Cesar Chavez’s movement brought new dignity for farmworkers as human beings, and respect for their rights as workers.
by Richard Ybarra
March 30 – Twenty-nine years after his passing in 1993, Cesar Chavez’s name and legacy continue to grow. Many young people born and raised since his passing are left to learn from those who were there, so they in turn can pass the proverbial baton to the generations that follow.
I was there. I was Chavez’s personal assistant for almost four years. At 22 years of age, a few months after his daughter Anna and I married, we spent Christmas with her family in Keene. As we were about to leave, Cesar Chavez asked me, “Why don’t you and Anna come live and work here?” I asked, “What would I do?” He answered, “You would work with me.”
Two months later, I left a well-paying job in San Diego and began our close association. The first month, I joined his personal security team. The second month, I took charge of that team. As we traveled, our relationship and my duties grew. I became his scheduler, personal secretary, speechwriter, political adviser, mood setter and constant companion. We found ways to laugh a lot as we did serious work across the U.S., Canada and Europe.
As we end National Women’s Month, I offer praise to my mother-in-law, Helen Chavez, who along with her husband Cesar, my wife Anna, and her seven siblings, started the farmworker movement, later joined by Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chavez. Without Helen Chavez, there would never have been a Cesar Chavez. She was the rock of the movement.
Cesar Chavez’s movement brought new dignity for farmworkers as human beings, and respect for their rights as workers. It was the first successful union by agricultural workers in the U.S. What most do not know is that his movement’s fervor to advance the plight and civil rights of farmworkers, Latinos and other working poor people overshadowed his interest in traditional labor activities.
In addition to promoting nonviolence, Cesar Chavez’s enduring lessons illustrated the importance of standing up to get things done, treating all people with dignity and never stopping to work for social justice. Teaching others to overcome fear was his top lesson.
My maternal grandfather, Juan Gonzalez, inspired me to join Cesar Chavez’s cause. He was the leader and organizer of the Lemon Grove school boycott and successful school desegregation court case. He also led farmworker strikes in San Diego and Orange counties in the 1930s. Like my mother, Minnie, I followed in my grandfather’s footsteps.
There are many memories from the nearly four years of working and traveling the country and world with Cesar Chavez as his personal assistant. We worked seven days a week, 15-18 hours per day, traveling by car or plane all across the country, attending marches and picket lines, from agricultural areas to speak about boycotts at universities. Some of the best moments were a private audience with Pope Paul VI; meeting Anthony Quinn and Loretta Lynn on “The Mike Douglas Show”; many private meetings with Dorothy Day, Coretta Scott King and the Kennedy family; and hundreds of hours spent inspiring farmworker families wherever we met them.
Chavez, who died at the age of 66, taught us to overcome fear by empowering farmworkers and other working poor. Small in stature, dark-skinned, with a fierce drive for justice, Chavez inspired generations and continues to inspire new immigrants to live in dignity and without fear.
When Robert F. Kennedy joined Cesar Chavez in 1968 at a mass in Delano celebrating the end of Chavez’s 25-day fast to promote nonviolent resistance, Kennedy called him “one of the heroic figures of our time.” When the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change presented Chavez with its Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize in Atlanta in 1973, King’s widow Coretta Scott King called Chavez “the rightful heir to my late husband Martin as the national leader of nonviolence.” At Chavez’s funeral mass, an audience of 40,000 farmworkers and people from all walks of life heard Cardinal Roger Mahony say, “Cesar Chavez was a special prophet to farmworkers.”
San Diego produced numerous full-time, $5 a week plus room and board volunteers for the farmworker movement. Linda and Carlos LeGerrette were the first, followed by Linda’s mom, Lil, and several family members. The Ybarra family, including our parents, Minnie and Mike, brothers Albert, Danny and primo hermano David Villarino, worked full time. Brother Sammy did part-time work and sang for the movement.
San Diego full-time volunteers who moved to the Central Valley included Katherine Atkins, Gary and Jackie Brown, Mike Castro, Jessie Constancio, Robert Hidalgo, Jim Hirst, Lynn Kirchner, Kathy Garren Ruiz, Juan and Berlinda Lopez, Ralph Magana, Mel and Pete Trejo, Vicky Campillo and Antonio Valladolid. An interesting farmworker volunteer note is that the four Ybarra brothers, David Villarino, Hidalgo, Hirst, Magana, Frank Archuleta, Valladolid, Silviano Curiel and John Velez all graduated from St. Augustine High in North Park.
There is one lingering controversy. In the 1970s, during grape and lettuce strikes, a few Chicano intellectuals began to tell a story of Cesar Chavez being against undocumented workers. I was in a number of these conversations between them. He always said, that unlike him, they did not have a constituency and could afford to be abstract. Since then, a number of Latino intellectuals and detractors have repeated that he had said, “I am against undocumented workers.” They conveniently left off the rest of his words, “who break my strikes or are used as strikebreakers. I represent undocumented strikers who don’t want anyone, documented or not, breaking their strike. If my own mother broke my strike, I would be against her.”
We all should find something to learn from his organizing and social justice lessons, like finding our voice and role in today’s discussions about equity, diversity and inclusion. Cesar Chavez passed on an energy and drive for social justice that must be carried forward from one generation to the next.
– Richard Ybarra serves as CEO of MNC Inspiring Success. He lives in San Francisco.
