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CESAR CHAVEZ: LEADER AS ORGANIZER
Ed Schwartz
A. Foundations
In an article in Playboy Magazine in January, 1970, Cesar
Chavez observed that, "Nothing is going to happen until we, the
poor can generate our own political and economic power. Such a
statement might seem radical, but it shouldn't."(l )For Chavez,
the statement represented more than an obligatory call to the
barricades. It summed up his strategy, his way of proceeding, a
way that distinguishes him from virtually every major movement
leader of the past generatlon.
Martin Luther King, Jr. exemplified the leader as prophet;
Cesar Chavez shows us the leader as organizer. To be sure, there
are similarities between the two men. Both emerged from
dispossessed minorities. Both succeeded in mobilizing non-violent
movements for social and economic justice. Both espoused
and practiced non-violence--indeed, Chavez may be America's
leading practitioner of non-violence today. Both understood the
importance of winning support for their demands from other groups
in the population--churches, labor unions, liberals, elected
officials. Most significant, both grounded their movements
in civic and religious ideals widely shared by the general
population.
These similarities should not obscure the important
differences between them, however. King, the prophet, stands in
the tradition of Moses; Chavez, the organizer, reflects the
tradition of David. The prophet is satisfied when the people
listen and respond. The organizer is content only when the
people come together within a permanent organization. The prophet
addresses large numbers at a time; the organizer works with small
groups until they can work together. The prophet demands the
center of the stage. The organizer frequently remains in the
background. These are the obvious points of contrast between the
two men.
To Reverend King, the message, the demands were the goal. Of
course, popularizing the issues required mobilizing people in
their behalf, but a movement was only a means to an end. Once one
cause was won, a new movement would be built to fight for the
next one. Organization building was simply not his kind of
architecture. He designed philosophies, strategies, not con-
stitutions and by-laws. His personal legacy remains, of course:
but significantly, the Southern Christian Leadershin Council
barely survives.
Chavez, by contrast, hopes to leave the United Farmworkers
of America as his major legacy. His private work, compared to
King's is minimal. We can think of no Chavez speech comparable to
"I Have a Dream"; no Chavez book comparable to Why We Can't Wait.
What Chavez believes apart from the issues of his own movement is
unknown. The movement itself, the organization, the Farmworkers
is what we know about Chavez, because this is what he wants us to
know.
Chavez' earliest political education grew out of his
religious convictions. As a young man in San Jose, he attached
himself to a barrio priest, Father Donald McDonnell, who mixed
discussions of social justice with stories from the history of
the labor movement. It is Father McDonltell, in fact, who
must stand as Chavez' main teacher. A graduate of St. Patrick's
Seminary in Menlo Park, California, the priest had resolved to
apply the principles of justice in Rerum Novarum (Pope Leo XIII)
and Quadragessimo Anno to the problems of the farmworkers. Joan
London and Henry Anderson, two chroniclers of the farmworkers,
describe his encounter with Chavez as perhaps the most im-
portant single meeting in the history of the farm labor movement.
Chavez is no less enthusiastic:
Father McDonnell sat with me past midnight telling me about
social justice and the Church's stand on farm labor and
reading from the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII in which he
upheld labor unions. I would do anything to get the Father
to tell me more about labor history. I began going to the
bracero camps with him to help with Mass, to the city jail
to talk with prisoners, anything to be with Elim. (3.)
Father McDonnell later recommended Chavez to the second person
who would influence him--Fred Ross.
Ross was legendary in organizing circles for piecing together
community organizations from house meetings held throughout a
neighborhood. In 1951, he was working in San Jose to establish a
community service organization under the auspices of Saul
Alinsky. At Father McDonnell's suggestion, he persuaded
Chavez to hold such a house meeting. Though skeptical at first,
the meeting convinced Chavez. As he recalled it several years
later:
So he (Ross) came in and sat down and began to talk about
farm workers, and then he took on the police and the
politicians, not rabble-rousing either, but saying the
truth. He knew the problems as well as we did; he wasn't
confused about the problems like so many people who want to
help the poor. He talked about the CSO and then the famous
Bloody Christmas a few years before, when some drunken cops
beat up some Mexican prisoners down in L.A. I didn't know
what CSO was or who this guy Fred Ross was, but I knew about
the Bloody Christmas case, and so did everybody in that
room; some cops had actually been sent to jail for
brutality, and it turned out that this miracle was thanks to
the CSO.
