This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

Farmworkers Movement and the UFW

The Farmworkers Movement was a labor movement that focused on ensuring farm workers in the central valley and throughout California fair wages, living conditions, and better working conditions. There were various agricultural labor organizations throughout the 60’s. The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), formed by the AFL-CIO in 1959. The AWOC local in Delano was a predominantly Filipino organization led by Larry Itliong. Later in 1962, the National Farmworkers Association (NFWA) was launched by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Fred Ross, Gilbert Padilla, and Manuel Chavez as a mutual aid association.

The momentum and progress of the Farmworkers Movement significantly picked up in 1965 when AWOC, led by organizer Larry Itliong decided to strike for better working conditions and demand that the federal minimum wage be applied. On September 8th, AWOC held 10 strikes against grape vineyards in Delano risking their jobs. In previous years, farming companies would often recruit and hire Mexican workers to serve as strikebreakers. With the intention to make the movement stronger, AWOC approached the NFWA to participate in the grape growers strike that would spread throughout the Central Valley. Just 8 days later, the NFWA met at Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Delano and agreed to join what became the largest farmworkers strike in the history of California.

At the picket lines of the strike, farmworkers performed theater skits or actos giving birth to El Teatro Campesino, a theater group founded by Luis Valdez that utilized actos to further the voice and cause of the movement. Unlike traditional theater companies, El Teatro Campesino used the farmworkers themselves to star in and share the farmworker message to organize other farmworkers.

The NFWA organized a 250 mile march from Delano to Sacramento in 1966. Joined by unions and student activist organizations, together they marched from March 17 to April 10 winning their first union contract. Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) showed support for the movement at the US Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor that same year advocating that the cause was not only a question of wages but of living conditions and education. That summer in 1966, the NFWA and AWOC merged together to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) to strengthen their demand that farmworkers receive the same fundamental rights that other American workers received.

After almost two years into the strike and with growing frustration about when the strike would end, some farm workers urged for violence towards the growers. In February of 1968, Cesar Chavez as an act of penitence to those who advocated for violence announced that he would fast as a way to rededicate the farmworkers movement to be nonviolent. He went 25 days without food and the deterioration of his health caused the violence to stop. His fast ended during a mass in Delano where RFK came to give his respects to Chavez. The ending of his fast meant the continuation of the grape strike and boycott.

Sources:

“A New Era of Farmworker Organizing (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/articles/000/new-era-of-farm-worker-organizing.htm. Accessed 25 Oct. 2023.

Kim, Inga. “The 1965-1970 Delano Grape Strike and Boycott.” UFW, 8 Mar. 2017, ufw.org/1965-1970-delano-grape-strike-boycott/.

“Marching for Justice in the Fields (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/articles/000/marching-for-justice-in-the-fields.htm#:~:text=On%20the%20morning%20of%20March,280%20miles%20to%20the%20north. Accessed 25 Oct. 2023.

“UFW Chronology.” UFW, ufw.org/research/history/ufw-chronology/. Accessed 25 Oct. 2023. https://ufw.org/1965-1970-delano-grape-strike-boycott/

“Workers United: The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/articles/000/workers-united-the-delano-grape-strike-and-boycott.htm#:~:text=On%20September%208%2C%201965%2C%20over,each%20box%20of%20grapes%20packed. Accessed 25 Oct. 2023.

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:

Contents of this path:

Filipino farm workers in Pajaro Valley, near Watsonville, California. The first generation of Filipino trade unionists became leaders in the multiracial organizing of migratory workers in the agricultural sector and the salmon canning industry from the 1920s through the 1960s. Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, Chris Mensalves, Sr. and Pete Velasco were the leaders who helped to form the Alaska Cannery Workers Union Local 37, now affiliated with the Inlandboatmen’s Union and the United Farm Workers.
“He was one of the co-founders of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a labor union that later joined the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to become what is known today as the United Farm Workers (UFW). During his years with AWOC, Philip and the other leaders made the decision to start Delano Grape Strike which was one of the most significant and well known strikes in the history of farmworker struggle in California. This strike is what eventually made the UFW. Philip Vera Cruz was the long standing second Vice President of the UFW until he retired in in 1997.”
“In the words of Philip Vera Cruz: ‘On September 8, 1965, at the Filipino Hall at 1457 Glenwood St. in Delano, the Filipino members of AWOC held a mass meeting to discuss and decide whether to strike or to accept the reduced wages proposed by the growers. The decision was "to strike" and it became one of the most significant and famous decisions ever made in the entire history of the farmworker struggles in California. It was like an incendiary bomb, exploding out the strike message to the workers in the vineyards, telling them to have sit-ins in the labor camps, and set up picket lines at every grower's ranch... It was this strike that eventually made the UFW, the farmworkers movement, and Cesar Chavez famous worldwide.’”
In 1962, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), a predecessor of the United Farm Workers (UFW), was founded in Delano, California. Cesar Chávez, alongside Dolores Huerta and other Chicano activists within this organization, defended the rights of farmworkers by employing nonviolent organizing tactics rooted in Catholic social teaching, Chicano identity, and civil rights rhetoric. Through a series of marches, national consumer boycotts, and fasts, the United Farm Workers union attracted national headlines, gained labor contracts with higher wages and improved working conditions, galvanizing the Chicano movement. California’s agribusiness depended on a corporatized system of farm production supported by political allies that hired low-wage workers from Asian, Native, and/or Mexican populations. Farmworkers worked in dire conditions, including exposure to deadly chemicals, inadequate food and shelter, and sexual harassment, while receiving meager wages. Those who protested were replaced by Mexican braceros under the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program’s termination in 1964 led to labor union mobilization among farmworkers. The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) was formed in 1966 as a collaboration between the Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the National Farm Workers Association. The union built partnerships with religious organizations, student and civil rights activists, and politicians, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. From 1966 to 1970, the UFWOC carried out a successful international consumer boycott on grapes by picketing outside of grocery stores across the U.S. and Canada and spreading awareness about the movement in Europe. Subsequent boycotts and strikes against lettuce and strawberry growers occurred during the following years. Strikes often led to law enforcement intervention, where farmworkers were beaten, jailed, or replaced by non-citizen laborers. Dolores Huerta is credited with negotiating thousands of labor contracts providing farmworkers with improved wages and working conditions. In 1972, the UFWOC renamed itself the United Farm Workers. By then, communities of farmworkers had been established across the U.S. In California, the UFW’s newspaper El Malcriado (“The Unruly One”) informed the community and provided them with job openings, and Luis Valdes’ El Teatro Campesino (“The Farmer’s Theatre”) offered short comedic skits performed by farmworkers. The UFW also established a federal credit union and union centers with medical care, pension, and voter registration services to its union members. Although the UFW is still operating, internal union strife, short-term labor contracts, and lack of federal legislation concerning farmworker rights have affected the progress of the union.
For more than a century farmworkers had been denied a decent life in the fields and communities of California’s agricultural valleys. Essential to the state’s biggest industry, but only so long as they remained exploited and submissive farmworkers had tried but failed so many times to organize the giant agribusiness farms that most observers considered it a hopeless task. And yet by the early 1960’s things were beginning to change beneath the surface. Within another fifteen years more than 50,000 farmworkers were protected by union contracts. The Bracero program, an informal arrangement between the United States and Mexican governments, became Public Law 78 in 1951. Started during World War II as a program to provide Mexican agricultural workers to growers, it continued after the war. Public Law 78 stated that no bracero-a temporary worker imported from Mexico-could replace a domestic worker. In reality this provision was rarely enforced. In fact the growers had wanted the Bracero program to continue after the war precisely in order to replace domestic workers. The small but energetic National Farm Labor Union, led by dynamic organizer Ernesto Galarza, found its efforts to create a lasting California farmworkers union in the 1940’s and 50’s stymied again and again by the growers’ manipulation of braceros. Over time, however, farmworkers, led by Cesar Chavez, were able to call upon allies in other unions, in churches and in community groups affiliated with the growing civil rights movement, to put enough pressure on politicians to end the Bracero Program by 1964
