Down in the Valley With Cesar

Power, Paranoia and Purges in the United Farm Workers

Down in the Valley With Cesar

http://counterpunch.com/yates10202009.html

By MICHAEL D. YATES
October 20, 2009

[Author's note: I worked for the United Farm Workers Union during a
sabbatical leave in the winter of 1977. I was made Research Director
and spent my time investigating the growers, helping out in
negotiations, and testifying in unfair labour practice cases. While I
was there I witnessed disturbing events, brought on in my view by the
union president's paranoia in the face of daunting external
pressures. The meeting described in the story, in which several staff
persons were purged from the union, was held while I was on union
assignment. I learned the details of it from persons present. I
recreated the meeting from information I received from them. I put
myself there and invented the dialogue for dramatic effect, although
some of the dialogue was told to me by friends who were there. For
verification that the union behaved then and later in an unusual and,
from a workers' point of view, autocratic and detrimental manner, see
the series of articles in the Los Angeles Times. An earlier series
was published in The Village Voice, in the issues of August 14 and
21, 1984. Supporting materials can also be found at
www.farmworkermovement.org. Except for Cesar Chavez and Jane Fonda,
the names in the story are not the real names of the persons described.]
--

I drove into union headquarters at 1:15 in the morning. It was
raining, and I barely saw the sign for Keene, California, which was
where my directions said to turn right from Route 66. Two hours
before, I had eaten at a truck stop in Needles and begun driving
across the desert. Now I was in the mountains, west of Tehachapi,
heading toward Bakersfield. Keene wasn't on the California map in my
road atlas, so I wasn't expecting much of a town. In fact, there was
no town at all, just the Keene Café, Ed and Edna Melton, proprietors.
It was closed, so I couldn't stop to ask directions. I kept driving
up the narrow road and, about a mile later, saw a hand-painted sign
on a small post which read "La Paz: United Farm Workers of America."
I turned my head back to the road just in time to brake before I ran
over the guard who was flagging me to stop. He motioned me into a
driveway blocked by a gate. A second guard approached my car from a
small guardhouse, shined a light in my face, and asked me in a
strongly accented voice what was my business. It didn't sound like
they were expecting me. I found out later that the scheduled guards
had been told, but they had traded shifts with two compañeros and
forgotten to tell them. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have mattered, but
death threats had been made against union president Chavez and the
guards were cautious of strangers. I told the second guard my name,
that I had come to work for the union, and that I was expected. I
gave him the name of my contact, Bill Martin, the union's personnel
director. He had a conversation in Spanish with the other guard, who
went into the booth and made a telephone call. Then he came out and,
in a friendly tone said, "Welcome to the Farm Workers."

Within minutes, Bill appeared on foot, introduced himself, said
something to the guards and got into my car. "I'll show you your
room. You must be tired. You can get some sleep and we'll talk
tomorrow. I'll stop by for you at 7:00." I looked at my watch­2:00. I
would still be tired in the morning. I had left Johnstown,
Pennsylvania, on New Year's Day, 1977, with an abscessed tooth, and
by the time I reached Amarillo, Texas, I was taking fifteen Aspirins
a day without much effect. Suddenly, a pain shot through my jaw so
sharp that I had to stifle a cry. I had a feeling that my next good
night's sleep would be awhile in coming.

As he opened the door, Bill was saying something about how they
hadn't had time to clean my room. I was thinking, well, how bad could
it be, until I looked inside. I'm glad he didn't look at me just then
because my face must have reflected my impulse to turn around and
run. The room was filthy, an inch of dust on the floor, trash
covering nearly every surface, furnished only with an ancient iron
bed, a dirty sagging chair, and a scarred cupboard tilting
dangerously forward. I wondered if maybe this was a test given to new
recruits to measure their commitment. But Bill was talking cheerfully
about how this was one of the nicer rooms, just a bit messy. I could
get it shipshape in no time. I tried to duplicate Bill's
cheerfulness. "It looks fine. Anyway, I'm so tired, I could sleep
anywhere tonight. See you at seven." I lied about sleeping. No way
was I going to rest now. I spent the next two hours cleaning the room
as best I could, manically sweeping, shaking, and wiping. By 4:00
a.m. the room was presentable, at least in the dim light cast by the
bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I walked down the hall to the
shower, but it didn't work. I washed myself with cold water, went
back to my room and fell asleep. I dreamt that I was the preacher in
The Grapes of Wrath addressing a large crowd of farm workers. I was
talking about the loaves and fishes. Here in these rich valleys there
were loaves and fishes aplenty, yet we who grew them went hungry. The
rich men's tables were filled to overflowing, yet ours were bare.
Where was the justice in that? The growers were like vampires sucking
our blood, and it couldn't be the will of Jesus, that poor savior of
us all, that we just sit here and take it. The faces in the crowd
nodded approval. I could feel their power. One of them shouted out,
"Hey preacher, don't forget, we want clean rooms too."

"You probably won't be able to start working right away. Each new
staff person has to meet with Cesar first, and he won't be back until
next week." This was disappointing news. Bill had indeed knocked on
my door at seven. He had taken me to his "kitchen" for coffee,
introduced me to some of his friends, and escorted me on a tour of
the grounds. The union's headquarters were located in what had been a
private sanitarium for alcoholics. The owner, the son of an actor of
some notoriety, had donated it to the union, making him about as
popular as anthrax among the local cattle and horse ranchers. It was
an isolated place, tucked into the desert mountains along the
railroad tracks, about two miles from the famous horseshoe curve. The
sanitarium had consisted of a large hospital and several
outbuildings. Single staff persons lived in the hospital, while
married staff lived in small houses or trailers.

