On a bright autumn morning in 1965, my partner, Bill Gibson, and I drove east from Delano, California through the vineyards that lined County Line Road looking for harvest crews. A small, black car pulled up close behind our green and white US Border Patrol van and waved for us to stop. We pulled to the side of the road and got out as did the short, Mexican-American driver of the car. The stocky, pleasant-faced man with straight black hair that fell down over his forehead introduced himself as César Chavez and said he was the president of the National Farm Workers Association.
At our newly opened office in nearby Bakersfield, we had been following the news of the grape strike since mid-summer. Just months earlier, at the end of 1964, Congress ended the Bracero Program, a law that brought hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmworkers annually to the western states to harvest crops. A coalition of church, labor and community leaders insisted, correctly, that the braceros competed with American farmworkers, marginalizing their opportunities and wages.[1] But after the braceros were gone, the growers continued to pay American farmworkers in the table-grape harvest what they had previously paid the braceros, $1.20 an hour and five cents a box.
In July, Filipino-American grape harvesters struck the vineyards in the Coachella Valley and won increases to $1.25 an hour and ten-cents a box. As the strike moved northward with the ripening grapes, loosely organized Mexican-American workers led by ad hoc leaders went out on wildcat strikes. Growers alleged that the strikers were destroying vineyards and burning packing sheds, and hired armed guards.
By the time the harvest reached Mettler and the Arvin-Lamont area in the southern San Joaquin, areas we patrolled from our office in Bakersfield, nerves were taught. Filipino-Americans belonging to the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee led by Larry Itliong, walked out of vineyards that had long been their domain and were replaced by Mexican-American workers and illegal immigrants. Strikers alleged to us that the scabs were all illegals. Then, on a Sunday afternoon in September, the NFWA met in Delano and voted to strike.
He was concerned that the growers would hire illegal aliens in order to break his memer’s strike, Chavez told us. They were already complaining to him about the illegals, and he was appointing a vice-president to screen the complaints before he brought them to us. Bill and I agreed screening the allegations was wise, but invited his assistance.
Chavez wanted to set up a protocol so there would be no problems between NFWA pickets and us. We told him we had to be neutral in the strike and didn’t think it wise for us to check papers in a harvest-crew while his members were picketing the vineyard. He agreed and said if they came to a vineyard to picket while we were in it, his members would stand silently on the opposite side of the road with their signs down until we left. He explained that a core principle of the NWFA was non-violence, and he was trying to guard against a repetition of the incidents that had occurred before they had gone on strike. He wanted the hardline attitude of the growers towards the workers to be the issue, Chavez explained, not the conduct of the strikers.
I asked Chavez about the striker’s flag, a red banner with a black thunderbird. Chavez said that the symbolism derived from labor struggles in Mexico, the black was the symbol of the hard-times the strikers had to endure, the red commemorated the bloodshed that often occurred in labor disputes. The thunderbird was a mystical Native-American symbol of power, he explained, the power of people organized for a purpose.
Chavez invited us to drop by his headquarters, a storefront on a Delano backstreet, for coffee in the mornings before we headed out to the vineyards. We often did, openly sharing our plans for the day with staff members who were often college students closer in age to Bill and me than any of us were to César or some of the clergy who were often present. Bill, a skilled mechanic, drove up to Delano one Saturday and tuned up César’s car.
Chavez had begun organizing by signing up farmworkers for burial insurance, a benefit of great importance to migrants. Now, he sought multi-year contracts with growers that not only would permit bargaining for wages, but improved working conditions such as sanitary facilities in the field, a fair system for rehire and healthcare.
Chavez saw illegal immigration as a threat to his union. Undocumented workers slipped across the border, worked for a short period of time and then returned to their families in Mexico. The workers were not amenable to be organized, Chavez believed, because they were interested only in wages, not the benefits important to domestic farmworkers. If there were illegal immigrants available, the growers could quickly break the union by hiring them. It would be two more decades before it finally became unlawful to hire an illegal immigrant.
As the strike wore on into 1968, in the three years since the end of the Bracero Program illegal border crossings increased six-fold. Unaided by any new authorities or resources, we in the Border Patrol lost ground, and the numbers of illegal immigrant workers swelled. Frustrated, Chavez complained that the Patrol was not doing enough to enforce the law. Ironically, the NFWA newspaper, El Macriado, caricatured us as badge-wearing thugs in cahoots with the growers and labeled us the Gestapo of the southwest.
Still, Chavez was able to win contracts. During some harvests, farm workers earned double the California minimum wage. Field sanitation was provided. The backbreaking short-handled hoe was outlawed. Hire back clauses reduced the uncertainty in migrant families’ lives. With grower funding, the union established health clinics for members and their families.
