worker, the white circle signified hope, and the red 

background stood for all of the hard work and 

sacrifice that the union’s members would have to 

contribute in order to gain justice for farm workers. 

The participants adopted the flag and chose “Viva La 

Causa” as their motto (Ferriss and Sandavol 1997, 

Levy 1975). 

During the following months, Chavez and the other 

officers worked to implement their plan. Cesar 

returned to Delano to continue handling cases and to 

draft the union’s constitution. Gil and Dolores hired 

a lawyer to write articles of incorporation. Dolores 

then headed to Sacramento with Manuel to begin 

lobbying for the FWA program while Gil began 

working on a life insurance program. Setting up a 

credit union proved easy by comparison. Richard 

Chavez had built a small one-bedroom house in 

Delano and Cesar realized that the house could be 

used as collateral to secure a loan and finance the 

credit union. The credit union opened and, at the 

suggestion of Dolores Huerta, Helen was recruited to 

manage its books (Levy 1975, Ferriss and Sandoval, 

Rose 2002, Taylor 1975, Rose 1990). 

By early 1963 the FWA was a successfully 

functioning organization. It operated under a 

constitution, collected dues, and offered a variety of 

services to its membership. Its offices eventually 

moved from the Chavez home to an old building 

located at 102 Albany Street, in the far southwest 

corner of Delano. Richard Chavez donated his labor 

to fix up the place, and the FWA had a party when he 

finished (Levy 1975, Taylor 1975). 

Still, the FWA struggled to recruit members and to 

collect dues. Chavez did not want the union to 

become reliant on outsiders and their money so 

collection of dues was important to him. Just as 

important, he saw that “once a guy had paid a whole 

year’s dues, $42.50, if anybody said anything wrong 

about the union or anybody in the union, that guy was 

like a lion. He had commitment” (Levy 1975). The 

commitment and the solidarity it fostered would be 

crucial if the FWA expected to have a chance of 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 241 

getting growers to raise wages, improve working 

conditions, and sign contracts. 

Two events during the first half of 1965 

demonstrated that the FWA had the strength to stand 

up for its members against the pressure of growers, 

labor contractors, policemen and local government 

officials. The union’s first strike occurred in May 

1965 in response to broken promises regarding wages 

to rose field workers. The FWA organized the 

workers for about a month and called a strike. The 

company countered by importing a group of unskilled 

workers from Mexico. Workers returned to work 

after the fourth day with concessions of a small wage 

increase. No contract was signed, however, and the 

wage increase remained nothing more than a 

temporary concession (Taylor 1975). 

The union also supported a rent strike near 

Porterville. Jim Drake and Gil Padilla, both of whom 

were paid by CMM but worked in conjunction with 

the FWA, found out that the Tulare County Housing 

Authority was generating a sizable profit from the 

Woodville and Linnell labor camps. The county 

health department had condemned the camps in 1965, 

but the housing authority continued to run the camps 

anyway. With the help of Cesar, Dolores, CMM 

worker David Havens, and a few other volunteers, 

Jim and Gil organized a summer-long rent strike 

against the Housing Authority and the J. D. Martin 

Ranch, where most of the Woodville rent strikers 

were employed. While this strike was quite 

improvised, it was notable for its effectiveness in 

raising awareness of the FWA. The black eagle of 

the FWA flag appeared in public for the first time. 

By the end of the summer, one new supportera 

Berkeley undergraduate named Doug Adairhad 

decided to move to Delano to join editor Bill Esher 

on the staff of the FWA’s newspaper, El Malcriado

(meaning “the unruly one”) , which had debuted the 

previous December (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, 

Taylor 1975, Levy 1975). 

As the third anniversary of the FWA founding 

convention approached, Chavez thought that the 

union was on the right track. However, its treasury 

was low and the union received no support from 

national labor organizations. The rose-workers’ 

strike and the rent strike revealed the union’s 

continued weaknesses. The FWA had managed to 

survive for three years and had grown to twelve 

hundred members. Chavez thought the FWA would 

be ready to sustain strikes and win contracts by the 

fall harvest of 1968 (Levy 1975). Meanwhile, 

Filipino farm workers in Delano, most of whom were 

AWOC members, voted to go on strike in September 

1965, beginning what would become a five-year 

campaign to bring the California table-grape 

industryand 70,000 farm workersunder union 

contracts. 

V. The Delano Grape Strike in 

Kern County, California and 

Across the U.S., 1965-1970 

During the years of the Delano grape strike, Chavez 

drew on all of the lessons he had learned and the 

experiences he had gone through since his boyhood. 

The years of the Delano strike also revealed the 

strength of the team of organizers and labor leaders 

that surrounded Chavez. If Helen Chavez, Dolores 

Huerta, Gil Padilla, Richard Chavez, Manuel Chavez, 

Jim Drake, and other activists (particularly Filipino 

labor organizers Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz) 

were the right people to join Cesar in leading the 

Delano grape strike, September 1965 was the right 

time for that strike to begin. 

This section of the study focuses on the most 

important period in the modern history of the farm 

labor movement in the American West. It highlights 

the central role that Cesar Chavez played in the strike 

but it also reveals how other leaders, union members, 

and urban supporters continued to define and 

strengthen La Causa. It also points to the importance 

of historical context. Several events and 

developments during the 1960s cleared a space that 

the farm labor movement never before had been able 

to claim and use. 

Conditions favorable to the farm labor movement had 

been developing since the late 1950s. The array of 

progressive and pro-labor groups that had pressured 

the AFL-CIO to create the AWOC in 1959 continued 

to mount a campaign against the Bracero Program. 

Ernesto Galarza remained the most vocal critic of the 

program, but other organizations applied increasing 

pressure on Congress to better regulate the program 

and to let it expire in 1961. The successes of the civil 

rights movement and the election of John F. Kennedy 

also gave members of these organizations hope that 

American society was entering a new era, one that 

would see improvement in the lives of migrant farm 

workers, racial minorities, and the working poor. 

The broadcast of Edward R. Murrow’s powerful 

documentary, Harvest of Shame, in November 1960 

attracted further support for their efforts (Majka and 

Majka 1982). 

Congress voted in 1961 to extend the life of the 

Bracero Program for two more years, but in March 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 242 

1963 the House voted against extending the program 

an additional two years. Though the Kennedy 

administration pushed through a final one-year 

extension, the Bracero Program ended on December 

31, 1964. 

The following spring, Chavez called some of 

California’s Chicano political leaders, labor 

organizers, and civil rights activists to Delano to talk 

about their window of opportunity. Chavez and his 

fellow participants in the farm labor movement were 

inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr., and others who 

fought and sacrificed for civil rights. They saw 

commonalities between their campaigns as did 

supporters of the civil rights movement in the cities 

and on the college campuses beyond Delano. Both 

King and Chavez were strong, charismatic leaders, 

who were dedicated to inter-racial alliances and 

nonviolent resistance. Both were willing to serve 

their causes as symbols and spokesmen, however, 

they understood the necessity of grassroots 

organizing and empowerment (Griswold del Castillo 

and Garcia 1995). 

LARRY ITLIONG INITIATES THE DELANO 

GRAPE STRIKE

In the spring of 1965, Secretary of Labor Willard 

Wirtz declared that braceros could be imported under 

Public Law 414 on an “emergency” basis if a labor 

shortage were to arise. He set $1.40 an hour as the 

braceros’ minimum wage. When grape growers in 

the Imperial and Coachella Valleys subsequently 

offered their Filipino workers only $1.25 an hour, 

Larry Itliong and Ben Gines of the AWOC demanded 

the same pay as that offered to braceros. After short 

strikes, the growers agreed to their demand. When 

the grape harvest moved north into the Arvin area, 

however, growers decided to set $1.25 an hour as the 

prevailing wage. Filipino farm workers again went 

on strike, but this time they lost (Majka and Majka 

1982). 

Larry Itliong, whom Dolores Huerta had recruited 

into the AWOC, was prepared to renew the fight 

when the grape harvest reached Delano, but he knew 

that the area presented a more challenging situation. 

The Delano agricultural economy employed a stable 

labor force, and many of the Filipino farm workers 

had lived in Delano for thirty years. Still, most of 

these farm workers were aging bachelors who had 

nowhere to live except in the labor camps located on 

Delano ranches. If the AWOC called a strike, 

growers could respond by shutting off the electricity 

and gas to their bunkhouses or by evicting them. 

Itliong approached Chavez for support. Chavez told 

them that the organization was a union, but that it 

was in no position to initiate a strike over the wage 

issue (Taylor 1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Levy 

1975). 

Itliong’s efforts to secure support from the AWOC 

leadership were rebuffed. George Meany’s 

disappointment with the organization had led him to 

close down the AWOC in the early 1960s and 

reactivate it nine months later with a new staff of 

professionals and a new national director, Al Green. 

In the fall of 1965, Green was trying to build a 

membership base large enough to justify the AFLCIO’s investment, which had ballooned to one 

million dollars. Green had no interest in grape 

workers and was, working behind the scenes with the 

Teamsters to organize citrus grove and packinghouse 

workers. Ronald Taylor notes that, as far as Green 

was concerned, “the Filipinos were on their own” 

(Scharlin and Villanueva 2000, Ferriss and Sandoval 

1997). 

Itliong was cautious when Filipino farm workers in 

Delano wanted to strike. He sent letters to nine 

growers asking for the wages that many of them had 

paid at their operations in southern California, but his 

letters were ignored. Finally, on September 8, 1965, 

the members of the Delano-area local of the AWOC 

met for a strike vote at the Filipino Community Hall. 

Itliong offered a series of warnings about the 

sacrifices that could be involved, but the majority of 

Filipino farm workers courageous vote to go on 

strike. Former UFW Vice-President Philip Vera 

Cruz characterized the vote as “one of the most 

significant and famous decisions ever made in the 

entire history of the farm workers’ labor struggles in 

California” (Scharlin and Villanueva 2000, Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1997). 

THE FWA JOINS THE DELANO GRAPE 

STRIKE

Chavez knew that Itliong had been thinking about the 

possibility of a strike, but the Filipino labor leader 

had not informed anyone in the FWA that he would 

hold a vote. Cesar never considered breaking the 

strike, but he was not sure if the FWA was ready to 

join it. Helen Chavez was more certain. When Cesar 

consulted his wife, she asked, “Well, what are we? 

Aren’t we a union? That’s what we’re a union for, 

right?” (Scharlin and Villanueva 2000, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997). After speaking with Helen, Chavez 

along with the rest of the FWA board offered Itliong 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 243 

their unconditional support, but told him that they 

would need to call a general meeting of the 

membership in order to hold a vote. Chavez set the 

date of the meeting for September 16, Mexican 

Independence Day. 

While the strike attracted two thousand 

workersmost of whom were Filipinoand spread 

to twenty ranches. FWA organizers furiously 

planned their general meeting. They inserted fliers in 

El Malcriado (the union’s newspaper) and distributed 

leaflets in Delano, McFarland, Earlimart, and other 

valley towns, announcing the meeting and 

proclaiming “Now is when every worker, without 

regard to race, color, and nationality, should support 

the strike and under no circumstances work in the 

ranches that have been struck” (Ferriss and Sandoval 

1997). Looking for a place large enough to hold the 

meeting, Cesar turned to Father Francis Alabart, the 

pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in 

Delano where the Chavez family attended Mass. 

On the night of September 16, 1965, as many as 

fifteen hundred men, women, and children crowded 

into the church hall, filled the doorways and 

windows, and gathered outside. The crowd 

overwhelmingly voted to strike. Gil Padilla opened 

the meeting and introduced speakers who recounted 

the history of the AWOC strike and explained the 

stakes. Chavez spoke at length, stressing the 

seriousness of the decision to join the strike and the 

need for nonviolent action modeled after that of the 

civil rights movement. He then invited farm workers 

in the audience to express their thoughts after which, 

when Chavez asked for a strike vote, they 

overwhelmingly raised their hands, and their voices. 

They chanted: ‘Huelga! Huelga! Huelga! Huelga!’ 

and began to clap in rhythm.” The sentiment was 

clear. Within a few days, organizers had counted 

twenty-seven hundred cards signed by farm workers 

authorizing the FWA to represent them. On Monday, 

September 20, the FWA (newly renamed the 

National Farm Workers Association or NFWA) 

struck thirty Delano-area ranches (Taylor 1975). 

Delano growers thought that Father Alabart had 

betrayed them. Growers pressured the hierarchy of 

the Catholic Church to distance itself from Chavez 

and the farm labor movement. The Church’s failure 

to do more to help farm workers disappointed and 

angered Chavez. He had appreciated the efforts of 

Father McDonnell and a few other priests over the 

years, but his interactions with the California Migrant 

Ministry made him wonder why the Catholic Church 

was not doing the same. César and other Catholics 

working in the CSO and the FWA asked “why the 

Protestants come out here and help people, demand 

nothing, and give all their time to serving farm 

workers, while our own parish priests stay in their 

churches. . . ?” (Etulain 2002). Chavez would 

remain critical of the Church at least until March 

1966, when the Catholic Bishops of California 

publicly endorsed the Delano strike. Nevertheless, 

Catholicism itself would provide a vital source of 

strength for Chavez and a unifying force for the farm 

labor movement throughout the years of the Delano 

grape strike (Etulain 2002, Kushner 1975, Day 1971). 

The NFWA leadership had asked the membership to 

wait until September 20 to strike so they could 

prepare. Chavez, still unsure that the NFWA could 

survive a large strike, rushed out letters seeking 

negotiations with growers or mediation from state 

officials which were ignored. NFWA leaders wanted 

to call upon CMM Director Chris Hartmire for 

support and supplies. Chavez arranged a meeting 

with Al Green at the Stardust Motel in Delano on 

September 19. As Cesar explained, “I proposed that 

we have a joint strike committee, a joint finance 

committee...We said we would recognize him as the 

leader of the strike” (Levy 1975). Green balked, 

saying he could not agree to anything without 

authorization from AFL-CIO headquarters (which he 

refused to call). Chavez’s proposal marked a 

potential turning point in the history of the farm labor 

movement. (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Levy 1975). 

Despite Green’s obstinance, Larry Itliong agreed to a 

measure of cooperation with the NFWA. The union 

lacked money to fund a strike and sufficient facilities 

to serve as strike headquarters, but the AWOC had 

resources to share. The Filipino Community Hall on 

1457 Glenwood Street in Delano had been converted 

into the AWOC’s strike headquarters. The hall had a 

large meeting room, large kitchens, a dining room, 

office space, and rooms for storage. Soon after the 

NFWA strike vote, Itliong invited the Chicano farm 

workers to share the Filipino Community Hall. The 

NFWA retained its own offices at First and Albany, 

but it also set up a small office in the hall and rented 

an adjoining “huelga house.” The food served to 

striking farm workers at the Filipino Community Hall 

quickly came to reflect the inter-ethnic nature of their 

alliance. Tacos and tamales began to show up next to 

platters of lumpia and adobo dishes in the dining 

room as the hall continued to offer a hot meal every 

day for hungry pickets (Taylor 1975, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Dunne 1971). 

The Filipino Community Hall took on great historical 

significance during the Delano grape strike. Not only 

was it associated with important events, including the 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 244 

AWOC strike vote in September 1965, a pivotal 

speech by UAW President Walter Reuther in 

December 1965, and Chavez’s announcement of his 

first public fast in February 1968, the hall highlights 

the important roles of Filipino farm workers who 

helped lead the strike and the Filipino community 

that helped support it (Fujita-Rony 2002). 

Philip Vera Cruz once stated that “all that has been 

written about the union has been focused on the 

Chicanos . . . and all the resources of the union that 

were spent in organizing were [spent on] . . . the 

Chicanos” (Scharlin and Villanueva 2000). 

Although neither part of Vera Cruz’s statement is 

entirely true, the sentiment it conveys did spring from 

the verifiable tendency of scholars, writers, and the 

general public to associate the farm labor movement 

and its leadership exclusively with Chavez and other 

Chicanos. Yet such distortions of historical memory 

contradict the spirit that Chavez himself tried to 

instill in the movement. Chavez spent a great deal of 

time during the Delano grape strike at the Filipino 

Community Hall, and he encouraged Chicano farm 

labor to do so as well. Growers and labor contractors 

often segregated Filipino and Chicano farm workers 

into separate picking crews and exploited ethnic 

animosities to break up labor disputes. At the 

Filipino Community Hall, however, Filipino and 

Chicano pickets began to develop a strong sense of 

unity. Soon after the strike began, the Filipino 

Community Hall became the scene of Friday night 

meetings of all AWOC and NFWA members (Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1997, Scharlin and Villanueva 2000, 

Taylor 1975). 

Inter-racial alliances, as well as alliances with 

religious groups, civil rights activists, and student 

groups, were crucial after September 1965. Chavez’s 

immediate concern, though, was what would happen 

in the first few weeks of picketing. By the end of the 

first day of the strike, more than twelve hundred 

workers had gone on strike but only two hundred had 

joined picket lines at vineyards spanning an area of 

about four hundred square miles around Delano, 

Earlimart, and McFarland. 

The NFWA quickly developed a system of “roving 

picket lines.” Pickets would form a car caravan 

behind a picket captain, who would lead the way to a 

ranch location scouted the previous day. At the 

entrance to the ranch, pickets would gather with signs 

and flags and await the arrival of the first workers. 

As workers approached, they were asked to join the 

picket line or at least withhold their labor from the 

ranch being struck By mid-morning, after all the 

sympathetic workers had turned around and the other 

esquiroles (“scabs”) had crossed the picket lines, the 

car caravans would drive the backroads looking for 

work crews. When one was spotted, the pickets 

would gather again and urge workers to support their 

strike with shouts of “Hay huelga aqui!” (“There is a 

strike here!”) or, in Tagalog, “Mag labas kayo, 

kabayan!” (“Come out of there, 

countrymen!”)(Taylor 1975, Ganz 2000). 

“The picket line is where a man makes his 

commitment,” Chavez said in the late 1960s, “and the 

longer he’s on the picket line, the stronger the 

commitment.” For Chavez, the picket line was a 

recruiting tool, an organizing tactic, a classroom, and 

a means of claiming space. California’s vast ranches 

might have been the private property of wealthy 

growers, but the picket line allowed farm workers to 

assert their control over public space. Chicana farm 

workers asserted such control from the beginning of 

the NFWA involvement in the strike. As the strike 

wore on, some farm labor families began to decide 

that the men should look for work on nonstruck 

ranches while the women stayed to represent their 

families on the picket lines (Ferriss and Sandoval 

1997, Matthiessen 1973). 

During the first few weeks of the strike, growers, 

foremen, and law enforcement officers acted 

violently towards those on the picket line. Growers 

and their supporters continued to play down the strike 

publicly, but some growers attacked pickets and 

threatened them with shotguns while law 

enforcement either looked the other way or took 

pickets into “protective custody” (Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Kushner 1975). 

Still, Chavez preached nonviolence. A close 

observer and supporter of the civil rights movement, 

he saw the positive national response to civil rights 

activists’ nonviolence in the face of police brutality 

in Birmingham, Alabama, in April 1963 and in 

Selma, Alabama, two years later. Martin Luther 

King, Jr., and his followers received heightened 

sympathy and support from the public after each of 

these confrontations, and the federal government was 

spurred to action. Chavez’s own commitment to 

pacifism grew from his mother’s teachings and his 

readings of Gandhi, but he cast his insistence that 

pickets resist retaliating against growers’ attacks in 

practical terms (Levy 1975). 

Chavez decided to recruit activists from the civil 

rights movement to teach farm workers nonviolent 

tactics for the picket line. This decision met some 

opposition, but students and other volunteersmany 

of whom participated in the civil rights movement as 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 245 

members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating 

Committee (SNCC) or members of the Congress of 

Racial Equality (CORE)quickly answered 

Chavez’s call (Ganz 2000, Levy 1975, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997). One of the first to do so was 

Marshall Ganz, the future director of the union’s 

international boycott and a future UFW executive 

board member (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

An emphasis on inclusivenessand the union’s need 

for support and publicity from beyond Delanoled 

Cesar, Dolores, and young farm workers such as 

Jessica Govea and Eliseo Medina to college 

campuses, churches, and to meetings of other unions, 

civic groups, and social organizations. When the 

Kern County sheriff directed his deputies on October 

18 to prevent pickets from “disturbing the peace” 

with shouts of “huelga,” Cesar planned to have a 

group of volunteers disobey the order on the same 

day that he was speaking at the University of 

California-Berkeley. Jim Drake recruited a group of 

clergymen and other supporters and notified the 

sheriff’s department, television stations, and 

newspaper reporters of their intention to use the word 

“huelga.” The following day, sheriff’s deputies 

arrested forty-four picketsincluding Helen Chavez, 

Protestant clergymen, and several SNCC and CORE 

volunteersfor chanting “huelga” outside the W. B. 

