José-Antonio Orosco - Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence

Jos-Antonio Orosco

ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8263-4377-2

2008 by the University of New Mexico Press
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Orosco, Jos-Antonio, 1971
Cesar Chavez and the common sense of nonviolence / Jos-Antonio Orosco.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8263-4375-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Chavez, Cesar, 19271993.
2. Labor leadersUnited States.
3. Non violence.
I. Title.
HD6509.C48O76 2008
331.88'13092dc22
[B]
2007043180

Book design and type composition by Melissa Tandysh
Composed in 10.5/13.5 Minion Pro Display type is Brioso Pro

INTRODUCTION
Cesar Chavez as a Political Thinker

CHAPTER ONE
Pilgrimage, Penitence, and Revolution:
The Logic of Nonviolence

CHAPTER TWO
The Most Vicious Type of Oppression:
The Broken Promises of Armed Struggle

CHAPTER THREE
The Strategies of Property Destruction
and Sabotage for Social Justice

CHAPTER FOUR
Refusing to Be a Macho:
Decentering Race and Gender

CHAPTER FIVE
The Common Sense of Nonviolence:
Time and Crisis in King and Chavez

I owe a great deal of gratitude to many individuals whose generosity and insight helped me to complete this book. Andrew Valls, Lani Roberts, Tony Vogt, Lisa Gonzales, and Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, all colleagues and friends at Oregon State University (OSU), read drafts and shared with me books, articles, and their enthusiasm for the project. Greg Moses, Scott Pratt, Gail Presby, Lisa Heldke, Barry Gan, and Kim Diaz were all kind enough to spend time with my writing and give me their honest opinions. Marta Kunecka read the entire manuscript, shared her ideas, and graciously helped me to prepare the index. I also wish to thank audiences at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, Concerned Philosophers for Peace, the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World, the Gandhi/King Society, the National Association of Chicana/o Studies, the University of CaliforniaRiverside Philosophy Department, and the OSU Ethnic Studies Department for probing questions and helpful suggestions on improving the work. In particular, I would like to thank the University of New Mexico Press staff for their skill and judgment in guiding me through the process of finishing the book.

I am extremely thankful for the support of friends who were either sounding boards for ideas or otherwise there to make life more precious with their care and inspiration: Lilia Raquel Duenas Rosas, the Rev. Parisa Day Parsa (la otra parte de mi alma), and Jeen Marie Belson. I cannot begin to express the love and thanks I owe to my mother, Flora V. Orosco, and the rest of my family for their continual support of all my academic endeavors. Finally, to Theresa, thanks for the many discussions that brought clarity and the love that makes it all worthwhile.

An earlier version of appeared as Cesar Chavez and Principled Nonviolent Strategy, in Nonviolence in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed., ed. Robert L. Holmes and Barry Gan (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2005), 26169.

DURING THE 2006 WORLD CUP, AMERICAN CORPORATIONS TRIED to tap into the increasingly lucrative Latino/a market with television commercials, in Spanish, that acknowledge their presence in the United States. One beer commercial juxtaposes images of traditional American city scenes with their new Latinized vistas. In one particular example, a street sign reading Main Street fades and quickly reemerges as Cesar Chavez Ave., suggesting that Latinos/as are literally altering civic landscapes with symbols, images, and colors that reflect a new sense of culture and history. These television advertisements appeared after the May 2006 Day without an Immigrant demonstrations in which millions of Latinos/as and their supporters marched in major American cities to support immigrant rights and to defeat punitive immigration bills passed in the House of Representatives in December 2005. Although the marches touched off heated debates about undocumented workers and the cultural elements essential to American national identity, these World Cup commercials seemed to recognize that Latinos/as will be permanent fixtures of American life.

What is curious about this particular beer commercial is not how it easily deploys Cesar Chavezs name. After all, Chavezs image was

People working in Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship have long argued over whether it is appropriate to elevate King as the lone icon or figurehead for the civil rights movement of the 1960s. For some, this approach is objectionable not only because it ignores the everyday contributions to racial justice of hundreds of nameless and faceless activists but because it also turns King into a charismatic and saintly hero who single-handedly shifted the course of American history. The danger of such exaltation is that it further removes King from the lives of ordinary people who feel they cannot relate to or compare with someone with such talent and ability. They therefore conclude that they themselves are unable to contribute anything of value to the struggle for social justice in this country. As Michael Eric Dyson comments, perhaps the best way to diffuse Kings message and make him irrelevant to young people is not only to honor him as the single civil rights leader but to pay tribute to him as a national hero with a federal holiday each January. That way, his trenchant criticisms of American racism,

In addition to ethnic commodification and the kind of mainstream tribute that erases his radical critiques, Chavez also suffers from constant comparison with other major figures, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., in a way that diminishes his own accomplishments and thoughts on nonviolence. The literature about Gandhis or Kings philosophy is now quite voluminous. Yet very little attention has been paid to Chavezs contribution to the theory of nonviolence. Both Gandhi and King are usually portrayed as activists and philosophers articulating and refining concepts of power, nonviolence, and justice. Chavez usually comes across primarily as an activist and not a thinker, simply implementing the theories of nonviolence created by others. This book seeks to correct this impression and to provide an analysis of Cesar Chavezs philosophy of nonviolence. I argue that he developed original views on nonviolent theory and practice that are significantly distinct from the work of Gandhi and King and may, in some ways, be more appropriate for guiding us on to how to conceive of, and struggle for, social justice in United States.

There are some who maintain that it is a misrepresentation to think of Chavez as anything but a charismatic and effective labor organizer. Peter Matthiessen writes that even though Chavez read and thought about the works of St. Paul, Niccolo Machiavelli, Winston Churchill, and Thomas Jefferson, he was a realist, not an intellectual.