Cesar Chavez

Sun blazing scorching your skin, stormy rain bringing sickness, and freezing temperature making breathing difficult, these are some of the things that farm workers face each and every day of their lives. Constant pain on every inch of your body for a laughable wage, and harsh treatment from farm owners are just a few experiences that farm labor workers have gone through for the betterment of this country. So that people could eat their fruits and vegetables, so that they can eat their gourmet meals, so that they could enjoy various tasting wines, while in that process the actual persons who pick these crops don't even have enough to support their own families. I would like to talk about one such farm labor family and their experience through their most difficult times in their lives.

In the 20th century large farm growers owned thousands of acres of land and they needed a large number of labor workers to plant and pick. A lot of the farm workers had came from foreign countries such as; India, China, Japan, the Philippines, and Mexico. In 1954, the Garza family was just returning from a long summer of migrant farm working in California, Oregon, and Michigan, they are headed home to Harlingen, Texas. Valentine and Augustina Garza with their young daughter Mary had been doing this since 1951. Mary says, "Ever since I could remember, we had always done field work". Entire families went on these work journeys, young children to elderly people had to work hard just to survive. In 1960, the Garzas moved to Fresno, California, because at that time the wages here in Fresno was more than the wages they were giving in Texas. Here they stayed and lived with Valentine's cousin, the Garcia family. The Garcia family were also farm labor workers and they traveled up and down the San Joaquin Valley for work.

There were two ways of getting paid to do field work; contract or hourly. Contract meant that workers get paid base on the amount of production they can supply, in other words, for every tray of grapes you picked is equal to $0.06. So if a worker picked 100 trays, then they will receive $6.00 for it. If the grower pays by the hour then the amount is not that important. However, being paid by the hour meant that it was going to be a very low rate an hour. If it was a contracted grower then the harder someone work and the more crop that is picked then they would receive more. That was one of the reasons why children were made to work. That is why there were many large families working together in the fields. According to professor Ray Smith, a professor of history at Fresno State University, "grape pickers in the mid 60's were making somewhere around $0.90 an hour with a bonus of $0.10 per basket picked". Not very much money for an extremely large amount of work, but many families, including the Garzas had no real choice but to work.

The Garzas picked everything; lettuce, walnuts, grapes, figs, cotton, melons, onions, bell peppers, strawberries, green beans, chile peppers, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, cherries, olives, oranges, and many more various crop. "It was very hard work", says Augustina, "it really drains out your body." Workers worked eight to ten hour days, usually from sun up to sun down in back breaking positions. Since their wage was very small some have deprived themselves from taking breaks and lunch so that they can make a little more pay. Bending over with a knife to cut lettuce for ten hours a day six or seven days a week will have lasting chronic back problems in the future. Mary said that she would cry almost every night after work because the pain in her feet, from all that standing around, was simply unbearable. She would have to use her hands to get her both feet into the car. Augustina now suffers from a bad case of arthritis on her hands, shoulders, and feet, the cause is believed to be from her working days in the fields. In the book, Grapes of Conflict, the author states, "While laboring in the fields, farm workers are usually provided with poor drinking water and unhealthy sanitation facilities."(57). Laborers are also exposed to very harmful pesticides that were sprayed on the crops that are working with. It is a very serious issue; the United Farm Workers association declares that now the average life expectancy for a migrant worker is only 49 years.

A lot of the times neither the growers nor the pesticides are the problem, but the weather. There is no choice but to work in very bad weather, let it be exhausting heat, high humidity, freezing cold, windy dust, or rain and hail the laborer is working hard. The farm workers have to wear a bandana around their face covering the nose and the mouth to insure breathing. And they wear safety glasses to prevent dirt and dust from getting into their eyes. During the raining season they wear flood boots and in the summer they wear hats to protect them from the sun, these are extra expenses that the farm workers needed and at times they could not afford because of large families.

Soon the growers were going to get a wake up call with the help of a young Chicano man named Cesar Chavez. In 1962 the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) was started by Chavez and he traveled for three years from town to town, to try and build an effective union. His cofounder was non-other than Dolores Huerta. The Garza family heard all about Chavez and what he was trying to do, but they didn't pay too much attention to it because Augustina became pregnant and in 1963 she gave birth to a health baby girl, which they named Estella.

Chavez and workers on strike.

In 1965 a strike occurred

with the assistance of Chavez and Huerta, workers walked off a rose field and wanted their wages increased. After a few days the growers agreed to the wage increase but not to a union contract. The workers were happy with the raise and all 85 of them went back to work. Around the same time another strike happened in the Coachella Valley, it was the grape season and it was important to get the grapes ready and picked for production. The growers know that time was crucial and the grapes needed to be picked so they gave in and decided to pay everyone $1.25 an hour, but still no union contract was signed. Not all growers were paying their workers the same; soon many farm workers asked Chavez and the NFWA to help them in their struggle for a better way of life in the fields. "Huelga!" was shouted! Soon after the NFWA went on strike and they set up a system of revolving pickets, with a different field picked each day.

Even though the NFWA had plenty of workers' support, not everyone went on strike. And these workers who continued to stay and work were harassed and ridiculed