Moody Foods

During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States saw the formation and heyday of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, which sought to address issues of worker’s rights, health inequalities, and pay gaps for farmworkers.  Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chávez partnered in cofounding the UFW.  However, as a result of both machisimo within the movement and a gendered lens taken by historians and journalists who have recorded the work of the UFW, Huerta has been credited far less frequently than Chávez.  This paper will highlight the role of Dolores Huerta in the UFW and the gendered nature of activism at the time, as well as drawing the connection to the contemporary experience of Latina women working on farms in the United States; providing a contemporary analysis will establish the relevancy of the topic and why it is critical in moving towards a more equitable and just world.

            The UFW is a labor union which provides a platform for Latinx farm workers to coalesce and address issues of worker’s rights.  The union was founded by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chávez following their establishment of the National Farm Worker’s Association (NFWA) in 1962.  A large focus of the UFW during the 1960s and 1970s was uniting around the impacts of pesticides on farming communities, access to basic worker’s rights, and fair pay. While Huerta and Chávez were cofounders of the UFW, credit is often given to Chávez with Huerta’s contribution becoming peripheral. One article repeatedly equates the UFW with “Cesar Chavez and his followers”[1] and credits the success of the union to “the unique character of Cesar Chavez”.[2] This article fails to mention Huerta’s name even in passing. This disregard for Huerta as a leader and as the cofounder of the UFW is repeated in multiple sources and is the general trend for news       reporting on work done by the UFW.  One article from the time is quoted saying, “the UFWA and its leader Cesar Chávez”[3] without any reference to Huerta.  Another article titled, “Chavez March to Support Striking Printers” entirely disregards Huerta and refers to Chávez as the sole leader of UFW.[4]  Additionally, another article refers to the Grape strike as a struggle between Cesar Chávez and the grape farmers, not only erasing Huerta, but all of the workers who tirelessly gave their time and efforts to the UFW.[5] This is exemplified again in an article titled, “Chavez Union Opens Worldwide Boycott Against Wine Firm”, never mentioning Huerta despite her critical role in administering the wine boycotts enacted by the UFW.[6] I could continue to cite source after source from newspapers reporting on the UFW during the 1960s and 70s that participate in the erasure of Huerta through the bolstering of the great race man narrative that uplifts and centralizes the work of Chávez.  Despite being Chávez’s counterpart in leadership and establishment of the union, she becomes lost in the sole focus on Chávez’s work.  It is notable that even during his life, Chávez did not want to be seen as the image for the UFW.  In an interview, Huerta speaks of Chávez as a humble man who did not want to be the center of attention.[7] By representing the UFW as a male-centered institution, “interpretations have distorted the history of the UFW and the role of women in its development”.[8] It is important to highlight the voice and activism of Huerta and other women in the UFW.

Dolores Huerta played a critical role in the development and success of the UFW.  Huerta began working full time for the NWFA, the prequal to the UFW, in 1964.[9] She coordinated industry-wide grape boycotts in 1968 and 1969 to bring attention to the toxic effects of pesticides.[10] She lobbied for the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which was “one of the union’s most important victories”. [11] She worked to pass a law removing citizenship requirements for people to have access to public services as well as a law mandating that farm workers have access to bathrooms in the fields.[12] She was able to raise significant funds and public awareness for the UFW through different mediums, including print, radio, and television.[13] Huerta administered the lettuce, grape, and wine campaigns in 1973 and 1975 and was the leader of negotiations for the union.  She was also the director of the political arm of the UFW from the late 1970s until 1982.[14] According to one news source of the time, Huerta is acknowledged as the “unheralded heroine”[15] of the UFW. Her role in the UFW was critical and she participated in an unprecedented amount of activism. 