Camp Ranch. Chavez received word of the arrests 

during his speech on the steps in front of UCBerkeley’s Sproul Hall and announced the news to 

the students in his audience, who began shouting the 

word and contributing cash. After similar speeches at 

San Francisco State University, Mills College in 

Oakland, and Stanford University later that day, 

Cesar returned to Delano with $6,700 and a new 

wave of volunteers. Many of them headed 

immediately to the Kern County Courthouse in 

Bakersfield, where Helen and the others remained in 

jail. As many as 350 people gathered outside the 

courthouse to picket and sing protest songs until 

those arrested were released (Taylor 1975, Rose 

1990, Levy 1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Jensen 

and Hammerback 2002). 

Chavez recognized the importance of such symbolic 

acts of protest and defiance, but no one did more to 

cultivate them than Luis Valdez. The son of farm 

workers, Luis Valdez was born in Delano and lived 

there until he was fourteen. He studied drama at San 

Jose State University and then joined the San 

Francisco Mime Troupe. Valdez was drawn to the 

Delano strike immediately and began a theatrical 

troupe (El Teatro Campesino), that would entertain 

pickets and boost morale (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, 

Levy 1975, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995). 

Valdez attracted enough farm workers to begin 

performing skits at the Friday night meetings at the 

Filipino Community Hall, on the picket lines, and 

along march routes. Luis and Cesar soon discovered 

that the skits, that entertained and educated, were as 

meaningful for the actors as they were for their 

audiences. “I found out that one of the hardest things 

for me to do was to get campesinos to act like 

growers,” Valdez explained. “But the moment that 

they did the boss, they changed. They became better 

organizers. They became confident and in control of 

themselves, and Cesar saw this.” The Teatro became 

a training ground (Galan Productions 1996). 

EMERGENCE OF THE GRAPE BOYCOTT

Despite the wave of support and emergence of 

unexpected resources such as El Teatro Campesino, 

the farm workers failed to make any headway with 

the Delano growers before the end of the fall harvest. 

In December, Chavez decided to launch the NFWA’s 

first boycott, targeting the multiple products of the 

Schenley Corporation, the second largest grower 

operation in Delano. In December 1965, Chavez 

assigned Jim Drake and Mike Miller (a SNCC 

organizer from San Francisco) to organize the 

boycott. They in turn recruited a staff of young farm 

workers and accepted SNCC’s offer to help 

coordinate the campaign. During the next few 

months these union members and volunteers set up 

boycotts in about a dozen cities in California and 

elsewhere in the West. 

These first boycotts were narrower in scope, more 

concentrated on the West Coast, and shorter in 

duration than the famous table-grape and lettuce 

boycotts of the later 1960s and 1970s. They relied 

heavily on white supporters who lived in the cities 

and only secondarily on farm workers themselves. 

Nevertheless, the first boycotts helped the union learn 

valuable lessons, and increased the movement’s 

national exposure (Rose 1990). 

Two other developments, one in December 1965 and 

the other in March 1966, helped make the strike a 

national event. Walter Reuther, the formidable 

president of the UAW and vice president of the AFLCIO, visited Delano on December 16 and almost 

immediately joined Chavez and Itliong at the head of 

a march through the streets of downtown Delano in 

defiance of a city council resolution passed the day 

before that prohibited demonstrations and marches. 

Reuther gave a rousing speech to hundreds of 

marchers, and members of the media and then met 

with Delano’s mayor and city manager, telling them 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 246 

that “sooner or later these guys are going to win” 

(Levy 1975). 

That evening, more than five hundred farm workers 

and supporters arrived for a rally at the Filipino 

Community Hall which was overflowing. Chavez, 

Larry Itliong, and Al Green joined Reuther on the 

stage, and when Chavez rose to a thunderous 

applause Reuther began to see the strength of the 

NFWA having arrived in Delano prepared to deal 

primarily with the AWOC. Reuther began his own 

speech by declaring: “This is not your strike, this is 

our strike!” The crowd roared back: “Huelga! Viva 

Reuther! Viva La Causa!” Reuther then announced 

that the AFL-CIO had voted to support the strike. 

Reuther’s decision to split the financial support 

equally between the AWOC and the NFWA gave the 

NFWA its first recognition and substantial means of 

support from the wider labor movement. Dozens of 

reporters from television and newspapers across the 

country covered the day’s events. The following 

morning, three times the usual number of farm 

workers joined picket lines in Delano, Los Angeles, 

and San Francisco (Taylor 1975, Kushner 1975). 

When Senator Robert Kennedy came to Delano three 

months later, he publicly embraced Chavez and the 

farm labor movement. Kennedy was a member of 

the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor along 

with Senator Pete Williams and Senator George 

Murphy. Williams, the subcommittee chairman, had 

sponsored bills that would ensure a minimum wage 

for farm labor, collective bargaining rights under the 

National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), tighter 

restrictions on child labor, and tighter control over 

the Farm Labor Placement Service. When the 

NFWA suggested that Williams hold hearings in 

California to bring attention to the bills and the 

Delano strike, he scheduled threein Sacramento, 

Visalia, and Delano on March 14, 15, and 16. 

Chavez was one of the first witnesses called to 

testify. Bishop Hugh Donohoe of Stockton also 

testified that the Catholic Bishops of California, who 

previously had remained silent regarding the strike, 

could find “no compelling reason for excluding farm 

management-labor relations from the National Labor 

Relations Act” (Taylor 1975). This institutional 

support from the Catholic Church was important to 

the striking farm workers, but Catholicism itself 

continued to play a far greater role in the farm labor 

movementas a march to Sacramento in the spring 

of 1966 would demonstrate. 

THE 1966 MARCH TO SACRAMENTO

The idea for the march to Sacramento originated in 

January 1966. NFWA leaders had retreated to a 

supporter’s home in Santa Barbara to evaluate the 

Schenley boycott and figure out how to keep farm 

workers from returning to the vineyards in the spring. 

Chavez, Huerta, Drake, Ganz, Valdez, Vera Cruz and 

a few others met and discussed the concept for a 

march to Sacramento that would pass through most 

of the farm labor towns. Chavez then suggested that 

since the march would coincide with Lent perhaps 

the march should be a pilgrimage which could arrive 

at Sacramento on Easter Sunday. Plans for the march 

were made and on March 17 a group of about 

seventy-five farm workers and thirty supporters 

began what was then the longest protest march in 

U.S. historyfrom the NFWA offices on Albany 

Street, along Highway 99 in Delano, to the steps of 

the state capitol building in Sacramento 250 miles to 

the north (Ganz 2000, Levy 1975). 

The march adopted three themes that Chavez 

suggested: Perigrinación, Penitencia, y Revolución

(“Pilgrimage, Penitence, and Revolution”). These 

themes resonated during the Lenten season, but they 

also reflected Chavez’s continuing emergence as a 

spiritual leader who urged farm workers to use 

spirituality as a source of strength (Levy 1975, 

Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). The march was arduous. 

Only eighty-two men and women made it the whole 

way and most of them had to endure fatigue, blisters, 

and bloody feet. Some marchers carried portraits of 

the Virgin of Guadalupe and a few shouldered large 

crosses. Others carried flags from the U.S., Mexico, 

the Philippines, the NFWA, and the AWOC. Most 

people wore red headbands or red armbands. The 

marchers walked about ten miles a day, beginning 

with a Mass and ending with a rally. At night 

marchers would rely on the hospitality of farm 

workers along the march route for places to shower 

and sleep. During the day, supporters brought food

and entire families joined in for several miles and 

even an entire day or two on the weekends, doubling 

and tripling the ranks of the marchers and stretching 

the march out as long as two miles. The march, like 

the movement itself, was a family affair embedded 

within a larger social network of community support 

(Ganz 2000, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Levy 1975, 

Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995). 

The march to Sacramento represented a convergence 

of ideas Chavez had put into action in Oxnard and 

elsewhere. The march incorporated religious 

symbols and practices, it exemplified one of the most 

effective means of nonviolent protest, it relied on 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 247 

community support, and it attracted favorable 

publicity (due in part to the media coverage of Martin 

Luther King, Jr.’s, march from Selma to 

Montgomery, Alabama, the previous year). The 

march also gave Chavez the chance to reconnect with 

farm workers along the San Joaquin Valley. Most 

important, it strengthened the solidarity of the 

hundreds of men, women, and children who 

participated (Levy 1975). 

The scale of the march was unprecedentedit was 

more than two hundred miles long, it involved 

hundreds of marchers and inspired thousands of 

supporters and observers. But the march also was 

revolutionary and historically significant for its 

spatial dimensions. Luis Valdez observed that the 

march obliterated territorial divisions. “The San 

Joaquin Valley is full of those limitations, of those 

barriers and those lines that you never crossed. Well, 

this march crossed them. It crossed them all. It 

was,” he concluded, “a literal taking of the territory” 

(Galan Productions 1996). 

As the marchers approached Sacramento a few days 

before Easter, Chavez received a telephone call from 

a lawyer representing the Schenley Corporation. The 

company wanted to sign a contract. Dolores Huerta 

assumed responsibility for drawing up and 

negotiating a contract. When the Schenley 

Corporation officially recognized the NFWA on 

April 6 and signed a contract ninety days later, the 

farm workers’ union had achieved much of what it 

sought when it went on strike in September. On 

Easter Sunday (April 10) a crowd of more than four 

thousand farm workers and supporters thronged to 

the steps of the capitol building to listen to speeches 

by Huerta and Chavez and to celebrate a remarkable 

victory (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Ganz 2000, 

Taylor 1975). 

A few days after Schenley announced its recognition 

of the NFWA, the Di Giorgio Company hinted that it 

might consider holding elections on its ranches to 

determine whether its workers wanted representation 

from the NFWA. A wary Chavez arranged a round 

of talks only to learn that the company insisted on an 

immediate end to the strike and boycott, compulsory 

arbitration, an election that would exclude striking 

farm workers, and a ballot that also listed a companyrun union. When Chavez heard that union organizers 

had been physically attacked at the company’s Sierra 

Vista ranch while he was meeting with company 

officials, he broke off the talks and decided to 

confront the agribusiness giant head on (Levy 1975). 

EVOLUTION OF THE UNITED FARM

WORKERS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Chavez quickly refocused the NFWA’s boycott 

network (now strengthened by the full support of the 

AFL-CIO) on Di Giorgio’s popular juice and canned 

food brands. The network also expanded into New 

York, Chicago, and other cities in the East where 

pickets could target points of distribution. When 

NFWA organizers learned that Di Giorgio was 

recruiting strikebreakers and requiring them to sign 

cards authorizing the Teamsters to represent them, 

Chavez and AFL-CIO organizing director Bill 

Kircher realized they would have to beat the 

Teamsters in ranch elections (Taylor 1975, Dunne 

1971). 

Di Giorgio planned to hold elections at its Sierra 

Vista ranch in Delano and its Borrego Springs ranch 

in San Diego County, but the company gave the 

NFWA only three days’ notice. Kircher and Chavez 

were infuriated and secured an injunction removing 

the NFWA and the AWOC from the ballots. They 

also pressed Governor Brown to investigate the 

situation. Chavez traveled with Chris Hartmire to Di 

Giorgio’s Borrego Springs ranch to recruit farm 

workers and maintain pressure on the company. 

After persuading ten farm workers to walk out, 

Chavez, Hartmire, and Father Victor Salandini 

entered the property to help the workers reclaim their 

belongings. All thirteen men were arrested for 

trespassing and detained before being chained 

together, taken to the San Diego County jail, stripped 

naked, and searched. When news of Cesar’s rough 

treatment spread, more outraged farm workers joined 

the strike. The negative publicity also pressured Di 

Giorgio to agree to the governor’s recommendation 

that new elections be held on August 30, 1966 (Levy 

1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Dunne 1971). 

In anticipation of the Di Giorgio elections, the 

NFWA and the AWOC negotiated a merger. The 

creation of the new union, the United Farm Workers 

Organizing Committee (UFWOC), was announced 

on August 22, 1966. Bill Kircher approved an 

operating budget of ten thousand dollars per month 

from the AFL-CIO, and the membership voted Cesar 

Chavez director and Larry Itliong assistant director; 

Dolores Huerta, Gil Padilla, Tony Orendain, Philip 

Vera Cruz, and Andy Imutan were appointed vice 

presidents and fellow members of the board of 

directors (Levy 1975, Taylor 1975). 

The farm workers’ new strength and unity helped 

bring them victory in the Di Giorgio elections. 

Although the Teamsters won the packing-shed 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 248 

workers, the field workers voted 530 to 331 in favor 

of representation from the UFWOC. When the news 

arrived at the Filipino Community Hall, where most 

of the union members had gathered to await results, 

“everyone just exploded.” The victory party soon 

migrated to the Peoples Bar and Cafe to celebrate 

(Levy 1975). 

The union’s successes brought a new wave of 

favorable publicity across the country and prompted a 

telegram from Martin Luther King, Jr. The civil 

rights leader acknowledged that “the fight for 

equality must be fought on many frontsin the urban 

slums, in the sweat shops of the factories and fields. 

Our separate struggles are really onea struggle for 

freedom, for dignity, and for humanity...We are 

together with you in spirit and in determination that 

our dreams for a better tomorrow will be realized” 

(Levy 1975). 

After the victories in the Di Giorgio elections, the 

UFWOC engaged in two smaller but still significant 

campaigns. The first involved the boycott of PerelliMinetti Company’s 2,600-acre vineyard in Delano in 

August 1966 after the company refused to negotiate a 

contract with the UFWOC. With this boycott, the 

UFWOC sent farm workers to Los Angeles, the 

company’s major market, but the union also used 

AFL-CIO assistance to follow cargo shipments to 

urban markets in the East. In New York City, union 

supporters organized a boycott of Macy’s department 

store, which carried Perelli-Minetti products. PerelliMinetti finally conceded in February 1967 and signed 

a contract four months later. Six other wineries in 

California followed suit almost immediately, giving 

the UFWOC a total of eleven contracts (all of them 

negotiated by Dolores Huerta) covering five thousand 

workersabout two percent of the state’s 

agricultural labor force. The contracts demonstrated 

the power of the boycott. (Ferriss and Sandoval 

1997, Jenkins 1985). 

In the summer of 1966, NFWA organizers had helped 

Tejano members of the Independent Workers 

Association organize a four-hundred-mile march 

from Rio Grande City to the Texas state capitol in 

Austin that was modeled after the march to 

Sacramento. By the time Chavez was able to join in, 

as many as ten thousand striking melon workers and 

their supporters were closing in on the state capitol 

building. After Chavez left, the IWA members voted 

to merge their organization with the UFWOC, and 

Tony Orendain agreed to head the Texas branch of 

the union. Tejano members of the UFWOC faced 

many of the same obstacles as their counterparts in 

Californiastaunch resistance from growers, 

intimidation from law enforcement authorities and 

quickly-issued injunctions from the local courts 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Griswold del Castillo 

and Garcia 1995, Taylor 1975). 

THE FORTY ACRES

Around the time that the Di Giorgio campaign was 

concluding, Chavez decided to move forward with 

plans to develop a network of service centers for farm 

workers modeled after the service center in San Jose. 

He wanted the centers to provide medical clinics, coop auto repair shops and gasoline stations, credit 

unions, and other health and welfare services. 

Chavez enlisted union volunteer Leroy Chatfield, the 

former principal of a Catholic high school in 

Bakersfield, to develop these plans. Chatfield soon 

raised twenty-five thousand dollars from a foundation 

and secured fifty thousand dollars more from the 

AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department (Taylor 

1975). 

The union acquired forty acres of land two miles west 

of Delano, on the north side of Highway 99 next to 

the city dump, in the spring of 1966. Although the 

land was barren and dusty in the summer heat, 

Chavez had ambitious plans for what would become 

the union’s headquarters, known by members as the 

Forty Acres. From the beginning, Chavez envisioned 

the Forty Acres as a model service center, and the 

union began planning the construction of four 

buildingsan automobile service station, an 

administrative center, a health clinic, and a retirement 

center for Filipino farm workers. By the beginning 

of 1968, Cesar’s brother Richard had built a gasoline 

and vehicular repair station. (Matthiessen 1973). 

Under Richard’s supervisionand with a donation of 

fifty thousand dollars from the United Auto 

WorkersUFWOC volunteers and other members of 

trade unions who donated their labor completed 

construction of an administrative building the 

following September and named it after Roy Reuther, 

brother of Walter Reuther. The new building, 

constructed with adobe brick and an aluminum roof, 

eventually housed offices, a reception area, and a 

large meeting room that doubled as the hiring hall, 

from which farm workers would be dispatched to 

ranches under contract. When Reuther Hall opened 

in 1969, Larry Itliong relocated his offices there, 

taking up a room down the hallway from Cesar 

(Kushner 1975, Taylor 1975, State of California 

1988). Union volunteers built the health clinic, and 

the offices of the credit union and El Malcriado (the 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 249 

union’s newspaper) also relocated to the Forty Acres 

(State of California 1988). 

The final and perhaps most notable component of the 

Forty Acres, devoted to retired Filipino farm workers, 

were not completed until 1975. Most Filipinos who 

immigrated to the U.S. came as young bachelors. 

Although some found wives in the U.S. and started 

families, most did not due in part to a climate of 

racism and anti-miscegenation laws. These aging 

men were not covered by Social Security. The 

UFWOC responded to their need for retirement 

homes and care by setting aside land on the east side 

of the Forty Acres for the creation of the Agbayani 

Village, a retirement center named for a Filipino farm 

worker who had died of a heart attack while on a 

picket line. The center’s residential building was 

designed with sixty units, each offering residents a 

private room and an adjoining bathroom. The center 

included a central kitchen, a dining hall, a living 

room, and a recreation room. Nearby land was 

reserved for a vegetable garden and for grazing a few 

head of cattle. In 1980 the Agbayani Village housed 

seventy single Filipino men (State of California 1988, 

Scharlin and Villanueva 2000, Day 1971). 

THE TABLE GRAPE STRIKE

In the summer of 1967, the grape strike continued 

with the Giumarra Brothers Fruit Company, the 

largest table-grape grower in the state. It controlled 

eleven thousand acres (six thousand of them in table 

grapes), employed more than two thousand workers 

at harvest time, and grossed twelve million dollars a 

year. When the Giumarra family refused to come to 

the bargaining table, the UFWOC called for a rally 

and strike vote on August 3, 1967, at the Bakersfield 

fairgrounds. More than sixteen hundred farm 

workers attended, voting in overwhelming numbers 

to go on strike against Giumarra (Griswold del 

Castillo and Garcia 1995, Majka and Majka 1982, 

Levy 1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Taylor 1975). 

The Giumarras gained injunctions that limited the 

number of pickets to three per ranch entrance and 

restricted the use of bullhorns. The company 

aggressively recruited illegal Mexican immigrants to 

break the strike (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). The 

union countered with a boycott of Giumarra table 

grapes, but the boycott initially proved difficult to 

manage. Boycott organizers thought that they could 

alert consumers to the Giumarra label, but grocery 

stores seldom shelved grapes by producer. 

Moreover, the Giumarra Company had little trouble 

marketing their product under other growers’ labels. 

Dolores Huerta and Fred Ross proposed a boycott of 

all California table grapes. The union would attack 

the entire table-grape industry simultaneously. The 

boycott began in January 1968. 

The campaign owed its remarkable success to a 

number of factors, the most important of which was 

the decision to send farm workers themselves to the 

cities and to the forefront of the boycott organization. 

During the next two years, these UFWOC members 

established boycott centers in more than forty major 

cities and worked with boycott committees in 

hundreds of smaller towns. One of the first young 

Chicanos to leave Delano to begin a major urban 

boycott campaign was Eliseo Medina. A Delano 

farm worker who had joined the NFWA in 1965 

when he was a teen-ager, Medina would become a 

veteran of numerous organizing and boycott 

campaigns. 