He did such a good job of explaSning how poor people could
build power that I could even taste it. I could feel it. I
thought, Gee, it's like digging a hole; there's nothiny
really complicated about it! ...You see, Fred was already an
organizer when Alinsky hired him. I guess some of his
theories came from Alinsky, but I learned everything
from Fred. It was Fred who developed this technique of house
meetings --Alinsky had never used them.
Anyway, I walked out with him to his car and thanked him for
coming, and then I kind of wanted to know--well, what next?
He said, "Well, I have another meeting, and I don't suppose
you'd like to come? I said "Oh, yes, I would." I told the
others I'd be right back and I got in his car and went with
him, and that was it. (4.)
Thus, the two most important influences on Chavez gave him the
political distance from his community that he needed to change
it. From Father McDonnell, he acquired an understanding of social
justice and labor history that reinforced his native religious
and civic idealism. From Fred Ross, he learned how to turn tight
barrio neighborhoods into instruments of power, then how to
translate the common values and concerns of migrant workers into
organized communities. This personal synthesis explains the
political hybrid that Chavez has since tried to create--between
the tactics of economic power and the philosophy of non-violence;
between a bread-and-butter union and a moral crusade.
Interestingly enough, it is an amalgam that defies the
conventions of its own separate parts. Modern organizers don't
often moralize, and it is still the rare church that
works to mobilize an economic movement.
To achieve this synthesis, Chavez has had to cultivate a unique
style of political leadership-one that also eludes conventional
analysis. How can a man become a leader in modern America who is
neither a great speaker, nor an artful infighter, nor a brilliant
administrator? How can a person who often stays inside a crowd
end up at its head? In Chavez' case, the answer lies in both his
personal approach to the movement and in his ability to blend
various traditions in its behalf. Six themes come to mind--
intimacy, example and sacrifice; continuity, conflict, and
participation.
To understand Chavez, we must analyze how these themes reinforce
one another.
B. INTIMACY, EXAMPLE, SACRIFICE
"The main thing in convincing someone," Chavez commented in an
article in Ramparts in 1966, "is to spend time with him.
"It doesn't matter if he can read, write, or even speak well.
What is important is that he is a man and second that he has
shown some in;tial interest. One good way to develop leadership
is to take a man with you in your car. And it works a lot better
if you're doing the driving, that way you are in charge. You
drive, he sits there, and you talk. (5.)
Some leaders teach from the speakers' platform; Chavez conducts
an endless series of tutorials. In an age of mass communications,
it is hard to imagine that one of the country's leading
movelments, The United Farmworkers of America, came toasther one
member at time. Tim Drake. a United Church of Christ minister who
worked with Chavez during the early 1960's recalled that:
His consistency and perseverance really shook me...A
disability case, a worker injured on the job--he would stay
with that worker day and night, day and night, until he
could locate an attorney who would take the case for
nothing, or find some way of settling it that was of benefit
to the worker. That's how his union was built: on plain
hard work and these very personal relationships. It was a
slow, careful plodding thing; the growers didn't even know
he was in town. Even when the strike started they had no
idea who Cesar Chavez was, but the workers did. (6.)
By cultivating such relationships, Chavez establishes a realistic
attitude between people in the movement as a whole. He views
leadership as "like taking a road over hills and down the valley;
you must stay with the people. If you go ahead of them too fast,
then they lose sight of you and you lose sight of them." (7.) He
is a realist. "Anyone who comes in with the idea that farmworkers
are free of sin and that growers are all bastards has never dealt
with the situation or is an idealist of the first order," he told
one reporter, "Things don't work that way. (8.)
Indeed, Chavez expresses contemptfor any image of the farmworkers
built upon a naive view of human nature:
"In the beginning, there was a lot of nonsense about the
poor farmworker: 'Gee, the farmworker is poor and
disadvantaged and on strike, he must be a super human
being!' And I said, 'Cut that nonsense out, all right!' That
was my opening speech. 'You're here working with a group of
men; the farmworker is only a human being. You take the
poorest of these guys and give him that ranch over there, he
could be just as much a bastard as the guy sitting there
right now. Remember, that both are men. In order to help the
farmworkers, look at them as human beings and not as
something extra special, or else you're kidding yourself and
are going to be mighty disappointed. Don't pity them either!
Treat them as human beings, because they have just as many
faults as you have; that way you'll never be in trouble,
because you'll never be disappointed. (9.)