Despite her many successes for the union and the tireless work she put in, Huerta received a large amount of pushback from both within and outside of the movement as a result of her public forms of activism.  She was frequently told by men within the movement that labor organizing was no place for a woman.  In her role as negotiator, she is quoted in Rose’s article stating, “He [Cesar] never really quite trusted what I did until he started to negotiate himself; then he found it was pretty hard to get the kind of language that I had gotten, and he started respecting what I had done”.[16]  Even Chávez, who Huerta speaks of as a soft spoken, patient man who did not want to be the center of attention, inflicted stereotypical gendered assumptions onto her.  Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Huerta challenged, “the conventional constraints upon women’s full participation in trade union activism, competing directly with male colleagues in the UFW”.[17]  She did not ascribe to the traditionally accepted forms of female participation in the UFW, which looked like volunteerism and behind the scenes work.  Rather, Huerta took center stage and engaged in the highly political and public work of labor organizing.  Huerta was not the only woman who had a leadership position within the UFW. Though comparatively little is known about other women’s work, recognizing their names and roles is an integral aspect of making visible the efforts of Latina women in the struggle for farmworker’s rights.  Among these women are Gloria Soto, the credit union manager and Ester Uran, who was in charge of membership for the UFW.[18] Although Huerta and a select few other women were able to successfully challenge the gendered nature of activism within the UFW, many women played crucial roles that are all too often erased because their participation occurred outside of the public sphere.

A perfect example of a woman who participated heavily and without which the UFW would not have been nearly as successful, but who was nearly all-together erased from common historical knowledge about the union was Helen Chávez.  As the wife of Cesar Chávez, she became engaged in activism through him.  Chávez quit working in the fields to do secretarial work for the union full time. It is noted that, “Since she was the only full-time staff member, without Helen Chávez this union service probably would not have survived”.[19] It is this type of work that make the UFW one of the most successful associations for Latinx people at the time. Women were filling critical roles that received no public recognition but were necessary for the union to provide its services.  By acknowledging the different ways that Huerta and Chávez participated in the UFW, one can gain a better understanding of the gendered implications for Latina women engaging in politics at the time.  Female models of participation tended to align more with Chávez’s supportive and invisible work.

Within these spaces of activism notions of work, motherhood, and domesticity specific to Latina farm workers intersect.  Chicanas in the movement at times were divided in their approach to feminism or loyalism to their culture and the movement at large, with some women noting that the primary fight was that of Chicana liberation as women and others pushing for liberation as a Chicanx community.[20] Huerta falls somewhere in between this, as she is not taking a directly feminist stance within the movement, however is rejecting much of the loyalist rhetoric expecting women to have children and raise for the cause without directly engaging. While Huerta valued, “placing personal autonomy and trade union activism before family life,” Chávez, “maintains that a woman’s proper place is in the home”.[21]  Chávez’s view reflects the common desire held by many working-class Mexicans to reflect the family structure of Anglo-Americans, but who were unable to as a result of socio-economic inequalities.[22] This desire to reflect the Anglo-American family is indicative of the reiteration of a dominant, white supremacist narrative that equates whiteness with wealth and access, as so often was the case.  During this moment in history, the women’s liberation movement could have offered a place for Chicanas to turn to gain a platform through which to address the sexism they were experiencing within the UFW and other Chicanx movements.  However, because of the dominant white feminist narrative, the needs of Chicana women were not addressed in the women’s liberation movement.[23] In contrast to Chávez’s emphasis on seeking the typical Anglo-American family structure, Huerta often rejected the domestic expectations assigned to her.  Huerta frequently left her children in the care of friends or family so that she was able to dedicate her time to the struggle.  Where Huerta was criticized for neglecting her domestic role of motherhood and homemaking, Chávez received praise for maintaining healthy family ties under strenuous times.  Thus, exemplifying sexist divisions of labor for those within the UFW and broader Chicanx liberation movement. Connected is the attitude held by many Chicanos within the movement, who expected to speak for and about the experience of Chicanas without giving them access to political voice within the liberation movement.[24] Latina women were often denied space to voice their organizing desires as a result of assumptions that a woman’s role ought to be within the sphere of domesticity. Huerta rejected this notion and in doing so not only spoke out for and with the voice of other Latina farm workers, but also established a precedence on which women were able to step into roles of leadership in the UFW moving forward. However, Huerta’s model of activism is arguably impractical for many people and comes with the assumption that everything else in life can be set aside to dedicate oneself to a cause. 