For Medina, as for dozens of other Chicanos, “it was 

a big experience.” This was especially true for 

Chicanas such as Mary Elena Rojas, Juanita Herrera, 

Fina Hernandez, Maria Sanchez, and Esther Padilla, 

all of whom joined their husbands in directing 

boycott efforts in Pittsburgh, Denver, Cleveland, and 

other cities. Chicanas who had been raised to defer 

to their husbands or other men found opportunities in 

the boycott to redefine their relationships with their 

spouses and to reconstruct their own self-images. 

Jessica Govea, Maria Saudado, Peggy McGivern, and 

Hope Lopezsingle Chicanas who, along with 

Dolores Huerta, independently directed boycott 

efforts in major citiesfound still other opportunities 

in the campaign. These women discovered “a new 

space to express a gendered resistance to the status 

quo based on their own views and experiences.” 

Indeed, leadership in the boycott campaigns gave 

women in the farm labor movement new confidence 

in their own organizing abilities (Rose 1990, Rose 

1995, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Taylor 1975, Galan 

Productions 1996). 

The boycott helped fuel the broader transformation of 

the Delano grape strike from a local labor struggle 

(though one that had spread to southern California 

and to Texas and had received national media 

coverage) into a key facet of the maturing Chicano 

movement. Since the early months of the Delano 

strike in 1966, Chavez had been identified alongside 

Reies Lopez Tijerina and Rudolfo “Corky” Gonzales 

as a national Chicano leader. Chavez rejected efforts 

to impose racial boundaries on the social movement 

he was building. Yet Chicanos across the country 

took pride in his courageous leadership and in the 

farm labor movement as a whole. The appearance 

and confidant assertiveness of Chicano boycott 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 250 

leaders in front of grocery stores, inside churches, 

and on college campuses inspired and attracted urban 

Chicanos across the country. During the coming 

months and years, young urban Chicanos would flock 

to La Causa and attribute to it a cultural significance 

that extended far beyond the San Joaquin Valley. As 

a result, the status of Chicanos gained new visibility 

within the broad spectrum of civil rights movements 

of the era (Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995). 

In the meantime, Chavez and the UFWOC leaders 

were increasingly worried about losing their 

momentum. Chavez himself was concerned that 

impatient farm workers and union supporters might 

abandon their commitment to nonviolence. It was 

becoming harder for the farm workers who had been 

on strike for more than two years to exercise 

restraint. By the spring of 1968, the civil rights 

movement, the anti-Vietnam movement, and the 

Chicano movement all had grown more militant. The 

first half of the year would see an escalation of 

revolutionary rhetoric among groups such as the 

Black Panthers and Black Muslims, the eruption of 

dozens of riots after the assassination of Martin 

Luther King, Jr., an explosion of more than 220 

student protests against the Vietnam War, and a 

continuation of Tijerina’s insistence that stolen land 

must be reclaimed through armed occupation. 

Growing numbers of farm workers began to believe 

that it was time to adopt a more confrontational 

approach (Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995, 

Taylor 1975, Daniel 1981). 

As reports of violent activity and property damage 

caused by frustrated farm workers mounted, Chavez 

became profoundly disappointed. He called a 

meeting at the Filipino Community Hall on February 

19, 1968, and announced that he had begun to fast. 

He would continue to do so until union members 

renewed their pledges of nonviolence. Chavez then 

left and walked to the service station building at the 

Forty Acres, where he set up a cot and a few religious 

items in a small room. He would remain there for 

most of the twenty-five days of his fast (Levy 1975, 

Daniel 1981). 

UFWOC leaders were divided in their responses. 

Tony Orendain and a few others thought that Cesar’s 

fast was a publicity stunt, and a waste of time. 

Dolores Huerta saw the fast’s broader spiritual and 

cultural significance. Within days word of the fast 

had spread throughout the San Joaquin Valley. 

Thousands of farm workers began streaming to the 

Forty Acres with pledges of support and nonviolence 

and prayers for Chavez’s health. Father Mark Day 

(the recently-appointed pastor of Our Lady of 

Guadalupe Church) pledged to offer Mass every day 

of the fast, and hundreds of farm workers and 

supporters pitched tents, and attended festive Masses, 

Jerry Cohen recalled, Cesar’s fast and the events 

surrounding it at the Forty Acres rejuvenated the 

farm labor movement (Levy 1975, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Matthiessen 1973, Levy 1975). 

Cohen explained how the fast also helped pull the 

union together in a new way. When a weakened 

Chavez was called to trial at the Kern County 

Courthouse in Bakersfield on the thirteenth day of his 

fast, the leaders of the union’s ranch committees 

(which functioned as locals) met to coordinate a 

show of support (Levy 1975). 

When Chavez and Cohen arrived at the courthouse, 

they were overwhelmed by the presence of as many 

as one thousand farm workers, singing and praying. 

The judge rejected a plea from Giumarra’s attorneys 

that the farm workers be evicted. This decision was a 

small but significant victory. It was the first time the 

farm workers’ union ever won anything in that 

courthouse. “Every time I had ever been in that 

courthouse before, it was like going on enemy 

territory,” Cohen explained. “But after that 

demonstration, it was a lot different” (Taylor 1975, 

Levy 1975). 

A little less than two weeks later, Chavez was 

convinced that the farm workers’ commitment to 

nonviolence had been renewed. He announced an 

end to his fast. UFWOC leaders planned a Mass and 

celebration at the Forty Acres and arranged to have 

Robert Kennedy fly in to be at Chavez’s side. On the 

morning of March 11, 1968, hundreds of cars began 

arriving in Delano, and organizers soon realized that 

they would need to relocate to Memorial Park. By 

the time Kennedy arrived, the gathering had swelled 

to four thousand people. Several priests, ministers, 

and rabbis celebrated an ecumenical Mass and 

Kennedy offered Chavez a piece of bread. 

One week later, Kennedy announced his candidacy 

for the Democratic nomination for president. For the 

next two months, the union shifted many of its 

members and volunteers into the campaign to help 

their ally win the California primary election. Their 

efforts worked, and on the night that Kennedy won 

he acknowledged his gratitude to Cesar, Dolores, and 

the UFWOC. After leaving the stage in the 

Ambassador Hotel ballroom, Kennedy was shot by 

an assassin. His death the next day shocked the 

nation, but it was especially devastating to the farm 

workers, who considered Kennedy not only a critical 

ally but also a close friend (Taylor 1975, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Levy 1975). 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 251 

The union poured its resources back into the tablegrapes boycott, its most powerful weapon. By the 

middle of 1969, it was clear that the boycott was 

having a substantial impact on California growers. 

The increasingly desperate growers filed a lawsuit 

against the union on July 4, 1969, claiming that the 

boycott had cost the industry twenty-five million 

dollars in sales. (Levy 1975, Meister and Loftis 

1977, Majka and Majka 1982). 

The union also opened a new front in its attack on 

growers with a focus on environmental health issues. 

In 1969 some grape workers with skin rashes and flulike symptoms began to complain to the union that 

they thought they were being poisoned by pesticides. 

Jerry Cohen discovered that growers had been 

substituting highly toxic phosphate-based pesticides 

for recently-outlawed DDT-based pesticides. The 

California Department of Health opened its own 

investigation and concluded that at least fifteen 

percent of all farm workers in the state suffered from 

pesticide poisoning. Boycotters in Washington, D.C., 

decided to purchase some Delano groups and have 

them tested. When the grapes showed high 

concentrations of Aldrin (a pesticide that has been 

banned because of its links to cancer), the issue 

exploded in the media, adding further fuel to the 

boycott effort (Taylor 1971, Meister and Loftis 

1977). 

END OF THE DELANO GRAPE STRIKE

As the first grape crop was ripening in southern 

California the following spring, the growers’ 

solidarity began to crack. In April 1970, Lionel 

Steinberg, the owner of three of the largest vineyards 

in the Coachella Valley, agreed to sign a contract 

with the UFWOC if a special committee of bishops 

appointed by the National Conference of Catholic 

Bishops was allowed to sit in on the negotiations. A 

handful of growers from the Coachella Valley 

followed Steinberg’s example, but the union’s big 

break came on the evening of July 25, 1970. John 

Giumarra, Jr. called Jerry Cohen and proposed that 

they meet immediately. 

The quick moving negotiations held in room 44 of 

the Stardust Motel barely slowed when Chavez and 

Cohen insisted that the Giumarras get the rest of the 

struck Delano grape growersall twenty-seven of 

themon board. After two days of meetings, the 

growers agreed to the union’s demands for an 

increase in pay; the creation of union-run hiring halls; 

an increase in piece-rate bonuses; the establishment 

of joint farm labor-grower committees to monitor and 

regulate pesticide use; and the funding of the Robert 

F. Kennedy Health and Welfare Plan for union 

members. On July 29, conciliatory growers gathered 

with elated union members at Reuther Hall at the 

Forty Acres to sign three-year contracts. 

The Delano contracts brought eighty-five percent of 

the table-grape growers in California under union 

contract, an unprecedented achievement in the 

history of the U.S. agricultural industry. But even as 

the UFWOC leaders celebrated, they knew that a new 

campaign already was needed. The Teamsters had 

broken a jurisdictional agreement with the UFWOC 

and moved in on farm workers in the lettuce fields of 

the Salinas Valley (Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 

1995, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

VI. The Salinas Strike, the Fight 

against the Teamsters, and 

Agricultural Labor Laws in the 

American West, 1970-1975 

The next period of the farm labor movement saw the 

UFWOC face familiar challenges brought with 

unprecedented force. On the same day that the union 

finished its negotiations with Delano grape growers, 

Chavez received confirmation that 29 lettuce growers 

in the Salinas Valley had signed contracts with the 

International Brotherhood of Teamsters and that at 

least 175 vegetable growers employing 11,000 farm 

workers in the Salinas and Santa Maria Valleys were 

considering Teamsters contracts of their own. 

Salinas Valley growers were determined to avoid 

giving in to the UFWOC (as they thought Coachella 

and Delano growers had done), and they were not 

adverse to violence. As the UFWOC engaged these 

new opponents, its leaders also had to administer the 

union’s new contracts and maintain its existing 

membership base. Moreover, the union initiated two 

transformative projectsmoving its headquarters 

from Delano to a location in the Tehachapi 

Mountains and completing the process of gaining 

independent standing within the AFL-CIO (Levy 

1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1995). 

Continued success in the fields and the undeniable 

power of the boycott brought important victories 

during this period, including the passage of the 

California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first 

law in the continental United States that recognized 

the rights of farm workers to organize and negotiate 

contracts with growers. 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 252 

FIGHT AGAINST THE TEAMSTERS

Given the Teamsters’ territorial raid in 1966 when 

the Di Giorgio Company and the Teamsters together 

tried to thwart the UFWOC, the Teamsters sudden 

move into the fields of the Salinas Valley was not 

without precedent. The Teamsters had a longstanding presence in the valley, and in July 1970 the 

union’s Salinas-based local had just renegotiated 

contracts covering workers in the area’s canneries, 

packing sheds, and frozen-food processing plants as 

well as field-truck drivers and packing-carton 

stitchers. As negotiations ended, representatives of 

the Growers-Shippers Vegetable Association 

(GSVA) asked if the Teamsters might also sign a 

contract covering field workers which would violate 

accepted trade-union policy. Nevertheless, William 

Grami, director of organizing for the Western 

Conference of Teamsters saw an opportunity to 

expand his power and sent word to the GSVA that he 

was willing to sign recognition agreements 

immediately (Meister and Loftis 1977, Taylor 1975). 

When Chavez and other union leaders learned of the 

Teamsters’ contracts, they quickly developed a 

counter-strategy. Chavez already had planned to 

organize the Salinas Valley, where farm workers 

picked seventy percent of the nation’s iceberg lettuce 

as well as broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, 

strawberries, and artichokes, but he had hoped to 

spend a couple of years after the Delano campaign 

building farm labor solidarity in the area before 

confronting growers. The UFWOC’s success in 

Delano forced the issue as growers in the Salinas 

Valley believed that if they signed a contract with the 

Teamsters, it would forestall the UFWOC moving 

into their area. However, the growers underestimated 

the strength of the UFWOC’s organizational base, 

which Manuel Chavez and Gil Padilla had begun 

building in the area several months earlier. Second, 

they underestimated the anger with which farm 

workers would respond to the contracts when they 

learned that they had been signed by Teamsters 

officials and growers without farm workers’ consent 

(Taylor 1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1995). 

That anger turned into activism when the UFWOC 

initiated the first step in its counter-strategy, a march 

on Salinas culminating in a massive rally. On August 

2, 1970, more than three thousand farm workers 

marched through the streets of Salinas and streamed 

onto the football field of Hartnell Community 

College, chanting “huelga” and carrying UFWOC 

banners, American and Mexican flags, and pictures 

of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Martin Luther King, 

Jr. Chavez took the stage. Alternating between 

Spanish and English, he denounced the growers and 

the Teamsters for their “great treason against the 

aspirations of those men and women who have 

sacrificed their lives for so many years to make a few 

men rich” (Levy 1975). Behind-the-scenes deals 

would not be accepted, Cesar asserted and he urged 

farm workers to refuse to sign Teamster cards. He 

asked them to begin forming representative 

committees at their ranches that would report to the 

UFWOC’s Salinas headquarters during the coming 

week. After several priests offered Mass, the crowd 

voted overwhelmingly to go on strike (Levy 1975, 

Ferriss and Sandoval 1995). 

Chavez was able to gain use of the Mexican 

American Political Association (MAPA) office on 

South Wood Street in Salinas. When Teamsters 

organizers, growers, and foremen tried to force the 

valley’s lechugeros (lettuce cutters) and other field 

workers to sign union cards, many of the workers 

simply walked off and went to the MAPA office 

instead. Many of the workers did not know the 

addresses of the ranches where they worked, so this 

took a great deal of time. Finally union organizers 

hung a large map of the valley in the MAPA office. 

As Padilla recalled, they “color-coded the strikes and 

then assigned each picket captain two or three 

ranches and told them to get those workers who had 

struck those ranches to form the picket lines” (Taylor 

1975). 

Meanwhile Chavez and AFL-CIO organizing director 

Bill Kircher pressured the Teamsters to recognize the 

UFWOC’s jurisdiction over field workers. They took 

their case to AFL-CIO President George Meany, who 

arranged for a meeting so that the leaders of the 

competing unions might come to an agreement. 

After this meeting and further mediation from the 

U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Farm Labor, 

the Teamsters agreed on August 10 to sign another 

“no raid” pact and to explore ways to break their 

Salinas contracts. Chavez, in turn, declared a six-day 

moratorium on strikes (Ferriss and Sandoval 1995). 

Chavez called off all UFWOC strikes in order to 

allow the Teamsters and growers to meet without 

distraction, but he realized that the union would need 

to maintain some pressure. The union’s leaders 

decided to target the area’s largest corporate growers. 

Each of these operations would be vulnerable to 

negative publicity and, if necessary, a consumer 

boycott. Leroy Chatfield had already sent out signals 

that the union was considering a boycott of United 

Fruit’s popular Chiquita bananas, and the arrival of 

corporate executives from the East Coast provided an 

opportunity for further maneuvering. During the 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 253 

second week in August, United Fruit’s vice president 

Will Lauer and Purex’s chairman of the board, 

William Tincher, met with Dolores Huerta, Jerry 

Cohen, and Marshall Ganz (Levy 1975). As 

negotiations moved forward over the coming days 

and weeks, the union concluded that the corporate 

growers would be unwilling to rescind their 

Teamsters contracts and sign with the UFWOC in 

order to avoid a boycott. 

Uncertain about what would lie aheadhow long 

growers would hold out, the extent to which the 

Teamsters could be trusted, and how long the area’s 

farm workers would remain nonviolentChavez 

decided to begin another fast. Chavez’s health 

deteriorated quickly, leading him to end the fast on 

the sixth day. On August 17, Chavez retreated to the 

Franciscan mission at San Juan Bautista to 

recuperate, leaving Huerta, Cohen, Ganz, and others 

to run the UFWOC office and continue negotiations. 

The mission at San Juan Bautista and others like it 

appealed greatly to Chavez. He found them to be 

peaceful places where he could meditate and pray. 

During his time in San Juan Bautista, Cesar noted 

that he “was able to reflect on what was happening, 

to shed all of those million little problems, and to 

look at things a little more dispassionately” (Levy 

1975). The need for a place to retreat, reflect, and 

plan would stay with Chavez for the rest of his life 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1995, Levy 1975). 

THE SALINAS STRIKE

While Chavez was at the mission, the union learned 

of Grami’s decision that the Teamsters were “honor 

bound” to maintain their contracts with all growers 

who wanted to keep them. Several corporate growers 

had notified the Teamsters of their desire to rescind 

their contracts in order to sign with the UFWOC, but 

170 smaller-scale vegetable and soft-fruit growers 

insisted on staying with the International 

Brotherhood. The Teamsters’ refusal to rescind these 

contracts shattered Cesar’s remaining hopes of 

avoiding a strike. Chavez knew that farm workers’ 

anger had been rising daily. A few days after his 

initial agreement with Grami, he discovered that the 

Teamsters had accepted a piece-rate increase of only 

two and half cents over the five-year length of their 

contracts. After the initial six-day moratorium period 

ended, Chavez and Huerta had to plead with union 

members to refrain from striking in order to give the 

Teamsters more time. Now, with the announcement 

on August 21 that members of the GSVA and the 

Teamsters were keeping their contracts, the area’s 

farm workers would not be stopped. When farm 

workers met at another rally at Hartnell College on 

August 23, 1970, they thundered their continuing 

commitment to a strike and pledged to remain 

nonviolent. The next morning, as many as 7,000 

farm workers walked off their jobs at more than 150 

ranches, making this the largest farm labor strike 

since the 1930s. From Salinas south to Santa Maria, 

the UFWOC’s red banners flew in the towns and 

along the roads. All across the landscape, “it looked 

like a revolution,” Jerry Cohen remembered (Daniel 

1981, Ferriss and Sandoval 1995, Taylor 1975, Levy 

1975, Meister and Loftis 1977). 

The atmosphere grew tense as the GSVA obtained 

injunctions that prohibited picketing, as local growers 

hired armed guards, and Teamsters officers sent 

thugs with baseball bats to intimidate UFWOC 

members, including those employed at grower 

operations that rescinded their Teamsters contracts. 

Local law enforcement officers sided with the 

growers and their men. When two burly Teamsters 

attacked Jerry Cohen as he was trying to check on the 

safety of broccoli workers involved in a sit-down, the 

only response from a sheriff’s deputy was a 

complaint to the semi-conscious UFWOC lawyer that 

there were too many pickets at the ranch. Cohen, 

who had suffered a concussion, was hospitalized for 

eight days. Other acts of violence followed during 

the next several weeks. A ranch foreman drove a 

bulldozer into UFWOC pickets’ cars, several pickets 

were shot at, and some were attacked with chains. 

Some farm workers began to retaliate, throwing rocks 

and using lead pipes as weapons (Levy 1975, Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1995). 

The injunctions and mounting acts of violence 

convinced Chavez to pull farm workers away from 

the picket lines and turn the union’s boycott 

machinery against non-UFWOC lettuce. George 

Meany had announced the official end of the grape 

boycott on August 31, and the first of several 

hundred boycott organizers began to return to 

California a week later. Despite his sense that most 

of them would not want to leave again so soon, 

Chavez announced at a press conference on 

September 17 that the union was sending boycotters 

to sixty-four cities in North America. 

The GSVA responded by going to court with the 

argument that the UFWOC strike was prompted by a 

jurisdictional dispute between two unions and that 

growers should not have to suffer the consequences. 

As union appeals moved forward, the Bud Antle 

Company, acting independently, went to court with a 

similar argument and convinced Judge Gordon 

Campbell to issue an injunction against the boycott of 

its lettuce. Chavez defied the order, and Judge 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 254 

Campbell summoned him to the Monterey County 

Courthouse in Salinas on December 4. When Chavez 

arrived with Jerry Cohen, the courthouse was 

surrounded and filled by three thousand farm workers 

standing or kneeling silently in a show of support. 

The hearing ended after three hours with Chavez 

refusing to call off the boycott. Cesar was led to jail 

for contempt of court, and his pre-planned press 

release went out: “Boycott Bud Antle! . . . And 

boycott the hell out of them!” (Levy 1975). 