He is equally hard on himself. "Don't let the public part fool
you," he says, "Me, here, I am just a plain human being, and I am
reminded of this constantly at home. My wife sees me as the same
old guy, you know. She has the advantage, she is removed from the
public part and she lets me know very definitely ly who I am. I
think thet sometimes, although I don't enjoy being taken down,
it is a good thing, that reminder at home..." (10.) If Chavez
"doesn't enjoy being taken down," he enjoys even less any signs
of adulation from his supporters. He is constantly stifling their
ovations for him.
Thus, unlike leaders who set themselves apart from their
followers, Chavez values intimate, frank relationships with each
of them. "Chavez gave me attention that I had never had before,"
a migrant from the Rio Grande observed, "I don't know how to
describe it...Cesar had the direct attention for us, not
like the politician that shakes your hand and says, 'How are
you?' and pats you on the back and is gone...Cesar gave his
attention to me." (11.) Most politicians today can't even
persuade the voters that they care about people like them. Chavez
has no such problem.
Intimacy creates the possibility of loyalty to the movement;
setting an example reinforces committments to its ideals. Chavez
places a high premium on adhering to the principles that he
espouses. If he preaches tolerance of human weakness, he
practices it. When he demands hard work, he sets the pace
himself. When he calls upon others to take risks, he places
himself in the most vulnerable position. "We don't let people sit
around the room crying about their problems," Chavez says, "No
philosophizing--do something about it." (12.)
Of course, at the center of this teaching by example is a strict
adherence to non-violence. It is far more than a tactic--"We are
firm believers, you know," (13.) he told a biographer. In the
tradition of Ghandi and King, he argues that violence, even
violence in a good cause, destroys the perpetrator as well as the
victim. "We must represent all human life, in the cities and in
the fields of Vietnam," he explained in an article in Look
Magazine. "Nonviolence is the only weapon that is compassionate
and recognizes each man's value. We work to preserve that value
in our enemies--or in our adversaries, as President Kennedy said
more gently, more rightly. We want to protect the victim from
being the victim. We want to protect the executioner from being
the executioner." (14.)
Yet if non-vlolence is not merely a tactic, it is a powerful
educational tool that Chavez uses to teach farmworkers many other
important values of the movement. Non-violence requires courage.
Following a particularly brutal confrontation with the Teamsters,
for example, members of the Longshoremen volunteered to retaliate
with their own "goons." Chavez rejected the offer. "They would
have run the Teamsters out of town," he explained,
"They've done it before, in Puerto Rico and Chicago...Maybe we
would have won the strike that way, but we would have lost a
lot too. See, every time the Teamsters beat up on one of our
guys, they lose. The whole idea of non-violence is you are not
afraid, if you become afraid, you start doing things you are
not supposed to do. Violence is a trap. We convert the farm-
workers and they can see our strength." (15.)
Non-violence demonstrates discipline, self-control. "It takes a
lot not to strike back," Chavez admits, "not that you don't get
the feeling sometimes. The reaction, I guess is built in us."
(16.) On more than one occasion, he has had to intercede between
the angry farmworkers and a grower after a particularly harsh
instance of brutality against picketers. Once he even warned a
mob that if it was going to "get" a grower, it would have
to get him, too. (17.) On another occasion, he threatened to
resign if union members embarked on a vigilante expedition. That
incident, particularly, showed how Chavez persuades by example
rather than rhetoric:
"You can vote right now to arm yourselves--" Chavez began, but
before he could complete his threat of resignation, a woman stood
up and spoke in his behalf. Concluding, she turned in a semi cir-
cle to plead with the brooding audience. "The whole world
supports Cesar!' she entreated, "just because of his
non-violence." A man stood up. "I offer words from the Bible," he
said, "Justice of God cannot be won by the sword. We must resist
the temptation to violence, especially when victory is certain."
The audience fell silent. Chavez, too, was silent. His tired face
reflected anything but certainty of victory. When it resumed, his
voice, came quietly, as if he had been speaking all along, and
only now had become audible again. "If you want a guard, and
nobody wishes to guard it without arms, then I will guard it
myself." He spoke very simply, and he meant it. "If they burn it,
we can build again. But if a man is killed, who can revive him?"
(18.)
The group came around.
