Cesar Chavez Movie Guide

 

Printable version here

Locations 

Los Angeles, CA:  Community Service Organization (CSO) offices

Delano, CA: 40 Acres Union office

Sacramento: capital of California

Characters

Cesar Chavez: civil rights leader and labor organizer. His Catholic faith inspired much of his non-violent work. Founded United Farm Workers (UFW) with his wife, Helen. 

Delores Huerta: labor organizer, lead negotiator in the workers' contract after the strike

Larry Itliong: Filipino organizer of AWOC, later combined with UFW.

Fred Ross: had worked for Saul Alinsky, Chicago community organizer, founded CSO in LA in 1948

Jerry Cohen: UFW lawyer, protested Vietnam

Robert Kennedy: New York Senator, Attorney General to President John F Kennedy. Supported the Civil Rights Movement. Assassinated in 1968.

Mr. Bogdanovich: Fictional farm owner. Immigrant who built his own business

Governor Ronald Reagan: of California. Didn’t support strikes or workers, later a US President

President Richard Nixon: makes deals to support farm owners to break boycott

Dates

1834 “Mill Girls” textile workers protest wage cuts

1867 Chinese immigrant railroad workers strike, owners starve them out

1877 Irish immigrant coal miners protest, 19 hanged 

1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 150 workers

1935 National Labor Relations Act: gives workers the right to unionize. (Doesn’t include 

        farm workers.)

1938:         Fair Labor Standards Act: Child Labor Laws

1950s         Chavez does training with CSO, registers laborers to vote

1962 Chavez moves family from LA to Delano, starts United Farm Workers

1965 Filipino work camp strike, the two movements join together

1966 Pilgrimage 340 miles to state capital, Sacramento

1968 Chavez fasts 25 day for nonviolence

1970 growers sign agreements to end boycott and five year strike

1975 Agriculture Labor Relations Act gives farm workers right to organize

Farm Labor Injustices

no minimum wage, no bathrooms, paying for water. child labor, goal: keep people uneducated

hard labor hurts the body, no health insurance or disability pay. life expectancy: 49 years, no safety protections. Many big farms are dependent on undocumented labor: owners don’t have to provide the same human rights as to US Citizens. 

 

Spanish

Si se puede! Yes, we can!

Huelga: strike 

La Causa: the Cause 

Non-Violence Strategies

Unions: bringing people together empowers them. fights for safety, reasonable hours and wages

Credit Union: Many poor people don’t have bank accounts, opportunity for small loans. 

Union Newspaper: educating people, helping them know their rights, sending info about events and strikes. Cartoons help people who can’t read see new ideas.

Strike: Workers refuse to work. Historically, the police have helped owners by arresting workers

Boycott: getting the large community to refuse to buy a product.

Fasting: like Jesus and Gandhi, Chavez fasted from food. He did it mostly to inspire his own followers to commit to non-violence. Got national attention. He broke his fast with communion (Catholic/Christian ritual of bread and wine to remember Jesus’ body and blood)

Pilgrimage: Chavez utilized his religious tradition to make their march a pilgrimage. Historically, Catholics would walk hundreds of miles to visit a holy site and seek God. 

US Justice System

Police overlooked owners or locals harming strikers, favored the rich and powerful. Intimidation, violence, arresting without a crime. Judges and lawyers make rules against workers’ rights. 

Slurs

beaner: anti-Mexican slur insulting a main type of food.

greaser: 1950s insult, maybe referred to the job of greasing axels. 

wetback: slur for immigrants who recently swam across the Rio Grande

spic: uncertain origins, overlaps with anti-Italian insults.

brown n*****: compares Latinx to another despised people group

illegals: undocumented immigrants, dehumanizes people to focus on a minor crime

Discussion Questions

1. A rich farm owner says, “The farm workers chose this life. If it wasn’t good enough, they could go get a different job.” What hurdles did the farm workers face that made this untrue? Can minimum wage workers today easily get better jobs?
2. Farm and other US industries still run on undocumented labor today to maximize profits. Many people blame the immigrants for crossing the border and for working for low wages. How can we solve these problems?
3. Cesar Chavez incorporated his faith in his activism. How can your work be inspired by faith?

Hope Bios: Cesar Chavez

  Cesar Chavez 

1927 - 1993

Change through Unity

His Calling

American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist. Chavez 

grew up as a migrant worker. Working on the farms was difficult, with

long hours, few bathrooms and little clean water to drink. Farm workers

they were not treated with respect or dignity. They made little money.

Chavez worked in the fields until he was 25, when he became an 

organizer for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Latino 

civil rights group.

His Faith

Chavez was Roman Catholic. Even though his family had little money and sometimes lacked food, their mother would often cook meals for the homeless. They gave other families rides to get medical attention.

Chavez undertook a number of spiritual fasts, promoting the principle of nonviolence, thanksgiving and hope, and to prepare for civil disobedience. Also in 1972, he fasted in response to Arizona’s passage of legislation that prohibited boycotts and strikes by farm workers during the harvest seasons. These fasts were influenced by the Catholic tradition of penance and by Gandhi’s fasting and nonviolence.

His Legacy

Chavez urged Mexican Americans to register and vote, and he traveled throughout California and made speeches in support of workers' rights. His public-relations approach to unionism and nonviolent tactics made the farm workers' struggle a moral cause with nationwide support. 

In 1964, they ended the exploitive Bracero Program, which ensured a constant supply of cheap immigrant labor for growers. (Immigrants could not protest any infringement of their rights, lest they be fired and replaced.) In the early 1970s, the UFW organized strikes and boycotts to protest for, and later win, higher wages for those farm workers who were working for grape and lettuce growers. They gained collective bargaining rights to farm workers. 

What can I do?

• Learn more: Movie: Cesar Chavez. And, our campus library has many books. Try Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa. 
• Take a fast to prepare yourself for understanding and action. Try one day drinking only water and fruit juice. (Consult a doctor if you have special medical needs.)
• Everyday things that come from unjust labor around the world- sugar, coffee, chocolate Look for fair trade labels on these items, or fast from them.
• Contemporary issues: Immigration laws continue to provide cheap undocumented labor in the U.S. but don’t protect the poor families or help them legally immigrate and receive American rights. 
• Contemporary US Issues: read hashtags: #blacklivesmatter #MikeBrown #Ferguson 
• Interview one person this week who has a different background from your own. Ask questions, listen, rather than arguing or correcting them.