The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (72 page)

New York Times
reporter Wayne King showed up at the La Paz gate and was turned away,
⁶
but that did not deter him. Celebrity lawyer Melvin Belli threatened legal action on behalf of Chavez before the
Times
story appeared. King’s front-page story
⁷
focused on the “quashed rebellion” by the Salinas dissidents and allegations by former UFW officials that Chavez had become preoccupied with clandestine plots and traitors, at the expense of building the union.

When CBS television’s
60 Minutes
expressed interest in profiling Chavez, aides coached him on how to counter charges of autocratic control. Chavez must take care not to appear hostile or aloof. He must rebut the idea that the union had not “lived up to the dreams
⁸
and vision that people remember from the 1960s.”

In a Salinas garage,
60 Minutes
correspondent Ed Bradley interviewed the paid reps who had sued their onetime leader. They, too, tried to be low-key, following their lawyer’s advice. Finally, Bustamante could not help himself. Until 1979, he said, Cesar had been a good leader. “Now he is . . .
dictador!
”

Sitting outdoors at La Paz, the verdant hills as backdrop, Bradley asked Chavez
⁹
how he felt being called a dictator. “Of course it bothers me,” Chavez said, his expressive eyes looking pained. “But I think that our union is one of the most democratic unions in the country. They have a right to say whatever they want to say. That’s the game. But I don’t think too many people listen to them.”

Of the top leaders who had left the union in recent months, only Gilbert Padilla talked to
60 Minutes
on camera. For more than two decades, Padilla had followed Chavez’s lead. Padilla was on the first NFWA board. He and Chavez had shared rooms, cigarettes, and picket duty. In the last few years, Padilla had struggled to understand Chavez’s behavior. Padilla had gone to all the other top leaders and said, Cesar’s gone nuts. No one wanted to hear that. In October 1980, at a credit union board meeting, Huerta attacked Padilla and told him he should resign. He knew how Chavez operated. Padilla called Chavez and resigned the next day. Chavez had always been a dictator, Padilla told
60 Minutes
: “And we let him. Because we needed him.”

Chavez shrugged off Padilla’s criticism: “If he left without justifying, he’d be called a quitter.”

Padilla and Govea were among several former union leaders who had found temporary work with California Rural Legal Assistance, the agency that Chavez had picketed in 1970 when he felt the group had become competition. After the 1981 convention, Cesar’s son Paul led pickets at a CRLA office where Chava Bustamante worked. CRLA leaders were eager to stay on good terms with Chavez. Govea’s and Padilla’s contracts were not renewed.

In multiple arenas, Chavez found himself in the position he always tried to avoid: on the defensive. In the past, he had excelled at turning attacks to his advantage. When adversaries had lashed out at Chavez, their attacks boomeranged; the more vicious the attack, the more powerful Chavez appeared. When the Teamsters stole UFW contracts, the UFW became the sympathetic victim, standing up to bullies. When growers fired workers unjustly, farmworkers were heroes. When judges threw strikers in jail, the UFW’s image soared. This time was different. Chavez found himself attacked for his own actions. With no external enemy to blame, he fingered the enemy within—traitors.

A story in
Reason
, a conservative magazine, charged the farm worker movement had improperly spent almost $1 million in federal funds. The story had a small audience, and the author had ties to the agricultural industry. But federal investigators and national reporters found that many of the magazine’s conclusions checked out.

NBC correspondent Jack Perkins arrived at La Paz
¹⁰
to interview Chavez and found an audience of fifty people. Perkins realized the welcome banners signaled anything but. Perkins could interview anyone he wanted, Chavez said—in front of the whole community. “We’re not refusing an interview,” Chavez repeated. The reporter explained he needed to speak with Chavez and other officials one-on-one. “Just do it in front of us,” Chavez said. “What’s wrong? What are you hiding? . . . You want an interview, I’ll give you an interview. You’re not going to tell me who’s going to be around when the interview’s done. They want to see, they have a right to see.”