Practicing non-violence also reflects a much subtler, but broader
way that Chavez teaches by example--namely, by cultivating
gentleness at all times. He is gentle in his criticism
of other people--sometimes, say his critics, too gentle. While he
sets exacting financial and administrative standards for his
staff, he is careful not to abuse them. His co-wcrkers appreciate
the approach. "When someone rebukes you heavily," one told a
reporter, "you remember it, you carry a scar; Cdsar does it so
softly that I couldn't focus on it while it was happening. I feel
badly, but I won't carry a scar."
By far the greatest value that Chavez hopes to promote by
example, however, is a principle as important as non-violence
itself--sacrifice. "Our lives are really all that belong to us,"
he once said, "I am convinced that the finest act of courage, the
strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others
in a totallv non--violent struggle for justice. To be a man is to
suffer for others. God help us to be men." (20.)
Chavez dramatizes his own personal sacrifice for the movement
through periodic public fasts. The first of thesef lasting 25
days in 1968, attracted national attention. Its public purpose
was to galvanize support for the grape strike. It had a deeper
significance, however, related to the internal politics of his
movement.
1968 was the year in which violent elements challenged advocates
of non-violence in every movement for social change. The
confrontation forced Martin Luther King into the streets of
Memphis to lead the marches of sanitation workers that cost him
his life. Similar upheavals on the campuses drove former
Congressman Allard Lowenstein, architect of the "Dump Johnson
Movement," to shift from denouncing the war to condemning violent
student protests--a shift that cost him much of his student
support.
Chavez chose to respond personally. Jerry Cohen, a staff member
at the time, explained:
"Cesar was mad. There had been a lot of loose talk about vio-
lence. He had told them the life of one man or woman was worth
more than the success of the cause, but they were not listening,
so he decided he had to find out who had the balls, and he
showed them. He scared the hell out of them. He didn't say,
"I'm not going to eat until you guys shut up your mouths about
violence;' he just said the union was committed to non-violence,
then started fasting. The people responded like, 'God, what is
this guy doing?' The people were scared and frustrated , they
didn't know what to do with him." (21.)
Certainly, the impact of the fast exceeded even Chavez'
erpectations. Workers from all over the country sought audiences
with him--opportunities that he used to discuss their individual
orqanizing problems. Supporters conducted rallies in his behalf.
He received media attention every night. Senator Robert Kennedy
joined him at the conclusion of the ordeal for a brief public
ceremony in San Jose. The fast resolved the question of who and
what wou]d lead the Mexican-American movement once and for all.
Yet if Chavez succeeded where Reverend King and Representative
Lowenstein failed, it was because his style of organizing made
success possible. His supporters were more than an audience--they
were his students, his friends, who rushed to his side when he
needed them. He had showed them how to follow his example in
general; it was only a small step for them to understand the
meaning of this particularly dramatic act of moral witness. His
whole career had embodied sacrifice. It was easy for others to
believe that he was prepared to offer the ultimate sacrifice, if
the integrity of his vision depended upon it. They had to
choose--if they wanted Chavez, they had to live up to his ideals.
Cesar Chavez, thus, became the only non-violent leader of the
1960's to outwit his violent opponents. For his physical
survival, he must thank God. For his political survival, he
deserves much of the credit himself.
C. CONTINUITY, CONFLICT, PARTICIPATION
One of Chavez' favorite storres is how he and his brother
developed the Farmworkers' flag:
"I wanted desperately to get some color into the movement, to
give people something they could identify with, like a flag.
I was reading some books about how various leaders discovered
what contrasted and stood out the best. The Egyptians had found
that a red field with a white circle and black emblem in the cen-
ter crashed into your eyes like nothing else. I wanted to use
the Aztec eagle in the center as on the Mexican flag. So I told
my cousin Manuel, 'Draw an Aztec eagle.' Manuel had a little
trouble with it, so we modified the eagle to make it easier to
draw.
"The first big meeting of what we decided to call the National
Farm Workers Association was held in September, 1962, at Fresno,
with 287 people. We had our huge red flag on the wall, with
paper tacked over it. When the time came, Manuel pulled a cord--
ripping off the flag and all of a sudden it hit the people. Some
of them wondered if it was a communist flag, and I said it probab
ly looked more like a neo-Nazi emblem than anything else. But
they wanted an explanation, so Manuel got up and said, 'When that
damn eagle flies, that's when the farmworkers' problems are to be
solved.' (22.)