It is important that in noting and admiring Huerta’s model of activism, we do not overshadow or infer that Helen Chávez and many other women’s style of activism are not incredibly valuable. Notably,

“Given the existing sexual division of labor in the union and in society, few women are able or willing to relegate their personal lives or families to a secondary position in order to pursue union organizing.  Thus, the more common form of female participation, á la Helen Chávez, remains ‘invisible’ – unrecognized and unappreciated by union members as well as historians”.[25] Furthermore, if one considers that Cesar Chávez was so completely dedicated to the UFW and as a result was largely absent as a father, Helen Chávez was not only doing all of the child rearing and home care, but was also working full time in support of the UFW.  The notion of motherhood was not entirely absent from Huerta’s politics and she was still spurred by the desire to care for her children as well as the children of others.  In an interview Huerta states, “…he [President Bush Sr.] said that there was nothing wrong with pesticides, that the government takes care of us, and we don’t have to worry about that.  At the same time there were farm workers that were dying of cancer, children, farm worker children, a very, very high percentage of them dying of cancer”.[26]  Here, Huerta is demonstrating the common sentiment shared by a large number of female activists during this time of being driven by a hope to protect and establish a more equal world for their children.  Although this is not Huerta’s driving rhetoric, it is notable that even in her disassociation from traditional forms of female activism in the UFW during the 60s and 70s, she demonstrates the shared concern for children that bring many women together in this space through the shared, however multifaceted, experience of motherhood.

            A contemporary analysis addressing the experience of Latina farm workers offers an important framework to understanding the importance of the UFW, Huerta, and Chávez. Recently, there is a trend towards farmers employing undocumented workers.  During the 1970’s, the UFW was uncertain in their engagements with undocumented workers and did not focus heavily on issues of citizenship.  Over the following decades, the shift towards more undocumented workers over U.S. citizens in farm labor impacted the number of people involved in the UFW.  As a result of folks feeling less safe to engage openly and politically, because of their documentation status, as well as a history of the UFW not advocating strongly for undocumented workers, the UFW saw a decline in membership.  As of 2008, “the U.S. farm labor force is largely undocumented and unorganized”.[27]  There are a multitude of factors that may contribute to the correlation between the majority of farm workers having an undocumented status and being unorganized.  It is likely that a fear of deportation is a leading factor, as well as an unfamiliarity with U.S. bureaucracy and politics.

An acceleration of migration resulted from the steep economic downturn in Mexico in the 1980s, the passing of NAFTA, and the call for cheap labor on U.S. farms.[28] This rise of undocumented labor is inextricably linked to the broader implications of an undocumented status in the U.S. today.  In 2006, 42% of undocumented adults in the United States were women.[29] This exemplifies a shift in the migration model that occurred since the heyday of the UFW.  During the 1960s and 1970s it tended to be that the husband or male in a heteronormative family would migrate to the United States looking for work and the rest of the family stayed in Mexico; as a result of the heightened push factors to leave Mexico, entire families began migrating at a much higher rate.  This meant that the U.S. was taking in higher numbers of women and children, who were less likely to be contributing to the economy and more likely to be using public services like education and access to healthcare for pregnancy and birth. In an attempt to combat this in California, Proposition 187 was passed in 1994 (ruled unconstitutional in 1998).  Prop 187 halted access to public services for undocumented immigrants, including public schooling, health care, and other social services.  The ultimate motive of Prop 187 was that, “If the model of the solo Mexican male migrant worker were restored, maximum profit could be extracted from his labor while reproduction costs—the expense of bearing and raising the next laboring generation—would be externalized in Mexico”.[30]  The U.S. aimed to exploit undocumented workers without providing access to any public services and without bearing any responsibility to extend care to the families of the workers who were growing the food that fed the country.  This ruling directly targeted women in its attempt to revert to a model in which women and children stayed in Mexico and were not able to come to the United States.  This also connects back to the notion that many women mobilized around issues impacting their children, indicating their deep emotional stake in ensuring a better life for their children.  By suspending the rights of undocumented children to attend public school, the emotional burden on many Latina mothers becomes all the more painful and difficult to bare.  It is important to recognize the emotional impact this most certainly had on undocumented Latina women and validate that experience as one that may trigger anxiety, depression, or other health problems for which they did not have access to proper care.

