The Cross and the Hoe A Story of Cesar E. Chavez

"From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their
own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength"

A STORY OF CESAR E. CHAVEZ

The Cross and the Hoe

Cesar Chavez’s hunger for Justice seared into his
heart when his father was swindled out of their
home farm in Yuma, Arizona. His father recuperated
his land but later lost it for unpaid taxes. It was a
time when there were no jobs and no money,
during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The Chavez family migrated to California and
worked as migrant farm laborers. Cesar Chavez, a
sturdy boy with a full head of black hair, merely
eleven years old, in 1938, worked the crops.
Thousands of Mexican American families and their
children labored from sun-up to sun-set, day in and
day out, year after year, earning whatever the land-
owning farm growers paid. The use of pesticides,
the heat, the long hours, poor sanitation, and lack
of pure drinking water made working conditions
unsafe. Civil authorities did not help; the public in
general did not care. Farm workers, unlike
employees in the auto industry, mines, and all other
employments, could not negotiate for their benefits;
they needed a labor union.

Cesar Chavez realized that escape from the prison
of poverty for farm laborers would be through hard
work and education. But how could this be, if a
family spent all their time working in the fields,
migrating from one job to the next? Cesar, himself,
somehow managed to graduate from the eighth
grade after attending 37 schools. Some schools
were segregated and when he attended an
integrated school he felt the stings of racism,
stares, punishment for speaking Spanish, and
isolation.

Cesar Chavez, like many other Mexican American
youth who enlist in the armed forces, escaped the
barrio and the farm fields when he enlisted in the U.
S. Navy. Upon his honorable discharge, Cesar went
to work with the Community Service Organization
CSO as an organizer. He learned community service
and organizing.

Never forgetting the experiences of injustice
suffered by field laborers, and in his quest for
Justice, Cesar Chavez hungered to organize farm
workers. In 1962 Cesar founded the National Farm
Workers Association, later named the United Farm
Workers. He learned from and was inspired by his
studies of Jesus Christ, Mahatma K. Gandhi, and
Martin Luther King, Jr. In his quest for justice Cesar
united the spiritual sacrifice of fasting, prayer, faith,
and nonviolence with the union activities of the
Huelga (strike), marches under the banners of Our
Lady of Guadalupe and the Aztec Eagle, boycotts,
and getting support from distinct groups across the
nation.

The powerful Growers finally succumbed and
negotiated contracts with the United Farm Workers.
Cesar Chavez’ commitment to organize agricultural
workers resulted in increased wages, safety in the
work place, health benefits, and improved housing
for their families. His unity of his faith and the
sacrifice of farm laborers who harvested crops or
worked with the hoe is the life story of Cesar
Chavez. His life demonstrates a relationship of his
heart and soul with his union organizing activities.

Illustration by Jim Covarrubias