An introduction to the life of Cesar Chavez

1. A Bittersweet Harvest
The Bracero
Program 1942-
1964
and César Chávez

2. César Chávez
• The American Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s had
many heroes. One of them
was César Chávez, who lived
from 1927 to 1993, and who
dedicated his life to helping
Mexican- Americans achieve
equality.
• This WebQuest will help you
become familiar with the
works of César Chávez, and
with a part of the American
Civil Rights Movement and
American history that is largely
ignored.

3. The Bracero Project
• Bracero(named for the Spanish term bracero,
"strong-arm" (lit. "one who works with his
arms") and ultimately derived from brazo,
"arm")

4. Introduction
• Dependence on Mexican labor has been a
source of great opportunity as well as great
conflict for Mexicans and Americans. In 1942,
facing labor shortages caused by World War
II, the United States initiated a series of
agreements with Mexico to recruit Mexican
men to work on U.S. farms and railroads.
These agreements became known as the
bracero program. (Bracero is a term used in
Mexico for a manual laborer.)
Between 1942 and 1964, an estimated two
million Mexican men came to the United
States on short-term labor contracts. A little-
known chapter of American and Mexican
history, the bracero program touched the
lives of countless men, women, families, and
communities. Both bitter and sweet, the
bracero experience tells a story of
exploitation but also of opportunity.

5. The first Braceros arrive in Los Angeles
by train in 1942.

6. Bracero workers being fumigated with DDT, in
Houston, Texas, 1956.
DDT was banned in 1972 as a toxic chemical and
a probable carcinogen.

7. DDT Fumigation
• Nadel described the photograph with this
caption: “Much in the same manner and feeling
used in handling livestock, upon crossing over the
bridge from Mexico at Hidalgo, Texas, the men
are herded into groups of 100 through a
makeshift booth [and] sprayed with DDT.”
• (Smithsonian Museum of American History)
• http://americanhistory.si.edu/ONTHEMOVE/colle
ction/object_441.html

8. Bracero Housing
• “The Mexican workers will be
furnished without cost to
them with hygienic lodgings,
adequate to the physical
conditions of the region of a
type used by a common
laborer of the region and the
medical and sanitary services
enjoyed also without cost to
them will be identical with
those furnished to the other
agricultural workers in the
regions where they may lend
their services.”
• —The Bracero Agreement

9. Bracero Housing
• Photograph by Leonard Nadel.
• Note from the photographer: “This is housing
provided by a Texan farmer for 200 braceros in
this long building, with the beds made out of
stretched canvas, upper and lower. Such close
living conditions make for high incidences of
respiratory illnesses among the braceros.”
• http://americanhistory.si.edu/ONTHEMOVE/c
ollection/object_1113.html

10. “Working in the fields,” 1956. Photograph by Leonard Nadel,
the Smithsonian Institution.
• The Short-Handled Hoe – “
• el cortito”
• “The hardest work would be
thinning and hoeing with a
short-handled hoe. The fields
would be about half a mile long.
You would be bending and
stooping all day. Sometimes you
would have hard ground and by
the time you got home, your
hands would be full of calluses.
And you’d have a backache.”
• —Roberto Acuna, migrant
worker, interviewed by Studs
Terkel. “Working”
• (New York, 1974), p.10.

11. Bracero worker’s homes in Mexico
• Photograph by Leonard Nadel.
• Note from photographer: “This is one
of the two rooms for a family of nine
people living in San Mateo — about
20 miles south of Mexico City. The
other room serves as a kitchen, work
room, and storeroom. When work is
available in the village, a Mexican
laborer may earn about 10 pesos per
day. Because of this, the wage earner
of the family here wants to get to
work as a farm laborer in the U.S.
where he may earn much more
working from 4 weeks to 6 months.”
• http://americanhistory.si.edu/ONTHE
MOVE/collection/object_1106.html

12. Task
• Using the attached worksheet, answer the 15
questions on the life of César Chávez and the
Bracero Program in the United States.

13. César Chávez Early Life
• César Estrada Chávez was born on
March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona,
in a Mexican-American family of
six children.
• The family's home was taken
away after his father had agreed
to clear eighty acres of land in
exchange for the deed to the
house, an agreement which was
subsequently broken. Later when
Cesar's father attempted to
purchase the house, he could not
pay the interest on the loan and
the house was sold to its original
owner. His family then moved to
California to become migrant
farm workers.

