Word: chavez
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...talks with Chavez were held in the back room of a small house near union headquarters in Delano. All interviews were strictly limited to 45 minutes (Chavez spends the rest of every hour exercising his disabled back), and the union leader insisted on talking only about la causa, never about himself. Those around Chavez were equally reluctant to discuss him as a man. Says Anson: "For most of them, Chavez is a symbol rather than a person...
...causa, which has come to represent not only a protest against working conditions among California grape pickers but the wider aspirations of the nation's Mexican-American minority as well. La causa's magnetic champion and the country's most prominent Mexican-American leader is Cesar Estrada Chavez, 42, a onetime grape picker who combines a mystical mien with peasant earthiness. La causa is Chavez's whole life; for it, he has impoverished himself and endangered his health by fasting. In soft, slow speech, he urges his people?nearly 5,000,000 of them in the U.S.?to rescue...
...Mexican Americans proud to be Mexican Americans. Chavez must be given credit, I think, for really starting the Mexican-American civil rights movement." Ironically, mechanization hastened by unionization may eventually diminish Chavez's farm-labor base?but it will not slow the momentum of la causa...
...Mexican-American militancy has turned up a mixed pinata of leaders, some of them significantly more strident than Chavez. In Los Angeles, 20-year-old David Sanchez is "prime minister" of the well-disciplined Brown Berets, who help keep intramural peace in the barrio and are setting up a free medical clinic. Some of them also carry machetes and talk tough about the Anglo. Reies Lopez Tijerina, 45, is trying to establish a "Free City State of San Joaquin" for Chicanos on historic Spanish land grants in New Mexico; at the moment, while his appeal on an assault conviction...
...Cesar Chavez has made the Chicano's cause well enough known to make that goal possible. While la huelga is in some respects a limited battle, it is also symbolic of the Mexican-American's quest for a full role in U.S. society. What happens to Chavez's farm workers will be an omen, for good or ill, of the Mexican-American's future. For the short term, Chavez's most tangible aspiration is to win the fight with the grape growers. If he can succeed in that difficult and uncertain battle, he will doubtless try to expand the movement...