page_title: Cesar Chavez
section_title: Immigration and legislative campaigns: 1973–1975
hierarchical_section_title: Cesar Chavez / Later activism / Immigration and legislative campaigns: 1973–1975
caption_attribution_description: Duncan West speaking with Cesar Chavez — at the Delano UFW rally in Delano, California (1974). Duncan represented the Teamsters who were supporiting the United Farm Workers−UFW, and condeming their IBT union leadership for working as thugs against a fellow union. Duncan and his wife Mary were the branch organizers of the LA IS.
context_page_description: César Estrada Chávez was an American labor leader, community organizer, businessman, and Latino American civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later merged to become the United Farm Workers labor union. Ideologically, his world-view combined leftist politics with Roman Catholic social teachings.
  Born in Yuma, Arizona, to a Mexican American family, Chavez began his working life as a manual laborer before spending two years in the United States Navy. Relocating to California, where he married, he got involved in the Community Service Organization, through which he helped laborers register to vote. In 1959, he became the CSO's national director, a position based in Los Angeles. In 1962, he left the CSO to co-found the NFWA, based in Delano, California, through which he launched an insurance scheme, credit union, and the El Malcriado newspaper for farmworkers. Later that decade he began organizing strikes among farmworkers, most notably the successful Delano grape strike of 1965–1970. Amid the grape strike his NFWA merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form the UFW in 1967.
context_section_description: In September 1973, the UFW's first constitutional convention was held in Fresno, representing the final step in the organization becoming a full union. A new constitution was announced that gave the group’s president, a post occupied by Chavez, significant powers; he feared that greater democracy would paralyze the group. At the convention, the UFW agreed to scrap monthly membership fees in favor or charging members 2 percent of their annual income. It also announced that volunteers who had worked for the UFW for more than six months could become members with voting rights. Previously, membership had been restricted primarily to farmworkers. The new executive committee, which included Huerta and Richard Chavez, was racially mixed, although some members expressed dissatisfaction that it did not contain more Mexican Americans.  By 1974, the UFW was again broke and its boycott was floundering. That year, New York Times Magazine opened with a headline: "Is Chavez Beaten?". Chavez flew to Europe to urge the unions there to block the imported goods that the UFW were sending there. He travelled through London, Oslo, Stockholm, Geneva, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Brussels, and Paris, although he found that the unions were cautious about joining his campaign. In Rome, he met with Pope Paul VI, who commended his activism.
  Chavez increasingly blamed the failure of the UFW strike on illegal immigrants who were brought in as strikebreakers. He made the unsubstantiated claim that the CIA was involved in part of a conspiracy to bring illegal migrants into the country so that they could undermine his union. He launched the "Illegals Campaign" to identify illegal migrants so that they could be deported, appointing Liza Hirsch to oversee the campaign. In Chavez's view, "if we can get the illegals out of California, we will win the strike overnight." Huerta urged him not to refer to migrants who had come to the U.S. illegally as "illegals" but Chavez refused, stating: "a spade's a spade." Some UFW field offices refused to collaborate with the campaign, and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) refused to allow its interns to work on it, at which Chavez cut the UFW's links with the NLG.
  While Chavez had been in Europe, his cousin Manuel Chavez had established a UFW patrol, or "wet line", along Arizona's border with Mexico to stop illegal migrants crossing into the United States. There were rumors that this patrol was employing violence against these migrants, beating and robbing them and in one case castrating a man. These allegations soon appeared in the local press. A Mexican investigation determined that the UFW had bribed San Luis city officials to prevent them from interfering in these activities along the border. A Mexican union, the Confederation of Mexican Workers, broke its links with the UFW over the issue. Chavez dismissed the reports of violence as the smears of paid provocateurs, a claim which many of his supporters accepted. Chavez protected Manuel, while the executive board kept silent on his activities, regarding him as useful. The Chicano activist Bert Corona staged a protest against the UFW wet line, at which Chavez directed Jerry Cohen to launch an investigation into the funding of Corona's group.
  In 1974 Chavez proposed the idea of a Poor People's Union with which he could reach out to poor white communities in the San Joaquin Valley who were largely hostile to the UFW. Meanwhile, the UFW announced that it would launch a boycott of the Gallo Wine company. In February 1975, the UFW organized a four-day march from San Francisco to the Gallo headquarters in Modesto, where a crowd of around 10,000 protesters amassed. The Modesto march had been a means of trying to rekindle the successes of the late 1960s and a public display of strength despite the setbacks that the UFW had experienced.
  In November 1974, the Democratic Party's candidate, the modern liberal Jerry Brown, was elected Governor of California. At this point, farm-worker's rights took centre stage in the state's political agenda. Chavez met with Brown and together they develop
caption: Chavez speaking at a 1974 UFW rally in Delano, California.
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