the little strike that grew to la causa

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GRAPE WORKERS NEAR DElANOAmong the most unpleasant of human occupations.Americans, he is of mixed Spanish andIndian blood, with liquid brown eyes,deeply bronze skin and thick, jet-blackhair. He was born on an 80-acre farmin Arizona's Gila Valley near Yuma,where his parents tried to scratch a livingfrom the arid desert earth. Chavezmet racial hostility early in daily rockfights between Anglo and Chicano kidsat the village school.The farm failed in the Depression,and when Chavez was ten, the familypacked everything it owned into a decrepitautomobile and headed acrossthe Colorado River into California. InOxnard, Chavez's father found workthreshing lima beans; when all the beanswere harvested, the family took off, lookingfor other jobs and often turning upjust a few days after a crop was in.Anglos on the Left'. That first winter back in Oxnard,with the little money earned in thefields already gone, was the family'sworst time. Cesar's brother Richard remembers:"There was this nice ladythere, and she had a vacant lot thatshe let us use. So we put up a tent. Itwas a very small tent-I guess about 8by 10. That's all we had. All the familystayed there. And it rained that winter.Oh, it rained. Rain, rain, rain. Wehad to go to school barefoot. We hadno shoes. I can't forget it."The family lived that winter on beans,tortillas and an occasional potato. Chavez'sfather sometimes picked peas for50¢ a day, half of which went to the contractorwho drove the workers to thefields in the back of a flatbed truck.There was nothing else to do. By thenext spring, the family had learned moreof the harvest schedule, and it set offfor the first of many years on the cir-20J.R. EYERMANcuit familiar to every migrant workerin California. Starting in the Imperialand Coachella valleys of the south,through the state's bulging middle, theSan Joaquin Valley, on up north ofSan Francisco and into the Napa Valley,they worked each crop in its turn: asparagus,grapes, beets, potatoes, beans,plums, apricots-anything that neededpicking, hoeing, thinning, leafing, tipping,girdling, digging or pruning.In 1941, the family moved to Delano,where Chavez met his future wife,Helen Fabela. At the movies with herone night, he had a jarring brush withdiscrimination. He refused to stay onthe right side of the theater, which wasreserved for Mexicans, and sat insteadwith the Anglos on the left. "The assistantmanager came," Chavez recalls."The girl who sold the popcorn came.And the girl with the tickets came.Then the manager came. They tried topull me up, and I said, 'No, you haveto break my arms before I get up.' " Chavez,then 16, was hustled off to the stationhouse for a lecture from the chiefof police, but he would not promisenot to do the same thing again.Like many other teen-age MexicanAmericans, Chavez became a pachaco,affecting a zoot suit with pegged pants,a broad fiat hat and a ducktail haircut.Some sociologists now see the pachacomovement as the first example of militantseparatism among Chicanos, an assertionof a distinct identity hostile toAnglo culture. The Anglos took it thatway, in any case, and reacted violently:during a series of riots in the Southwestduring the summer of 1943, severalthousand soldiers, sailors and Marinesbeat up hundreds of Chicanoyouths. Police promptly arrested someof the victims.Because of his own experience of povertyand acquaintance with prejudice,Cesar Chavez has made la caasa morethan a labor movement. He is determinedto better the lot of all MexicanAmericans. There is much room for improvement.There have never been JimCrow laws against them, like thoseagainst blacks, but overt discriminationundeniably exists. Chicanos still find ithard to get into the barbershops and publicswimming pools of south Texas. Still,though the Chicano is set apart by language,assimilation is often easier forhim than for the Negro. For this reason,and because most of the Chicanopopulation lives in relative obscurity inthe barrios or rural areas, the MexicanAmerican community has been slow todevelop aggressive leadership.Now, because they have seen that organizedblack action gets results, the Chicanoshave begun to stir with a newmilitancy. They have formed the BrownBerets, modeled on the Black Panthers,and set up a $2,200,000 Mexican-AmericanLegal Defense and EducationalFund, financed by the Ford Foundation."We are about ten years behind the Negroes,and we must catch up," says Dr.Daniel Valdes, a Denver behavioral scientist."But I think we will do it withoutextreme violence." Lawyer DonaldPacheco puts the plight of the MexicanAmerican more bluntly: "We're the 'nigger'of ten years ago."If he is a migrant farm worker, theMexican American has a life expectancyof about 48 years v. 70 for the averageU.S. resident. The Chicano birth rateis double the U.S. average-but so isthe rate of infant mortality. More thanone-third live below the $3,000-a-yearlevel of family income that federal statisticiansdefine as poverty. Eighty percentof the Mexican-American populationis now urban, and most live inthe barrio.Forbidden LanguageThe overwhelming majority work asunskilled or semiskilled labor in factoriesand packing plants, or in service jobs asmaids, waitresses, yard boys and deliverymen.Particularly in Texas, MexicanAmericans sometimes get less pay thanothers for the same work. Even the fewwho have some education do not escapediscrimination. Chicano women find thatjobs as public contacts at airline ticketcounters are rarely open; they are welcomeas switchboard operators out of thepublic eye. Mexican-American men whowork in banks are assigned to the lessfashionable branches. Promotions comeslowly, responsibility hardly ever.One major impediment to the MexicanAmerican is his Spanish language,because it holds him back in U.S.schools. Mexican Americans averageeight years of schooling, two years lessthan Negroes and a full four years lessthan whites. Often they are forced tolearn English from scratch in the firstgrade, and the frequent result is thatthey become not bilingual but nearlyTIME, JULY 4, 1969