Late Nov.-Dec. 1965: The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee initiates a national table grape boycott. In Washington’s Yakima Valley, justice for farm workers would be aided by federal “war on poverty” programs. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed off on the “Economic Opportunity Act of 1964,” effectively initiating the “war on poverty,” as well as the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), with the aim of alleviating the harsh conditions encountered by many populations that had been previously institutionally neglected.3 The role of the war on poverty’s Yakima Valley administrative entity, the Yakima Valley Council for Community (YVCCA), was to train a group of Chicana/o leaders that would organize independently of the YVCCA. The YVCCA thus ushered in the organizational framework of el Movimiento by training its leaders. Prior to war on poverty efforts, the Catholic Cursillo Movement in the Valley trained individuals to take leadership positions within the community.4 The Cursillo movement began in the U.S. in 1957 as a Catholic ministry designed to train members in community leadership and engagement via weekend retreats. One organizer, Ricardo Garcia, noted that Cursillo activity existed around 1964-65, while others contend that Cursillismo didn’t necessarily have an impact until 1967. The movement stressed unity and action to better the lives of others. At the peak of Cursillo and YVCCA action, organizers helped establish centers throughout the valley to aid many of those in need, especially farm workers.
Since its inception, El Teatro Campesino and its founder and artistic director, Luis Valdez, have set the standard for Latino theatrical production in the United States. Founded in 1965 on the Delano Grape Strike picket lines of Cesar Chavez’s United Farmworkers Union, the company created and performed “actos” or short skits on flatbed trucks and in union halls. Taking the “actos” on tour to dramatize the plight and cause of the farmworkers, El Teatro Campesino was honored in 1969 with an Obie Award for “demonstrating the politics of survival” and with the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award in 1969 and 1972.
Larry Itliong & other Filipino leaders of Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) approached NFWA to participate in strike against major grape growers of the Central Valley. Filipino farmwohe Delano Grape Strike. Born in the Philippines, Itliong immigrated to the U.S in 1929, hoping to become a lawyer. Instead, he ended up working in the Alaskan fish canneries and along the West Coast as a farm laborer. During that time, he experienced how badly laborers were treated and saw the power they could gain by working together. He became an activist and organizer. Following his service in the U.S. Army during World War II, Itliong became a U.S citizen and in 1954 moved to Stockton’s Little Manila, where he organized for the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). He was so good at recruiting new members that union leaders asked him to move to Delano to organize Filipino grape workers. It was there that he helped change the history of farm labor. On Sept. 8, 1965, he led AWOC members in walking off the grape vineyards to demand wages equal to federal minimum wage and better working conditions. But Itliong knew that for the strike to succeed, they needed members of the National Farm Workers Association to join. He approached NFWA’s leader, César Chávez, with the proposal. On Sept. 16, the AWOC and NFWA joined forces beginning the Delano Grape Strike and Boycott. It lasted five years and was one of the most important social justice and labor movements in American history, ending with victory for the farmworkers. In the meantime, the AWOC and NFWA merged in 1966 to become the United Farm Workers (UFW), with Chávez as director and Itliong as assistant director. In 1971, Itliong left the UFW but continued to work for Filipino Americans until his death in 1977 at age 63. One of his major successes was securing funding for the construction of the Paulo Agbayani Retirement Village in Delano, which has provided housing and support for retired Filipino farmworkers since 1974.
“The Delano Grape Strike began on September 8, 1965, in protest to substandard wages being paid to predominantly Filipino farm workers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. A week later, they were joined by the Mexican-American National Farmworkers Association, led by prominent labor leader Cesar Chavez, his elder brother Richard, and Dolores Huerta. Less than a year later, the two organizations merged to form the United Farm Workers – and more than 2,000 workers had joined the fight. Ultimately, the strike spread across North America and even Western Europe as consumers supported the workers by boycotting non-union grapes”
Striking workers are subjected to physical and verbal attacks throughout their peaceful demonstrations, and on March 16, the Senate Sub-Committee on Migratory Labor held hearings in Delano. March 17, the morning following the hearings, Cesar Chavez sets out with 100 farm workers to begin his pilgrimage to the San Joaquin Valley. After 25 days, their numbers swell from hundreds, to an army of thousands.
Striking workers are subjected to physical and verbal attacks throughout their peaceful demonstrations, and on March 16, the Senate Sub-Committee on Migratory Labor held hearings in Delano. March 17, the morning following the hearings, Cesar Chavez sets out with 100 farm workers to begin his pilgrimage to the San Joaquin Valley. After 25 days, their numbers swell from hundreds, to an army of thousands.
Thirty-five years ago in April, Yakima Valley farmworkers took to the streets to address low wages and other concerns. The workers, who marched from Granger to Yakima over the course of two days, were led by Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers union. One organizer of the march said its legacy was instilling confidence in area farmworkers and giving them a voice that has been heard in Olympia. “They became emboldened,” recalled Ricardo Garcia, one of the organizers of the 1986 march and one of the founders of Radio KDNA, a Granger-based Spanish-language radio station. The farmworkers movement traces its roots to the Mexican Farm Worker Program — also known as the Bracero program — that brought Mexican nationals to the United States to keep farms working as the military and war industries created a labor shortage. While the program required that farmworkers be treated fairly, they were subjected to brutal working conditions — workers were required to use short-handled hoes — and cheated out of a portion of their wages by the Mexican government, which was supposed to hold a tenth of their