The golden era for California farm workers lasted little more than a decade. By the end of the ‘70’s, the Border Patrol was apprehending over one million illegal immigrants annually and estimated that two slipped into southwestern fields and orchards for every one that was caught. The numbers became so great and reliance on illegal border-crossers by the growers so widespread that Chavez was forced to give up organizing. Contracts were lost to the rival company unions established by the Teamsters. Wages and working conditions for farmworkers regressed.
No longer faced with worker shortages, growers deemed the innovations in mechanization and timing of crop cycles begun at the ending of the Bracero Program unnecessary. By 1968, aided by the development of a thicker-skinned tomato, California canning tomatoes were harvested entirely by machine. Grape growers converted labor-intensive table grape vineyards to wine grape production simply by not girdling the vines in the spring of 1965, and California vintners geared up marketing to sell the increased quantities of wine. Landowners on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley planted thousands of acres of almond groves. The nuts came in during the late winter at a time local labor was plentiful to harvest them. But prototype mechanical lettuce and asparagus pickers introduced at the California Agriculture Exposition at Davis in January 1965 never went into production.
In 1984, the agriculture lobby delivered the coup de grace, succeeding in enacting a law prohibiting Border Patrol officers from entering on agricultural land to search for undocumented workers. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1987 made the knowing employment of undocumented workers illegal, but the law was easily circumvented and indifferently enforced by the Bush, Clinton, and Bush II administrations.
Gone was the last, great opportunity to bring farmworkers into the American mainstream. In 1965 when Chavez began organizing, the USDA estimated 465,000 Hispanic, Filipino, white, black and native American farm workers were employed in migratory farm labor in the U.S.[2] Today, it is estimated that 80 percent of farm workers are in the U.S. illegally. Legal and illegal alike work an average of 100 days a year, earning about $10,000, and live in poverty little different than that John Steinbeck described in Grapes of Wrath.
Domestic farm workers and their families have little hope of ever enjoying the promise of a full life in their own country and their plight now laps over into a broader range of occupations. Proposed immigration reform legislation allows growers to cycle new waves of foreign workers through their fields and orchards, promising them a green card at the end of five years of farm work. Then, presumably, they will join the ranks of the impoverished men loitering in building supply center parking lots waiting for a day job.
[1] The Bracero era was shown in the 1960 CBS television documentary Harvest of Shame, produced by Edward R. Murrow.
[2] Martin, Philip L. Promise Unfulfilled, Unions, Immigration, & The Farm Workers. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. p. 51.
At our newly opened office in nearby Bakersfield, we had been following the news of the grape strike since mid-summer. Just months earlier, at the end of 1964, Congress ended the Bracero Program, a law that brought hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmworkers annually to the western states to harvest crops. A coalition of church, labor and community leaders insisted, correctly, that the braceros competed with American farmworkers, marginalizing their opportunities and wages.[1] But after the braceros were gone, the growers continued to pay American farmworkers in the table-grape harvest what they had previously paid the braceros, $1.20 an hour and five cents a box.
In July, Filipino-American grape harvesters struck the vineyards in the Coachella Valley and won increases to $1.25 an hour and ten-cents a box. As the strike moved northward with the ripening grapes, loosely organized Mexican-American workers led by ad hoc leaders went out on wildcat strikes. Growers alleged that the strikers were destroying vineyards and burning packing sheds, and hired armed guards.
By the time the harvest reached Mettler and the Arvin-Lamont area in the southern San Joaquin, areas we patrolled from our office in Bakersfield, nerves were taught. Filipino-Americans belonging to the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee led by Larry Itliong, walked out of vineyards that had long been their domain and were replaced by Mexican-American workers and illegal immigrants. Strikers alleged to us that the scabs were all illegals. Then, on a Sunday afternoon in September, the NFWA met in Delano and voted to strike.
He was concerned that the growers would hire illegal aliens in order to break his memer’s strike, Chavez told us. They were already complaining to him about the illegals, and he was appointing a vice-president to screen the complaints before he brought them to us. Bill and I agreed screening the allegations was wise, but invited his assistance.
Chavez wanted to set up a protocol so there would be no problems between NFWA pickets and us. We told him we had to be neutral in the strike and didn’t think it wise for us to check papers in a harvest-crew while his members were picketing the vineyard. He agreed and said if they came to a vineyard to picket while we were in it, his members would stand silently on the opposite side of the road with their signs down until we left. He explained that a core principle of the NWFA was non-violence, and he was trying to guard against a repetition of the incidents that had occurred before they had gone on strike. He wanted the hardline attitude of the growers towards the workers to be the issue, Chavez explained, not the conduct of the strikers.