nonlingual. In Texas, 40% of Chicanosare considered functionally illiterate. InLos Angeles, only an estimated 25%can speak English fluently. Chicano childrenin some rural areas are still punishedfor speaking Spanish in school.Only this year, Chicano students at BowieHigh School in El Paso-in a predominantlyMexican-American section-managed to get a rule abolished thatforbade the speaking of Spanish onthe school grounds.The Chicano is as vulnerable to mistreatmentat the hands of the law as theblack. Seven Mexicans were beaten bydrunken policemen at a Los Angeles policestation on Christmas Eve, 1952; sixof the officers were eventually given jailterms. During an 18-month period endinglast April, the American Civil LibertiesUnion received 174 complaints ofpolice abuses from Los Angeles MexicanAmericans. Two of the recent landmarkSupreme Court decisions limiting policequestioning of suspects involved MexicanAmericans-Escobedo v. Illinoisand Miranda v. Arizona. Many Mexicansstill look on the Texas Rangers andU.S. border patrols with terror.Pluralism v. the Melting PotThat Chavez has dramatized the problemsof Mexican Americans in the cityas well as on the farm seems beyond dispute.Father Bernardo Kenny, a Sacramentopriest with a sizable MexicanAmerican congregation, believes thateven if Chavez never wins his strike hewill have made a "tremendous contribution."Says Kenny: "He focused attentionon the problem of the farmworkers, and he made the MexicanAmericans proud to be Mexican Americans.Chavez must be given credit, Ithink, for really starting the MexicanAmerican civil rights movement." Ironically,mechanization hastened by unionizationmay eventually diminish Chavez'sfarm-labor base-but it will notslow the momentum of la causa.The new Mexican-American militancyhas turned up a mixed pinata of leaders,some of them significantly morestrident than Chavez. In Los Angeles, 20year-old David Sanchez is "prime minister"of the well-disciplined Brown Berets,who help keep intramural peacein the barrio and are setting up a freemedical clinic. Some of them also carrymachetes and talk tough about theAnglo. Reies Lopez Tijerina, 45, is tryingto establish a "Free City State ofSan Joaquin" for Chicanos on historicSpanish land grants in New Mexico; atthe moment, while his appeal on an assaultconviction is being adjudicated,he is in jail for burning a sign in the CarsonNational Forest. Denver's Rudolfo("Corky") Gonzales, 40, an ex-prizefighter,has started a "Crusade for Justice"to make the city's 85,000 MexicanAmericans la causa-conscious.As with the blacks, the question forthose who lead the Chicanos is whetherprogress means separatism or assimilation.Cal State Professor RafaelGuzman, who helped carry out a fouryearFord Foundation study of MexicanAmericans, warns that the barrio is potentiallyas explosive as the black ghetto.He argues for a new pluralism inthe U.S. that means something otherthan forcing minorities into the establishedAnglo-Saxon mold; each groupshould be free to develop its own culturewhile contributing to the whole.Yet there is no real consensus in thebarrio. The forces for assimilation arepowerful. A young Tucson militant, SalomonBaldenegro, contends: "Our valuesare just like any Manhattan executive's,but we have a ceiling on oursocial mobility." While federal programsfor bilingual instruction in MexicanAmerican areas are still inadequate, thatkind of approach-if made readily availableto all who want it-leaves thechoice between separatism and assimilationultimately to the individual Chicanohimself. He learns in his father'stongue, but he also learns in Englishwell enough so that language is no longera barrier; he retains his own culture,but he also knows enough of the majority'srules and ways to compete successfullyif he chooses to.Cesar Chavez has made the Chicano'scause well enough known to make thatgoal possible. While La hueLga is insome respects a limited battle, it is alsosymbolic of the Mexican-American'squest for a full role in U.S. society.What happens to Chavez's farm workerswill be an omen, for good or ill, ofthe Mexican-American's future. For theshort term, Chavez's most tangible aspirationis to win the fight with thegrape growers. If he can succeed inthat difficult and uncertain battle, hewill doubtless try to expand the movementbeyond the vineyards into the entireMexican-American community.THENiXON AT GAME WITH SON·iN·LAW & SHORTStimulating and clears the mind.PRESIDENCYSporting LifeAmericans are one of the world'smost sports-conscious people, yet foryears they have not had a Presidentwho shared that enthusiasm. PresidentEisenhower's interest was largely confinedto golf and John Kennedy's toswimming and sailing. In the Johnsonyears, the principal sport was huntingranch deer from a Lincoln Continental.Richard Nixon, by contrast, is an allroundsports enthusiast who not only followsthe sports pages with the attentionof a Monday morning quarterback, buthas learned to relax by attending sportsevents and by participating in sports aswell.Nixon has already watched the WashingtonSenators lose three times thisyear, which sets some kind of attendancerecord for modern Presidents.He enjoys chatting with the players,which has led a few wags to the conclusionthat the White House has betterrelations with Senators on the fieldthan with Senators on the Hill. BobShort, owner of the Senators, marvelsthat Nixon "knows more about baseballthan I do. I was amazed to hear himsay he'd been following the Senatorson his trip to Midway." Nixon andDavid Eisenhower attend games togetherand frequently talk baseball. One recentevening, the duo sped out to the stadium,Nixon rushing away from a pressconference, David forsaking his bride.The Senators lost, but Nixon was still optimisticabout their future.No Dumb Questions. As Vice President,Nixon once said: "Baseball is a diversionthat both stimulates and clearsthe mind." Yet his interest in the arenadoes not fade when the World Seriesends. He likes hockey, and is the kindPICTOR IAL PARADETIME, JULY 4, 1969 21
Page 2 and 3: APGRAPE STRIKERS MARCHING FROM DELA
Page 4 and 5: to tackle the growers on a substant

the little strike that grew to la causa

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