Chavez Cesar - Sal si puedes

PETER MATTHIESSEN

With a New Foreword by
Marc Grossman

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London

A portion of the contents of this book appeared originally in the New Yorker, in somewhatdifferent form.

Lines on pp. 22829 from If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song) are used by permission.Words and Music by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger. TRO 1958 and 1962 Ludlow Music, Inc.New York, NY.

Lines on page 226 from Pastures of Plenty are used by permission. Words and Music byWoody Guthrie. TRO 1960 and 1963 Ludlow Music, Inc. New York, NY.

An excerpt by Rev. Wayne C. Hartmire Jr. from an article in the June 1966 issue of St JosephMagazine is reprinted by permission. 1966 by Mount Angel Abbey, Inc. All rights reserved.

An excerpt by Reverend Drake from the October 1968 issue of Presbyterian Life is used bypermission. 1968 by Presbyterian Life.

The editors of Bamparts magazine have granted permission to quote from The Tale of the Raza,by Luis Valdez, July 1966. 1966 by Ramparts Magazine, Inc.

Postscript, Cesar Chavez, by Peter Matthiessen, first appeared in the New Yorker, May 17, 1993, p. 82.Foreword by Ilan Stavans first appeared in Transition, no. 84 (July 2000). 2000 by Ilan Stavans.

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

1969, 2014 by Peter Matthiessen
Foreword by Marc Grossman 2014 by Marc Grossman
First California Paperback, 2000
ISBN 978-0-520-28250-6 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-520-95836-4 (ebook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier edition of this book as follows:

To the farm workers and the American future

T HE call still haunts me. I was in my Sacramento officeshortly after 9 a.m. on Friday, April 23, 1993. Paul Chavez, CesarChavezs middle son and one of eight siblings, was on thephone. Ive got some bad news, he said, his voice cracking.My dad has died.

Paul was calling from La Paz, the farm worker movementheadquarters at the Tehachapi Mountain hamlet of Keene, eastof Bakersfield, just after hearing the news from union staff.They had discovered Cesars body when the United FarmWorkers president had failed to awake in his room at the SanLuis, Arizona, farm worker home where they were staying.

Id known Cesar for twenty-four years, since beginning as avolunteer grape boycotter in 1969 while an undergraduate atthe University of California, Irvineand had served as hislongtime press secretary, speechwriter, and personal aide.

Peter Matthiessens beautiful portrait of Cesar Chavez deepenedmy commitment when it first appeared later that year,and it is just as compelling four and a half decades later. Mytask here is to offer insights gleaned since Sal Si Puedes wasinitially published and bring readers up to date through Cesarspassing in 1993, and beyond.

Paul Chavez was about to break the news to his mother,Helen, and other family members at La Paz. He asked my helpin getting word to the press.

I made some calls, trying to keep a lid on the story so familymembers could be notified before word broke on the news.But soon it was all over the media. Fortunately, most immediatefamily members were already informed.

The drive down Californias endless Central Valley was abluruntil the Mercury air terminal at Meadows Field, Bakersfieldsairport. Helen Chavez, her eight children, many of herthen twenty-seven grandchildren, and other family andfriends stood on the tarmac in the early evening light. Wewatched for the twin-engine plane chartered by a UFW supporterthat was flying from Yuma with Cesars body.

Helen had been making tamales that morning, to welcomeher husband back home, in the kitchen of the familys modesttwo-bedroom wood-frame house at La Paz. After learningthat her husband of forty-five years had died, Helen kept onmaking tamales. Her children said that others urged them tobe strong for their motherbut she was comforting them.

Cesars brother Richard Chavez and Arturo Rodriguez,who would soon succeed Cesar as UFW president, helped liftthe body from the plane. A white shroud covered him. Theycarried Cesar toward a waiting hearse. Paul led everyone inthe Lords Prayer. The body was later turned over to IrvingNichols, a former Bakersfield farm worker whom Cesar hadbefriended years before, who was now taking a leave from anAfrican American funeral home in Los Angeles.

An honor guard of farm workers accompanied the bodyfrom that night on, taking turns standing silently, holding UFWflags. The idea came from when Cesar was one of many standingsilent watch over Senator Robert F. Kennedys casket inNew Yorks St. Patricks Cathedral on the night before his funeralin 1968.

The task of organizing Cesars funeral began. We wereexpecting big crowds, although no one anticipated the forty-five-thousand-pluswho journeyed to Delano. His passing wasa deep personal loss. Thankfully, he died of natural causes,peacefully in his sleep, which was something of a relief becausewe had always worried that he would meet a violent endlike the Kennedy brothers, Dr. King, and his hero Gandhi.

I was with Cesar at the two times in the 1970s when federalagents notified the union about plots on his life. Ill live to bea hundred if they dont get me with a bullet or if I dont die ina car crash, hed say. His father had died at 101. His motherwas ninety-nine. Many first cousins had lived into their nineties.He was a strict vegetarian who meditated and exercised.But the years took their toll.

His last long fast, in 1988, over the pesticide poisoning offarm workers and their children, lasted thirty-six days; he wassixty-one. Cesar still labored sixteen-hour days at sixty-six.He hadnt taken a real vacation in thirty-one years, since startingthe union in 1962. He insisted on the cheapest seats onred-eye flights traveling across the country to save his unionsome money. Youre worth the extra money for a regularplane ticket, Helen would tell him. It didnt do any good. Noone could tell Cesar Chavez to spend more or reduce his hecticpace.

He rarely traveled by plane in California or Arizona. As hisaide, I gave up trying to count how many times wed meet athis house before 4 a.m. to be in a distant part of the state bymidmorning. After a full days schedule, wed make the longdrive back to La Paz and get home at 2 or 3 a.m. Hed be backat work that morning before anyone else.

My father packed 120 years of work into sixty-six years oflife, his son Paul said.

Cesar endured hardships and sacrifices in building the movement.Not the least of them fell on his family.

I grew up among his older kids, first getting to know Cesarthrough his eldest son, Fernando, when we were nineteen- ortwenty-year-old college students. We were the same ageand remain close friends. I still call him Polly, his nickname,around family.