Reflections On Cesar Chavz And The Labor Movement

2 Pages 550 Words

It’s amazing how much can change in just five years; although I’m not a rich man now, I am so much more hopeful and happy than I was back in 1965, before the Great Grape Boycott. When they grow up, my grandchildren will never believe the terrible conditions me and their grandmother lived in, and so perhaps they’ll never understand how far we’ve really come.

In 1960, I was already married and had a child. The only way I could make ends meet was to follow the grape harvest and pick grapes, but the work was so much harder than it sounds. Back then, I only made ninety cents per hour, plus ten cents for every basket I picked. I didn’t mind having to work so hard every day, if the living conditions had only been a little better. I had to pay $2.00 per day just to live in a tiny little shack with no electricity or water, and since money was so tight, my 10 year old had to illegally work in the fields.

I had resigned myself that life wasn’t going to get much better than this, and comforted myself with the knowledge that at least this was a better life than I would have had in Mexico. Then one day I ran across a flyer that asked Mexican agricultural workers to join the Filipino workers in striking against the Delano grape growers, so that our wages would be increased to $1.25 per hour. I had always thought that our back-breaking work was worth more than 90 cents an hour, so I went to the meeting. There, I saw Cesar Chavez, the leader of the movement. He gave an inspirational speech about demanding our rights as workers, and almost everyone there voted to join the strike.

Once we went on strike in Delano, the growers though we were replaceable and they just hired other Chicano workers in our place. But every day, we would rotate what farms we would go to and picket, and more often than not, we would get those strikebreakers to join our strike. Then Cesar asked the country to boycott grapes, and explained our unjust working ...