The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (27 page)

Chavez knew the general demoralization had spurred talk that nonviolence was a losing strategy. Rumors circulated
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that Manuel Chavez and others wanted to escalate attacks to scare growers into negotiating. Chavez was due in court to respond to the contempt citation on February 26. He needed a way to shift the debate, and he needed to restore momentum and reenergize his troops.

“What you’ve got to keep in mind
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all the time about him is that his whole life is in the strike, and I mean in the whole movement, and that’s the thing that he had uppermost in his mind at all times,” Fred Ross said a few months later. “He thought that things were slowing down and had to be zoomed up. Something had to be created that would zoom things up, just like the march did.”

On February 13, 1968, the day Giumarra filed its legal papers, Chavez stopped by for dinner at the home of Fred and Ginny Hirsch and ate a hearty portion of pasta. LeRoy Chatfield spent the next day with Chavez, driving him to meetings in San Francisco. From 4:00 a.m., when they left Delano, till 11:00 p.m., when they returned, Chavez didn’t eat. On Thursday, Chatfield checked around and talked to Jerry Cohen. They concluded Chavez had probably started a fast. On Sunday, visitors took Cesar and his brother Richard out to lunch at Abbati’s, one of their favorite local spots. Cesar didn’t eat. Richard talked to Helen, then confronted his brother. Cesar told him he had been fasting for five days, as penance, because he was afraid things were getting violent on the picket lines.

The next day Chavez called all the union staff, volunteers, and strikers to a noon meeting. Manuel Chavez drove his cousin to Filipino Hall. Cesar sat at a table on the stage at the front of the simple hall where strikers and union volunteers took their meals, a room that smelled of peanut butter, mystery meat, and fish heads. When everyone had assembled, Chavez spoke for about ninety minutes about the importance of nonviolence and explained that he had begun an indefinite fast to reaffirm the movement’s commitment to the principle of peaceful protest.

“He told us that he was fasting as a prayer—it
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was not a hunger strike and its purpose was not strategic but as an act of prayer and of love for us,” Marion Moses wrote in a letter the next day, struggling to find words to convey the emotion of the moment. “He felt that he was responsible as the leader of the union for all the acts of any of us.”

He told them he was afraid they might be losing the will to win, and he spoke of his fear that people might turn to violence. He warned about the danger of taking shortcuts. He compared their fight to the civil rights movement in the South and pointed to ways the recent shift away from nonviolence had hurt that struggle. Many in the audience opposed the war in Vietnam, and Chavez said they must be just as adamant in their opposition to senseless killing back home. No victory was worth endangering a human life.

“The most important thing that he said, in my opinion,” Moses wrote, “was that we as a union and as a movement have aroused the hopes and aspirations of poor people . . . and we have a duty and responsibility to those people . . . we cannot by resorting to violence crush their hopes and destroy what we have done. He said that even if all of us in the room were to disappear the movement that had been started would still go on.”

He told them he planned to stay at Forty Acres, the barren patch of land on the outskirts of town that would someday be the union’s headquarters. The fast was a spiritual experience, he said, and although they had so far built only a gas station on the site, Forty Acres was the spiritual home of the union. The last thing he said was that he was doing this because he loved them all. Then he left and started walking west. Helen followed, and they walked together the three miles to Forty Acres.

Larry Itliong took over the meeting, angry that he had not known about the fast and impatient with the theatrics. Itliong protested that Chavez had made his decision without consulting the board. He said the union must continue its work and endorsed a resolution calling on Chavez to stop. People began talking at once, angry, offended, close to tears. Some expressed concern about his health; others thought Chavez was playing Gandhi, or God. They took a vote on the resolution to urge him to stop, and the motion failed. Even if they had trouble understanding Chavez’s rationale, his supporters argued, they owed him that effort. After all, his decisions had proved sound in the past.