14. School Years
• Due to a language barrier, Chávez
faced difficulty in school. His family
spoke only Spanish at home, and his
teachers forbade him from speaking
the language at school. At one time,
Chávez was hit on the knuckles with a
ruler for violating this rule. Also at
school, he constantly faced hearing
racial slurs.
• In 1942, he graduated from eighth
grade. It would be his final year of
formal schooling, because he did not
want his mother to have to work in
the fields. Chavez dropped out to
become a full-time migrant farm
worker.
• He attended more than 30 schools

15. The CSO
• Cesar's life as a community
organizer began in 1952 when
he joined the Community
Service Organization (CSO), a
prominent Latino civil rights
group. While with the CSO,
Cesar coordinated voter
registration drives and
conducted campaigns against
racial and economic
discrimination primarily in
urban areas. In the late 1950s
and early 1960s, Cesar served
as CSO's national director.
• Cesar's dream, however, was
to create an organization to
protect and serve farm
workers, whose poverty and
disenfranchisement he had
shared. In 1962, Cesar
resigned from the CSO, leaving
the security of a regular
paycheck to found the
National Farm Workers
Association, which later
became the United Farm
Workers of America.

16. United Farm Workers
• A strong believer in the principles
of nonviolence practiced by
Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., Cesar effectively
employed peaceful tactics such as
fasts, boycotts, strikes, and
pilgrimages. In 1968 he fasted for
25 days to affirm his personal
commitment and that of the farm
labor movement to non-violence.
He fasted again for 25 days in
1972, and in 1988, at the age of
61, he endured a 36-day "Fast for
Life" to highlight the harmful
impact of pesticides on farm
workers and their children.
• When Filipino American farm
workers initiated the Delano
grape strike on September 8,
1965, to protest for higher wages,
Chávez eagerly supported them.
• Six months later, Chávez and the
NFWA led a strike of California
grape pickers on the historic
farmworkers march from Delano
to the California state capitol in
Sacramento for similar goals. The
UFW encouraged all Americans to
boycott table grapes as a show of
support.

17. César Chávez Legacy
• Cesar's life cannot be measured in material
terms. He never earned more than $6,000 a
year. He never owned a house. When Cesar
passed, he had no savings to leave to his
family.
His motto in life-"si se puede" (it can be
done)-embodies the uncommon and
invaluable legacy he left for the world's
benefit. Since his death, dozens of
communities across the nation have
renamed schools, parks, streets, libraries,
other public facilities, awards and
scholarships in his honor, as well as enacting
holidays on his birthday, March 31. In 1994
he was posthumously awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest
civilian honor in America.
Cesar Chavez-a common man with an
uncommon vision for humankind-stood for
equality, justice, and dignity for all
Americans. His ecumenical principles remain
relevant and inspiring today for all people.
• César Chávez's birthday, March 31, is
celebrated in California as a state holiday,
intended to promote service to the
community in honor of Chávez's life and
work. Many, but not all, state government
offices, community colleges, and libraries are
closed. Many public schools in the state are
also closed. Texas also recognizes the day,
and it is an optional holiday in Arizona and
Colorado. Although it is not a federal holiday,
the President proclaims March 31 as César
Chávez Day in the United States, with
Americans being urged to "observe this day
with appropriate service, community, and
educational programs to honor Cesar
Chavez's enduring legacy.”
• Referenced in Stevie Wonder’s song entitled,
“Black Man”

18. Browse the Archives of the Bracero
History for images & oral histories

19. Browse the images from the National
Museum of American History

20. The Story of the Bracero Program
Click on the picture for a video

21. The César Chávez Foundation
Click to go to the Website

22. Sí se puede
• (Spanish for "Yes, it is
possible" or, roughly,
"Yes, it can be done”) is
the motto of the United
Farm Workers. In 1972,
during Cesar Chavez's
24 day fast in Phoenix,
Arizona, he and UFW's
co-founder, Dolores
Huerta, came up with
the slogan.
• President Barack
Obama adopted the
English version "Yes, we
can!" first during the
2004 Illinois Democratic
primary race for U.S.
Senate,and it became a
slogan of his 2008
presidential campaign.

24. Resources
• http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fightfields/book1.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program
• http://www.mhcviva.org/events/detail/2010-
02-20-Bracero-Program-Exhibit.html
• http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/small
_exhibition.cfm?key=1267&exkey=770&pagekey
=773
• http://hnn.us/articles/27336.html