The actions of the Antle Company and Judge 

Campbell played right into the union’s hands. As 

Chavez passed time in the Monterey County Jail, 

reading books and answering letters, the union 

maintained a constant vigil. Priests offered Masses, 

union leaders organized rallies, and the national 

media covered every development. Media coverage 

escalated when Chavez received two prominent 

visitors, Coretta Scott King and Ethel Rose Kennedy. 

Both women had confidence in Cesar’s struggle, and 

they passed on the strength that they had shared with 

their husbands. Clearly, Chavez was now regarded 

on a par with the nation’s other civil rights leaders. 

He remained in jail for twenty days. On December 

24, 1970, the California Supreme Court ordered his 

release pending its review of the case. 

Over the course of the next year, the UFWOC 

continued to wage its battles against Salinas and 

Santa Maria Valley growers and against the 

Teamsters. In Washington, D.C., George Meany and 

Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons brokered a 

new jurisdictional settlement, which Chavez and Bill 

Grami signed in mid-March. UFWOC leaders met in 

May with thirty or forty growers and several 

Teamsters officials. The Teamsters no longer wanted 

their contracts with the GSVA, and the growers 

promised to negotiate with the UFWOC if Chavez 

would suspend the boycott. The UFWOC leaders 

accepted the deal; however after five months of 

weekly negotiations, the union concluded that the 

growers were not willing to sign contracts. Bill 

Kircher announced in November that the UFWOC 

was breaking off talks. The lettuce boycott began 

again, with no end in sight (Levy 1975). 

EVOLUTION OF THE UFW/ THE MOVE TO 

LA PAZ

Despite the slow progress in Salinas, the union 

continued to win victories on other, less prominent 

fronts. By the summer of 1971, the UFWOC had 150 

contracts to administer; however, the union’s leaders 

lacked real experience administering contracts that 

covered thousands of workers. When Chavez insisted 

on going to Salinas to personally honor his promise 

to farm workers there, he took most of the union 

leadership with him, leaving only Larry Itliong and 

Richard Chavez in Delano to coordinate the election 

of ranch committees, ratify the contracts, set up 

hiring halls, verify farm workers’ seniority, 

administer the medical plan and life insurance 

program, and coordinate the collection of dues and 

the payment of taxes. The California Migrant 

Ministry assigned twenty volunteers to help, but they 

too had little practical experience. Cesar refused to 

accept the administrative help offered by the AFLCIO because he preferred to have farm workers 

stumble through administrative tasks and learn from 

their own mistakes (Levy 1975, Taylor 1975, Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1995, Meister and Loftis 1977, Daniel 

1981). 

The task of setting up hiring halls proved particularly 

difficult. Growers were supposed to send written 

requests for a certain number of workers to the hiring 

hall every day. Likewise, workers seeking 

employment on a union ranch were supposed to go to 

the hiring hall, verify their UFW membership (and 

pay their dues if necessary), and request a dispatch to 

a union ranch. Hiring hall administrators were 

responsible for matching workers with growers’ 

needs based on a seniority system. This system 

broke down in the first couple of weeks of August as 

confusion over ranch information, duplicate 

registrations and dispatch cards were compounded by 

thousands of people waiting to be dispatched at the 

same time. John Giumarra, Jr., noted his complaints 

about the early inefficiencies of the hiring hall even 

as he acknowledged how transformative they were. 

In the eyes of growers, the hiring hall quickly became 

“a bottleneck in every farm operation” (Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1995, Taylor 1975). 

Richard and other union leaders became able 

administrators, and growers such as Lionel Steinberg 

expressed satisfaction with the hiring hall. Yet the 

year and a half following the signings in Delano 

continued to be a challenging period of adjustment 

for everyone involved in the union. Farm workers 

had to learn what their rights were under the contracts 

and how to initiate grievance procedures (which often 

meant translating the legalistic language of contracts 

into Spanish). The workers elected to ranch 

committees had to learn how to represent their coworkers and deal with growers, and those assigned to 

help run local hiring halls had to learn how to place 

thousands of workers a day. Meanwhile, union 

leaders and organizers continued to recruit new union 

members, direct pickets and boycotts, negotiate with 

growers and mediators, talk to elected officials and 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 255 

the media, and raise money from union supporters. 

UFWOC members at all levels struggled with their 

tasks, but Chavez was committed to the creation of a 

democratic union in which farm workers themselves 

would wield power and make decisions rather than 

rely on professional union administrators or even 

their own leaders to tell them what to do. Chavez 

knew that if the union’s structure did not empower 

farm workers, then growers would never treat them 

with the respect they deserved (Taylor 1975). 

Chavez’s commitment to a democratic union 

influenced his decision in 1971 to move the union’s 

national headquarters from Delano to a more remote 

site. While in Salinas, Chavez had received word 

that Kern County was trying to sell 187 acres of land 

it owned in the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains. 

The property located near Keene, thirty miles east of 

Bakersfield, was the former site of the Kern County 

Tuberculosis Hospital. The sanitarium had been 

closed, but a number of wood-frame cottages, 

administrative buildings, hospital wings, and a 

central steam-boiler plant still stood, sheltered by 

large oak trees and set among grassy hills (Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1995, Taylor 1975). When Chavez 

learned about the property’s reduced price tag, he 

contacted a union supporter who had offered to help 

the union buy its own ranch someday. This supporter 

entered into a bidding contest with a farmer and 

finally won the property for a price of $232,000. The 

down payment was his gift to the UFWOC, and the 

union made arrangements with county officials to pay 

off the rest. Chavez renamed the place Nuestra 

Senora Reina de La Paz (Our Lady Queen of Peace). 

He announced that he wanted to move the UFWOC’s 

central administrative offices and staff residences 

there (Taylor 1975). 

This decision met some resistance from other union 

leaders. Larry Itliong, for example, thought that the 

move would distance Chavez and other officers from 

farm workers, especially the Filipino farm workers in 

Delano and exacerbate a distance that the union’s 

emerging bureaucratic structures already had created. 

Itliong wanted Chavez to remain a daily presence in 

Delano. Itliong thought that Jim Drake, Leroy 

Chatfield, Marshall Ganz, and other volunteers had 

too much influence on the union leader and that 

Chavez had been “swayed by the grandiose thinking 

of a brain trust of intellectuals” (Taylor 1975, Meister 

and Loftis 1977). Not surprisingly, Itliong refused to 

relocate to La Paz. His continued opposition to the 

union’s emerging structure, among other reasons, 

prompted his decision to resign in October 1971 

(Scharlin and Villanueva 2000, Taylor 1975, Meister 

and Loftis 1977). 

Helen Chavez also was reluctant to move to La Paz 

for more personal reasons. She had spent time at the 

Kern County Tuberculosis Hospital as a girl. 

However, most of the staff welcomed the move. 

They realized that La Paz would provide a place to 

retreat and plan strategy, and they thought that the 

move would curtail interruptions from workers who 

went to the Forty Acres with complaints best handled 

by field office staff or ranch committee members 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1995). 

Chavez himself was eager to establish offices and a 

residence at La Paz for several reasons. First, he 

wanted to decrease farm workers’ dependence on his 

leadership. The relocation from Delano also would 

help keep the union from becoming too closely 

identified with one particular place or one part of the 

nation’s farm labor population and thus would allow 

the union to maintain an appealing and inclusive 

national profile. Chavez also wanted enough land to 

build a union training center, where farm workers 

could learn leadership skills and nonviolent tactics. 

Finally, Chavez continued to relish the peaceful and 

communal atmosphere of Franciscan missions such 

as San Juan Bautista, and he longed for a refuge 

where he could escape the media spotlight and spend 

free time with his family. The move to La Paz thus 

represented an important transition in Chavez’s own 

identity as a movement leader (Ferriss and Sandoval 

1995, Taylor 1975). The move was completed by the 

summer of 1972. Chavez’s office was located in one 

corner of the large administration building. The 

Chavez family moved into a two-bedroom woodframe house on the property. 

Through the rest of the decade the full-time 

population of La Paz fluctuated between 100 and 150 

individuals, most of who lived in the old hospital’s 

staff housing or in trailers purchased by the union. 

The main hospital unit was converted into a hotel of 

sorts for farm workers who came to La Paz for 

training and for volunteers who passed through on 

their way to field offices or other assignments. The 

union also established a day care center for younger 

children and arranged for older children to be bused 

to Tehachapi for school (Taylor 1975). 

Despite Chavez’s best intentions, some union 

members who wished to build a wider base of 

leadership thought that Chavez’s involvement with 

the day-to-day problems of farm workers and the 

day-to-day operation of the union remained 

remarkably high, even excessive. As historian Cletus 

Daniel notes, the AFL-CIO president and trade-union 

traditionalists developed serious doubts about 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 256 

Chavez’s “eccentric” style of leadershiphis wellknown idealism, his constant involvement in all 

aspects of the union, his unwavering sense of 

mission, and his stubborn aversion to compromise. 

The latter quality in particular rankled Meany, who 

privately blamed Chavez for the AFL-CIO’s 

difficulty in settling the jurisdictional dispute 

between the UFWOC and the Teamsters (Taylor 

1975, Daniel 1981). 

Still, few could deny that Chavez’s leadership was 

effective and that farm workers derived benefits from 

their union. As a result of these improvements, the 

union grew larger and stronger. The union’s growth 

under Cesar’s direction, in fact, paved the way for its 

admission into the AFL-CIO as a fully independent 

affiliate, renamed the United Farm Workers of 

America (UFW), in February 1971. This change in 

status gave the union a voice in directing federation 

policies and operations but required the union to 

forfeit a ten-thousand-dollar monthly subsidy it had 

continued to receive as an organizing committee. 

The shift reflected the union’s maturation (Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1995, Taylor 1975, Levy 1975). 

UNION SUCCESS IN FLORIDA

As the campaign in Salinas stalled in 1971 and 1972, 

other organizing campaigns and political battles drew 

the union’s attention. One of the most prominent 

organizing drives took place in Florida. Following 

the NBC broadcast in 1971 of the documentary 

Migrant, which exposed the squalid living and 

working conditions of Florida’s agricultural laborers, 

the UFW sent Manuel Chavez to meet with farm 

workers and establish a base of operations for the 

union. The documentary was particularly critical of 

the Minute Maid Company, a subsidiary of the CocaCola Company that operated thirty thousand acres of 

citrus groves and employed twelve hundred farm 

workers in south central Florida. Coca-Cola moved 

quickly to improve conditions, but its predominantly 

African-American workers still welcomed the 

assistance of the UFW. Manuel organized the 

Minute Maid workers. Coca-Cola recognized its 

vulnerability to a boycott and signed a contract in 

February 1972 with little protest. As in California, 

the union’s efforts transformed the lives of farm 

workers (Taylor 1975, Meister and Loftis 1977). 

The union’s success in Florida, however, turned the 

state into one of several new political battlegrounds. 

In 1972, an unprecedented political offensive began 

when a nation-wide coalition of corporate growers, 

shippers, anti-union groups, and their allies in state 

offices joined with the American Farm Bureau 

Federation to sponsor legislation that limited union 

voting rights to year-round employees, banned 

harvest-time strikes, banned boycotts, and, in some 

states, even banned negotiations over pesticide use. 

Legislatures in Kansas, Idaho, Oregon, and Arizona 

passed these bills. Similar initiatives had begun in 

Florida and California when the UFW launched its 

counter-attack. Chavez assigned Jerry Cohen to lead 

a whirlwind campaign in Oregon, where a Farm 

Bureau bill had just passed and Gov. John Connally 

had one week in which to act on it. Cohen and the 

union’s Portland-based boycotters mobilized farm 

workers and supporters and applied enough pressure 

on the governor to veto the bill. Eliseo Medina 

achieved even greater success in Florida. Several 

months before the beginning of the legislative season 

in 1972, a supporter informed the union that a Farm 

Bureau bill would be introduced. Medina and his 

staff began an opposition campaign that exposed the 

rampant abuses of the labor contracting system and 

the deplorable sanitary conditions of labor camps 

(which caused a typhoid epidemic in the spring of 

1972). The campaign helped defeat the bill in 

committee (Meister and Loftis 1977, Levy 1975). 

ARIZONA FAST OF 1972

In 1972, Chavez decided to focus his own efforts on 

Arizona, where Dolores Huerta had been meeting 

with farm workers, lobbying politicians, and 

monitoring the rapid progress of yet another Farm 

Bureau-sponsored bill. Aware of the pressure that 

the bill’s opponents could bring to bear on his office, 

Governor Jack Williams instructed the highway 

patrol to deliver the bill as soon as it passed the state 

senate. Forgoing a customary review by the state 

attorney general’s office, the governor signed the bill 

within an hour of its passage on May 11, 1972. 

Chavez immediately traveled to Arizona with Jim 

Drake, Marshall Ganz, Leroy Chatfield, and his 

brother Richard to join Dolores. As the group of 

union leaders met to strategize, they discussed their 

frustration over local farm workers’ sense of 

defeatism. “Every time we talked about fighting the 

law,” Cesar explained, “people would say, ‘No se 

puede, no se puedeit’s not possible. It can’t be 

done.’” Dolores, however, insisted that “from now 

on, we’re not going to say, ‘No se puede,’ we’re 

going to say, “Si se puede!’” (Huerta 1975). The 

slogan stuck. The attitude that it reflected propelled a 

labor campaign that transformed Arizona politics 

(Huerta 1975, Levy 1975). 

Upon learning of Governor Williams’ decision to 

sign the Farm Bureau’s bill, Chavez began a fast that 

would last twenty-four days. On the sixth day of his 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 257 

fast, Chavez moved to the Santa Rita Community 

Center in Phoenix’s south-side barrio. The worndown, white-stucco building offered a small airconditioned room for Cesar’s cot and a large meeting 

hall for Masses and rallies. During the next eighteen 

days farm workers gathered nightly to attend Mass, 

sing union songs, listen to farm workers from 

California talk about unionization, and meet with 

visitors such as Sen. George McGovern and Coretta 

Scott King. The fast had the same mobilizing effect 

on farm workers that the Delano fast had in 1968, but 

it was no less physically difficult for Cesar. 

Although his physical health deteriorated rapidly, he 

remained committed. Chavez decided to end the fast 

on June 4, the two-year anniversary of Robert 

Kennedy’s assassination. Five thousand farm 

workers arrived at a Phoenix hotel for a memorial 

Mass in Kennedy’s honor, a brief statement from 

Chavez, and a rally (Taylor 1975, Meister and Loftis 

1977, Levy 1975). 

Meanwhile, Jim Drake and the other union leaders 

organized a recall campaign against Gov. Williams 

and began to collect the necessary 108,000 

signatures. They exceeded that number. The 

attorney general blocked the recall election by 

challenging the validity of tens of thousands of 

signatures, but the union’s victory was clear. Forty 

percent of the number of voters in the most recent 

gubernatorial election signed petitions opposing the 

Williams administration. Moreover, farm workers in 

Arizona began to recognize and exercise their 

political power. In the 1972 election, an 

unprecedented number of Mexican Americans and 

Navajos were elected to state, county, and local 

offices. Two years later, Raul Castro captured the 

governor’s office (Taylor 1975, Meister and Loftis 

1977, Levy 1975). 

PROPOSITION 22

During the middle of the Arizona campaign, the 

union learned of its greatest political threat yet. The 

American Farm Bureau Federation was preparing to 

place an initiative on the California November ballot 

that would shackle the UFW with the same 

restrictions that had been enacted in Arizona. Progrower groups spent $224,000 to qualify the initiative 

(Proposition 22) for the ballot and another $500,000 

on the campaign to pass it. In response, union leader 

Leroy Chatfield sent farm workers and union 

supporters throughout the state to serve as “human 

billboards” in high-traffic areas and to talk with 

community groups, church groups, students, and 

other sympathizers. The union could spend only onefifth of the amount that growers spent, but the 

union’s campaign was more effective. On November 

7, Californians soundly defeated Proposition 22. As 

in Oregon, Florida, and Arizona, the UFW 

demonstrated its abilities to orchestrate and win 

political battles. Unionized farm workers in 

California and across the country embraced the 

political strength of their solidarity. Growers took 

notice as well (Daniel 1981, Taylor 1975, Meister 

and Loftis 1977). 

CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURAL RELATIONS 

ACT

The political victories of 1972 were impressive, but 

they came at a significant cost. While union leaders 

and organizers focused on the political arena, 

organizing activity in the fields came to a virtual 

standstill. At the same time, union leaders had to 

delay efforts to further improve the union’s 

administration of existing contracts, and the union’s 

largest strikeagainst Salinas growerscontinued to 

lie dormant. The extent of the union’s vulnerability 

was revealed when its three-year contracts with the 

table-grape industry expired in 1973. Once again the 

Teamsters broke a jurisdictional agreement, this time 

with the support of the White House (Daniel 1981, 

Levy 1975). 

When Richard Nixon ran for reelection in 1972, he 

gained strong support from the Teamsters and their 

president, Frank Fitzsimmons. Nixon appointed 

Peter Nash as general counsel to the National Labor 

Relations Board and instructed him to aid growers 

filing complaints against the UFW (despite the fact 

that the NLRB had no jurisdiction over agricultural 

workers). Nixon also pardoned former Teamsters 

president Jimmy Hoffa and ordered the Justice 

Department to drop its prosecution of Fitzsimmons’ 

son on fraud charges. It is not surprising, that the 

Nixon White House also backed the Teamsters union 

in its jurisdictional fight with the UFW. 

In the summer of 1972, Nixon’s White House 

Counsel, Charles Colson, sent a memo to the Justice 

and Labor Departments and to the NLRB explaining 

that the president had taken a “personal interest” in 

the fight and that these agencies should intervene if 

and when they could thwart the UFW (Levy 1975). 

Colson also reportedly arranged to have Fitzsimmons 

address the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 

annual convention in Los Angeles in December 1972. 

The Teamsters president used the opportunity to 

attack the UFW as “a revolutionary movement that is 

perpetuating a fraud on the American public” 

(Meister and Loftis 1977, Ferriss and Sandoval 1995, 

Taylor 1975, Levy 1975). 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 258 

Around the time of the Farm Bureau convention, a 

sympathetic grower from the Coachella Valley 

warned Chavez that the area’s table-grape growers 

were going to sign with the Teamsters when their 

UFW contracts expired in April 1973. When the 

Teamsters announced in January that they had 

renegotiated their contracts with 170 Salinas and 

Santa Maria growersalmost three years before they 

were set to expireit was clear that the Teamsters 

were launching a major offensive. As Bill Grami 

announced these new contracts, Teamsters officials 

continued their aggressive negotiations with growers 

in the Coachella and Imperial Valleys. Teamsters 

organizer Ralph Cotner, met with twenty-five 

Imperial Valley growers in Indio on January 24 and 

proposed contracts directly intended to undermine 

UFW gains. Cotner claimed that the Teamsters had 

the workers’ consent and promised to produce the 

signatures of 4100 workers (despite the Farm Labor 

Service’s estimation that only 1500 farm workers 

were employed in the area and a survey by the 

Catholic Bishops Committee showing that the vast 

majority favored the UFW). The Teamsters 

continued to represent farm workers against their 

will. 

In response to the Teamsters’ maneuvers, Chavez 

called for early negotiations with growers under 

contract, but his efforts were in vain. Nine hours 

after the union’s contracts with Coachella and 

Imperial Valley growers expired on April 15, 1973, 

all but two growers (Lionel Steinberg and K. K. 

Larson) signed with the Teamsters. On April 13, 

union members filled the Coachella High School 

auditorium and voted to strike any grower who 

signed with the Teamsters. Three days later, one 

thousand farm workers walked off their jobs, 

beginning one of the most turbulent periods in the 

history of the farm labor movement. By the time 

union strikes against table-grape growers ended five 

months later, two UFW members had been killed, 

hundreds more injured, and more than thirty-five 

hundred arrested for violating court injunctions 

against picketing and other demonstrations of protest 

(Meister and Loftis 1977, Levy 1975). 

When the UFW lost the Coachella contracts, the 

union’s leaders immediately began to rally support. 

Rev. Chris Hartmire sent volunteers and supplies 

from the California Migrant Ministry and Monsignor 

George Higgins arrived with twenty-five clergymen 

and labor organizers to offer their assistance. 