If the flag symbo]izes the Farmworkers movement, the story
reflects how Chavez is putting it together--a synthesis of
various traditions that creates more energy than the sum of its
parts. For the flag, Chavez drew upon the wisdom of ancient
Egypt, just as Christianity is the ultimate source of authority
for the movement. The Mexican-American symbol, the Aztec eagle,
stood in the center, reflecting the centrality of
Mexican-American history to the Farmworkers' cause. The design
confronted the workers, in the way that the Farmworkers
themselves are supposed to confront established institutions. Yet
the flag was accessible. Manuel Chavez drew the eagle so that
others could replicate it, just as Cdsar Chavez builds his
organization so that anyone could participate in it. These three
elements--continuity, conflict, and participation--are the
ingredients that hold the United Farmworkers of America (UFWA)
together.
It is the Catholic tradition, even the church itself that serves
as the ultimate source of authority for the movement. Religious
symbols infuse the Farmworkers more directly than almost any
other social cause in America, and certainly more than any other
union. The religious connection is all the more unusual in that
Chavez himself is not a priest. To be sure, his political
education was theologically inspired, but more than one
politician has shared an equivalent education without applying it
directly to his work. Indeed, if we had to identify only one
characteristic that distinguishes the Farmworkers from other
economic uprisings, it would be this religious orientation.
Yet the Catholic appeal has been critical to winning support from
the workers themselves. Chavez' first major march in 1966--from
Delano to the California Statehouse in Sacramento--brought this
point home even to skeptical observers. It was not merely a
march, but a pereginacion, with the theme of "Penitence,
Pilgrimage, and Revolution" as climax on Easter Sundey. Along the
way, workers paraded under the Mexican patron saint of the
compesinos, la Virgen de Guadalupe. When one of the volunteers
objected to this hcavy religious motif -- including masses every
night and morning--Cesar Chavez took a vote. Dolores Huerta, a
farmworkers leader summed up the results: "We put the Virgin
to a motion, and virginity won." (23.)
Later, William Kircher, an AFL-CIO organizer with the
farmworkers, explained the march's tactical significance.
"The march was obviously an organizing tool. New. Radical. Dif-
ferent. A crew of people walking along the highway carrying the
banner of Our Lady, calling meetings at night which attracted
farm workers out of the fields and towns, opening with "De
Colores" (a song about the colors of spring in the fields) maybe
a prayer. The whole thing had a strong cultural, religious thing,
it was organizing people." (24.)
Indeed, the Catholic appeal has succeeded with the farmworkers
where all other traditions have failed.
Beyond the religious imagery, Chavez evokes memories of
Mexican-American history. "We are men and women who have suffered
and endured much not only because of our abject poverty, but
because we have been kept poor," he wrote in an open letter to
the California Grape and Tree Fruit League in 1969. "The colors
of our skins, the languages of our cultural and native origins,
the lack of formal education, the exclusion from the democratic
process, the numbers of our slain in recent wars--all these
burdens generation after generation have sought to demoralize us,
to break our human spirit, but God knows we are not agricultural
implements or rented slaves, we are men." (25.)
The letter merely echoed a point that Chavez had made to the
Farmworkers from their very first meeting--their cause was part
of a history that extended back to the worker rebellion in Mexico
over 155 years ago.
Chavez' third appeal is to American civic ideals, particularly
when he addresses non-farmworker audiences. "What we demand is
very simple," he told a Senate Sub-Committee hearing, "We want
equality. We do not want or need special treatment unless you
abandon the idea that we are equal men."(26.) In an article in
Look Magazine he noted that, "It may be a long time before we get
justice under the law, because the law is on the side of the
growers. As Robert Kennedy said to the Delano Sheriff during the
Senate hearings on Migrant labor--he was amazed to to find that
our people were arrested because they might commit a crime--'I
suggest that the Sheriff read the Constitution of the United
States."' (27.)
Reference to specific civic ideals are not made as much by Chavez
as they were by Martin Luther King. Certainly, religious and
Mexican-American imagery is more prominent. Nonetheless, like all
leaders of Mexican movements, Chavez sees himself as holding the country accountable to its own professed ideals.
Appeals to tradition do more than rationalize the demands of the
Farmworkers; they strengthen the resolve of the Union to fight
for them. Nonviolent, or not, Chavez understands that his
movement is engaged in a sustained battle with the established
interests--not just the growers, but the "Banks and railroad
companies and big corporations that run agri-business, a $1
billion industry in California." (28.) Indeed, he sees it as
being "locked in a death struggle against man's inhumanity to
man" in the food industry, "And this struggle itself gives
meaning to our life and ennobles our dying." (29.)