Those who knew him best realized that when Chavez made up his mind, he would not change. Cesar was an old Indian and it was no use arguing with him, Manuel Chavez said. Chatfield berated Itliong and the other skeptics, furious that they did not appreciate the reverence of the act and incredulous they could talk about union business at a moment like this. For Chatfield, Chavez was the union, and whatever he decided to do, that was the business of the union. Pointing his finger at Richard Chavez, Chatfield declared in a loud voice that for the duration of the fast, Forty Acres was “sacred ground.” He ordered Richard not to allow any cars onto the property.

Richard, Manuel, Marion, and LeRoy headed to Forty Acres. They spent the rest of the day cleaning out rooms in the adobe gas station building. They moved heavy machinery, oil, tires, and surplus clothes. Chatfield found a bed, mattress, and heater for the room where Chavez reclined on a canvas mat, and they hooked up an electric line from the outside utility pole. Chavez told them he had no deadline, nor idea how long he would fast.

Father Mark Day announced that mass would be said every night, a decision that transformed the private penance into a communal religious celebration. Within days, Forty Acres became a shrine. Offerings were tacked up on a huge union banner hung against the wall; the Chatfields brought a picture of John F. Kennedy, and Richard Chavez’s wife brought a photo of their oldest son, who had died in a car crash in 1966. Votive lights, crucifixes, and a picture of the Virgen de Guadalupe sat propped on a card table that became an altar.

Women painted the windows of the gas station, mimicking the stained glass of chapels, with designs and peace symbols and Our Lady of Guadalupe. The number of people at mass doubled overnight from 100 to 200, then jumped to 450, then 600. Traffic backed up on Garces Highway, the two-lane road that led to the union headquarters, and cars parked as far as a half mile away. When they entered the edge of Forty Acres, women carrying candles walked on their knees.

“A lot of people thought Cesar was trying to play God,”
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said Dolores Huerta, who was in New York working on the boycott when the fast began. “They just couldn’t accept it for what it was.” She understood the Mexican tradition of penitence and accepted Chavez’s action without question. Ross was in New York, too, and he was shaken. “Fred was hit very hard,” Huerta said. “Fred reacted very strongly because I think Fred probably loves Cesar, I think more than anybody in the world, maybe even more than his wife and children.” Huerta and Ross flew back to California.

Each night, Chavez came out from his room around seven-thirty for mass, which was held indoors at first, and then outside, despite the winter cold, to accommodate the swelling crowds. Father Day searched biblical indices for references to penance and sacrifice and read a different passage each night. Special guests were called up to speak during the mass, including Fred Ross, Walter Reuther, and Jerome Lackner, Chavez’s physician. Protestant clergy and Jewish rabbis participated, and Chavez wore a mezuzah around his neck. Each night, people brought “relics” to present to Chavez during the offertory. He held up each one and named the donor family. Then they were tacked up on the walls, till the walls were full and the extras placed on tables.

They sang songs, sometimes “We Shall Overcome,” and usually “O Maria, Madre Mía,” the song Father McDonnell used to sing to summon parishioners in Chavez’s old San Jose neighborhood of Sal Si Puedes. The singing usually ended with “De Colores,” a Spanish folk song that was becoming the anthem of the farmworkers. Everyone crossed arms in front, held hands with their neighbors, and swayed to the music

After about a week, another ritual was added to the evening mass. Someone suggested tacking up a cross for each day that Chavez fasted, a visible record of the length of his penance. It was pruning season in the grapes, and Richard Chavez collected fresh cuttings from a nearby Giumarra vineyard and twisted the canes into small crosses, each a few inches high. Each night a family member or friend presented another cross to Cesar, and then the symbol was pinned up above the door.

The longer the fast, the more impressive Chavez’s sacrifice, the more emotional the response. His willingness to risk his life moved people of all faiths, and the ecumenical touches gave the services universal appeal. But the outdoor masses and colorful rituals resonated most deeply with ethnic Mexicans. Catholicism was a part of their cultural identity, and in the ceremonies at Forty Acres they saw their church,
el pueblo
, the people. Sacred ground was where they chose to worship, not within the confines of the brick-and-mortar church. The fast played into the deepest traditions of Mexican Catholicism, infused with spirituality, penance, and a sense of community.

