Millions reaped what Cesar Chavez sowed - Obituary - Cover Story

National Catholic Reporter, May 7, 1993 by Arthur Jones

Chavez - who watched the union lose a $2.4 million suit two years ago - was in Yuma contesting a $5.4 million judgment against the UFW that had gone to Bruce Church Inc., a multimillion-dollar agribusiness with vast land holdings in Arizona and California.

Bruce Church Inc. had sued for damage done by a UFW boycott and won, and the UFW was appealing the case. Chavez gave testimony for two days and, when not in court, reportedly spent the tame driving through Yuma's poor streets, the playground of his brief childhood.

Often hungry as a boy, Chavez would fight hunger as a married man when - trying to bring a union to life - he would have to beg for food for his family from the workers he was attempting to organize.

Later, he would embrace hunger through fasts to further the cause. He was on a seven- or eight-day water-only fast until the evening before his death.

He was staying in the small, brick home of a disabled former migrant worker, family friend Dona Maria Hau, in San Luis, a half-hour south of Yuma. Hau had given Chavez her bed because she and UFW officials were concerned about his health. The previous evening, they had persuaded him to break his fast and have a vegetarian meal.

On Friday morning, April 23, Chavez did not appear for breakfast. David Martinez, UFW secretary-treasurer and a 20-year UFW loyalist, found him lying on the bed, dressed, union documents and court papers around him. But dead.

He had died young; his father lived to 101, his mother to 99.

Word of Chavez's death spread to the union halls decorated with the Virgin of Guadalupe and UFW flag, to the fields, to the small towns and larger cities. And stories about the short, compact man with the ready smile, the iron determination, the genuine humility and the deep faith were being told amid the tears.

In a way, Chavez had died fighting for what his mother and father had lost. The holdings of Bruce Church Inc. today include land that once was the Chavez family farm, land that Chavez, until the end of his life, believed had been unjustly taken from them.

Humble "tough cookie"

The tributes came from ordinary people and from at least two presidents - U.S. President Bill Clinton and Mexico President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

They came from UFW colleagues such as feisty former Vice President Dolores Huerta, a possible successor, and indirectly from one or two growers - though other growers were quick to downplay Chavez's and the UFW's importance.

Baldemar Valesquez, leader of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Toledo, Ohio, cited Chavez as an inspiration. "The most important legacy he leaves is the legacy of self-help, not leaving it to advocates, do-gooders and others to struggle for us."

Pat Henning, chief of staff of the California Assembly's Labor Committee, said he fasted with Chavez for several days during his water-only fast in 1988 to call attention to the harm allegedly caused by pesticides in the fields.

"There's a whole generation of Catholic activists in social justice from the |60s that owe their origins of who they are today to Cesar Chavez and the UFW," said Henning, a permanent deacon.