Familiar groups of Chicano students and progressive 

sympathizers began to arrive or send aid, and the 

AFL-CIO offered its strongest support yet when 

president George Meany publicly denounced the 

Teamsters as “union busting” and “strikebreaking.” 

A few days later, Meany persuaded the AFL-CIO 

executive council to authorize $1.7 million in aid. 

Combined with the $1 million of UFW funds that 

Chavez committed to the fight, this contribution from 

organized labor made the 1973 campaign the bestfinanced farm labor strike in U.S. history. Pickets 

could count on strike pay, and they knew that the 

union could provide legal assistance and bail for 

those sent to jail (Taylor 1975, Levy 1975, Meister 

and Loftis 1977). 

As court injunctions against picketing increased the 

union needed to provide bail money to free hundreds 

of farm workers and supporters from jail. On the first 

day of the strike, Riverside County Judge Fred 

Metheny issued an injunction covering the Tudor 

ranch; by the end of the harvest, a total of eighteen 

injunctions had limited the number of UFW pickets, 

their distance from ranch properties, and the use of 

bullhorns. Cesar recalled that “the worst was the 

Tenneco [ranch] injunction which prohibited all 

picketing,” ...the day that was issued, Teamster 

goons appeared at various picket lines armed with 

grape stakes, clubs, baseball bats, metal pipes, and 

knives” (Levy 1975). 

The Teamsters willingness to use violence was well 

known. The International Brotherhood hired more 

than 300 “guards” and paid them to “protect” 

nonstriking farm workers. Their intimidating 

appearance--dark sunglasses, tattoos, and biker 

boots—ran contrary to the union’s $1.3 million a year 

public relations campaign to improve its image. The 

guards’ first show of force came on April 25, when 

thirty Teamsters stormed a meeting at a labor camp 

and began throwing rocks at UFW members. Violent 

encounters were then reported every week: shots 

were fired at a house where Chavez was sleeping, 

two Teamsters kidnapped a man they mistook for a 

UFW member and attempted to murder him, several 

Teamsters in the back of a truck hurled twenty-pound 

rocks at a car in which Chavez was riding, 

unidentified men set fire to a trailer home with a 

UFW family inside, a bomb blew up the car of 

another UFW member. An attack on June 24 was, in 

the words of Lt. Paul Yoxsimer, “the most violent 

eruption of the entire strike.”(Levy, 

1975).Approximately 180 Teamsters carrying iron 

pipes, chains, clubs, tire irons, and machetes attacked 

400 men, women, and children on a picket line 

southeast of Thermal, leaving twenty-five injured and 

four hospitalized (Levy 1975, Meister and Loftis 

1977, Taylor 1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1995). 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 259 

Throughout these weeks, Chavez reminded union 

members of the importance of nonviolence. As the 

strike wore on and the union failed to make any 

headway with growers, who managed to harvest most 

of their crops with imported workers from Mexico, 

some could not resist retaliating. When the harvest 

moved north toward Delano, the situation looked 

bleak. On July 10, 1973, the E & J Gallo Wine 

Company, the nation’s largest winery, announced 

that it had signed a four-year contract with the 

Teamsters. The UFW’s Delano contracts were set to 

expire less than three weeks later. Nevertheless, 

Chavez remained upbeat. Chavez knew that the 

jurisdictional fight would continue after the 1973 

harvest, and he was convinced that the union had the 

strength to retain farm workers’ loyalty and public 

support. 

Chavez’s prediction that the Teamsters would capture 

the table-grape industry held true. What surprised 

Chavez and the rest of the UFW was the vigor with 

which law enforcement in Kern, Tulare, and Fresno 

Counties aided the Teamsters’ (and growers’) efforts. 

One of the largest confrontations between union 

members and sheriff’s deputies occurred in Kern 

County on July 22, 1973. As union members 

picketed on Edison Drive in front of the Giumarra 

Ranch, several helicopters began to sweep low to 

kick up dust and spark disarray. Deputies ran in 

among the pickets, swinging billy clubs and grabbing 

picketers’ faces to spray mace in their eyes. One 

deputy pinned 17 year old Marta Rodriguez’s arms 

behind her back, handcuffed her, and began to drag 

her away. Rodriguez panicked and screamed for 

help. When Frank Valenzuela, the former mayor of 

Hollister, approached the deputy and offered to calm 

the girl down, other officers converged on him, 

clubbed him on the legs, sprayed mace in his eyes, 

and hit him in the stomach. They pinned the fallen 

man’s arms behind his back, shoved his face in the 

dirt, and handcuffed him. By the end of the 

afternoon, 230 picketers had been arrested (Levy 

1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1995). 

Amid such violence, the union’s last-minute talks 

with the Giumarras and other Delano growers went 

nowhere. By the beginning of August as many as 

three thousand union members were picketing 

ranches scattered throughout Kern, Tulare, and 

Fresno Countiesstanding up to Teamsters’ threats 

and attacks, withstanding brutal arrests by sheriff’s 

deputies, and filling county jails to capacity. The 

picketing would last only two more weeks. On the 

night of August 13, the union sponsored a party at a 

park in Arvin. Following the party, a young picket 

captain from Yemen named Nagi Daifullah and 

several other union members were talking outside a 

bar near the park. A sheriff’s deputy ordered them to 

disperse. When they refused, a scuffle broke out. 

Daifullah ran from the scene; the deputy chased after 

him and , knocked him to the ground with a blow 

from his flashlight. The twenty-four-year-old farm 

worker suffered fatal head injuries and died on 

August 15. The next day, shots fired at pickets from 

a passing truck killed sixty-year-old union member 

Juan de la Cruz. The deaths, so close together, sent 

shock waves through the farm labor movement. As 

the union prepared to mourn its martyrs, Chavez and 

the other union leaders agreed to call off all picketing 

“until the federal law enforcement agencies guarantee 

our right to picket and see that our lives are safe and 

our civil rights not trampled on” (Levy 1975, Meister 

and Loftis 1977, Ferriss and Sandoval 1995, Taylor 

1975). 

For Chavez, this was a momentous decision. Just a 

few years earlier, he had explained to writer Peter 

Matthiessen his belief that “the picket line is where a 

man makes his commitment” (Matthiessen 1973). As 

Chavez knew, the picket line was profoundly 

important as a recruiting tool, an organizing tactic, 

and a means of claiming space. The courageous act 

of picketing itself allowed farm workers to 

demonstrate their commitments to La Causa to their 

employers and co-workers. Such commitments were 

difficult to break, and they gave striking farm 

workers a strength that simply was harder to cultivate 

in the safer settings of rallies, marches, and distant 

boycotts. However, Chavez was not willing to risk 

farm workers’ lives on the picket lines. The UFW 

thus shifted its dwindling resources to the boycott, 

targeting California’s non-union table grapes and 

lettuce and the wines of Ernest and Julio Gallo. 

By then, the union was almost a shadow of itself. 

During the strike of 1973 the UFW lost ninety 

percent of its contracts, dropping from 150 to 12 

(which covered only about 6,500 farm labors), and its 

membership rolls dropped from 55,000 to 10,000. 

The union also had burned through almost three 

million dollars in strike-related expenses. Yet the 

union’s members remained committed to the 

struggle, and its boycott organizers remained spirited. 

On the morning of September 1, five hundred 

boycotters gathered at the Forty Acres for a rally. 

They climbed into cars, trucks, and buses decorated 

with union signs, formed caravans, and headed for 

cities throughout the U.S. and Canada (Meister and 

Loftis 1977, Levy 1975). 

Chavez and other union leaders continued hasty 

preparations for the union’s second constitutional 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 260 

convention (its first since gaining full membership in 

the AFL-CIO), to be held at the new Fresno 

Convention Center from September 21 through 24, 

1973. The convention was unlike those of other trade 

unions. Most of the 414 delegates could barely 

afford to attend. Debate was unusually lengthy, 

extending over several marathon sessions, the last of 

which stretched for twenty-two hours. Convention 

delegates paused several times to listen to addresses 

by guests such as Sen. Edward Kennedy and UAW 

President Leonard Woodcock, but most of their time 

was spent discussing, amending, and finally adopting 

the union’s new 111-page constitution. The 

convention concluded with the election of a new 

nine-member executive board: Cesar Chavez 

(president), Dolores Huerta (vice-president), Philip 

Vera Cruz (vice-president), Pete Velasco (vicepresident), Gil Padilla (secretary-treasurer), and atlarge board members Mack Lyons, Eliseo Medina, 

Richard Chavez, and Marshall Ganz. Cesar was 

pleased with the union’s new structure. The 

convention “set rules which are law and have to be 

obeyed. Before, we improvised, and I had to make 

all the decisions. Now we have a clearly constituted 

authority to act between conventions,” he explained. 

“The executive board makes the policy decisions, 

which I carry out” (Levy 1975, Meister and Loftis 

1977, Taylor 1975). 

After the convention, union leaders turned their 

attention back to the boycott. During the rest of the 

year and into 1974, Cesar and Dolores spent more 

time on the road traveling to different cities, speaking 

to the media, and rallying farm workers and 

volunteers on the picket lines. Chavez also traveled 

with Helen in Europe (on non-UFW funds) for three 

weeks to spread the boycott message and curtail 

California growers’ ability to dump their produce on 

European markets. He and Helen received an 

unexpected audience with another supporter, Pope 

Paul VI. The Pope praised Cesar for his “sustained 

effort to apply the principles of Christian social 

teaching” and for his close cooperation with the U.S. 

Bishops Committee on Farm Labor and then offered 

his blessing. As Chavez returned to California, it was 

clear that the American Catholic Church would 

intensify its support of the union and its boycott 

(Rose 1990, Levy 1975, Meister and Loftis 1977). 

Despite skeptics’ conclusions that the union’s battle 

against the alliance of growers and Teamsters was 

hopeless, the boycott gained momentum. By the end 

of 1974, a Louis Harris poll revealed that twelve 

percent of the country’s adult population (or 

seventeen million Americans) had stopped buying 

grapes and eleven percent (fourteen million people) 

had stopped buying lettuce. The union estimated that 

growers had lost at least four million dollars in sales. 

Ernest and Julio Gallo were hit particularly hard, 

reportedly losing nine percent of its market share 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1995, Meister and Loftis 

1977). 

Still, the union’s leaders realized that the boycott 

alone would not force growers to recognize the union 

or allow elections. To beat the Teamsters and gain 

leverage with the growers, the union needed a state 

law that would level and regulate the playing field.. 

During the 1974 legislative session in California, 

Jerry Cohen pushed a bill that would have given the 

union secret-ballot union-recognition elections. The 

proposal contained no language about boycotts or 

strikes (which growers had tried to limit with 

Proposition 22) and thus was vulnerable to powerful 

opposition from agribusiness, but the maneuver 

signaled the possible emergence of new common 

ground. Between 1965 and 1974, growers had come 

to believe that farm workers should be 

protectedand thus regulatedby the NLRA, which 

guaranteed secret-ballot elections. During the same 

time, the union had moved toward the opposite 

position. In the early years of the first Delano strike, 

Chavez had railed against the exclusion of farm 

workers from the legislative act that protected other 

industrial workers’ basic rights to organize. Chavez 

knew that the farm workers’ continued exclusion 

from the NLRA allowed the union to utilize its most 

effective weapons, the primary and secondary 

boycotts, without restriction. If the two sides could 

compromise on these issues, though, a legal 

framework that would benefit workers and growers 

might be constructed. Cohen’s bill was defeated in 

the state senate, but not before gaining the 

endorsement of the former secretary of state and 

current gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown (Taylor 

1975, Ferriss and Sandoval 1995). 

Jerry Brown’s election as governor of California in 

November 1974 marked the beginning of a new era 

of possibility for the farm labor movement. 

Governor Brown (the son of former governor Pat 

Brown) considered himself a friend of Chavez and 

the farm labor movement, and he even recruited 

union organizer Leroy Chatfield onto his staff. The 

union thus expected to see prompt movement toward 

a farm labor law when Brown took office in January 

1975, but there was little response to Chavez’s 

requests for a meeting. As the union’s leaders began 

considering ways to get the governor’s attention, 

Fred Ross, Jr., proposed a march on Gallo. Not only 

would a march to the company’s headquarters in 

Modesto put pressure on the giant company, it would 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 261 

send a message to Brown and show skeptics across 

the country that the movement was strong (Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1995). 

On February 22, 1975, several hundred farm workers 

and union supporters gathered in San Francisco’s 

Union Square while another contingent prepared to 

head north from Delano, following much of the same 

route as the famous march on Sacramento almost a 

decade prior. The main group would trace a 110-

mile route across San Francisco Bay, toward 

Stockton, and south to Modesto. Before the marchers 

left Union Square, three Gallo supporters unfurled a 

huge banner from the top of the St. Francis Hotel 

with a provocative message: “GALLO’S 500 UNION 

FARM WORKERS BEST PAID IN U.S. . . . MARCHING 

WRONG WAY, CESAR?” The union’s members barely 

blinked. Their contract demands called for much 

more than raises in pay. When the marchers arrived 

in Modesto one week later, however, another banner 

waited: “73 MORE MILES TO GO. GALLO ASKS UFW TO 

SUPPORT NLRA-TYPE LAWS IN SACRAMENTO TO 

GUARANTEE FARM WORKER RIGHTS.” By that time 

the marchers’ numbers had swelled to almost twenty 

thousand, and they had good reason to cheer as it 

seemed that Gallo had given in. The jubilant 

marchers converged in Modesto’s Graceada Park for 

a rally and celebration (Ferriss and Sandoval 1995). 

Governor Brown succumbed to the pressure even 

though he knew how difficult it would be to forge a 

bill that would be acceptable to the state’s influential 

growers and farm workers. During the next two 

months, Brown and his secretary of agriculture 

organized a series of public hearings at the capitol 

and private negotiating sessions at the governor’s 

homes in Hollywood and Sacramento. Cohen served 

as the union’s lead negotiator on the bill, and he 

pushed Chavez’s demands effectively. By the end of 

May, Chavez knew that he would get what he 

wanted: binding, timely, secret-ballot elections; the 

right to boycott; voting rights for seasonal workers; 

protection for organizers in the fields; and the 

establishment of a government agency to certify 

election results and enforce the law’s provisions. 

Growers, for their part, were satisfied that the legal 

framework would curtail the constant disruptions of 

strikes and boycotts that hampered their harvests and 

cost the industry millions of dollars. They were 

pleased, too, with the creation of a five-person 

supervisory board appointed by the governor. 

The bill survived a special legislative session and, on 

June 5, 1975, Governor Brown announced the 

remarkable political achievementthe signing into 

law of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act. The bill 

marked a victory for Brown as well, one of the first 

significant accomplishments of his administration. 

But the governor wisely sounded a note of caution. 

He warned those present at the bill signing ceremony 

not to “overstate what’s going on here today; this is 

the beginning, not the end.” Indeed, the UFW had a 

great deal of organizing work ahead. And, as Chavez 

and other union leaders returned to the fields, they 

would find that the growers’ approval of the ALRA 

was anything but a capitulation to the UFW (Levy 

1975, Meister and Loftis 1977, Ferriss and Sandoval 

1995, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995). 

VII. The Modernization of the 

United Farm Workers and the 

Broadening of the Farm Labor 

Movement in the U.S., 1975-1984 

After the passage of the landmark Agricultural Labor 

Relations Act, Chavez allowed himself to look ahead 

to future challenges. As one of the most prominent 

labor leaders and civil rights leaders in the American 

West, Chavez had developed a broad social vision. 

The challenges he had identified were many. “After 

we’ve got contracts, we have to build more clinics 

and co-ops,” he told writer Jacques Levy in 1975. 

“Then there’s the whole question of political action, 

so much political work to be done taking care of all 

the grievances that people have, such as the 

discrimination their kids face in school, and the 

whole problem of the police. . . . We have to 

participate in the governing of towns and school 

boards,” he continued. “We have to make our 

influence felt everywhere and anywhere. It’s a long 

struggle that we’re just beginning, but it can be done 

because the people want it” (Levy 1975). 

During the time period covered by this section of the 

study, Chavez began a sustained effort to broaden his 

personal focus and that of the farm labor movement 

beyond the challenges associated with securing 

contracts. He worked to make the UFW a modern 

union, one that had a well-trained leadership and 

utilized an array of tools to communicate with 

politicians and the public. As Chavez’s leadership in 

the fields of public health and environmental safety 

evolved, he focused more of the union’s resources on 

the problems of pesticides. Still, this wider focus 

developed slowly and haltingly. The promises of the 

ALRA proved to be fleeting, growers still fought the 

UFW on several fronts, the Teamsters remained in 

the fields, and the possibility of violence on the 

picket lines continued to influence Chavez’s strategic 

thinking. Moreover, the UFW’s political power was 

greatly diminished by the conservative drift of state 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 262 

and national politics. As the union’s public appeal 

began to fall, the boycott, the union’s most effective 

weapon, became less reliable. Nevertheless, when 

Chavez called a renewed boycott of grapes in 1984 to 

publicize the dangers of pesticides and protest 

growers’ refusal to come to the bargaining table, his 

commitment to fighting for the dignity of farm 

workers was as strong as ever. 

1,000-MILE MARCH

Governor Jerry Brown’s signing of the ALRA 

marked a proud moment for the farm labor 

movement, but growers also regarded it as a victory. 

Both celebrations ended quickly. The first 

controversy erupted when Brown announced his 

nominees to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board 

(ALRB), the five-person board responsible for 

certifying election results and enforcing the farm 

labor law’s provisions. Despite Brown’s promise to 

appoint a balanced board, four of his five nominees 

were decidedly pro-farm labor: former UFW 

organizer Leroy Chatfield and another Chavez ally, 

Bishop Roger Mahony, as well as a Latino civil 

rights activist and a progressive Democrat who had 

worked for the Teamsters. When growers 

complained that the board was “oriented toward 

unionization,” they seemed to reveal a fundamental 

misunderstanding of the ALRA’s purpose. Most 

growers demonstrated no greater inclination to 

cooperate with UFW organizers who began seeking 

access to ranches in anticipation of ALRB-supervised 

elections. Citing constitutional rights preventing 

trespassing on private property, the Gallo Company 

and other grower operations refused to allow UFW 

organizers into their fieldseven as they granted 

access to Teamsters organizers (Ferriss and Sandoval 

1997, Meister and Loftis 1977). 

Chavez decided to publicize violations of the new 

law and create new opportunities for organizing by 

embarking on a “thousand-mile march” from San 

Ysidro north to Sacramento, then south again to La 

Paz. On July 1, 1975, Chavez and sixty union 

members touched the fence of the U.S.-Mexico 

border near San Ysidro and began walking north. 

Marching and singing every day, the farm workers 

gathered almost every night with supporters from 

nearby towns and ranches to hold rallies and sign 

petitions demanding elections. The fifty-nine-day 

march and its events rejuvenated Cesar (Meister and 

Loftis 1977, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

The thousand-mile march succeeded in spreading the 

news of the ALRA among the state’s farm workers, 

and it built momentum for upcoming elections. 

Because it also helped maintain pressure on Gov. 

Brown, the march aided another battle fought on 

behalf of farm workers: the effort to ban el cortito

(the short-handled hoe) from the fields of California. 

El cortito was a hoe that measured only twenty-four 

inches in length. Its use required farm workers to 

bend and stoop as they walked along rows of lettuce 

and sugar beets, thinning and weeding, and it left 

users with lifelong back pain if not debilitating back 

injury. Chavez traced his long struggle with back 

pain to the use of el cortito in his youth. Despite 

California growers’ arguments that el cortito allowed 

greater precision in thinning and weeding, growers in 

other states had stopped forcing farm workers to use 

it long ago. In 1972, California Rural Legal 

Assistance attorney Maurice Jourdane had submitted 

the first formal complaint against the use of the shorthandled hoe to the state Division of Industrial Safety. 

The DIS rejected the claim, but the state supreme 

court overturned the ruling. Three years later, the 

DIS had yet to issue an order forbidding the use of 

the tool. Jourdane contacted the UFW, which in turn 

pressured Gov. Brown to order the DIS to take action 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Griswold del Castillo 

and Garcia 1995). 

