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César Chávez was born on March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona and grew up in a small adobe house. Because his family had lost their home during the Great Depression, they packed up and moved to California to become migrant farm workers. All through his childhood, César’s parents gave him a very firm foundation in Catholic social teaching. Never, for example, would any hungry person be turned away from the Chávez door.
Because César’s family had to move so often to follow the seasons of the various crops they were harvesting, César had been in more than thirty-six schools by the time he was in eighth grade, his final year of formal education. Many of César’s memories were of abuse he experienced in school because he spoke Spanish and because he was always the “new kid in school.”
When he graduated from eighth grade in 1942, César decided to become a full-time migrant farm worker so that his mother would not have work in the fields. Two years later, he joined the United States Navy at age seventeen hoping to learn valuable skills to help him occupationally. Unfortunately, however, Mexican-Americans at that time were only allowed to serve as deckhands and painters.
Eventually César married Helen Fabela, and they had seven children. César continued working in the fields until 1952 when he was invited to help lead a Latino civil rights group called Community Service Organization.
During his time as a migrant worker, César encountered continual problems faced by migrant workers: unjust wages, racism, poor housing, and many others.
But God sent certain people into César’s life, people who would help him form ideas about how to put his Catholic social principals into action. One of these was a woman named Dolores Huerta with whom he would eventually start an organization that today is known as the United Farm Workers. Another was Fred Ross who introduced community organizing to César. Another person was Father Donald McDonnell who led César to read about St. Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi. From these readings, he began to understand the power of nonviolence.
In time, César began to organize farm workers so that they could receive a just wage for their families and live in decent conditions. Through fasting and prayer and boycotts, César was able to accomplish much to improve the lives of the migrant workers. César was also able to get growers to stop using pesticides that were destroying the unborn children of pregnant migrant workers.
César Chávez died in April of 1993. More than 30,000 people came to pay their respects at his casket. Cardinal Roger Mahoney called César, “a special prophet for the world’s farm workers,” and many were calling César a saint.