A flummoxed Perkins gave in. He would make clear that this was a stunt, he said. “You haven’t met one like this, huh?” Chavez said with satisfaction as he got his way.

He gained little from the maneuver, however, since the facts were not on his side. Chavez feigned ignorance on details. He did not know whether the credit union had been computerized, how many health clinics existed, or locations of the union’s service centers. The projects were all “coming along,” he said. He casually informed Perkins at the conclusion of the interviews that the union might sue NBC for libel. “We’ve been part of a very controversial organization since we started,” Chavez said. “We’ve been investigated up and down. I can truthfully say we’ve never been found lacking in any respect.”

Chavez again unleashed a preemptive attack
¹¹
before the broadcast aired. He tried to deflect attention and discredit the report by attacking its sources and motivation. He alleged a grower conspiracy, threatened libel, and called for a White House investigation into improper ties between NBC and the Farm Bureau.

NBC did not mince words.
¹²
Chavez’s movement had been granted $796,000 to develop a microwave system to help the rural poor by connecting health clinics and service centers—but no health clinics existed and many service centers were shuttered. The credit union had been granted $349,115 to computerize and expand but had no computer or satellite offices.

Roger Mahony, now bishop of Stockton, watched the
Prime Time
report and recalled the early warnings from Jerry Cohen and AFL-CIO organizing director William Kircher about the need for professional staff. The controversy “will cause much misery and grief
¹³
for the union that could have been avoided,” Mahony wrote to Monsignor George Higgins.

Jimmy Carter, whose administration had been eager to fund Chavez’s projects, had lost his reelection bid in 1980 to Chavez’s old nemesis, Ronald Reagan. Reagan administration auditors concluded federal funds had been improperly used
¹⁴
to support the UFW instead of nonprofit entities. A separate $347,529 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor for English classes was spent on students who did not qualify because they were not full-time farmworkers, earned too much money, or were undocumented. The government asked the union to return more than $255,000.

Chavez had brushed aside earlier warnings about sloppy bookkeeping and long operated as if rules did not apply. For years he had blurred the lines between the labor union and the nonprofit entities. When he needed money for the UFW, Chavez arranged transfers
¹⁵
without regard to legal restrictions. One of the charities loaned the union $300,000 to buy computers, jeopardizing the charity’s tax-exempt status. He had always bluffed his way past problems. Now the mistakes began to catch up with him. On top of the government’s request that he return a significant portion of the grant, the IRS ruled that the union staff members were not legally volunteers. The UFW owed $390,000
¹⁶
in back social security and federal unemployment taxes.

Chavez also found himself on the defensive in the political arena at home. Here, too, the damage was self-inflicted. He had increasingly played the games he once abhorred. The union’s fate was tied to the ALRA, and he needed political support to ward off attempts to water down the law. Huerta had returned to Sacramento as the UFW lobbyist. Instead of working on a shoestring, as she had decades earlier for the CSO, she had thousands of dollars in campaign funds. “Dolores should be able to hand the politicians the check,
¹⁷
and then go see them in Sacramento for favors,” Chavez said.

Assemblyman Howard Berman, a Los Angeles Democrat, had sponsored the ALRA. When Berman challenged Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy for leadership of the house, Chavez relished an opportunity to pay back McCarthy for his role in defeating the UFW’s Proposition 14. The UFW endorsed Berman’s bid to oust McCarthy at the end of 1980. The union’s political committee contributed thousands of dollars to Berman plus a $30,000 loan.
¹⁸

Neither McCarthy nor Berman prevailed. Instead, the fight marked the ascension of one of California’s most powerful and colorful politicians, Willie Brown, who cobbled together a bipartisan coalition. Chavez’s move had backfired: key Republicans threw their support to Brown because they feared that Berman would be beholden to Chavez. “I think it was an extremely dangerous threat to agriculture,” said Assembly Republican leader Carol Hallet, explaining her support for Brown.