Meanwhile, the ALRB established offices around the 

state, staffed them with arbitrators and paralegals, 

and arranged for more than 150 elections during the 

late summer of 1975. At the same time, the 

Teamsters’ power was waning. Their most powerful 

ally, Richard Nixon, had been out of office for almost 

two years, former president Jimmy Hoffa had 

disappeared, and several federal agencies were 

moving forward with criminal investigations into the 

union’s activities. Still, the International 

Brotherhood continued to work with growers to fight 

the UFW. Teamsters organizers enjoyed unlimited 

access to field workers, and their men who continued 

to serve as “guards” prevented UFW organizers from 

“trespassing.” Largely as a result, the two unions 

split the elections held during August and September. 

The UFW won 74 elections and the Teamsters won 

73 (17 ranches voted for “no union”); however, 

before the end of the year, the UFW began to pull 

away. Of the remaining elections, the UFW won 124 

to the Teamsters’ 42, giving the UFW the right to 

represent 27,000 farm workers seeking union 

contracts (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Meister and 

Loftis 1977, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995). 

Virtually all of these elections were contested. 

Growers challenged the validity of elections in which 

striking farm workers voted, the Teamsters filed 

complaints charging the UFW with electioneering at 

the polls, and the UFW registered more than one 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 263 

thousand complaints against growers for firing proUFW workers and against the Teamsters for 

intimidating UFW organizers. This workload 

overwhelmed the ALRB’s young, inexperienced 

staff. Not only did the board conduct more than three 

hundred elections by the beginning of 1976, it was 

asked to investigate nearly twelve hundred charges of 

unfair labor practices and forced to respond to more 

than two hundred lawsuits. As a result, the board 

only certified seventy-five elections by the end of 

1975, including one at Inter Harvest, where the UFW 

won handily, but excluding the Gallo Wine Company 

and the Giumarra Company, two of the state’s largest 

grower operations (Meister and Loftis). 

More important, the ALRB used its $2.6 million 

annual operating budget in just seven months. By 

early 1976, the board was forced to lay off all of its 

175 employees and suspend operations until the 

legislature appropriated additional funds. This froze 

more than two hundred uncertified election results, 

more than one thousand complaints of unfair labor 

practice, and hundreds of petitions for elections. 

Without board agents in the fields, growers had little 

incentive to open negotiations with election winners 

and even less incentive to recognize unofficial 

election results. The UFW also charged that growers 

fired several hundred farm workers for engaging in 

UFW organizing activity. The board appealed to the 

legislature for emergency funding, but by this time 

enough rural Democrats in the legislature had aligned 

themselves with Republicans to block the request. In 

addition, the board’s opponents pressed for radical 

changes to the law, which would have reduced 

penalties for unfair labor practices, restricted seasonal 

farm workers’ voting rights, and virtually blocked 

UFW organizers from access to the fields. The progrower coalition refused to grant emergency funding 

and even threatened to withhold the next year’s 

allocation if such changes did not go through. Gov. 

Brown stood by the UFW. Despite Brown’s welcome 

support, though, Chavez knew that the union would 

have to take yet another battle to the public (Meister 

and Loftis 1977, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

PROPOSITION 14

The union’s leaders decided to put the key 

deficiencies of the ALRA, including lack of funding 

and experienced staff, and two possible remedies, 

before the state’s voters. They prepared a ballot 

initiative that, if approved, would require the 

legislature to adequately fund the ALRB every year 

and require growers to allow all union organizers 

equal access to workers in the fields. In the summer 

of 1976, union volunteers collected signatures from 

more than 700,000 supporters with remarkable ease. 

Their effort put Proposition 14 on the November 

1976 ballot (Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995). 

The drive for signatures forced growers and their 

allies to retreat, but only temporarily. The legislature 

voted to provide additional funding for the board 

without changes in the law, and, with three new 

members, the board went back to work. Pro-grower 

forces then launched a $1.8 million media campaign 

against Proposition 14. The “No on 14” campaign, 

largely funded by oil companies and other corporate 

interests with ties to agribusiness, was deceptive. 

Ignoring the legislature’s responsibility to fund the 

board adequately and the limitations on union 

organizers’ access to workers that the initiative itself 

proposed, the campaign cast the ballot measure as 

nothing but an attack on private property rights 

(Meister and Loftis, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

Chavez, Cohen, Huerta, and other union leaders 

countered the “No on 14” campaign in speeches and 

other public appearances, but they seem in retrospect 

to have been overconfident. The initiative was 

defeated by a three-to-two margin. No one took the 

defeat of Proposition 14 harder than Chavez. Once a 

firm believer in the political process and confidant 

that the public always would see the justice of La 

Causa, Chavez became disillusioned. In the future he 

would be more inclined to deal with elected officials 

and other political power brokers rather than appeal 

to the electorate itself (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

UFW EMERGES AS DOMINANT UNION IN 

CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE

Victories in the fields also proved hard to come by in 

1976. With an enormous backlog of election 

petitions, complaints, uncertified election results, and 

lawsuits to deal with, the ALRB slowed the UFW’s 

progress toward new contracts to a virtual standstill. 

Chavez increasingly expressed his frustration and 

displeasure with the board. The ALRB did hold 

nineteen elections during the calendar yearof 

which the UFW won fifteenbut the more important 

process of certifying election results at the largest 

grower operations (such as Gallo) went nowhere 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

After a long, difficult year in which most of the 

union’s energy and resources went into driving the 

campaign for Proposition 14, filing complaints 

against growers, preparing for elections, and 

haranguing the farm labor board for its lack of 

progress, the UFW finally found a cause for 

celebration and a reason for optimism. In March 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 264 

1977, Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons 

announced that the International Brotherhood was 

giving up its claims to field workers and that, with 

the exception of a contract with Bud Antle, it would 

not seek to renew any of its remaining contracts 

covering farm workers in California. This 

development, though unexpected, reflected the reality 

of the Teamsters’ mounting defeats at the ballot box 

in 1975 and 1976. The announcement marked the 

end of the bitter, wasteful struggle between the two 

unions. Chavez looked back at the period with 

regret, but looked to the future with great optimism. 

With a membership approaching forty thousand, the 

UFW in 1977 was unquestionably the dominant 

union in California agriculture. With as many as 

200,000 farm workers in the state still unorganized, 

the union seemed poised to grow even stronger 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Daniels 1981). 

UFW ORGANIZATIONAL GROWTH AND 

CHALLENGES

As Chavez anticipated the organizing work that lay 

ahead, he felt more keenly his long-standing desires 

to restructure the UFW’s management and chart the 

union’s future. For several years, the union’s leaders 

had been aware of mounting internal divisions over 

issues such as union leaders’ various duties, the 

degree of Chavez’s own influence over day-to-day 

operations, salaries for union leaders and staff, and 

the allocation of resources in political campaigns, 

legal battles, social services, and field organizing. 

Chavez hoped to tackle the issue of management 

structure first. He had invited consultants such as 

Kenneth Blanchard, the author of The One-Minute 

Manager, to La Paz to lead seminars and offer 

advice. Now, one month after the Teamsters’ 

announcement, Chavez decided to bring the entire 

union staff to the mountain retreat of Charles 

Dederich’s drug rehabilitation program, Synanon, for 

a conference. Cesar was impressed with the order, 

tidiness, and efficiency of the Synanon retreat, and he 

thought that the union might adopt certain aspects of 

Dederich’s program. One feature that appealed to 

Chavez was an exercise in open communication 

known as “the Game.” Soon after the staff 

conference at Synanon in April 1977, Chavez set up 

weekly two-hour sessions of the Game for all union 

staff at La Paz (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Griswold 

del Castillo and Garcia 1995, Coplon 1984). 

The Game required participants to sit in a circle, 

confront fellow participants, and air 

grievancesoften quite combatively. It proved to be 

unpopular with many of the staff members, and longtime union organizer Jim Drake even resigned after 

the Game was introduced to La Paz. Yet Chavez felt 

that the exercise was worthwhile. “It was very 

productive,” he told a reporter. “We wanted a more 

open union. We wanted the staff to deal squarely 

with the leadership, and vice versa. . . The Game 

[gave] you license to say anything.” Jerry Cohen 

later acknowledged Drake’s perspective. The Game 

itself “was just a little blip on the screen,” but “it was 

indicative of an internal problem with the union.” 

The problemor array of problems, all of them 

associated with the union’s continuing transition into 

a modern labor unionalso pushed away VicePresident Philip Vera Cruz, and another of the 

union’s talented board members, Eliseo Medina. But 

Drake, Vera Cruz, and Medina would not be the last 

to leave, and the internal divisions beginning to 

plague the union’s leadership would not be resolved 

for three more years (Coplon 1984, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Scharlin and Villanueva 2000). 

YUMA MELON STRIKE

Despite the emergence of internal divisions, 

organizing campaigns and election drives continued 

to swell the union’s membership rolls to a peak of 

more than one hundred thousand. One organizing 

campaign occurred during the summer of 1978 in 

Yuma, Arizona. Melon pickers near Chavez’s 

hometown had contacted the UFW for assistance in a 

strike and warned the union that a local judge had 

issued an injunction against all picketing. Chavez 

left La Paz with his wife Helen and drove to Arizona 

during the second week of June. Their decision to 

challenge the injunction and face imprisonment made 

this an unusual homecoming, for by now growers had 

learned that jailing the prominent UFW leader would 

create more problems than it would solve. On June 

13, Cesar and Helen joined forty farm workers on a 

picket line along Highway 95 at the G&S Produce 

Company’s fields. Sheriff’s deputies ordered the 

pickets to disburse and all of them did (at Chavez’s 

request) except for Cesar and Helen. County officials 

were unsure how to proceed. At the hearing, the 

judge handed down a suspended six-month sentence 

for contempt, and the Chavezes emerged from the 

courthouse to a cheering throng of six hundred farm 

workers waving UFW banners (Griswold del Castillo 

and Garcia 1995, Jensen and Hammerback 2002). 

IMPERIAL VALLEY LETTUCE STRIKE

Returning to La Paz, Chavez looked ahead to a new 

campaignthe union’s most important since the 

passage of the ALRA. When union contracts with 

lettuce growers in the Imperial and Salinas Valleys 

were set to expire on January 1, 1979, Chavez wanted 

to negotiate with the entire industry at once so that 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 265 

growers under contract would not suffer a 

competitive disadvantage. Marshall Ganz began 

investigating the conditions of the state’s vegetable 

growers and the executive board met to discuss 

strategy. After Ganz discovered that inflation had 

created huge profits for growers (even as workers’ 

wages stood still), the board decided to push growers 

for wage and piece-rate increases of more than forty 

percent, payment of salaries for full-time UFW 

representatives (to be elected by workers on each 

ranch), and increased contributions to the union’s 

medical plan. When Dolores Huerta and the 

negotiating team presented these demands, growers 

were caught off guard (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, 

Lindsey 1979). 

The farm workers’ solidarity was remarkable. After 

negotiations with Imperial Valley growers failed to 

produce results, nearly five thousand lettuce-pickers 

working on eight large ranches walked off their jobs 

on January 19. It was the union’s first major strike in 

almost four years and it immediately shut down onethird of the nation’s iceberg lettuce production, 

costing growers more than two million dollars during 

the first two weeks alone. The spirit of solidarity 

even spread to a new generation of Chicanos. When 

growers were allowed to post worker-recruitment 

handbills on the classroom windows of Holtville 

High School, Chicano students walked out in protest. 

Only a union lawsuit could bring the growers’ 

recruitment efforts at the high school to a halt 

(Lindsey 1979, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

Farm workers’ commitment to the fightand 

Chavez’s commitment to nonviolenceremained 

strong even after the fatal shooting of twenty-eightyear-old union member Rufino Contreras on 

February 10, 1979, at the Mario Saikhon Ranch. As 

Contreras and a group of pickets entered the ranch to 

confront strikebreakers, ranch guards fired as many 

as fifteen rounds in the group’s direction. A bullet 

struck Contreras in the head, killing him instantly. 

Many pickets responded with anger and violence of 

their own, but a saddened Chavez again doubted the 

wisdom of sending farm workers to the picket lines 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

As the harvest ended in the Imperial Valley and 

moved north to the Salinas Valley, Chavez began to 

argue with Marshall Ganz and others at executive 

board meetings that the union should pull farm 

workers from the picket lines and reactivate the 

lettuce boycott that Chavez had quietly ended the 

previous year. Local ranch-committee members and 

strike leaders, however, insisted that the farm 

workers were galvanized by the strike and that 

growers were close to giving in. Their prediction 

proved true in September, in large part because of the 

pressure created by two marches and a massive Labor 

Day rally. The twin marchesone south to Salinas 

from San Francisco, the other coming north from San 

Ardoconverged on Hartnell Community College 

and drew twenty-five thousand participants, some of 

whom threw down their tools and joined the marches 

as they passed through the valley. Near the 

conclusion of the rally, Jerry Cohen announced that 

the Meyer Tomato operation had agreed to sign a 

contract and meet all of the union’s demands. Within 

a few days, most of the valley’s other vegetable 

growers signaled their willingness to sign as well 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Etulain 2002). 

This victory was one of the union’s greatest. 

Lettuce-pickers under union contract became the 

highest paid field workers in the country. Moreover, 

the improved medical plan allowed the union to meet 

the health-care needs of an increasing number of 

farm workers. Perhaps most important, veteran union 

members and recently-organized farm workers alike 

saw just what they could accomplish through unified, 

nonviolent effort (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

MODERNIZATION OF THE UFW

The contracts signed with growers who had 

operations in the Salinas Valley and Imperial Valley 

propelled the union into a new phase, one in which 

the UFW would continue to evolve into a modern 

union with a well-defined management structure and 

an organizational system capable of handling tens of 

thousands of union members. The phase also would 

see Chavez’s increased efforts to expand his view 

beyond the campaigns for union contracts in order to 

pursue his wider social agenda. And, not 

coincidentally, the new phase would be marked by 

the departures of several long-time union leaders, 

many of whom left because of their sense that La 

Causa could no longer encompass both a modern 

union and a broad social movement. These 

transformations came in the wake of a great victory, 

but they occurred at a time when the political climate 

in California and the rest of the nation was growing 

more conservative. The union’s struggles were far 

from finished. 

Efforts to reorganize the union’s management had 

been developing slowly since 1977, but they finally 

came to fruition after the signing of the lettuce 

contracts. The nine-member executive board adopted 

a “team-management” model, requiring each board 

member to take command of one area of the union’s 

operations. Chavez was pleased with the adoption of 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 266 

this new system. It was predicated on a great amount 

of individual responsibility, accountability, and, in 

Cesar’s words, “systematic and intensive 

communication.” But it relieved Chavez of the need 

to make all decisionseven if it did not deter Chavez 

from keeping a hand in all decision-making 

processes. As part of the same effort to improve and 

modernize the union’s management, the UFW turned 

the old doctors’ residence at La Paz into a computer 

center with records for members and supporters as 

well as sympathetic individuals who might be 

receptive to direct-mail appeals. The union also 

received a grant to develop a microwave 

communication system, so that staff members in La 

Paz could communicate with organizers in the fields 

without relying on public telephones (Jensen and 

Hammerback 2002, Coplon 1984, Griswold del 

Castillo and Garcia 1995). 

With the union’s modernization efforts progressing, 

Chavez again looked ahead to the broader challenges 

that he had talked about with Jacques Levy in 1975. 

His goal of mobilizing farm workers’ political power 

remained important, and the union began to funnel 

hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign 

treasuries of politicians identified as allies. Chavez 

also began exploring the idea of a broader “Chicano 

lobby” in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., that 

would push the interests of all Mexican Americans. 

Yet even as Chavez directed political initiatives, he 

remained convinced that political power alone would 

not get farm workers and Chicanos what they needed 

(Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

Cesar continued to view his fight as more than a 

struggle for union recognition and contracts. La 

Causa was a labor movement, one that had evolved 

into a modern labor union, but it also was a social 

movement, one that sought dignity for farm workers, 

Chicanos, and other marginalized groups. In the late 

1970s and early 1980s, Chavez was trying to chart a 

course for the UFW that encompassed union work 

and a broader social agenda (Levy 1975). 

During this time, a number of leaders and staff 

members who thought that the UFW could no longer 

be both a labor union and a social movement decided 

to resign, and not always on good terms. Some 

internal critics thought that the UFW was becoming 

too bureaucratic and falling out of touch with its roots 

as a social movement. Others thought that the union 

remained too close to its roots and that it needed the 

guidance of a professional management team. 

Marshall Ganz and Jessica Govea, both highlyrespected board members, decided to leave the union 

because they thought that it was not doing enough to 

support grassroots organizing among farm workers 

out in the fields. Attorney Jerry Cohen left as well, in 

part because he disagreed with the union policy of 

paying staff members as if they were volunteers 

rather than professional managers. Even Gil Padilla, 

one of the original founders of the FWA, decided to 

resign after finding himself disagreeing too often 

with Chavez and the rest of the board over policy 

decisions. These departures saddened Chavez and 

undoubtedly hurt the union (Ferriss and Sandoval 

1997, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995, Coplon 

1984). 

Divisions between the executive board and local 

union representatives in the Salinas Valley hurt the 

union as well. These divisions first emerged during 

the summer of 1979, when local strike leaders 

rejected Chavez’s proposal to shift union resources 

from the picket lines to the boycott. After the union 

won its contracts, many of these local leaders were 

elected as union representatives and began pressing 

La Paz for help in setting up a credit union and 

dealing with a membership base that had grown by 

the thousands. When the executive board was slow 

to respond, the representatives decided to challenge 

three board positions on Chavez’s slate at the union’s 

convention in 1981. The surprise move failed, and 

the Salinas delegates walked out of the convention. 

Chavez, suspecting that the move was the work of 

grower-paid saboteurs, fired seven field 

representatives from the Salinas Valley. This wellpublicized battle continued into 1982, when a judge 

ordered the union to reinstate the representatives and 

give them back pay on the grounds that they had been 

elected and thus were not subject to termination from 

the executive board (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, 

Coplon 1984). 

When word of these internal divisions made its way 

into the news, California growers paid attention. The 

work of the ALRB already progressed at a snail’s 

pace. In 1982, seven years after the farm labor 

board’s creation, it had yet to make an award for 

violation of the ALRA. Now, with the turnover in 

union leadership and the rift between the executive 

board and the Salinas representatives, growers began 

to sense that the UFW was weaker than it had been in 

years. They became more aggressive in obstructing 

organizing drives, contesting elections, and stalling 

contract negotiations. One grower’s gun even took 

the life of yet another union memberthe fifth 

martyr for La Causa. After months of organizing 

work among fellow farm workers at the Sikkema 

Family Farm, a dairy ranch outside of Fresno, 

twenty-one-year-old Mexican immigrant René Lopéz 

finally succeeded in getting the ALRB to hold an 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 267 

election in September 1983. As Lopez and his 

friends relaxed and awaited the outcome of the vote, 

Sikkema guard Donato Estrada and Ralph Sikkema’s 

brother-in-law drove toward the group and called 

Lopéz over to their car. A shot rang out, and Lopéz 

fell dead. He was the first union organizer to die 

while trying to work under the protection of the 

ALRA. Speaking to a crowd of one thousand family 

members, friends, and farm workers at Lopéz’s 

funeral, Cesar asked. “How many more martyrs must 

there be before we can be free?” Chavez’s questions 

were rhetorical, of course, but the criticism 

underlying them was largely directed at David 

Stirling, the new general counsel of the ALRB 

(Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Coplon 1984). 

Stirling had been appointed by George Deukmejian, a 

conservative Republican who captured the California 

governor’s office in 1982 with the strong support of 

agribusiness. Gov. Deukmejian selected Stirling for 

the post and backed his efforts to pull the ALRB 

away from its “pro-union bias.” Stirling quickly 

moved to replace the ALRB’s field staff and signaled 

his intent to slow down the board’s work even 

further. Stirling also reduced the board’s 

expenditures on election monitors. Before the cuts, 

four monitors normally would have been sent to an 

election the size of that on the Sikkema ranch in 

September 1983 to protect farm workers. The board 

failed to protect Lopéz, though, and Chavez blamed 

Stirling (Jensen and Hammerback 2002, Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997). 

BOYCOTT AGAINST UNRESTRICTED 

PESTICIDES

By the end of 1983, the union’s strength was waning 

and its organizing efforts were spiraling downward. 

