Cesar Chavez honored for fighting for farm laborers

By Emily Vizzo

 

Cesar Chavez Holiday

State offices will be closed today, as well as the city of Oxnard, including the Oxnard Public Library.  

Cesar Chavez, the revered farmworker activist, is being honored today on his birthday for his contributions to improving the working conditions of farm laborers.

Chavez, who would have been 83 this year, died in 1993. Robert F. Kennedy once described him as “one of the heroic figures of our time.” And Chavez was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Bill Clinton in 1994.

Today, his story still resonates with farmworkers, labor activists and community supporters. Between 15,000 and 22,000 farmworkers toil in Ventura County fields, harvesting strawberries, citrus, avocado, cilantro, onion, blueberries and parsley for about 100 farms, said Lauro Barajas, regional director of the United Farm Workers, founded by Chavez.

“What would Ventura County be without farmworkers?” Barajas said.

Working conditions can be arduous, including sun exposure, muddy fields, low pay and skin irritation from pesticides, Barajas said. Many workers lack health insurance and some face harassment from supervisors, who sometimes don’t speak the same language.

“The wages I think are the worst,” said Barajas, who emigrated from Mexico at 16 and now works in the Oxnard office of the UFW. “With the minimum wage, there is no way to survive, especially in this area.” 

Undocumented workers may be too intimidated to speak up when problems like sexual harassment occur, he said, noting that one-third of farmworkers are women. 

Some of Chavez’s contributions addressed basic needs, such as rest breaks and access to bathrooms and hand-washing facilities in the field.

Chavez once fasted for 36 days to protest the use of dangerous pesticides, some of which still plague farmworkers, Barajas said.

In 2008, mourners attended the funeral of Maria Isabel Vásquez Jiménez, a 17-year-old pregnant immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico, who died after collapsing from heat exhaustion in grape fields near Stockton.

Stories like that concern Newbury Park community minister-in-training and activist Theadora Davitt-Cornyn. She gave a special sermon this month to honor Chavez and promote a March 21 immigration reform rally at Oxnard’s Del Sol Park. It coincided with a Washington, D.C., rally that drew tens of thousands of people.

Immigration reform has been a hot-button issue for years. The Obama administration recently targeted President George W. Bush-era changes to the H-2A Guest Worker Program. The Obama administration changed the rules to raise wages and strengthen protections for workers. Farmworker groups praised the changes but growers said the changes would be costly and the rules inflexible.

New Labor Department rules require growers to post jobs on a national electronic registry.

Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have proposed a plan pairing conditional legal status grants for undocumented workers with more stringent border control.

Much of this movement can be traced to the efforts of Chavez. He lived briefly in Oxnard with his migrant worker family during the 1930s, said Frank Barajas, a history professor at CSU Channel Islands. 

He returned to Oxnard’s La Colonia in 1958, working on issues related to immigration, schooling, police brutality and discrimination, said Frank Barajas, who is not related to Lauro Barajas.

After opposing the federal Bracero guest worker program, Chavez formed his own farmworker union.

“He was a voice for people who had very little voice, farmworkers particularly,” Frank Barajas said.

Farmworker housing was a challenge then and continues today, said Rodney Fernandez, director for the Cabrillo Economic Development Corp., which specializes in affordable housing for low-income residents.

At one time, Ventura County had 2,000 housing units for farmworkers, Fernandez said. But during the 1970s, most local growers dismantled company-owned worker housing.

Two developments — Rancho Sespe near Piru and Cabrillo Village in Saticoy — established 260 farmworker units, Fernandez said.

In the past eight years, Cabrillo Economic Development Corp. has built 153 farmworker housing units in Santa Paula, Oxnard and Fillmore, he said. Planned developments for Piru, Santa Paula and Ventura will add 141 units for farmworkers.

“It starts with the people who plant the seeds and pull the weeds and pick the crops,” Davitt-Cornyn said. “A lot of hands have handled the food that we eat. Those are hands we need to be more conscious of.”

Chavez’ birthday is designated a legal holiday in California under a bill signed on Aug. 18, 2000. It triggered efforts to establish optional and commemorative Cesar Chavez Days in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Rhode Island.

Rep. Joe Baca, D-San Bernardino, introduced legislation in 2003 to establish a national holiday to honor Chavez, but it was referred to a House Committee on Government Reform. There’s since been little movement.