As women were experiencing the effects of a careless state and racist policies in addition to the everyday struggles and inequalities faced by many, they were also mobilizing around these issues.  Notably, “When undocumented women engage in political activity wearing UFW T-shirts or buttons, they temporarily and partially transcend their formal exclusion from the U.S. nation-state through identification as workers and members of a union with iconographic status in the U.S. Chicano movement”.[31] This begins to deconstruct the notion of citizenship as both a formal and legal reality, as well as a social and experienced one. When Latina women organize, they are claiming a space in social and experienced citizenship, they are engaging with and affecting U.S. politics. In her work, Seif focuses on the accounts of two undocumented Mexican farm workers citing that, “while the political victimization of undocumented Mexican women has been extensively studied, there has been less academic inquiry into their political opinions and activities”.[32] Here, the author acknowledges the common historical locating of Latina women as passive objects on which action occurs, rather than active participants in their own history building process.  As previously noted, Latina farm workers often engage with issues that directly impact their children, such as better education systems and fighting the rampant use of pesticides that are particularly dangerous to children’s health.  The women interviewed by Seif, Marta and Fernanda, exemplify this narrative as both recently joined the UFW to ensure a better future for their children.  As time goes on, female leadership within the UFW has increased, with three out of five new board members in 2000 being women.  With increased engagement from women in the public and political sphere, it is increasingly likely that as new histories are being created every day, women are being recorded, doing the recording, and making visible their specific experience.

The heart of this issue and so many others lie in the reality of institutional racism in the United States intersecting with patriarchy.  Institutional racism acts as the process by which racial inequality is recreated and systematized so that it is part of the institutions that mandate social norms and actions. Much of the experience of Latina farmworkers, both in the 1960s and 70s and now, is one of the environmental injustices that have resulted from this framework of institutional racism.  While Latina farmworkers are feeding the nation, many do not have enough money to afford the food they spend long and taxing days harvesting.  While so much of white America’s environmental worries are over the pollution of lakes and trees in their backyards, Latina farmworkers’ bodies and the bodies of their children are experiencing the effects of pesticide poisoning.  Laura Pulido, a Latina woman and leading activist and academic writer on environmental racism, writes that, “Numerous problems stem from not conceptualizing the problem accurately, including not giving sufficient weight to the ballast of past racial violence, and assuming the state to be a neutral force, when, in fact, it is actively sanctioning and/or producing racial violence in the form of death and degraded bodies and environments”.[33]  As we see the continuation of environmental injustices being experiences by Latinx farmworkers in our country, it is imperative that we understand the histories at play.  We must make every effort to find, make visible, and share these histories.  This narrative needs to include not just the racial violence conjured by Pulido, which has created the system now in place, but the voices of those who have been fighting against it, as that is where we may find the answers in how to stand on the groundwork they have laid and continue in bringing the fight forward.  I will end this piece with a few words given by Dolores Huerta in an interview about the current struggles faced by many Latinx people in the United States today as a reminder that this paper is meant to highlight her actions and that the fight is ongoing.

“We all have to identify this issue; we have to acknowledge that racism exists and that people are getting killed because they’re black or brown, and people are being mistreated, people are being incarcerated.  The whole immigration issue, it’s not about people crossing the border, it’s about building prisons and saying that you have committed a crime when crossing the border’s not a crime.  It’s a civil offence.  So, there’s profits that are being made out of racism and we’ve got to identify this and acknowledge it and then say to everybody and to all of our institutions and our, our government agencies.  Everybody here has got to take a position and to start acknowledging and start working to end the racism.  Racism is so much in the fabric of American culture”[34]

References

“Cesar Chavez March To Support Striking Printers.” Sun Reporter, July 4, 1970.

Chávez, Alicia. “Huerta, Dolores (1930-).” Latinas in the United States, Set: A Historical Encyclopedia. Indiana University Press, 2006. 332-33.

Bernstein, Harry. “Chavez Union Opens Worldwide Boycott Against Wine Firm.” Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1971.

