Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Miriam Pawel The Cr

I worked for many years in los angeles at the Los Angeles Times. I have written for the new york times. Currently i write for the los angeles review of books and i am on the board of directors of the National Book critics circle. I am also the author of a book lapoetry, that deals with causa. At this time i would like to introduce miriam. Miriam is the former Pulitzer Prize winning editor. She spent 25 years working at newsday and to the Los Angeles Times. Her book, the crusades of cesar a biography is the First Comprehensive biography of the charismatic leader. She has written the union of widely acclaimed into nuanced history of chavez is United Farmworkers Movement and nuanced history of a United Farmworkers Movement. She recently received an endowment for her work on the chavez biography. Please welcome miriam pawel. [applause] thanks, gregg. Gregg hi miriam. Gg. Iam hi, gre gregg i want to ask you something i feel is important what brought you through the writing about cesar chavez . Innow a lot of people here texas know who he is, but i was very surprised to learn that recently when the mexican filmmaker diego luna was having the premier of his phone film on cesar chavez at south by southwest in austin, he took a stroll down cesar chavez asked people if they knew who cesar chavez was. Most of them said they felt he boxere boxer, the mexican Julio Cesar Chavez or they thought he was Julio Cesar Chavez junior, who is also a boxer. Another answered isnt he the enezuelan leader hugo chavez . Several others said they thought he had something to do with the chicano movement. It really surprised the and i want to ask you, why did you decide to write a fulllength book after writing, what is it . A long series and the Los Angeles Times about the unions and then your recent book, the union of their dreams. Miriam the answer is it ties very closely to what you said about diego luna. The fact is there was no biography. That is why i wrote it. You are all here today presumably because you have heard of cesar chavez and know something about him, but he is virtually unknown these days. When you get outside of california and the southwest, people really have no idea of who he was. I was in the Salinas Valley recently, which is still the heart of the Agricultural Industry and an english teacher got up and at an event and said her students had no idea who cesar chavez was. It is not only in austin. Part of the reason he has faded from our collective memory and not gotten the attention and study he deserves is because there has been until recently so little serious scholarship about him. There has been a lot of hagiography, a lot of repetition stories that rather make him into a fairly one ofensional figure, so a lot people have known he was a much more complicated person, but there has been a reluctance to tackle the subject. I knew from my earlier work that there was a tremendous amount of material available. He saved everything. He saved documents, hundreds of audiotapes of conversations and meetings and conferences. I knew there was a rich trove of material that had not been fully mined. He is such an important figure in history and should be. An a pardonwould be step in restoring him to that position he deserves. Miriam how gregg how helpful were earlier works about the union like peter there were aeel couple others jopp leavy as well. How helpful were those earlier biographies . Miriam they were very helpful, all three of those book in different ways. The first two books you mentioned, john dunn and Peter Matheson were ridden at the height of the struggle in the glory days of the movement and boycott. People probably still remember the boycott. 67, 68,both written in 69, that time period. Theyre both great writers so they captured the spirit of the time. Dunn is more leery of where the movement was going to end up and more accurate in his predictions. Peter matheson, whom i interviewed for my book as well was much more optimistic at the time about where things were going to end up and was disappointed. Was the official biographer of chavez. His book was published in 94. There is obviously a big gap after that. Because he was authorized, he was allowed this incredible access to chavez. Chavez and the union they would have the right to review the manuscript before hand. What leavy was did was transcribe all his tapes and record everything. Ultimately he had a falling out rs and sold hisei collection to yale university. There were hundreds of tapes. He was present at negotiations and single closeddoor meetings. He went with chavez on a trip to europe where among other things caesar and helen chavez had a and helenth cesar chavez had a meeting with the pope. Leery leavy was not in the meeting with the pope gregg do you repeat any of those stories for us recent readers . Miriam absolutely. I repeat the story and then i try to separate out the fact from the way the stories have gotten embellished over the years, some of them. Ways tradeteresting he has created his own mythology and he did that because he was a great organizer. He did it to help with the cause 24 years afterd his death, it is time to shows the way in which he created the mythology. Gregg i understand you did not have access to most of the family. Or, i believe dolores where to rta asl dolores hue well. Can you tells the reasons they didnt want to cooperate with another book . Miriam i should let the family talk about their reasons themselves. They felt the story was transmitted to me by thirdparty sources. They felt the story should be transmitted by the family. Ofy have always had a lot control over the story. We were heavily involved in the movie, so they did not feel i was the person who should be writing the story. I knew that going in. I knew i would not have cooperation and i knew that there was so much material out there that i