# data[].attributes.headline
Personas/Grupos/Organizaciones integrales de El Moviemiento de Los Trabajadores Agricolas 

# data[].attributes.subject
Personas/Grupos/Organizaciones integrales de El Moviemiento de Los Trabajadores Agricolas 

# data[].attributes.body
El Movimiento de Los Trabajadores Agrícolas se empuja por personas y organizaciones importante que buscan mejorar las condiciones y vida de los trabajadores del campo. Las figura más eminente es César Chavez un líder y activista que fundó la Asociación Nacional de Campesinos (NFWA) que más tarde se convirtió en el Sindicato de Trabajadores Agrícolas Unidos (UFW). Dolores Huerta, otro figura integral, trabajó junto a Chávez y ha sido fundamental en la organización y educación de los trabajadores. Además, organizaciones como Comité de Servicio de los Amigos Americanos (AFSC) y a la Federación Estadioudense del Trabajo y Congreso de Organizaciones Industriales (AFL-CIO). Estos individuos y grupos han jugado roles importantes en la lucha por los derechos trabajadores, salarios justos y condiciones seguras para los Trabajadores Agrícolas

# data[].attributes.body
El Moviemiento de Los Trabajadores Agrícolas ha sido por varios eventos que pasaron en diferentes partes de Estados Unidos. Uno de los eventos más significativos fue las huelga de Delano en 1965, en California donde los trabajadores filipinos y mexicanos se unieron para exigir mejores condiciones. Este evento llevó a la famosa marcha en 1966 desde Delano a Sacremento, donde los manifestantes corrieron más de 300 millas para llamar la atención sobre sus demandas. Otro evento importante fue el boicot de la uva, comenzas en 1965 y se extendió durante varios años, a no comprar uvas hasta que los productores aceptaran negociar con el trabajadores agrícolas

# data[].attributes.headline
Por qué es importante en el Movimiento Chicano

# data[].attributes.subject
Por qué es importante en el Movimiento Chicano

# data[].attributes.body
El Moviemiento de Los Trabajadores Agrícolas es una parte fundamental del Moviemiento Chicano a su lucha por la justicia social y los derechos de los trabajadores mexicanos y latinoamericanos en Estados Unidos. Este moviemiento, lider por figuras como César Chavez y Dolores Huerta, no solo buscan mejorar las condiciones trabajadores en los campos, tambien empoderar a la comunidad chicano y levantar su voz de la pública. Como resultado, la creación del Sindicato de Trabajadores Agrícolas (UFW) y las leyes que mejoraron las condiciones de trabajo. Además, el movimiento creado una mayor orgullo cultural entre los chicanos y contrubuyen a la lucha por los derechos civiles en general.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Staff in the Hispanic Reading Room can provide access to these books at the Library of Congress. If you cannot visit the Library in person, please contact us using Ask a Librarian for assistance. In many cases, you can also find these materials at your local library.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Research Guides: A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States: 1962: United Farm Workers Union

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This Hispanic Reading Room research guide focuses on 20th and 21st century American court cases, legislation, and events that had important impacts on civil rights in Chicana/o/x, Hispanic, Latina/o/x, Mexican-American and Puerto Rican communities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Half a century ago this summer, labor activist Cesar Chavez joined thousands of striking farmworkers in Texas as they converged on Austin, the state capital, to demand fair wages and humane working conditions.

Their march, which started from the punishing melon fields of South Texas, was his march, too. It was a deep and abiding understanding of the challenges of the farmworker's life that drove his commitment to labor rights. The life of Cesar Chavez mirrored that of the people he was trying to help. Their cause - La Causa - was his.

Born into a Mexican-American family of migrant farm laborers and a life of grinding poverty, Chavez dedicated his life's work to improving conditions for the legions of farmworkers who kept fresh food on the tables across America - while they often went hungry, living and laboring in abysmal conditions and being paid unlivable wages.

"Without a union, the people are always cheated, and they are so innocent," Chavez told The New Yorker's Peter Mathiessen in 1968.