Ganz, Marshall. “Resources and Resourcefulness: Strategic Capacity in the Unionization of California Agriculture, 1959-1966.” American Journal of Sociology105, no. 4 (2000): 1003-062. doi:10.1086/210398.

“Grape Strikers Are Victorious.” Sacramento Observer, August 6, 1970.

Huerta, Dolores, Robert Davis-Undiano, Cristobal Salinas, and Kathleen Wong. “A Conversation with Dolores Huerta.” Journal Committed to Social Chance on Race and Ethnicity 2, no. 2 (2016): 135-47. Accessed February 24, 2019. NCORE.

Jenkins, J. Craig. “The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker Movement in the 1960s.” American Journal of Sociology92, no. 3 (November 1986): 753-55. doi:10.2307/2071031.

Pulido, Laura. “Geographies of Race and Ethnicity II.” Progress in Human Geography 41, no. 4 (2016): 524-33. doi:10.1177/0309132516646495.

“Rival Farmworkers Local Chartered.” Oakland Post, June 12, 1974.

Ruíz, Vicki. From out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-century America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Rose, Margaret. “Traditional and Nontraditional Patterns of Female Activism in the United Farm Workers of America, 1962 to 1980.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 11, no. 1 (1990): 26. doi:10.2307/3346700.

Seif, Hinda. “Wearing Union T-Shirts.” Latin American Perspectives 35, no. 1 (2008): 78-98. Accessed February 23, 2019. doi:10.1177/0094582×07310969.

“Most Of California’s Prop. 187 Ruled Unconstitutional.” CNN. (1998). Accessed March 16, 2019. http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/03/19/prop.187/.

Murphy, Jean. “La Causa.” Los Angeles Times, December 21, 1970.

Wynne, Bridget. “Chicanas Speak: About Feminism &the Women’s Liberation Movement.” Off Our Backs 9, no. 10 (November 30, 1979). ProQuest.

[1] J. Craig Jenkins, The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker Movement in the 1960’s, (1986), 754

[2] Jenkins, The Politics, 754

[3] Rival Farmworkers Local Chartered, (Oakland, 1974), 1

[4] Cesar Chavez March To Support Striking Printers, (San Francisco, 1970), 1

[5] Grape Strikers Are Victorious, (Sacramento, 1970), 1

[6] Harry Bernstein, Chavez Union Opens Worldwide Boycott Against Wine Firm, (Los Angeles, 1971), 1

[7] Dolores Huerta, Robert Davis-Undiano, Cristobal Salinas, and Kathleen Wong, A Conversation with Dolores Huerta, (San Francisco, 2016), 139

[8] Margaret Rose, Traditional and Nontraditional Patterns of Female Activism in the United Farm Workers of America, 1962 to 1980, (1990), 26

[9] Marshall Ganz, Resource and Resourcefullness: Strategic Capacity in the Unionization of California Agriculture 1959-1966, (2000), 1047

[10] Alicia Chavez, Huerta, Dolores (1930-), (2006), 332

[11] Chavez, Huerta, 333

[12] Huerta, A Conversation, 138

[13] Rose, Traditional, 29

[14] Rose, Traditional, 28

[15] Jean Murphy, La Causa, (1970), 1

[16] Rose, Traditional, 28

[17] Rose, Traditional, 26

[18] Murphy, La Causa, 2

[19] Rose, Traditional, 27

[20] Vicki Ruiz, From out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-century America, (2008), 111

[21] Rose, Traditional, 29

[22] Rose, Traditional, 29

[23] Bridget Wynne, Chicanas Speak: about feminism & the women’s liberation movement, 1

[24] Wynne, Chicanas, 1

[25] Rose, Traditional, 30

[26] Huerta, A Conversation, 140

[27] Hinda Seif, Wearing Union T-Shirts, (2008), 81

[28] Seif, Wearing, 80

[29] Seif, Wearing, 81

[30] Seif, Wearing, 82

[31] Seif, Wearing, 79

[32] Seif, Wearing, 79

[33] Laura Pulido, Geographies of Race and Ethnicity II, (2016), 525

[34] Huerta, A Conversation, 143