The union had difficulty attracting enough votes to 

win elections. When it did win elections, it took 

months to have them certified. Even when the 

union’s victories were certified, growers refused to 

negotiate contracts. The absence of new contracts 

limited resources and, more important, created the 

impression that the union was not worth voting for, 

perpetuating this cycle. Membership in the union 

plummeted to less than forty thousand, and frustrated 

executive board members knew that the union needed 

to break the cycle. During the spring of 1984, the 

board prepared to call a new and more dramatic 

boycott of grapes to force growers to the bargaining 

table despite their ability to hide behind the 

Deukmejian’s ALRB. This time, the union would 

work to make the public aware of the environmental 

and health risks associated with the hundreds of 

millions of tons of chemical pesticides dumped on 

grapes and other crops each year. 

The union had opposed the unrestricted use of 

pesticides since the late 1960s. In 1969, Chavez 

testified in front of the Senate Subcommittee on 

Migratory Labor that “the issue of pesticide 

poisoning is more important today than even wages,” 

and pesticide regulations were written into virtually 

every contract the union negotiatedyears before the 

Environmental Protection Agency issued its own 

regulations. Chavez also began encouraging young 

union members and supporters such as Marion Moses 

to study medicine so that they might help farm 

workers overcome the health risks associated with 

pesticides. Moses earned her medical degree in the 

1970s and, after residencies in internal and 

occupational medicine, returned to California to work 

for the union. Soon after her arrival at La Paz in 

1983, Moses began to hear reports that a number of 

farm workers and other people, most of them 

children, from farm towns around Delano had 

developed cancer. In McFarland, a farm town near 

Delano with six thousand residents, thirteen children 

living in a six-block area had recently been diagnosed 

with leukemia. This extraordinarily high ratiofour 

hundred percent above averagedefined the town as 

a cancer cluster. It would not be the only one (Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1997, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 

1995, Taylor 1975). 

The UFW’s opposition to unrestricted pesticide use 

provided a common cause with environmental and 

consumer safety groups. An estimated three hundred 

thousand farm workers across the country suffered 

illnesses caused by pesticide exposure every year, but 

millions of tons of pesticides spread through the air 

and groundwater, and millions of Americans ate 

grapes and other produce items contaminated with 

pesticide residues. With promises of support from 

church groups and high expectations of support from 

other organizations, Chavez called for a national 

boycott of California grapes on June 12, 1984. The 

union planned to rely heavily on their computerized 

databases and a newly-acquired knowledge of 

advertising techniques. This campaignthe “hightech boycott” with a focus on pesticideswould help 

define the union through the rest of the decade 

(Jensen and Hammerback 2002, Griswold del 

Castillo and Garcia 1995). 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 268 

VIII. Cesar Chavez and the Farm 

Labor Movement in a New Era in 

California and Across the U.S., 

1984-1993

Cesar was fond of telling doubters and reassuring 

supporters that “we have more time than money.” He 

knew that the combined economic resources of farm 

workers would never match the countless millions of 

dollars on which corporate growers and their allies 

could draw. But Chavez believed that if farm 

workers remained patient and nonviolent, eventually 

they would gain enough strength and support to help 

them outlast the “feudalistic” structure of 

agribusiness. During the final decade of Chavez’s 

life, the UFW never regained the strength it had in 

the 1970s. Yet Cesar was never discouraged. 

According to Chavez, the most important battle 

already had been won. “It doesn’t really matter 

whether we have a hundred thousand members or 

five hundred thousand members,” he explained in 

1984. “In truth, hundreds of thousands of farm 

workers in Californiaand in other statesare better 

off today because of our work. And Hispanics across 

California and the nation, who don’t work in 

agriculture, are better off today because of what the 

farm workers taught peopleabout organizing, about 

pride and strength, about seizing control over their 

own lives.” Chavez led the farm labor movement as 

it continued to fight the other battles against growers, 

pesticides, conservative politicians, and the 

ineffectual farm labor board, but also, more broadly, 

against racism, ignorance, violence, greed, poverty, 

and despair, until his death in 1993 (Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997). This section of the historic context 

examines the last decade of Chavez’s life and the 

battles that the UFW faced during that time. 

The union’s new boycott of grapes took off under the 

direction of Richie Ross, a labor activist and political 

consultant. Using computer-generated mailing lists 

and modern offset-printing equipment installed at La 

Paz, Ross began sending out hundreds of thousands 

of pleas from Chavez asking sympathizers to boycott 

California grapes until growers agreed to negotiate 

with the UFW and meet its demand to stop using 

pesticides known to have caused cancer in laboratory 

animals. Growers retaliated with a media campaign 

of their own, and they tried to divert attention away 

from the issue of pesticides and toward Chavez’s 

“political” interests (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, 

Coplon 1984). 

Cesar rose above these personal attacks with grace 

and simple eloquence. In a speech before the 

Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in November 

1984a speech that he considered particularly 

important and, along with union speechwriter Marc 

Grossman, took great pains to preparethe union 

leader maintained his broader focus on the union’s 

fight against multiple injustices, especially poverty, 

racism, corporate welfare, the failure of the state to 

enforce the law, and the poisoning of the 

environment. He called attention to the fact that 

“thousands of farm workers live under savage 

conditions: beneath trees and amid garbage and 

human excrement. . . . They walk miles to buy food 

at inflated prices,” he noted, “and they carry water 

from irrigation pumps.” Given such conditions, 

Chavez explained, it was no surprise that the babies 

of migrant farm workers suffered a twenty-five 

percent higher infant mortality rate than the rest of 

the population, or that malnutrition among the 

children of migrant workers was ten times higher, or 

that farm workers’ life expectancy was only fortynine years, twenty-four years less than that of the 

average American (Jensen and Hammerback 2002). 

Finally, after years of denying that unrestricted 

pesticide use posed any dangers, growers were 

beginning “to reap the harvest from decades of 

environmental damage they have brought upon the 

landthe pesticides, the herbicides, the soil 

fumigants, the fertilizers, the salt deposits from 

thoughtless irrigation, the ravages from years of 

unrestrained poisoning of our soil and water. 

Thousands of acres of land in California have already 

been irrevocably damaged by this wanton abuse of 

nature,” Cesar reported. Thus the union decided to 

return to the boycott and update it for a new era. 

Chavez noted that the union’s traditional 

alliesracial minority groups, labor unions, and 

church groupswere providing their support, but so 

too was “an entire generation of young Americans 

who matured politically and socially in the 1960s and 

’70smillions of people for whom boycotting grapes 

and other products became a socially accepted pattern 

of behavior.” Chavez concluded that many of these 

supporters were responding because the union’s 

boycott was “high-tech.” It was a boycott “that uses 

computers and direct mail and advertising techniques 

which have revolutionized business and politics in 

recent years” (Jensen and Hammerback 2002). 

Chavez’s confidence aside, the table-grapes boycott 

was much harder to sell in 1984 than it had been in 

1968 and 1973. Church groups might have been 

supportive, but organized labor was reeling from the 

loss of manufacturing jobs and the hostility of the 

Reagan administration, which had decimated the air 

traffic controllers’ union just three years prior. 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 269 

Hundreds of thousands of union members who would 

have been sent out to rally support for the boycott in 

the 1960s and 1970s were now out of work. The 

generation of antiwar students had grown up, 

developed careers, and gained more disposable 

income, but many of their priorities had changed, and 

many had become disillusioned. In his speech to the 

Commonwealth Club, Cesar claimed that the union 

had achieved more success with the boycott by 

November 1984 than it had during the fourteen years 

since 1970. The boycott might have gained a strong 

following, but table-grape growers showed no 

immediate sign of feeling the pressure (Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Jensen and Hammerback 2002). 

Yet as the boycott continued through the mid-1980s, 

news of other pesticide-induced illnesses emerged. 

In 1985, as many as one thousand people became ill 

after eating California-produced watermelons that 

had been sprayed with Aldicarb, an illegal pesticide. 

In 1986, one hundred and twenty citrus workers at 

the LaBue Ranch in Tulare County suffered burns 

when they came into contact with a combination of 

chemical pesticides that had not been approved by 

agriculture regulators. In 1987, twenty-seven farm 

workers at the H. P. Metzler Ranch in Fresno County 

were treated for symptoms of pesticide 

poisoningrashes, dizziness, eye irritation, nausea, 

and respiratory difficulties. That same year, new 

cancer clusters were identified in other San Joaquin 

Valley towns, including Delano (Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Jensen and Hammerback 2002, 

Hoffman 1988). 

The Environmental Protection Agency concluded that 

consumers, too, were endangered by pesticides. The 

heightened awareness of the dangers reached the 

pages of the New York Times in March 1986. 

“Pesticides dwarf the other risks the agency deals 

with,” noted Steven Schatzow, director of the 

agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs. “The risks 

from pesticides are so much greater because of the 

exposure involved. Toxic waste dumps may affect a 

few thousand people living around them. But 

virtually everyone is exposed to pesticides” 

(Hoffman 1988). 

The UFW took the E.P.A.’s warnings to consumers, 

student groups, and public officials in several ways. 

The union produced and distributed a short 

documentary titled The Wrath of Grapes in 1987. It 

included testimonials from parents in McFarland and 

other farm towns lamenting the fact that growers and 

the government were ignoring the dangers of 

pesticides, and it conveyed the stories of families 

whose children were born with birth defects or later 

developed cancer as a result of direct contact with 

pesticides and indirect contact with pesticide residues 

in the water and air. Around fifty thousand copies of 

the documentary went out to consumer groups, 

church groups, student groups, and the media. 

Chavez and other union leaders also continued to 

deliver speeches, lead marches, and participate in 

rallies throughout California and the rest of the 

country. Marion Moses took yet a third approach to 

educating the public. In 1988 she opened the 

Pesticide Education Center in San Francisco to serve 

as a clearinghouse of information about pesticides 

and a base from which to pressure public officials to 

ban known cancer-causing pesticides (Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Levy 1975, Chavarria 1987). 

As the table-grapes boycott entered its fourth year, 

Chavez sensed a need to refocus himself, the union, 

and its supporters on the campaign and its deeper 

meaning. In order to reflect on this, to serve penance 

for those who enabled growers to continue to use 

pesticides and nonunion labor, and to bring pressure 

to bear on the grocery stores that “promote, sell, and 

profit from California table grapes,” Chavez decided 

to begin a new public fast. He vowed to consume 

nothing but water until table-grapes growers agreed 

to negotiate new contracts and eliminate pesticides 

known to cause cancer (Jensen and Hammerback 

2002, Ferriss and Sandoval 1997). 

 

Chavez recognized the dangers of this fast. Despite a 

healthy personal regimen that included a vegetarian 

diet, exercise, and yoga, his sixty-one years of age 

had taken their toll. A medical team joined Chavez at 

the Forty Acres to monitor his health, and his family 

drew near. Even former union leaders such as 

Marshall Ganz, Jerry Cohen, and Fred Ross Jr., 

returned to Delano to offer Cesar their support. After 

a remarkable thirty-six days, Chavez was advised to 

end the fast or risk permanent damage to his health 

and possibly death. On August 21, 1988, eight 

thousand farm workers and supporters, including 

Jesse Jackson, Ethel Kennedy, and state 

assemblyman Tom Hayden as well as actors such as 

Martin Sheen and Edward James Olmos joined 

Chavez at the Forty Acres to attend Mass and 

celebrate the end of the union leader’s fast. The spirit 

of Cesar’s fast did not end, however. Supporters 

agreed to take up the fast in three-day periods and 

continue a “chain of suffering.” Jesse Jackson was 

the first to accept a small wooden crucifix from Cesar 

and fast for three days before passing the cross to the 

next person (Ferriss and Sandoval 1997, Griswold del 

Castillo and Garcia 1995). 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 270 

The fast was hard on Chavez’s health, and it would 

take him months to recover. Even more troubling, 

according to Chris Hartmire, was the fact that “the 

growers didn’t call.” The fast accomplished Cesar’s 

personal goals, though, and it produced a wave of 

media attention and a series of rallies, grocery-store 

pickets, and vigils around the country. Within two 

years studies would show grape consumption down 

seventy-four percent in New York City, thirty-seven 

percent in Los Angeles, and thirty-six percent in San 

Francisco. Chavez’s patient confidence remained 

intact (Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 1995, Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1997). 

Less than a month after Chavez ended his fast, 

Dolores Huerta unexpectedly risked her own life for 

La Causa. On a fundraising trip through California, 

presidential candidate George Bush proclaimed, “I 

have never, nor will I ever, boycott grapes!” The 

next day, September 15, Huerta arrived at a rally for 

Bush at the St. Francis Hotel to distribute press 

releases criticizing Bush’s opposition to the boycott. 

After talking to several reporters outside the hotel, 

Huerta found herself herded into a group of 

protesters. Within a few minutes a police officer 

began beating the fifty-eight-year-old union leader 

with his billy club. Huerta was hospitalized with four 

fractured ribs, a ruptured spleen, and life-threatening 

internal bleeding. Chavez, still recovering from his 

fast, demanded a full investigation, as did several 

civil rights groups and the California Labor 

Federation. The city finally settled a lawsuit with 

Huerta out of court three years later for more than 

eight hundred thousand dollars. Huerta used the 

settlement proceeds to assist groups working to 

organize women (Ferris and Sandoval 1997). 

By the spring of 1989, Chavez’s health was restored 

and he was back on the road, speaking to farm 

workers, church groups, college students, and 

consumer groups. He talked about the struggles of 

farm workers and the history of the union, the 

tragedies caused by pesticide poisoning and the 

refusal of the state to pass and enforce restrictions on 

the use of pesticides, and the broader problems faced 

by farm workers, Latinos, other racial-minority 

groups, and the poor. He called for increased 

concern for public health and the environment, 

greater state investment in public education, greater 

support from the state and private industry for 

affordable housing for lower-income Americans, and 

more job training and job opportunities for the 

unemployed. Chavez drew large audiences wherever 

he went, and he commanded the respect due a labor 

leader and civil rights leader of his stature (Ferris and 

Sandoval 1997, Jensen and Hammerback 2002). 

Even some of Chavez’s former opponents were 

beginning to recognize his legacy. On October 19, 

1990, a reluctant Chavez helped celebrate the 

opening of new elementary school in Coachella 

named in his honorthe first public building in the 

state of California to bear his name. Two years later, 

in the middle of a rejuvenated field-organizing 

campaign that prompted the first wage increase for 

grape workers in eight years, the union planned a 

two-mile march in downtown Salinas. Members of 

Teamsters Local 890 asked if they could join Chavez, 

and he agreed. The mingling of UFW members and 

Teamsters on the streets of Salinas seemed strange to 

those who remembered the bitter, violent 

confrontations of the 1970s (Hartmire 2000, Ferriss 

and Sandoval 1997) 

Even as the union was enjoying steady gains in 

boycott support and making progress in the fields, it 

was beset by financial problems stemming from 

grower lawsuits. One of the most difficult lawsuits 

was filed by one of the union’s staunchest opponents, 

the Bruce Church Company, a corporate giant in the 

lettuce industry. The grower operation, which owned 

land in California and Arizona (encompassing the 

former Chavez homestead near Yuma), had signed 

with the Teamsters in 1970. After its workers voted 

for representation by the UFW under the auspices of 

the ALRA, the company launched what would 

become a seventeen-year battle challenging the 

election. And, in 1984, the company filed a $5.4 

million lawsuit in Arizona for damages stemming 

from the secondary boycott. A federal judge finally 

dismissed the suit in 1992, but the company initiated 

a $3 million lawsuit one year later. Because the 

UFW’s total assets at the time had fallen to around $2 

million, the suit threatened to drive the union into 

bankruptcy and out of existence (Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia 

1995). 

Chavez traveled to San Luis, Arizona, in April 1993 

to testify against this new lawsuit. After two days of 

testimony he was tired but confidant, eager to defeat 

the lawsuit and return to organizing work. On April 

22 the union leader spent a relaxing evening with 

UFW board member David Martinez at the San Luis 

home of Dona Maria Hau, a retired farm worker. 

Sometime in the early morning hours of April 23, 

1993, Cesar died from natural causes. He was sixtysix years old. 

As news of Cesar’s death spread to family members, 

friends, farm workers, supporters, and old allies, so 

too did feelings of shock, sadness, and griefbut 

also gratitude for all that Cesar did, all that he fought 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 271 

for, and all that he symbolized. Almost forty 

thousand people made their way to Delano to pay 

their respects and to march with Cesar behind the red 

and black union flags one last time. 

The funeral procession followed Cesar’s simple pine 

casket along the Garces Highway, past People’s Cafe, 

to the Forty Acres. Jesse Jackson, Edward James 

Olmos, and some of Robert Kennedy’s children took 

turns as pallbearers, while Ethel Kennedy offered 

comfort to Helen, her longtime friend. Former 

governor Jerry Brown spoke at the funeral, and words 

of condolence flowed in from Pope John Paul II, 

President Salinas de Gortari of Mexico, and President 

Bill Clinton. Countless farm workers whose lives 

Cesar fought to improve reflected, too, on the passing 

of their champion. The words of Pete Velasco, a 

Filipino immigrant, farm worker, and union leader, 

perhaps reflect the widest sentiment: 

“Cesar was a gift to the farm workers, to all people, 

and to me. He taught us how to walk in the jungle 

and not be afraid. He taught us to maintain dignity. 

[With Cesar’s death,] the spirit within every one of us 

has become renewed, just like the spirit of 1965 has 

come back to life. And that was a beautiful legacy 

that we received from our brother Cesar Chavez.” 

After the funeral procession, Chavez was laid to rest 

in a simple, private ceremony at La Paz. As Velasco 

affirmed, Chavez’s legacy lived on (Ferriss and 

Sandoval 1997). 

Chavez’s legacy matches that of any social leader in 

the U.S. during the twentieth century. Identification 

and preservation of sites associated with Chavez’s 

life and the history of the labor movement that he led 

will ensure that this legacy is not forgotten. At the 

same time, identification and preservation of sites 

associated with Cesar Chavez and the farm labor 

movement will recognize the difficulties that farm 

workers faced in their efforts to form the attachments 

to place that most Americans take for granted. 

Properties such as the Forty Acres near Delano and 

Nuestra Señora Reina de La Paz in the Tehachapi 

Mountains have particular importance. Purchased, 

shaped, and maintained by farm workers, these sites 

reflect the strength and permanence of their union. 

