Early on, differences in resources brought the two closer together. The NFWA had not accumulated a strike fund or a permanent home, whereas AWOC had AFL-CIO money and Filipino Hall. The situation forced many Mexican families to rely on the generosity of Filipino workers to feed their families while out on strike. Many recalled strikers eating meals together in Filipino Hall, often sharing cuisines. “We [were] introduced to fish heads and bitter lemon and all that Filipino food,” Padilla fondly remembered.65 As the growers dug in and resisted a settlement, many of the men—both Filipino and Mexican—began to seek work elsewhere, testing the fortitude of the striking families. At these moments, Mexican women picked up the slack and led the picketing in the fields. The now famous photo of UAW president, Walter Reuther, leading a march, flanked by Cesar Chavez and Larry Itliong, in November 1965 conveys the multiethnic solidarity of the moment, although it obscures the significant role women played in sustaining the movement.66
FIGURE 4. AFL-CIO and AWOC members march in support of farm workers during the Delano strike, 1965. Left to right: Larry Itliong, AWOC; Walter Reuther, UAW; Cesar Chavez, NFWA. ALUA, UFW Collection, 362.
The photo also hides the simmering tension that existed among the various labor factions that composed the movement at the beginning. AWOC struck, in part, because of worries that NFWA was about to take the lead in the race to establish a farm worker union. This misperception was fueled, in part, by Al Green, who had been active throughout rural California in search of the right formula for success. A mercurial figure, Green had belonged to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters before the organization was ejected from the AFL-CIO for corruption in the national office. He maintained connections to packinghouse workers organized under the Teamsters and advised Itliong and other AWOC members to be open to whatever affiliation gave them the best chance for victory. Meanwhile, the presence of the UAW’s Walter Reuther at the November march and his gift of $10,000 to both AWOC and NFWA indicated more than just a helping hand from a big national brother. During the mid-1960s, Reuther locked horns with AFL-CIO president, George Meany, over a range of policy issues, including the role of the national union in the civil rights movement. That Reuther had an especially close relationship to Chavez spurred Meany to send Bill Kircher, an AFL-CIO representative, to shore up the national union’s influence over the new movement. By August 19, 1966, Kircher had forged a merger of AWOC and NFWA under the name United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and brokered an agreement for Chavez rather than Itliong to become the president of the union.67 The decision made sense, given that the majority of workers were Mexican; however, it also threatened to alienate the significant number of Filipino workers who still maintained allegiances to other unions, including the Teamsters.
By 1966, leaders had worked out much of the logistical issues related to who would guide the union, but many issues remained unresolved, including how this movement would succeed where others had failed. Although many noble efforts had been made over the previous sixty years, no organization or leader had figured out the right approach to earning collective bargaining rights for farm workers. The typical union strategy, the strike, had thus far failed. By the end of the harvest that year, growers showed their usual stubbornness in resisting negotiations and a confidence that they could outlast the poorly funded union. To succeed, Chavez would have to consider the boycott, a strategy that had lapsed since the NFLU used it in 1948 but that would have new potential in the era of the civil rights movement.
TWO
Capitalism in Reverse
AS JERRY BROWN HEADED FOR a meeting of the National Executive Board (NEB) of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in 1968, he pondered a future without the union. Accompanied by his wife, Juanita, Brown (no relation to the future California governor of the same name) had arrived in Delano in 1966 as a twenty-one-year-old graduate student in anthropology from Cornell University. Within a matter of minutes of their meeting, Cesar Chavez temporarily derailed Brown’s dream of writing a dissertation on farm worker communities. Brown recalled Chavez’s first words to him: “He said, ‘Jerry, do you know who we hate more than social workers?’” Staring intently into Brown’s eyes, Chavez answered his own question: “Social scientists.” In the next minute, Chavez made a deal with Brown to open the Delano farm worker community to him if the couple vowed to serve the movement for at least two weeks. Now, two years later, Brown was heading for Filipino Hall as the co-coordinator of the international boycott to plead his case to the NEB for a major expansion of the campaign.
In his two years of service, Brown had put his love of data analysis to good use, studying USDA consumer and marketing reports for the top forty-one cities where California grapes were sold. Brown recalled, “I found out very rapidly that … the ten major North American cities—which also included Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver —received 50 percent of the grape shipments.”1 Although the boycott had been a part of the farm workers’ arsenal since 1965, the union had neither the resources nor the time to study the effectiveness of the tactic. Most of the union’s boycott effort was intuitive, trying to stop the grapes as they wound their way through the market. Anecdotal knowledge of their success came from the front lines, where longshoreman, Teamsters, or restaurant and bar workers agreed not to convey grapes and wine to suppliers and customers. Occasionally the media covered an impressive demonstration in front of a supermarket, but the notion of how effective such campaigns were in changing customers’ buying habits was a mystery. Now Brown’s research provided material evidence of success and, more important, the prospect of improving the boycott. According to his statistics, only four of the cities had demonstrated meaningful declines in grape sales. Brown argued that by concentrating the union’s meager resources on building effective boycott houses in the ten leading cities, the union could affect the majority of the North American market for grapes and bring the grape growers to the bargaining table in a way that neither the strikes nor the marches had been able to do thus far.
In spite of Brown’s data, Chavez showed little enthusiasm for his research and privately upheld the primacy of the strike. “It was important in Cesar’s and in many of the board members’ [views],” recalled Brown, “to keep a big strike presence going on.” Such a position ran counter to Brown’s prescription for success: “I started realizing that we were never going to win the strike in the fields. You know, it was important for the media, it was important for the press, it was important for the farm workers’ morale. Yes, you might get a few more [growers] to [capitulate to] the strike, but they could always replace the workers with workers from L.A., from Phoenix, from Mexico—using the poor against the poor. The idea started to form in my mind that unless we redeployed resources and got strong boycotts in ten of these cities, we were never going to win the boycott. And I started to argue this with Cesar more and more strongly.”2
Rather than plead his case further to an obstinate Chavez, Brown appealed to two veterans of the movement, LeRoy Chatfield and Chris Hartmire, both of whom had the capacity to persuade Chavez to take the matter to the NEB. “We talked about democracy,” Brown remembered, “but Cesar was very much in control of the union,” and such a move was thought to be both audacious and politically risky. To his surprise, Brown received an invitation to speak at the next board meeting.
As Brown spoke, members listened patiently as he explained his charts and graphs, detailing changes in grape sales where the boycott had been most consistently implemented. His confidence growing with every word, Brown boldly challenged his audience: “I ended my presentation by saying if the board did not take immediate steps to strengthen the boycott, then I couldn’t really believe that they were serious about winning. And I—Juanita and I—we’re going to leave the union.” He left the meeting with the impression that the members had finally grasped the importance of the data, though Chavez showed little sign of agreement and no intention of answering Brown’s ultimatum. Three days later, the