Chavez, Cesar Estrada

▪ 1994

      U.S. migrant farm worker and labour leader (b. March 31, 1927, Yuma, Ariz.—found dead April 23, 1993, San Luis, Ariz.), was an inspirational Hispanic leader who quit his job in the fields to organize poorly paid Mexican-American migrant farm labourers into the nation's first successful union of agricultural workers, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), the forerunner of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). Chavez had begun working beside his parents in the fields by the time he was 10. He sporadically attended some 65 different schools and lived in a succession of migrant worker camps before serving in the navy during World War II. After the war he returned to migrant farm work in Arizona and California. Chavez received training as an organizer from California's Community Service Organization (CSO), a creation of Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. He served as general director (1958-62) of the CSO before founding the NFWA in 1962. Chavez captured national attention in 1965, when he became the driving force in what became a five-year California grape pickers strike, and again in 1968, when he led a nationwide boycott of California table grapes. He remained in the public eye by fasting and by inviting arrest to dramatize his fight with both grape growers and iceberg lettuce producers. By 1970, with 17 million Americans supporting the grape boycott, growers had agreed to sign with the union. Though the Teamsters union tried to organize field hands, they abandoned the effort in 1977. Meanwhile, the UFWA had merged with an AFL-CIO farm group to form UFWOC, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO in 1966. That organization became the UFW in 1971. Chavez, who ruled the union with an authoritarian hand, eventually lost the support of his top aides, who resigned. Union membership also dwindled from 100,000 to some 20,000 members as it became increasingly difficult for Chavez to concentrate on organization efforts when he became involved in encounter programs, holistic medicine, vegetarianism, meditation, and faith healing. Chavez died in his sleep of natural causes.

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