They remain sources of pride for Mexican Americans 

and others who supported the UFW in the 1960s and 

1970s and continue to support the union today. For 

all Americans, these sites are critical locations for 

understanding U.S. history as it unfolded over the 

course of the twentieth century. 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 272 

Cesar Chavez and the Farm Labor Movement Timeline 

1903 Japanese and Mexican beet-field workers in Oxnard unite to form Japanese-Mexican Labor 

Association 

1905 Industrial Workers of the World (also known as Wobblies) begin efforts to organize farm workers 

1913 Wheatland Riot breaks out at the Durst Brothers’ hop ranch, leaving five dead and dozens injured 

March 31, 

1927 

Cesario Estrada Chavez born in the Gila River Valley northeast of Yuma, Arizona 

1927 – 

1938 

Chavez spends boyhood at the family homestead in the Gila River Valley; attends Laguna School 

1928 Mexican farm workers in the Imperial Valley form La Unión de Trabajadores del Valley Imperial

1930 Mexican and Filipino lettuce workers form Agricultural Workers Industrial League (AWIL) 

1931 Farm workers in California form Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) 

1933 CAWIU organizes 24 strikes, including massive San Joaquin Valley cotton strike 

1935 National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) signed into law; protects industrial workers’ rights to 

engage in collective bargaining but specifically excludes farm workers and domestic workers 

1938 – 

1943 

Chavez family spends time in Oxnard, San Jose, Delano, and elsewhere working in seasonal 

agriculture 

1939 United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) active in California 

1944 – 

1946 

Cesar serves two years in the U.S. Navy 

1947 National Farm Labor Union (NFLU) leads a strike and boycott against Di Giorgio Farms in Kern 

County 

1948 

Cesar marries Helen Fabela 

1949 NFLU leads strike of cotton field workers in the San Joaquin Valley; Chavez participates 

1949 – 

1951 

Cesar works for a lumber company with Richard in Crescent City; Helen pregnant with third child 

1951 Cesar and Helen move back to San Jose’s Sal Si Puedes barrio 

June 1952 Fred Ross, founder of the Community Service Organization (CSO), meets Chavez in San Jose, 

recruits him 

1953 – 

1958 

Chavez organizes CSO chapters in Oakland and the San Joaquin Valley 

1955 Fred Ross meets Dolores Huerta in Stockton, recruits her into CSO 

1959 Chavez elected executive director of the CSO; family moves to Los Angeles (Boyle Heights) 

March 1962 

CSO membership votes down Chavez’s proposal to organize farm workers; Chavez resigns 

April – 

September 

1962 

Chavez family moves to Delano; Chavez begins talking with farm workers about forming an 

association 

September 

30, 1962 

Farm Workers Association (FWA) holds founding convention in Fresno 

1963 FWA sets up offices at 102 Albany in Delano 

March 1965 First FWA strike, for a pay raise, against a rose grower 

Summer 

1965 

Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) calls strikes in Coachella Valley and near Arvin 

September 

8, 1965 

AWOC members in Delano, led by Larry Itliong, meet at Filipino Community Hall and vote to go on 

strike 

September 

16, 1965 

FWA changes name to National Farm Workers Association (NFWA); votes to join AWOC strike 

November 

1965 

Luis Valdez and Agustin Lira form El Teatro Campesino 

December 

1965 

NFWA and AWOC launch boycott of Schenley Industries and Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 273 

Cesar Chavez and the Farm Labor Movement Timeline (continued) 

December 

1965 

UAW president Walter Reuther visits Delano, announces support for AWOC and NFWA 

March 1966 Robert F. Kennedy, visiting Delano for Senate hearings, announces support for AWOC and NFWA 

March 17 – 

April 10, 

1966 

NFWA and AWOC members undertake 300-mile, 25-day march to Sacramento 

April 1966 Schenley Industries agrees to sign a contract; focus turns to Di Giorgio; national boycott continues 

June 1967 Di Giorgio agrees to talks with NFWA and AWOC, then signs contract with Teamsters 

July 1967 NFWA and AWOC merge to form United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) 

August 30, 

1967 

Election victories give UFWOC right to represent field workers at Di Giorgio ranches 

Summer 

1967 

Chavez activates nationwide boycott of Giumarra table grapes 

January 

1968 

Giumarra selling grapes under rivals’ labels; Chavez extends boycott to entire table-grapes industry 

February 14 

– March 11, 

1968 

Dismayed by violence, Chavez conducts fast at Forty Acres; announces fast on February 19 at Filipino 

Community Hall 

Spring 1969 UFWOC declares boycott of all Safeway grocery stores (where Giumarra sold 20 percent of its 

grapes) 

April 1970 

Coachella grower Lionel Steinberg signs a contract with UFWOC 

July 29, 

1970 

Giumarra and other Delano growers sign contracts with UFWOC, ending five-year table-grapes strike 

August 

1970 

Salinas Valley lettuce growers sign contracts with Teamsters; UFWOC moves operations to Salinas 

August 23, 

1970 

Chavez activates lettuce boycott; InterHarvest, Fresh Pict, and Pic N Pac sign contracts with UFWOC 

December 

4 – 24, 

1970 

Chavez jailed at Monterey County Courthouse for refusing to terminate boycott of Bud Antle lettuce 

1971 UFWOC begins the process of becoming an AFL-CIO union; begins to move headquarters to La Paz 

1971 Larry Itliong resigns from UFWOC 

May 12 – 

June 4, 

1972 

Chavez conducts fast at Santa Rita Center in Phoenix to protest anti-union legislation 

November 

1972 

UFW leads defeat of Proposition 22, which would have restricted union activity in California 

April 1973 UFW loses Coachella Valley contracts to Teamsters; violence often erupts along picket lines 

Summer 

1973 

Strike activity and violence spread to San Joaquin Valley 

August 13, 

1973 

Nagi Daifullah dies from head injuries suffered while fleeing deputy sheriff near Arvin 

August 15, 

1973 

Juan de la Cruz dies from gunshot wounds in Kern County; Chavez suspends picketing, activates 

boycott 

September 

1973 

UFW holds first convention 

February 

1975 

March to Gallo headquarters in Modesto prompts negotiations on new state law to govern labor 

relations 

June 5, 

1975 

Governor Jerry Brown announces passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act 

July 1975 Chavez conducts “thousand-mile march” from San Ysidro to Sacramento to La Paz 

April 1976 Agricultural Labor Relations Board runs out of funds; Chavez puts funding proposition on November 

ballot 

November 

1976 

Growers oppose Proposition 14 with $2 million campaign; Proposition 14 defeated by wide margin 

1977 Teamsters withdraw from fields; Chavez brings “the Game” to La Paz 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 274 

Cesar Chavez and the Farm Labor Movement Timeline (continued) 

January 

1979 

Contracts with Imperial and Salinas Valley growers expire; negotiations stall; strike begin 

February 

10, 1979 

Rufino Contreras dies from gunshot wounds in Imperial Valley; Chavez suspends picketing 

August 

1979 

Focus of strike activity moves to Salinas Valley; picketing and marches secure new contracts 

1978 – 

1981 

UFW leadership increasingly divided by internal issues (union structure and authority, priorities, 

salaries) 

1982 ALRB’s failure to enforce the ALRA creates perception of inactivity in the fields 

1983 Radio Campesina network launched 

September 

1983 

Rene Lopez dies from gunshot wounds near Fresno, reflecting ALRB’s failure to protect organizers 

1984 Chavez calls on American consumers to boycott grapes because of health risks from pesticides 

1987 Cancer clusters prompt UFW production of short documentary film The Wrath of Grapes 

1988 Chavez conducts 36-day fast to pressure growers to negotiate contracts and regulate pesticides 

April 22, 

1993 

Chavez dies in his sleep in San Luis, Arizona 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 275 

Appendix G: Sites Requiring Additional Research and 

sites not Determined Eligible for National Historic 

Landmark or National Register of Historic Places 

Nomination

Over 100 sites related to Cesar Chavez and the Farm Labor Movement were evaluated in this study. An initial 84 

sites were evaluated based on research conducted by the Center for Oral and Public History at California State 

University, Fullerton under the leadership of Dr. Raymond Rast. Many more sites were suggested during public 

scoping for the study. Chapter 3, Resource Significance, identifies sites that 1) appear to be eligible for nomination 

as a National Historic Landmark (NHL), 2) sites that may be eligible for NHL nomination pending additional 

research, and 3) sites that appear eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The 

following table includes study findings regarding significance and integrity for the remainder of the sites identified 

through the study process. With additional information and research, some of these sites may be determined 

significant upon further evaluation. 

An asterisk has been placed for sites that were identified during public scoping in spring 2011. These sites have not 

received the same level of evaluation as those sites that were identified and evaluated by the Center for Oral and 

Public History. Additional time and information is needed to fully evaluate these sites. 

Commemorative sites such as named streets, schools, parks and libraries are not included, with one exception, as 

these sites were named in honor of Cesar Chavez after his death in 1993 and thus are not associated with his 

productive life or important achievements. General suggestions about entire towns, neighborhoods/barrios, or 

university campuses also were not included in the list. 

Sites Requiring Additional Research and Sites not Determined Eligible for NHL or NRHP Nomination

Property/Site City (or 

proximate) 

Initial Significance Findings/Additional Research 

Needs 

San Francisco-Oakland, CA Area 

East Bay Huelga Headquarters Oakland Integrity of site and structure diminished by surrounding 

development and subsequent use 

NFWA Office San Francisco Integrity of site and structure diminished by surrounding 

development and subsequent use 

St. Paul’s Convent (Boycott House) San Francisco Integrity of site and structure diminished by surrounding 

development and subsequent use 

San Jose – San Juan Bautista-Salinas – Watsonville –Gilroy-Hollister, CA Area

*City Hall and Downtown Gilroy Gilroy Need better understanding of potential national 

significance. 

*Hollister Memorial Park Hollister Site where gatherings occurred but likely lacks clear 

association. 

Hartnell Community College Athletic 

Field 

Salinas Integrity of site intact, but integrity of structure diminished 

by subsequent use; association with Cesar Chavez and 

the farm labor movement is brief and unclear 

San Jerardo Cooperative Salinas Integrity of site undetermined 

*The Reada House Salinas Site where Chavez stayed but likely lacks clear 

association. 

Chavez Family Residence (Scharff 

Avenue) 

San Jose Site retains moderate integrity, but structure itself 

nonextant 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 276 

Sites Requiring Additional Research and Sites not Determined Eligible for NHL or NRHP Nomination (continued)

Property/Site City (or 

proximate) 

Initial Significance Findings/Additional Research 

Needs 

Cesar and Helen Chavez Family 

Residence (Summer St) 

San Jose Integrity of site likely intact, but association likely unclear 

Cesar and Helen Chavez Family 

Residence (Wabash) 

San Jose Integrity of site likely intact, but association likely unclear 

CSO Office (East Santa Clara Avenue) San Jose Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of building interior unknown but likely diminished 

by subsequent use 

CSO Office (Jackson Avenue) San Jose Integrity of site diminished by freeway; integrity of 

structure diminished by subsequent use 

CSO Office (Selma Avenue) San Jose More information needed in order to locate and analyze 

this site. 

Mayfair Community Center Site San Jose Building itself no longer extant at site; integrity of site 

somewhat intact but diminished by new community center 

and surrounding development 

Mexican Heritage Plaza Site San Jose Grocery store building non-extant; site has been 

redeveloped; site retains integrity of location but lacks 

integrity of design, setting, feeling, and association 

Evergreen Ranch Site San Jose Site likely lacks integrity, given development of Evergreen 

Valley College. More information is needed. 

Center for Employment Training San Jose Need to determine history of location 

Theodore Roosevelt Junior High School San Jose School seems to be no longer in use; now surrounded by 

Roosevelt Park 

*Sacred Heart Church San Jose Site where gatherings occurred but likely lacks clear 

association. 

*Palomar Ballroom San Jose Site where gatherings occurred but likely lacks clear 

association. 

*Notre Dame/ Santa Clara Avenue San Jose Unable to determine whether or not site is extant. 

Significance/relationship unclear. 

*Watsonville Plaza Watsonville Site where gatherings occurred but likely lacks clear 

association. 

Calistoga-Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto-Fresno-Caruthers-Visalia-Porterville Area, CA

Migrant Farm Worker Housing Center Calistoga Integrity of site undetermined 

Sikkema Dairy Ranch Caruthers Integrity undetermined 

Delano, CA Area 

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Meeting 

Hall 

Delano Renovations of meeting hall have progressed since initial 

evaluation; interior likely lacks integrity 

Richard Chavez Residence Delano Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity of structure diminished by 

subsequent use 

American Legion Hall Delano Integrity of site and structure likely intact, but association 

with CC and FWM brief and unclear 

Dolores Huerta Residence Delano Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity of structure diminished by 

subsequent use 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 277 

Sites Requiring Additional Research and Sites not Determined Eligible for NHL or NRHP Nomination (continued)

Property/Site City (or 

proximate) 

Initial Significance Findings/Additional Research 

Needs 

Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation, Sierra Vista 

Ranch 

Delano Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity assessment for 4,400 acre 

property requires additional resources; association with 

CC and FWM unclear 

NFWA Strike Headquarters (“Arroyo 

Camp”) 

Delano Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity of structures diminished by 

subsequent use 

Delano High School, Auditorium Delano Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity of structure diminished by 

subsequent use; association with CC and FWM brief and 

unclear 

NFWSC Headquarters Delano Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity of structure diminished by 

subsequent use 

Delano Memorial Park Delano Integrity of site diminished by subsequent use; 

association with CC and FWM brief and unclear 

NFWA Office (The “Pink House”) Delano Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity of structure diminished by 

subsequent use 

*El Teatro Campesino site on Wellington 

Street 

Delano Need more information in order locate and analyze. 

*King House Delano Need better understanding of potential significance. 

*Site of the printing press where UFW 

newspaper was printed, no specific 

site/city listed with comment 

Delano Significance of the paper is associated with multiple UFW 

offices and sites in Delano and Keene. 

Bakersfield-Lamont-Arvin-Keene, CA Area

DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation, Di Giorgio 

Farms 

Arvin Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity assessment for 12,000 acre 

property requires additional resources; association with 

CC and FWM unclear 

Giumarra Vineyards Corporation Bakersfield Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity assessment for massive 

property requires additional resources; association with 

CC and FWM unclear 

Kern County Fairgrounds Bakersfield Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity assessment for massive 

property requires additional resources; association with 

CC and FWM unclear 

*Ming’s Restaurant Bakersfield Need better understanding of potential national 

significance. 

UFWOC Field Office Lamont Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity of structure diminished by 

subsequent use 

Carpinteria-Ventura-Oxnard-Santa Barbara, CA Area

Carpinteria State Beach Carpinteria Integrity of site likely preserved by state park status but 

association with CC unclear 

Buena Vista Labor Camp Oxnard Integrity of site diminished by subsequent use, but local 

residents suggest some structures on site retain integrity 

CSO Office (North Grant) Oxnard Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity of structure (Quonset hut) 

diminished by subsequent use 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 278 

Sites Requiring Additional Research and Sites not Determined Eligible for NHL or NRHP Nomination (continued)

Property/Site City (or 

proximate) 

Initial Significance Findings/Additional Research 

Needs 

CSO Office (Location needs confirmation 

– Hayes Street?) 

Oxnard Integrity undetermined 

Cesar Chavez Boyhood Residence 

(North Garfield) 

Oxnard Site likely retains moderate integrity, but structure is nonextant. 

*Our Lady of Guadalupe School Site Oxnard Site where Chavez baptized, worked, stayed, testified, 

taught, worshipped (but likely lacks clear association) 

*Colonia Park Oxnard Sites where gatherings or meetings occurred (but likely 

lacks clear association) 

*United Packing Workers Association (La 

Colonia?) 

Oxnard No mention of site associated with this union, need better 

understanding of potential significance. 

*Labor Camps on 5th Street between 

Rose and Pacific (Triple S Bracero Camp 

and Campo Vanessa) 

Oxnard Need better understanding of potential significance. 

*Cristo Rey Church Oxnard Need more information, need better understanding of 

potential significance. 

*Latin American Veterans Club, Oxnard Oxnard Need better understanding of potential national 

significance. 

*School attended by Chavez (Colonia 

and Garfield) 

Oxnard Need confirmation of location and more information to 

understand potential significance. 

*Casa de la Raza Santa Barbara Site where Chavez stayed but likely lacks clear 

association. 

Farm Labor Placement Service Office Ventura Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of structure diminished by subsequent use 

Los Angeles, CA Area 

CSO Headquarters (Soto Street) Los Angeles Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

structure non-extant 

CSO Headquarters (4th Street) Los Angeles Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of structure diminished by subsequent use 

UFWOC Field Office Los Angeles Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of structure diminished by subsequent use; 

association with movement unclear 

California Migrant Ministry Offices Los Angeles Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of structure diminished by subsequent use; 

association with movement unclear 

Boycott House (Winter Street) Los Angeles Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of structure diminished by subsequent use; 

association with movement unclear 

Boycott House (1st Street) Los Angeles Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of structure diminished by subsequent use; 

association with movement unclear 

Boycott House (Pacific Avenue) Los Angeles Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of structure diminished by subsequent use; 

association with movement unclear 

Boycott House (Hobart Street) Los Angeles Address unconfirmed; integrity undetermined 

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church (Cypress 

Ave) 

Los Angeles Need better understanding of potential national 

significance 

AME Church Los Angeles Need more information in order to locate and analyze 

Jewish Temple, Los Angeles (Westside) Los Angeles Need more information in order to locate and analyze 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 279 

Sites Requiring Additional Research and Sites not Determined Eligible for NHL or NRHP Nomination (continued)

Property/Site City (or 

proximate) 

Initial Significance Findings/Additional Research 

Needs 

Lincoln Park, Los Angeles Los Angeles Site where rally occurred (but likely lacks clear 

association) 

Los Angeles County Fairgrounds Los Angeles Site where rally,or gathering occurred (but likely lacks 

clear association) 

Downtown Plaza, Los Angeles Los Angeles Site where rally or gathering occurred (but likely lacks 

clear association) 

Juvenile Hall, Los Angeles Los Angeles Need better understanding of potential national 

significance 

Blythe-Borrego Springs-Coachella-Coachella Valley-Thermal, CA Area

UFW Office (Main Street) Blythe Integrity undetermined 

UFW Office (N. Broadway) Blythe Integrity undetermined 

*20th Avenue and Rannells Boulevard Blythe Site where farmworker tragedy occurred. Need better 

understanding of potential national significance. 

Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation, Borrego 

Springs Ranch 

Borrego Springs Integrity undetermined, but association with CC brief 

UFWOC Field Office Coachella Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but structure non-extant (if address is 

correct) 

David Freedman Ranch Coachella Integrity undetermined 

*UFW Office (6th Street) [public meeting 

comments indicate this was the first 

union hall in Coachella] 

Coachella Integrity of site undetermined. More research is needed. 

*Our Lady of Soledad Church/now 

known as Centro Martin Ortiz at 1612 1st

Street 

Coachella Need a better understanding of potential significance. 

More research is needed. 

El Parque de Mecca/ Triangle Park Coachella Site where gathering or rally occurred (but likely lacks 

clear association). More research is needed. 

*Teneceo fields/ranch Coachella Site of violent crash with Teamsters, need more 

information to locate and analyze significance and 

integrity. 

*Draftco Ranch Coachella Site of first Filipino strike in 1965. Need more information 

in order to locate and analyze significance and integrity. 

*Aguilera (sp.?) Ranch/Camp Coachella Ranch provided a place to rest for farmworkers. Need 

more information in order to locate and analyze 

significance and integrity. 

*Taj Mahal building at Indio Fairgrounds 

(Riverside County) 

Indio Site where rally occurred (but likely lacks clear 

association) 

Coachella Valley High School Thermal Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but integrity of structures diminished by 

subsequent use; association with CC and FWM brief and 

unclear 

*Iglesia Vieja de Coachella Coachella Site where Chavez worshipped (but likely lack clear 

association) 

Calexico-Holtsville-Imperial Valley, CA

De Anza Hotel Calexico Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of structure diminished by 2010 earthquake 

NFWSC Health Clinic Calexico Integrity undetermined 

Mario Saikhon Ranch Holtville Integrity undetermined 
Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment 

Appendices 280 

Sites Requiring Additional Research and Sites not Determined Eligible for NHL or NRHP Nomination (continued)

Property/Site City (or 

proximate) 

Initial Significance Findings/Additional Research 

Needs 

San Luis-Yuma, AZ Area 

*Former site of Immaculate Conception 

Church (Main St. and Giss Parkway) 

Yuma Site where Chavez was baptized (but likely lacks clear 

association) 

*Arizona Superior Court in Yuma County Yuma Site where Chavez testified (but likely lack clear 

association) 

*Entrance to the CRIT Reservation Ehrenberg Need better understanding of potential national 

significance 

Phoenix, AZ Area 

Del Webb Towne House Phoenix Integrity of site diminished by surrounding development; 

integrity of structure diminished by subsequent use; 

association with CC and FWM brief and unclear 

UFWOC Arizona Headquarters Tolleson Integrity of site intact (location, setting, feeling, 

association), but structure non-extant 

*Radio Campesina – original location? El Mirage Need more information in order to locate and analyze 

*Farm Workers Center at El Mirage (note 

from Ray :(Centro Adelante 

Campesina?) 

El Mirage Need more information in order to locate and analyze 

*Old Sacred Heart Church Phoenix Sites where meetings or gatherings occurred (but likely 

lacks clear association) 

*Saint John the Baptist, Santa Rita 

Chapel, St. Mary Magdalene Chapel 

Phoenix Sites where meetings occurred (but likely lacks clear 

association) 

*16th Street murals Phoenix Need better understanding of potential significance 

March Routes 

1969 Coachella to Calexico Integrity limited/unknown 

1975 San Francisco to Sacramento Integrity limited/unknown 

1975 Delano to Sacramento Integrity limited/unknown 

Downtown Delano March route not yet determined 

*UFW to Courthouse Salinas March route not yet determined 

Downtown Oxnard Oxnard March route not yet determined 

1975 San Diego to Sacramento to La 

Paz march route (1,000 mile march) 

Integrity limited/unknown 

*Sites identified through public scoping in spring 2011. Generally, more information and analysis is needed to determine 

their significance and related integrity.