"The Crusades of Cesar Chavez" discussion at the Central Library

On Tuesday I attended an interview and discussion at the Aloud program at the L.A. Central Library. Laura Pulido, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at U.S.C. interviewed Miriam Pavel author of "The Crusades of Cesar Chavez," and Luis Valdez, and founding artistic director of El Teatro Compesino (The Farm Workers' Theater) founded on the picket lines of the Delano grape strike in 1965.  Valdez's influential "Zoot Suit" was the first Chicano play on Broadway.  His film credit-prize winner editor works include "La Bamba," and "Cisco Kid."  His Teatro hired actors to put on skits from the back of trucks to get out the message of the United Farm Workers and the demonstrations.

Miriam Pawel also wrote "The Union of Their Dreams - Power, Hope and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement."  She is a Pultizer-prize winning editor and worked at Newsday and the L.A. Times. She researched the archives at Wayne State University in Detroit for over 3 years that include audio tapes of all the UFW meetings.

Luis Valdez was born in a migrant labor camp near the Chavez family on the West side of Delano, CA in 1940.  He graduated from college in 1964 and went to Cuba to meet Che and Fidel and then started the theater company working for Chavez.  He became friends with Chavez when he moved to Delano and lived with his family.  Chavez was born in 1927 in Arizona and came to Delano as a teenager...as a city "Chicano Zoot Suiter."

They both described how  Chavez became a community organizer and led the movement to improve the quality of life of the farm workers.  During Lent in March of 1965 he organized a march from Delano to Sacramento.  He had recruited religious leaders, students from Berkeley and other Universities.  They described his role evolving into a "Gandhi" like character.  He gave up smoking and drinking and became a spiritual leader of the movement...some say "saint like."  He was a successful organizer, and with the help of may others he took on the powerful owners and growers of the Central Valley and resulted in a successful grape boycott nationwide in 1970.

Chavez wrote the first constitution for the organization that later became a part of the AFL-CIO.
His weakness was that he did not have the management skills to run the day to day operations of the labor union.  He couldn't delegate authority.  His running of the labor contracts was a disaster, they said.  There was also conflict with the Filipino workers who some times felt left out. But considering that he was operating at a time when Reagan was governor and Nixon was president, he accomplished a lot.  "He turned himself into an Icon because we needed an Icon" they said.  They pointed out that he was not the first spiritual leader who created and built but couldn't run it.

Cesar Chavez

Luis Valdez, Miriam Pawel, and Laura Pulido