did not need it. I understand that they responded to your first articles that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and they filed some kind of suit with the attorney general. What was the result of that . Miriam the articles in the Los Angeles Times were much more movement hade become and the fact that the union was not in the fields anymore and had not been for many years. The story focused mainly on the present and on the problems that farmworkers still suffer from into the exploitation into the terrible Housing Conditions and the exploitation terrible Housing Conditions. I started looking back at the past and i did this book through the present underwriting about sconditions today. They did not sue. They filed the notice is saying they were preserving their right butue the paper for libel, ultimately never filed a suit. They filed a paperge report, but the stood by the story and never issued a correction. Gregg there is a famous line in a film by john ford and they are having the john ford panel next door. It is a scene at the end when jane stewart goes to a newspaper reporter or editor and tells him that he is not the man that shot liberty balance liberty valence and the newspaper want hear anything about it. He says, in the legend becomes when print the legend the legend becomes fact, print the legend. Sar get started as a labor organizer . Miriam we will have to connect that to the legend. You have got a plan. His beginning as an organizer is really a fascinating part of the story and important to understanding his later years and decisions. He was a farmworker. He became part of the migrant stream in 1939 when he was 12 years old and his family lost their farm in yuma, arizona. He was in the navy, he came out, he worked his way out of the aelds and was working in lumberyard. A man named fred ross no one has heard of fred ross with a couple of notable exceptions fred ross was an enormously Important Community organizer and ran a group called the Community Service organization, which was almost exclusively in california. It was part of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Jose. 2, he went to san he held house meetings where you invite a few people over, talk to them about what are their concerns, what are their needs and get them involved in collective community organizing. A meetingar chavez at at the chavez house. Part of the legend is that fred ross wrote in his journal i think i found the guy i am looking for. You can find that quote in lots of scholarly work, but that is made up. In fredthe actual entry rosss journal from that night in which he says something very positive. He says chavez great potential, great energy, something very positive about ce quote asot exactly the the legend has become. He is 25 years old. Jobs stuck in a deadend and here comes fred ross who says they are going to do a better registration drive. Voteres chair of the registration drive and he clearly it clearly impresses impressesd he clearly ross. Is on the payroll of the cso. He has a 10 year apprenticeship as an organizer working for ross before he goes off to the part of the story that more people are familiar with when he organizes farmworkers. Back to his go name. When i first got a copy of your anyway was startled because the accent marks in his name were not there and it read Caesar Chavez cesar chavez. I looked it up and found that several newspapers do use the found inrks and i also our second brain wikipedia, that the accent marks were there and that his original name was cesario. Can you tell us why he changed his name or whether he actually used the accent marks or not . Cesario,is name was his grandfathers name was cesario and he was named after his grandfather even though he never knew him. Growing up just outside of yuma, when he went to school his name and hisged to cesar mother was never happy about the situation. She always called him cesario. She also did not speak english heard she spoke spanish at home. He became cesar when he went to school. Ofyou listen to these tapes, which i have listened to hundreds of hours, or you talk to people who worked with him at the time, although there is some revision of history in that, he was always called cesar. With miss forview asked why do you call him cesar in the movie . Helene said because and that isesar good enough for me. Gregg ok. Was he at the time that he became organizer with the cso, i think he became disenchanted with the way things were being run. He also was kind of upset with once the union the circuit,put in they often wanted to talk about andy and very little else not support the work that needed to be done to create the union later on. Keyam i think that is a point and it goes back to the cso days. Here he is an organizer in the cso. He is helping and power Mexican Americans who have not been part of the voting public to some degree and certainly not a political power. As he works with them and as they move into the middle class, they adopt middleclass values and he is really upset by this. In the late 1950s, you see him or writing in his journal and writing letters to fred ross and saying the way this is going, this is not going in the direction i want. Tobelieved it was important empower people and for them to have a sense of dignity and not live in poverty and be comfortable, but not to forget where they came from and help people who are still living in poverty and help the cause. That is a lot of the reason why he leaves the cso and starts out on his own to organize farmworkers. I think that really strong feeling that i have empowered these people into now they are using that power and now they are using that power to pursue support, i dont becomes important later on. He never wanted to be in that situation again and he talked about that quite a lot. Cso was athe membership organization. A union,s running labor unions are often supported because people want more money