Word: chavez
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...YEARS AGO, while trying to galvanize support for his fledging farmworkers' union, Cesar Chavez struck upon the idea of a mass march on the California state capitol. As Chavez said later to Jacques Levy, a former New York Times reporter, "We wanted to use the march for calling attention to the strike [against Schenley liquors] and we wanted to take our case to Governor Pat Brown. But also we wanted to take the strike to workers outside the Delano area, because they weren't too enthused...Equally important to me--and I don't know how many shared my thoughts...
This incident, while somewhat extreme, is indicative of Chavez's fanatic devoption to the farmworkers' cause and of his attitude toward his own role in that struggle. Chavez has a mystical belief in the power of sacrifice. Through a subtle transformation of traditional Latin machismo into an aggressive, masochistic non-violence, Chavez drives himself on to take gratuitous risks, represses emotions, and lives with pain. And this all in the name of penance for the redemption that one day will bless the UFW. As he puts it, "To be a man is to suffer for others." After years of suffering...
Unfortunately, Levy in Autobiography of La Causa has failed to bring out many of the latent elements in Chavez's personality. Levy's sympathy for Chavez and his cause (La Causa) has kept him from either asking Chavez the hard questions that would develop these themes or developing them on his own in a critical perspective...
Levy went to California five years ago when Chavez's organizing efforts began to attract national attention. Unlike most other journalists, however, Levy stayed and followed Chavez for five years through negotiations, marches, fasts, strikes--through, that is, the adolescence of the United Farm Workers Union...
Even last week Chavez charged irregularities: "Right now 20% to 30% of the workers are not voting because of fear, intimidation and threats." Apparently some stiff-arming was going on. "My foreman said if we sign with Chavez, goodbye job," worried one worker in Delano. A new five-member State Agricultural Labor Relations Board -which Teamsters and growers argue is heavily biased in favor of Chavez -will have its hands full sorting out charges of election fraud as balloting continues over the next unquiet months...