Chavez called Brown’s pact with Republicans “an unholy alliance” and made veiled threats against two Chicano Democrats from Los Angeles, Assemblymen Art Torres and Richard Alatorre, who had supported Brown. An internal UFW memo was blunter: farmworkers had been betrayed by the two young legislators who supported “Farmer Brown.”
¹⁹
Torres had worked for the UFW and run for the Assembly with Chavez’s support. Now the union leader vowed revenge. In the meantime, with Jerry Brown leaving the governor’s office at the end of 1982, Chavez faced a bleak future in Sacramento.

Finally, Chavez found himself on the defensive in court. The Maggio company, a large vegetable grower, had sued the UFW for millions in damages from the 1979 strike, claiming the union had sanctioned reckless behavior that forced the grower to hire security guards and caused major losses. Maggio had substantial video and photographic evidence. Witnesses testified that strikers threw rocks, rushed the fields, and committed other violent acts. The UFW had rejected earlier overtures
²⁰
by Maggio to settle for $30,000. Several years into the case, the grower’s attorneys again proposed a settlement. Chavez’s counsel, Ellen Eggers, urged him to reconsider. Maggio offered to sign
²¹
a contract on terms favorable to the union in exchange for a payment from the UFW of between $400,000 and $500,000, spread over five years. Eggers thought the amount could be bargained down and warned Chavez, “There is no question that so far they have the upper hand in this case.” He declined to negotiate. In 1987, the UFW was found liable for $1.7 million in damages. Eventually the union exhausted its appeals and paid the court-ordered penalty. The UFW never signed a contract with Maggio.

Eggers faced another difficult defense of Chavez in the lawsuit filed by the paid reps. He seemed unconcerned about evidence that caused his legal team consternation. Chavez’s defense was that the UFW constitution gave the president the right to fire staff, who served at his pleasure. But documents and witnesses supported the workers’ contention that they had been elected, not appointed. Agendas for nominating meetings were entered into evidence along with memos from Ganz to Chavez announcing election results.

“I have never had any question
²²
whatsoever about whether the paid rep position is an appointed or elected position,” Chavez said in a sworn deposition. “After the contracts were signed, I began appointing people to fill the positions pursuant to my authority.” No paperwork existed to support his position. Shown a copy of a ballot, he said he had “no idea” how it had been prepared and only found out weeks later that there had been elections.

Chavez had grown accustomed to making statements that went unchallenged, whether the subject was how many schools he had attended, the number of health clinics, or whether vegetable workers were ready to go on the boycott. When confronted, he denounced doubters as tools of the growers. In the case of the paid reps, he confidently swore to facts unsupported by the record. In addition to his insistence that he had appointed the paid reps, he swore he had destroyed old tape recordings of executive board meetings.

On the central question of fact, U.S. District Court judge William Ingram unequivocally rejected Chavez’s version of events. “I conclude they were elected,”
²³
he wrote about the paid reps. “There is no evidence, contemporary with the events, that supports the contention that they were appointed.” The judge noted in his November 16, 1982, ruling that Chavez was a busy man keeping track of many things, excusing him for testimony that could have constituted perjury. The paid reps, the judge wrote, had “every reason to believe that they are elective officials; they were led to believe that by their union leadership and by the duly published processes of election.”

The second phase of the trial was to determine whether Chavez had a right to remove elected representatives. Chavez argued the workers were fired for “incompetence and insubordination.”
²⁴
Again, Judge Ingram disagreed
²⁵
: “Although the court is hesitant to involve itself in intra-union disputes . . . the magnitude of the issues involved justifies such intervention . . . The court finds that defendant Chavez’s interpretation was not reasonable. Summary removal of elected union officials is not warranted under any reading of the constitution.”

The ruling proved a pyrrhic victory for the farmworkers. The union appealed, the case dragged on for years, and the workers ran out of time and money. After the initial burst of media attention, Chavez’s skirmish with the rank-and-file leadership attracted little notice and did not tarnish his reputation outside the fields. In the cities, the baby boomers who had grown up boycotting grapes had moved into positions of leadership and power. They welcomed a chance to indulge in nostalgic support for
la causa
and their 1960s past. They gave money instead of walking picket lines.