Chavez modeled his methods on the nonviolent civil disobedience of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. - employing strikes, boycotts, marches and fasts - to draw attention to La Causa. And he drew inspiration from the social teachings of the Catholic Church and from the life of St. Francis. An Italian nobleman who lived in the 12th and 13th centuries, Francis of Assisi renounced his wealth after a period of captivity during war and illness. He became a champion of the poor, living his life in solidarity with them.

Even in the face of threats and actual violence - be it from police or other unions, such as the Teamsters - Chavez never wavered from his commitment to passive resistance.

At the end of his first fast - which ended in 1968 after 25 days - Chavez was too weak to speak, but a speech was read on his behalf:

"When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belongs to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us be men."

Chavez's work and that of the United Farm Workers - the union he helped found - succeeded where countless efforts in the previous century had failed: improving pay and working conditions for farm laborers in the 1960s and 1970s, and paving the way for landmark legislation in 1975 that codified and guaranteed agricultural workers' right to unionize, bargain collectively with their employers and vote in secret-ballot elections in California.

But after these momentous, hard-won victories, the UFW matured as a union, and its influence gradually declined, while the political climate in California turned against labor. Chavez took up a new cause, sounding the alarm over the dangers of pesticides - but never gained the kind of traction of earlier campaigns.

He died in 1993 in Arizona, not too far from where he was born. He was still doing union business, at 66. More than 40,000 people attended his funeral.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded Chavez a posthumous Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award.

"He was for his own people a Moses figure," Clinton said. "The farmworkers who labored in the fields and yearned for respect and self-sufficiency pinned their hopes on this remarkable man, who, with faith and discipline, with soft-spoken humility and amazing inner strength, led a very courageous life. And in so doing, brought dignity to the lives of so many others, and provided for us inspiration for the rest of our nation's history."

Some key moments in his life:

1927: Chavez is born on March 31 in Yuma, Ariz., one of five children. When bank foreclosure forces the family to leave its small farm, the Chavez family joins the some 300,000 men, women and children streaming into California, following the harvest, during the Great Depression.

The work is back-breaking, hard-to-come-by and pays pitifully. For example, two hours of picking peas - in the hot sun, stooped over - yields the entire family 20 cents. They live in overcrowded, primitive housing with no electricity or running water. Sometimes they cram into a tent, or sleep in the rough. Chavez experiences profound discrimination at school - from teachers as well as other students - and drops out after 8th grade to join his family full time in the fields.

1939: Chavez is first exposed to unions in San Jose, Calif., where his family is working at the time.

1946: Joins the U.S. Navy and serves for two years at the end of World War II in a segregated unit. Chavez returns to agricultural work when his service ends.

1948: Meets and marries Helen Fabela in Delano, Calif. They have eight children. He begins learning about Gandhi - who used nonviolent civil disobedience in the fight for India's independence from British rule - and the teachings of St. Francis, who championed the poor.

1952: Starts working for the Community Service Organization, a Latino civil rights group that organized communities around issues such as voter registration, immigration and police abuse. He rises to become the group's national director.

1962: Chavez resigns from the CSO because it won't endorse his proposal to form a farmworkers union. He uses his life savings of $1,200 to form the National Farm Workers Association in Delano.

1965: Chavez criss-crosses California's Imperial and San Joaquin valleys to recruit members. At the time, he is so poor that he sometimes asks for food from the workers he is trying to help.

In September, the NWFA, under the leadership of Chavez and Dolores Huerta, calls for a strike against grape growers, joining the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, a Filipino American labor group. At the time, field workers earned as little as 40 cents per hour.

1966: Chavez leads strikers on a 340-mile march from Delano to Sacramento to bring awareness to La Causa of farmworkers. The NWFA also merges with the AWOC to form the United Farm Workers.

Chavez also helps lead a strike and march by farmworkers in Starr County in South Texas. Ultimately, the strike fails, as Texas Rangers bring in replacement workers from Mexico.