and better conditions. Not everyone joins a labor union aecause they believe in la cau e and they want to sacrifice. He felt very strongly that you needed to educate workers in order to share this philosophy that he had and that was that became a tough issue. , the at this Time Beginning of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, movement if you will, there were other leaders in the mix. Edina and el m exico, there was the crusade for justice in denver, there was Jose Angel Gutierrez here in texas. Chavez never reached out to connect with them. It seemed to be focused in california. Miriam i think this goes back to the control issue to some degree. Personed to be the sole in control. He ultimately undermined efforts by other people to organize in texas because he did not want to be in that kind of position of sharing power. He also had a strong commitment to nonviolence and that was not necessarily shared by the other early leaders of the shekinah movement. Chicano movement. End oflly towards the his life he emerges as the symbol of the chicano movement. At the appearance during the fast of Robert Kennedy that catapulted the union and his crusade to a more National Audience . The fast explodes in 1958. This is two years into the grape strike and he is becoming a more nationally known figure, particularly the march to sacramento in 1966, but the fast is a tremendous organizing opportunity. 25 days. For the Union Headquarters becomes a shrine. There are nightly masses, there are people walking on their knees up the path to the 40 acres. It attracted tremendous Media Attention for the first time. Bobby kennedy coming to break the fast is an iconic picture. It still gets used a lot today. The kennedy name it was enormous at that point in time. It comes a week before kennedy announces that he was running for president. It ties dfw into their First Political campaign. Doortodoor campaigning in los angeles and help kennedy when the primary. They are they are in the hotel when he gets shot. It was important they are there in the hotel when he gets shot. I always quote the reverend jim drake who was one of chavezs top advisers. Wasaid after the fast cesar too saintly to make mistakes. This was thrust on him to some degree. He certainly embraced of the image of the suffering and the pennants and that was part of the marching as well and believed that when you sacrifice , it is such a powerful force that it forces other people to want to help you and i think it did. Religious he a very man or was it the fact that they appropriated a lot of the religious iconography . Was both. Think it it was a tactic certainly. Obviously it was a real thing. He grew up in a catholic home. His mother was quite religious in the sense of mexican catholicism, which has its own. Ultural resonance for people so it was important to him but he also used it tremendously. Ffectively you have to remember when the strike starts in 1965 the Catholic Church in california is not supporting the farmworkers union. Now we think of the church as being on their side, but the pillars, the financial pillars of the church where the growers so they were loath to do anything over it. There are a lot of great files that thechdiocese archdiocese of fresno kept saying what are these people doing, get them out of here. You are trying to convince a very poor mexican farmworkers who are scared of speaking out in favor of the union because they are risking their jobs and their homes and their livelihoods. The embrace of the church and having the support was really important and so he does this brilliant thing of using the banner of the virgin of Guadalupe Bay wherever he goes, virgin of guadalupe wherever he goes. They walk off the up the spine of the San Joaquin Valley through these little farmworker towns. Everywhere they go, every night there is a little rally. The churches have to open their doors to the workers. It is during lent. It was brilliant. Ultimately the church comes around and the bishop support them, but it took a while. Gregg at the same time this is happening, there was a lot of the nonviolence they used in the strikes and boycotts, etc. You mentioned there was violence at times among the farmworkers. There were acts of sabotage against the growers. Cahcezshabbos manuel vez waslly manuel cha relentless. Frustration they felt when they were dismissed from the Movement Must have caused a lot of emotional violence. Not a ruthlessness was foreign concept. That manifested itself in different ways. Was sothe reasons chavez effective was his singleminded focus and intensity. Back are communicated to his followers and people interpreted communicated to his followers and people interpreted that in different ways. If you believe and you are led to believe by this leader that anything goes in the interest of getting this, this victory, sometimes people do things on behalf of the movement that would not have been sanctioned and sometimes people look the other way. When i talk to growers who lived through this era, one thing that makes them the most angry and they first thing they always say is this was not a Nonviolent Movement and they are right to a degree. Tacit understanding that violence against property was ok, violence against people. Asnt if you are a grower and your life is your vineyard and someone takes a machete to the your vines, you are pretty angry about that. I liveduring this time in crystal city, texas. We were privileged at that time to have a performance by el teatro campacino. We were very proud of that. Little did we know that shabbos haddissed chavez distanced himself from them and came teat tetro second, not first. He dismissed them. You talk about this and i hope you would clarify some of this. Caue people were all for la sa and still cau summarily dismissed. Notam for people who may know his name, he was a farmworker born in a liberal labor camp in andno, but his family m