From humble beginnings on a farm his family had owned in the Gila Valley near Yuma, Cesar Chavez rose to become a major historical icon for the Hispanic community in the United States.

Chavez, co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union, advocated for the rights of farmworkers, acting to increase wages and improve their working conditions through strikes and nationwide boycotts of agricultural products he organized.

Claiming as his models Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Chavez rallied his followers with the motto “Si, se puede” (“Yes, it can be done”).

In the process, he gained national attention and the support of such figures as the Kennedys.

“He was the best known and most loved Hispanic leader in this country,” said Tony Reyes, who recalled participating with Chavez on a couple of smaller marches.

But not everyone has fond memories of the labor leader and civil rights activist.

As he is revered by the Hispanics, Chavez was reviled by the farming community in California and Arizona for the disruptions he caused their business, the crop losses they suffered and the often violent turn of the strikes he led against them.

Newspaper accounts of those days in the 1970s and ’80s tell of rock throwing, beatings, fires and even a shooting that targeted workers in the fields. Car and labor bus windows were shattered, metal strips were laid in roadways to puncture tires and packing houses were torched.

Attorney Stephen Shadle, who represented lemon growers who were struck by the UFW in 1974, recalled that hundreds if not thousands of people were bused in to picket the groves.

“The strikes were extremely disruptive. Chavez just wanted to get labor contracts and was willing to stop the harvest. It happened to be one of the biggest lemon crops. It cost growers millions of dollars in the fruit they couldn’t get to market.”

Chavez would return to the Yuma area in the following years to strike against the cantaloupe industry, and then lettuce growers.

Both Reyes and Shadle agree that Chavez by nature was a pacifist who often went on hunger strikes to call attention to the injustices he saw. However, the strikes he set in motion became too big and too emotional for him to contain.

“He made it clear he didn’t want violence,” Reyes said.

“I enjoyed my meetings with Chavez,” Shadle said. “He was mild-mannered and nonthreatening. It was the methods used by his followers that were disruptive.”

In the late 1980s, Chavez called for a boycott of lettuce and other products grown in Arizona by the shipping company Bruce Church.

It was while he was in the Yuma area to testify in a trial involving the boycott that Chavez died on April 23, 1993, at the home of supporters in San Luis, Ariz.

“That was when I finally realized how big a figure he had become,” said Reyes, who was mayor of San Luis at the time. “I got 47 calls in less than half an hour from news media around the world. He probably was one of the biggest Hispanic figures in the U.S. I realized it that day.”

Today the labor leader’s birthday (March 31, 1927) has become Cesar Chavez Day. Many parks, cultural centers, libraries, schools and streets have been named in his honor in cities across the United States. In San Luis, where Chavez frequently visited, a statue stands in his honor and a community center and street are named for him.

And there is general agreement that the lives of Hispanic farmworkers are better for his efforts.

“His focus was on the farmworker,” Reyes said of Chavez. “He did so many things to improve their lives.”

For example, he said, today the workers have better pay, sanitary facilities and water to wash their hands, rest breaks and health insurance. Also, the short-handled hoe — a “back-breaking” implement — no longer is used.

“Looking back, I can see that he did some good things,” Shadle acknowledged. “He probably did force Arizona growers to come closer to the California pay scale so from the pickers’ standpoint, he probably did help them.”

Perhaps most of all, Shadle concluded, “The Hispanic people had no marketing power. Chavez brought that to them. He provided a voice for farmworkers and for the Hispanic people.”