1967: In addition to the strike, Chavez calls for a nationwide boycott of non-union California table grapes. He sends UFW workers to cities across the country to raise awareness. Their efforts dovetail with the civil rights movement and a greater consciousness of racism and economic inequity. Millions of Americans supported the boycott, which eventually became international in scope and lasted until 1970.

1968: In February and March, Chavez fasts for 25 days to rededicate and recommit himself to the struggle for justice through nonviolence. He loses 25 pounds. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy joins him at the Mass where Chavez breaks his fast, and calls the labor leader "one of the heroic figures of our time."

1970: After five years, the strike and boycott against the grape growers ends in victory for the UFW. In the past, big agribusiness had been able to end strikes through violence or negotiating small, one-off pay increases. This time, the union is able to secure broader rights: to organize and bargain collectively, in addition to better wages.

He calls for a nationwide boycott of lettuce.

1972: Chavez fasts for a second time, for 24 days, to protest an Arizona law that bans farmworkers from organizing, boycotting or striking.

1973: After a second strike against grape growers turns violent, Chavez calls off the strike and begins a second boycott of grapes and lettuce.

1975: California passes the state's landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which establishes and protects the rights of all farmworkers to form unions and bargain for better wages and working conditions.

1982: With the strong support of agribusiness in the state, Republican George Deukmejian is elected governor of California. He proceeds to defang enforcement of the farm labor laws.

1986: Chavez kicks off his "Grapes of Wrath" campaign to draw attention to the pesticide poisoning of farmworkers and their children.

1988: Chavez goes on his third and final fast, which lasts 36 days.

1993: Chavez died in his sleep on April 23 while he was in San Luis, Ariz., on UFW business. He was 66 years old. More than 40,000 people attend his funeral.

1994: Chavez posthumously receives the Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian award.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cesar Chavez: The Life Behind A Legacy Of Farm Labor Rights

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Half a century ago this summer, labor activist Cesar Chavez joined thousands of striking farmworkers in Texas as they converged on Austin, the state capital, to demand fair wages and humane working conditions. Their march, which started from the punishing melon fields of South Texas, was his march, too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On September 8, 1965, Filipino American grape workers, members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, walked out on strike against Delano-area table and wine grape growers protesting years of poor pay and conditions. The Filipinos asked Cesar Chavez, who led a mostly Latino farm workers union, the National Farm Workers Association, to join their strike.

Cesar and the leaders of the NFWA believed it would be years before their fledgling union was ready for a strike. But he also knew how growers historically pitted one race against another to break field walkouts. Cesar's union voted to join the Filipino workers' walkouts on Mexican Independence Day, September 16, 1965. From the beginning this would be a different kind of strike.

-Cesar insisted the Latino and Filipino strikers work together, sharing the same picketlines, strike kitchens and union hall.

-He asked strikers take a solemn vow to remain nonviolent.

-The strike drew unprecedented support from outside the Central Valley, from other unions, church activists, students, Latinos and other minorities, and civil rights groups.

-Cesar led a 300-mile march, or perigrinacion, from Delano to Sacramento. It placed the farm workers' plight squarely before the conscience of the American people.

-The strikers turned to boycotts, including table grapes, which eventually spread across North America.

But Cesar knew the strikers' greatest weapon was simply their decision not to quit, to persevere no matter what the odds or how long it would take. The strikers had to be prepared to risk everything-beginning with their financial security.
Two and a half years into the strike, during the winter of 1967-68, some strikers, especially some young men, were impatient. There was no hope of victory any time soon. Thick Tule fog shrouded the valley, making things seem even drearier.

Some young male strikers talked about violence, about striking back at the growers who abused them. By fighting back they could prove their machismo, their manliness. Cesar rejected that part of American culture that, he said, "tells our young men that you're not a man if you don't fight back." He had already begun boycotting table grapes, following the tradition of his hero, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Cesar also followed Gandhi and Dr. King's practice of militant nonviolence.