The problem of leadership lies in involving workers directly in
the process of conflict. Chavez believes that the picket line
serves this purpose well:
"If a man comes out of the field and goes on the picket
line, even for one day, he'll never be the same. The picket
line is the best possible education. Some labor people came
to Delano and said, 'Where do you train people? Where are
your classrooms?' I took them to the picket line. That's
where we train people That's the best training. The labor
people didn't get it. They stayed a week and went back to
their big jobs and comfortable homes. They hadn't seen
training, but the people here see it and I see it. The
picket line is where a man makes a commitment, and it's
irrevocable; and the longer he's on the picket line, the
stronger the commitment. The workers on the ranch committee
who don't know how to speak, or who never speak--after five
days on the picket lines they speak right out, and they
speak better." (30.)
By speaking of defending ideals and preserving traditions,
however, Chavez engages in this sort of conflict without trying
to subject the growers to humiliating defeat. "Let them have
their pride," he says, "What we want is a contract. This is what
they fail to understand. We are not out to put them out of
business because our people need the work; we are out to build a
union, and we'll negotiate half our lives to get it. If we can't
get better wages and working conditions for the workers, we are
willing to give up something. But growers choose to make it a
personal fight, so we have to do something to save their
face...Things can't look as if we are are getting a victory and
they are not. (31.)
The key to the success of their process, thus, lies in the
participation of the workers themselves. Every step that Chavez
takes--from his personal contacts with the workers to his
insistence that they join the picket lines --aims at providing
the direct involvement upon which personal dignity and
political democracy depends, "We don't need perfect political
systems," he says, "If you don't participate in the planning, you
just don't count." (32.)
It is on this point, primarily, in fact, that both the growers
and the Teamsters now resist Chavez. "The companies wanted to
come direct to La Paz and have us straighten out the problems,"
he explains, "but we can't do that." (33.) Instead, the
Farmworkers gives powers to individual ranch committees, both to
manage their internal affairs and to participate directly in
contract negotiations. The procedure is cumbersome, but Chavez
defends it:
"We have to preserve the ranch committees. They must have direct
representation at the convention. They not only have
the right, but the responsibility to deal with their own
internal problems. They deal with the members directly. They
are involved but they must be responsible for the first and
second steps of the grievance procedures." (34.)
This is participatory democracy with a vengeance, but Chavez
believes that the future success of his organization depends upon
it. Why spend so much time with individual workers, if not to
prepare them for self-government? Why set an example of courage,
if the workers themselves never feel the pride that comes from
displaying it? What good is gentleness if a community's members
never relate to one another? How can a congregation fulfill
God's will, if the parishioners never take responsibility for
their decisions? What purpose is served by endless conflict, if
it leads only to the replacement of one boss by another? These
questions dictate a single answer to Chavez--the workers must
participate in their union, or it will not be their union.
D. THE ORGANIZING OF DEMOCRATIC IDEALISM
In the Federalist Papers, James Madison warned that, "a zeal for
different opinions concerning religion, concerning government,
and many other points," had, "divided mankind into parties,
inflamed with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more
disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for
their common good." (35.) The possibility that private grouss
might promote public values never entered the Madisonian
equation. The only way to guard against the "evils of faction"
was to design a government sufficiently complex to prevent any
one group from gaining ultimate control.
Writing about America 40 years later, Alexis de Tocqueville came
to exactly the opposite conclusion:
"Among democratic nations...all the citizens are independent
and feeble; they can hardly do anything by themselves, and
none of them can oblige his fellow men to lend him their
assistance. They all, therefore, become power]ess if they do
not learn voluntarily to help one another. If men living in
democratic countries had no right and no inclination to
associate for political purposes, their independence would
be in great jeopardy, but they might long preserve their
wealth and their cultivation: whereas if they never
acquired the habit of forming associations in ordinary life,
civilization itself would be endangered." (36.)
Cesar Chavez would agree with de Tocqueville. Many observers see
in the Farmworkers only a new "interest group," using
extraordinary tactics to achieve essentially private
goals--economic security, higher wages, collective bargaining.