After mass each night, people milled around. Some prayed. Others gathered around the campfire that burned around the clock, close enough to the building that Chavez could see the shadows cast by the flames at night. People told stories about their lives and about
la llorona
, the Mexican version of a female bogeyman. Women served hot chocolate as temperatures dipped near freezing.

Father Day had swiped a few boxes of vigil candles from the local church, but they soon ran out. They bought out all the candles they could find in the nearby cities, and Chatfield sent for more from Los Angeles. “I’m playing for all the marbles
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on this one,” Chatfield said to Cohen. “We’re going to make Huntley-Brinkley,” referring to the national NBC-TV nightly news report.

An impromptu campground sprang up on the dusty land that surrounded the gas station. First to pitch a tent at Forty Acres were Nick Jones and Virginia Rodriguez, one of many couples who had met through the union. Nick worked for the Migrant Ministry. He had grown up in Fargo, North Dakota, and had been working for leftist causes in Chicago when he heard the farmworkers needed help. Virginia was one of the few union staff members who had worked in the fields. As a child, she had to ask the school bus driver to stop at the fields where her parents worked so that she could help in the afternoons. She knew the indignities firsthand, and she believed fervently in
la causa
. As soon as Nick and Virginia pitched their tent, others followed. Chatfield rented tents, first all he could find in Bakersfield, then Fresno, and then Los Angeles. Each slept eight people. More than two hundred tents filled the lawn, some occupied for just a night, others for a week.

Rotating guards restricted entrance to the room where Chavez stayed. During the first days he did some routine work, met with union officers, and wrote letters. “Please pray for me,”
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Chavez wrote to Fresno bishop Timothy Manning, explaining why he had chosen to fast. Manning came to visit and said he appreciated Chavez’s commitment to nonviolence and urged him to obey doctor’s orders.

Chavez remained in seclusion during the day, but after mass his door stayed open late into the night. He talked one-on-one, his specialty. “He sacrifices for us!” read a flyer urging workers to come to Forty Acres. “The fast of Cesar Chavez
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has moved farm workers throughout the state to come to talk with him this week. He turns away no one. He desires to see the people.” The people waited as long as two hours to see him, farmworkers mingling with politicians, religious leaders and supporters. Chatfield kept a guest register but stopped after a few days because of complaints that the lists served a more sinister purpose: attendance became another loyalty test.

One of those who condemned the fast was a former member of the Spanish Mission Band, John Ralph Duggan, who had left the priesthood and now worked full-time for Chavez. Duggan saw the fast as a spectacle that offered Chavez a welcome escape from the mounting drudgery of running the union. If Chavez wished to fast in a truly religious manner, Duggan argued, he should have gone off by himself, rather than turn the fast into a public drama that provided an excuse for everyone else to stop work. “I expressed my amazement
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to Jerry Cohen, the lawyer of the union, the day the fast began,” Duggan wrote, “and he explained that the fast could become a great propaganda instrument; in a very short time I saw what he meant.”

Orendain, the union’s secretary-treasurer, shared Duggan’s view. Manuel Chavez had asked Orendain for money to buy items for the fast. Orendain refused.
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Chavez had said the fast was a personal, religious matter, Orendain said. He would authorize no expenditure of union money. Chatfield controlled ample funds through the Service Center and approved any expense necessary. By the end, they had spent more than $20,000 on food, drink, tents, candles, and transportation. “Had Cesar the right
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to decide as he did alone and without the consent of the executive board or the membership while the fate of the union was at stake?” Philip Vera Cruz wrote in his journal in the midst of the fast. “This question has been and still is being debated among strikers and volunteers alike.”

Most of the people who were among the presumed targets of Chavez’s plea for nonviolence, including Orendain and Hirsch, reacted negatively to the fast. Hirsch was initially shocked: “His new emphasis on non-violence was a wholly irrational reversal
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from the Cesar Chavez I had spoken to only a few days previously,” he wrote three months after the fast. Beyond any personal offense, Hirsch and others tended to be more militant and agnostic, and uncomfortable with the religious overtones. The masses brought “enforced respect and reverence,” Hirsch wrote. The message was clear: go along or get out.