Some of the strikers equated nonviolence with inaction or even cowardice. Cesar believed exactly the opposite. He believed nonviolence is more powerful than violence, that it supports you if your cause is just. He believed nonviolence forces you to be creative-that it lets you maintain the offensive, which is crucial to winning any contest.

But for Cesar, nonviolence was more than a tactic or strategy that could be discarded if it wasn't working. He once wrote, "However important the struggle is and however much misery, poverty and exploitation exist, we know that it cannot be more important than one human life." Cesar also quoted Gandhi, who said, "Do something! Offer your life! If you really want to do something, be willing to die for it."

He didn't teach people by lecturing or by telling them what to do. He led by example. He planted little seeds of hope that sprouted into a renewed movement.

Again following the example of Gandhi, Cesar announced in February 1968, he was fasting to rededicate the movement to nonviolence. He went without food for 25 days, only drinking water. It was an act of penitence for those who advocated violence and a way of taking responsibility as leader of his movement.

The fast divided the UFW staff. Some didn't understand why Cesar was doing it. Others worried about his health. But the farm workers understood. A Catholic mass was said daily near where Cesar was fasting in a tiny windowless room of an adobe-walled gas station at the Forty Acres, the UFW headquarters outside Delano. Hundreds, then thousands, came.

In 25 days, Cesar lost 35 pounds. His doctors said his life was in danger.

But the fast worked. All talk of violence stopped. Dr. King wrote Cesar, expressing admiration and solidarity. The fast ended during a mass in Delano with thousands. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was there, he said, "out of respect for one of the heroic figures of our time."

Cesar was too weak to speak, so his statement was read for him. It ended with, "It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives to we find life. The truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men."

The grape strike continued. So did the grape boycott.

For 100 years before Cesar Chavez, farm workers tried, and failed, to organize a union. Every strike was crushed. Every union was defeated.

Cesar knew the farm workers couldn't win with just a field strike. The growers controlled all the rural social and political institutions.

Cesar read about Gandhi's boycott of salt in 1930. He carefully followed Dr. King's Montgomery bus boycott in the mid-1950s.

For the first time in American history, Cesar and the United Farm Workers (the result of a merger in 1966 between the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the National Farm Workers Association) decided to use a boycott in a major labor dispute. The boycott changed the scene of the battle from the fields, where the odds were stacked against farm workers, to the cities, where farm workers could appeal for help to the American people, whom Cesar called "our court of last resort."

Hundreds of grape strikers traveled across the U.S. and Canada, telling their stories and organizing mass support for the grape boycott. The strikers were joined by thousands of supporters who helped tirelessly organize the boycott.

Cesar and the farm workers believed if consumers in communities throughout North America knew about the suffering of field laborers-and saw the grape strikers struggling nonviolently-they would respond. For Cesar, nonviolence couldn't be understood in the abstract. It could only be seen in action. He said, "the whole essence of nonviolent action is getting a lot of people involved, vast numbers doing little things."

He knew most people couldn't drop what they were doing and dedicate themselves completely to the movement like the grape strikers, most of whom lost their homes, cars and worldly possessions. But Cesar and the farm workers showed ordinary people that by making little sacrifices every day-by not eating grapes-they could directly help the poorest of the poor.

The boycott connected middle-class families in big cities with poor farm worker families in the California vineyards. Millions stopped eating grapes. At dinner tables across the country, parents gave children a simple, powerful lesson in social justice.

By 1970, the grape boycott was a complete success. Table grape growers at long last signed their first union contracts, granting workers better pay, benefits, and protections.

In the decades that followed, Cesar and the UFW continued using nonviolent strikes, boycotts, marches and fasts to help farm workers stand up for their rights and gather support from ordinary Americans to aid them in their efforts. Those efforts continue to this day through the work of the United Farm Workers of America and the Cesar Chavez Foundation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 1965-1970 Delano Grape Strike and Boycott

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On September 8, 1965, Filipino American grape workers, members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, walked out on strike against Delano-area table and wine grape growers protesting years of poor pay and conditions. The Filipinos asked Cesar Chavez, who led a mostly Latino farm workers u