Word: chavez
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...villain in the eyes of most Chavez supporters is the grower, but the growers have also been victims of Chavez's misrepresentations. On the Johnny Carson show, Chavez supporter Gloria Steinem told a national audience, "This (California's San Joaquin Valley) is the heart of the agri-business, which is an enormous industry. This is not just farmers or anything. This is land owned by the railroads and rich banks and corporations, land that is the size of many European countries...
This is not to deny that there is some poverty among farmworkers, but the poor workers are a small minority, not the starving masses Chavez has depicted. It is particularly interesting to note that Chavez has not sought to unionize these poor workers, most of whom are in the South, but the well-paid $8000 to $12,000 a year workers in California instead...
...Chavez's most vicious misrepresentation, however, has been his claim of worker support. In 1965, Chavez called his first strike in Delano, California. Delano is the center of the nation's table grape industry, and in the surrounding fields close to 7000 workers make a living. They work 11 months a year growing, pruning and harvesting grapes...
...Chavez maintained the appearance of a strike by gathering outside volunteers to man the picket lines. Most of these were college students belonging to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Students for a Democratic Society. The farmworkers, however, continued working...
...truth is that Chavez's strike was a complete hoax. There was no strike and there was no more than a handful of workers in his United Farmworkers Union...