paychecks in trust for them. The National Farm Workers Union was organized to combat the abuses that farmworkers faced. Chavez emerged as a leader in the farm labor movement, founding the National Farm Workers Association in 1962 in California with Dolores Huerta, forging alliances with other unions, churches and community groups to push for the end of the Bracero program in 1964. While the program ended, wages remained low. Chavez’s NFWA merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form United Farm Workers. Tomas Villanueva and Guadalupe Gamboa, sons of Yakima Valley farmworkers, met with Chavez in 1966, and came back to formed the United Farm Workers Cooperative in Toppenish, pushing for better wages, sick pay and help applying for food stamps and other assistance. In the 1980s, following Chavez’s calls for boycotting California grapes until workers receive better wages, labor organizers in Yakima sought Chavez’s help securing better wages in the Valley and promoting organized labor. “We invited him to inspire, motivate people for the farmworker movement,” Garcia said.
Ending his 23-day fast in support of the Union’s strike against grape growers, United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez (R) breaks bread with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in this 1966 photo. Chavez said that Kennedy legitimized his union’s cause by lending his support. On 19th February, 1968, Cesar Chavez, the trade union leader, began a hunger strike in protest against the violence being used against his members in California. Robert F. Kennedy went to the San Joaquin Valley to give Chavez his support and told waiting reporters: “I am here out of respect for one of the heroic figures of our time – Cesar Chavez. I congratulate all of you who are locked with Cesar in the struggle for justice for the farm worker and in the struggle for justice for Spanish-speaking Americans.” On March 10 Robert F. Kennedy flew to California to help Chavez end a 25-day fast, offered as public penance for the violence that had resulted from his union's strike tactics. Chavez, who had lost 35 pounds in 25 days, was too weak to speak at the Mass of Thanksgiving in his honor. But someone read his speech, which included the following words: "It is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are... I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally
Ending his 23-day fast in support of the Union’s strike against grape growers, United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez (R) breaks bread with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in this 1966 photo. Chavez said that Kennedy legitimized his union’s cause by lending his support. On 19th February, 1968, Cesar Chavez, the trade union leader, began a hunger strike in protest against the violence being used against his members in California. Robert F. Kennedy went to the San Joaquin Valley to give Chavez his support and told waiting reporters: “I am here out of respect for one of the heroic figures of our time – Cesar Chavez. I congratulate all of you who are locked with Cesar in the struggle for justice for the farm worker and in the struggle for justice for Spanish-speaking Americans.” On March 10 Robert F. Kennedy flew to California to help Chavez end a 25-day fast, offered as public penance for the violence that had resulted from his union's strike tactics. Chavez, who had lost 35 pounds in 25 days, was too weak to speak at the Mass of Thanksgiving in his honor. But someone read his speech, which included the following words: "It is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are... I am convinced that 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 be men." Note: sources have conflicting start and ending dates of this either 25 or 27 day fast on water only. (UPI Photo/Files)
Interview with Lupe Martinez (with the UFW from the 1960s through 2006.) “I wanted to get into heavy machinery and that kind of work, instead of continuing to throw and swamp grapes and pick oranges, and all of the other stuff I used to do. I knew it would give me more stability. I started to get into the spraying with a lot of pesticides. We were doing the ponds, making sure we killed all of the algae, spraying all of that. Then pretty soon we were doing all of the almonds; we were doing grapes and we were spraying all this other stuff. At that time they were telling us what we were spraying was “medicine.” I know a lot of folks don’t realize it, but this is what they used to tell us. “You’re going to apply medicines to the grapes.” I said, “Okay.” But then, we realized early on that people were getting sick, and there were no Ag. Commissioners coming out, or Cal OSHA, or anybody else regulating what we were doing. Maybe there were regulations, but out in the fields, I used to stick my hands in the chemicals and in the pesticides to measure them. “Okay, so this is a pound; so this is a pound.” That kind of stuff, you know? There were no masks; there wasn’t any of that stuff. But then, little by little, I started to open up my eyes. Felipe Franco was born without any arms or legs here in Delano. That kicked me in the behind to say, “Is that because we’re responsible, because of the pesticides we apply?” His mother blamed it on Captan, which was the kind of sulfur dust that we were putting out there. So it opened my eyes. And, my wife was also working in the same fields. I thought, “What are we doing? What are we putting on the plants? How does it do this?” The mentality of my boss was “We’re going to put gibberellic acid on the grapes so they can plump up five, six, seven times bigger than what Mother Nature provides.” We can do that. You do it at a specific time so that it absorbs the gibberellic acid, so that it plumps up and you have huge grapes. This is why we have cosmetic grapes. It started to hit me, “Wait a minute! Who’s eating these grapes? Who are we providing them to?” The consumer has no idea what’s really happening out there in the fields. I think those were the beginning stages. I didn’t know it was environmental justice, but it started to get me moving. Then of course, the UFW came by. Once the UFW came by, my first real big fight was the McFarland cancer cluster, trying to figure out why that was happening. Why were these children having these cancers in that radius, in the vicinity of that neighborhood? That was in the ’80s, the real early ’80s. I went and I did a whole campaign in McFarland so that we could expose it, and that’s how it got exposed.