Chavez views the process in reverse. To him, demands for
economic improvement are beginning steps toward the overall
improvement of the workers--toward their gradual assumption of
democratic rights and responsibilities. Even now, the union runs
cooperatives, health clinics, and community centers. It sponsors
voter registration drives and supports candidates. It trains
student volunteers to work with farmworkers, while it sends farm-
workers to work on the boycotts in major cities. It is already a
cause. The question now is whether it can evolve into a
full-scale, democratic culture.
By any standard, of course, Chavez' success has been improbable.
Farmworkers could not be organized, but he is organizing them.
Door-to-door canvassing has vanished in the electronic age, but
Chavez makes it work. Idealistic leaders either sell out, give
up, or get shot today, but Chavez has preserved his principles
over twenty different years. Tradition, particularly religious
tradition is losing its force everywhere, but Chavez is bringing
people into his movement on the strength of its appeal. Most
Americans have lost confidence in politics, but the Farmworkers
are devoting their lives to it. Modern organizations cannot
survive unless they bureaucratize, but Chavez is creating ranch
committtees and democratic conventions. From this perspective, it
is not surprising that the Farmworkers face problems. It is
astonishing that they exist at all.
Yet Chavez' accomplishment should tell us something about the
power of this kind of political leadership. The prophet worries
about the vision; the organizer tends to the community itself.
The people learn to love him, so that through him, they can find
one another and the common purposes that will sustain them. It is
a Populist leadership; and although Chavez is a Mexican-American,
he has become our major spokesman for the Populist
tradition--that unique synthesis of religious idealsm, economic
radicalism, and political democracy that modernity was supposed
to have crushed.
Chavez knows better than anyone what a Populist
faces today--corporate dominance of the economy; bureaucratic
dominance of the polity; materialistic perversion of our basic
civic values. He should have lost to the growers and the
Teamsters long ago, as surely as David should have lost to
Goliath. His success should remind us that when Divine
inspiration brings a people together, even their slingshots can
turn out to be pretty powerful weapons.
FOOTNOTES
1.) Cesar Chavez, "Sharing the Wealth," Playboy Magazine,
January, 1970, p.127.
2.) Joan London and Henry Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap, (New York,
Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970.) pp. 143-44.
3.) Ibid., pp. 143-44.
4.) Peter Mathiessen, Sal Si Puedes, (New York, Random House,1969,) p. 44.
5.) Cesar Chavez, "The Organizer's Tale," Ramparts, 5 July, 1966, p. 44.
6.) Mathiessen, op.cit., p.54.
7.) Ibid., p. 172.
8.) John Gregory Dunne, Delano, (New York, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1971,) p. 171.
9.) Mathiessen, op.cit., p. 115.
10.)Ronald B. Taylor, Chavez and the Farmworkers, (New York,Beacon, 1975,) p. 212.
ll.)Ibid., p. 215.
12.)Mathiessen, op. cit. p. 115
13.)Taylor, op.cit., p. 139.
14.)Cesar Chavez, "Non-Violence Still Works," Look 33 (April 1, 1969,) p.52.
15.)Taylor, op.cit., p.300.
16.)Ibid., p.215.
17.)Mathiessen, op.cit., p.88.
18.)Mathiessen, Ibid., p.148.
l9.)Mathiessen, op.cit., p.116.
20.)Taylor, op.cit., p.229.
21.)Taylor, Ibid., p.225.
22.)Cesar Chavez, "The Organizer's Tale," op.cit., p.46.
23.)Mathiessen, op.cit., p.128.
24.)Mathiessen, Ibid., pp. 167-68.
25.)Cesar Chavez, "Letter to the Growers," reprinted in Paul
Fusco and George D. Horwitz, La Causa: The California Grape Strike. (New York. MacMillan, 1970,) p.14.
26.)Mathiessen, p. 126.
27.)Chavez, op.cit., p.57.
28.)Cdsar Chavez, "Non-Violence Still Works," op.cit., p.52.
29.)Ibid. p.14.
30.)Mathiessen, op.cit., pp. 83-84.
31.)Ibid., pp. 105-106.
32.)Cesar Chavez, "Sharing the Wealth," op.cit., p.20.
33.)Taylor, op.cit., p.20.
34.)Ibid., p.20.
35.)James Madison, The Federalist Papers #10, Clinton Rossiter, editor, (New York,Mentor, 1961,) p.79.
36.)Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America,Volume II , Second Book, Chapter V. (New York, Vintage, 1945,) p.ll5.
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