Cesar Chavez: Giant Slayer

AARP Colorado recognizes the contributions of the late Cesar Chavez with its sponsorship of a celebration and parade in his memory to be held March 28, 2015. The march will commence at Regis University at 10 a.m. and end in celebration at Cesar Chavez Park on West 41st Avenue at Tennyson Street in Denver. Call Roberto Rey at 303-318-6763, rrey@aarp.org for more information, and please take a moment to read the article below by one of AARP Colorado’s many talented volunteers.

 

By David G. Ronquillo

Cesar Chavez.

Giant slayer.

Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night, "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

In historical perspective, we can say John F. Kennedy was born great, groomed as he was for the Presidency by his family. Winston Churchill achieved greatness, driven by his own sense of destiny. And Abraham Lincoln had greatness thrust upon him by the dire circumstances of a national crisis.

Each of these great men in history defeated threats of their times, but with formidable forces at their command.

Cesar Chavez, on the other hand, belonged to a group of men such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose only weapon was a deep-seeded sense of justice in their struggles for equality. Their armies marched unarmed.

Leadership may be groomed and nurtured, but leaders are born. They are imbued with an intangible quality that instills devotion from followers. This is true of Chavez — for there was no lack of men and women who had tired of the severe inequities rampant in the world of migrant workers during the ‘60s and ‘70s. But it was left to Chavez to light the fuse of worker revolt that spread across the fields of the American Southwest in the fight for just wages and humane working conditions.

Although Chavez and other labor organizers had sought changes to the conditions of migrant field workers as far back as the mid-1950s, it was the legendary Edward R. Murrow in his historic documentary Harvest of Shame in 1960 that brought the deplorable conditions to the attention of the American public. One line from the program summed up the ordeals of this labor class, in which a Southern farm producer says, “We used to own slaves, now we just rent them.”

It was in this arena that Chavez stepped in the ring and took up the challenge. With no more than a seventh grade education, the diminutive labor organizer from Yuma, Arizona took on the agricultural giants of America with a brilliant public relations campaign that espoused non-violent protests. The famous image of Chavez staring up at a much taller Anglo farmer in a produce field remains an iconic moment in the movement.

Giant slayer, indeed.

Chavez was not the only Latino organizer dedicated to bettering the lives of migrant field workers and gaining the dignity they deserved. They likewise should be recognized and honored. But it was he who became the face of the movement.

When history and circumstance chose to thrust greatness upon him, Cesar Chavez answered the cry.

[Photo by Roberto Rey]