I asked Chavez about the striker’s flag, a red banner with a black thunderbird. Chavez said that the symbolism derived from labor struggles in Mexico, the black was the symbol of the hard-times the strikers had to endure, the red commemorated the bloodshed that often occurred in labor disputes. The thunderbird was a mystical Native-American symbol of power, he explained, the power of people organized for a purpose.
Chavez invited us to drop by his headquarters, a storefront on a Delano backstreet, for coffee in the mornings before we headed out to the vineyards. We often did, openly sharing our plans for the day with staff members who were often college students closer in age to Bill and me than any of us were to César or some of the clergy who were often present. Bill, a skilled mechanic, drove up to Delano one Saturday and tuned up César’s car.
Chavez had begun organizing by signing up farmworkers for burial insurance, a benefit of great importance to migrants. Now, he sought multi-year contracts with growers that not only would permit bargaining for wages, but improved working conditions such as sanitary facilities in the field, a fair system for rehire and healthcare.
Chavez saw illegal immigration as a threat to his union. Undocumented workers slipped across the border, worked for a short period of time and then returned to their families in Mexico. The workers were not amenable to be organized, Chavez believed, because they were interested only in wages, not the benefits important to domestic farmworkers. If there were illegal immigrants available, the growers could quickly break the union by hiring them. It would be two more decades before it finally became unlawful to hire an illegal immigrant.
As the strike wore on into 1968, in the three years since the end of the Bracero Program illegal border crossings increased six-fold. Unaided by any new authorities or resources, we in the Border Patrol lost ground, and the numbers of illegal immigrant workers swelled. Frustrated, Chavez complained that the Patrol was not doing enough to enforce the law. Ironically, the NFWA newspaper, El Macriado, caricatured us as badge-wearing thugs in cahoots with the growers and labeled us the Gestapo of the southwest.
Still, Chavez was able to win contracts. During some harvests, farm workers earned double the California minimum wage. Field sanitation was provided. The backbreaking short-handled hoe was outlawed. Hire back clauses reduced the uncertainty in migrant families’ lives. With grower funding, the union established health clinics for members and their families.
The golden era for California farm workers lasted little more than a decade. By the end of the ‘70’s, the Border Patrol was apprehending over one million illegal immigrants annually and estimated that two slipped into southwestern fields and orchards for every one that was caught. The numbers became so great and reliance on illegal border-crossers by the growers so widespread that Chavez was forced to give up organizing. Contracts were lost to the rival company unions established by the Teamsters. Wages and working conditions for farmworkers regressed.
No longer faced with worker shortages, growers deemed the innovations in mechanization and timing of crop cycles begun at the ending of the Bracero Program unnecessary. By 1968, aided by the development of a thicker-skinned tomato, California canning tomatoes were harvested entirely by machine. Grape growers converted labor-intensive table grape vineyards to wine grape production simply by not girdling the vines in the spring of 1965, and California vintners geared up marketing to sell the increased quantities of wine. Landowners on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley planted thousands of acres of almond groves. The nuts came in during the late winter at a time local labor was plentiful to harvest them. But prototype mechanical lettuce and asparagus pickers introduced at the California Agriculture Exposition at Davis in January 1965 never went into production.
In 1984, the agriculture lobby delivered the coup de grace, succeeding in enacting a law prohibiting Border Patrol officers from entering on agricultural land to search for undocumented workers. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1987 made the knowing employment of undocumented workers illegal, but the law was easily circumvented and indifferently enforced by the Bush, Clinton, and Bush II administrations.
Gone was the last, great opportunity to bring farmworkers into the American mainstream. In 1965 when Chavez began organizing, the USDA estimated 465,000 Hispanic, Filipino, white, black and native American farm workers were employed in migratory farm labor in the U.S.[2] Today, it is estimated that 80 percent of farm workers are in the U.S. illegally. Legal and illegal alike work an average of 100 days a year, earning about $10,000, and live in poverty little different than that John Steinbeck described in Grapes of Wrath.
Domestic farm workers and their families have little hope of ever enjoying the promise of a full life in their own country and their plight now laps over into a broader range of occupations. Proposed immigration reform legislation allows growers to cycle new waves of foreign workers through their fields and orchards, promising them a green card at the end of five years of farm work. Then, presumably, they will join the ranks of the impoverished men loitering in building supply center parking lots waiting for a day job.
[1] The Bracero era was shown in the 1960 CBS television documentary Harvest of Shame, produced by Edward R. Murrow.
[2] Martin, Philip L. Promise Unfulfilled, Unions, Immigration, & The Farm Workers. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. p. 51.
