Word: chavez
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...King at Selma. He was also the only bishop to join a group of Catholic intellectuals in signing a 1967 open letter criticizing U.S. policy in Viet Nam-thereby earning a tough reprimand from Vagnozzi. He publicly endorsed Milwaukee's Father James Groppi and California's Cesar Chavez. Then, in 1968, his appearance on an NBC television special about the U.S. Catholic Church occasioned a critical resolution from the executive board of U.S. bishops...
Every modern saint can be seen as a more than worthy character in search of a more than worthy author. In Peter Matthiessen, Mexican-American leader Cesar Chavez would seem to have found the perfect biographer. As a novelist (At Play in the Fields of the Lord), Matthiessen has a proven taste for mystics, especially from Latin America. As a naturalist (Wildlife in America), he has shown true indignation at the greedy exploitation of man and nature. Small wonder that in this book he begins by investing Chavez's selfless fight against the California grape growers with vast moral...
...after all this, Biographer Matthiessen is still left with the biggest puzzle of all: Who is Cesar Chavez? Here is where Matthiessen might have recouped. Here is where he finally loses...
...cautiously humanizes Chavez as a man with a weakness for Diet-Rite Cola who cannot spare enough time from the cause for his wife and eight children. But that's about it. Clues to Chavez's character and motivation lie scattered all through the book. Perhaps the most provocative is the "martyr's shelf" behind his desk at the headquarters of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, which includes photographs of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, as well as busts of John Kennedy and Lincoln...
Conspicuous Poverty. The motif of purification and self-sacrifice runs through Chavez's life beyond any possible requirements of political strategy. He turns down all personal awards. He keeps himself in conspicuous poverty. He has given up smoking and drinking. Even when he designs buildings for his organization, they take on the look of the old Franciscan missions he loves...