Living arrangements were varied and informal. At one time, evening
meals had been taken communally in a large refectory, but chronic
labour shortages had made it impossible to continue this practice.
Now staff persons were responsible for their own provisioning and
cooking. In the hospital, people had formed "kitchens" of six to
twelve members who constituted a sort of mini-collective for shopping
and cooking. Bill invited me to join his kitchen, an offer I quickly
accepted. He explained that my duties would include preparing supper
for eight to ten people two or three times a month and collecting
money and shopping for food maybe once a month. Over coffee, I
surveyed the kitchen. There was a double hotplate, an electric frying
pan, a coffee pot, a few pots, pans, and plates, a motley and small
collection of utensils, a beat up table, six broken chairs, a small
bathroom sink, and an ancient refrigerator. No stove, no real sink,
and, I was casually informed, no hot water, which didn't matter
because the water was contaminated and had to be boiled anyway. My
stomach churned in panic. I couldn't cook for eight people in Julia
Child's kitchen let alone here. When a woman sitting with us pointed
to the cooking sign-up sheet on the refrigerator and suggested that I
might as well sign it now, I looked at her with glazed eyes. There
was a hint of sarcasm in her voice. She knew I was in trouble and was
enjoying it. She had frowned when Bill had invited me to join their
group. Mechanically, I surveyed the sheet and, with relief, I saw
that there were open days at the end of the month. I marked them and
made a mental note to write to my mother for recipes.

I wondered aloud what I was supposed to do until I could meet with
Cesar. Bill suggested that I introduce myself to as many people as
possible and let them know that I was available for work. He had
heard that I would be working in the research office. Cesar had
seemed excited when Bill had shown him my application. Bill had read
it and decided that my skills might be better used here at union
headquarters than in the Detroit boycott office, which was where I
had originally been assigned. Cesar agreed, and this pleased Bill
greatly. Cesar had said that we can get professors on our side, too.

Most of the people I met that first week were new, and there were
frequent references to people who had just left. This didn't surprise
me­low wages, hard work, and crummy living conditions have a way of
wearing down people's commitment. The new people were uniformly
idealistic and happy to be here. Most were in their early twenties
and had supported the union in college or in their churches. To all
of us the union was special, an uncorrupted champion of the poorest
workers, and Cesar was a hero, a mystical little man, a modern-day
Gandhi who, through sheer determination and will, had finally beaten
the growers. He had built a union and a movement. The campesinos
flocked to his union, and people who wanted to do something right
with their lives flocked to his movement. With monastic zeal we came
to the union, to do good and, I suppose, to purify our souls.

On first meeting, union veterans seemed just as idealistic and
selfless as the newcomers. Within a few days I felt more at home than
I imagined possible. This was a true community, and I found myself
thinking that I should quit teaching and live here. I felt separated
from my former self, as if I were in the middle of a spiritual
reawakening. One evening, a married couple took me to a local union
meeting in a small town down the mountain. About two hundred workers
talked and sang in Spanish and English, loyalists, none of whom had
yet won union contracts but who had marched and picketed from San
Francisco to Boston, giving witness for the union. "Yo soy
economista," I repeated again and again. They smiled a silent welcome
or told me their stories in broken English. I was moved, happy to be
with brothers and sisters.

"You can go in now." I had been waiting in Cesar's outer office for
an hour, ignored by his personal secretary, a young Anglo named Mark
Wilson. Mark was flanked by two assistants, another Anglo and a
handsome Chicano, Juan Salazar, who was Cesar's chief bodyguard. They
were not a friendly group. They made me uncomfortable, especially
Mark, who struck me as a person who feels he has the right to order
people around because he is close to the person who can. When Juan
looked at me, I remembered that I had seen him the night before
arguing with a woman I assumed to be his wife. Their child was crying
and his wife was saying loudly that he should spend more time with
his son. Juan spoke sharply to her­when he saw me, he glared but then
smiled and said, "Buenos noches, hermano." Today, I remembered the glare.

My meeting lasted less than five minutes. Mark followed me into a
spare, windowless office and introduced me to Cesar. He was a small,
slightly built man with jet black hair, dressed in a cheap
open-collared shirt, chino pants, and sandals. He shook my hand
limply but with both hands. He had a gentle voice and manner. He
spoke directly and without pause, explaining what he had in mind for
me to do. He wanted me to attend a staff conference the following
weekend. Then the meeting was over. At the door I turned to ask a
question. Cesar looked up at me from his desk. I was too embarrassed
to speak so I smiled and left.

Stockton is about forty miles east of San Francisco, a shabby town,
squat and dirty, like most of those in California's central valleys.
In summer the temperature reaches 110 degrees, and the air is fouled
by pesticides. We had arrived in Stockton late at night after a long
drive: Cesar, two bodyguards, and me. We stayed at the house of a
union supporter. Cesar knew thousands of people and, like an Indian
holy man, never had to worry about a place to eat and sleep. It was
my thirty-first birthday, and I had packed a bottle of wine. We drank
it after the meal and a meeting with a union lawyer. Cesar toasted
me. He said that I was doing good work for the union.

My job in Stockton was to testify in an unfair labour practice
hearing. Under pressure from the union, its allies, and a sympathetic
governor, California's legislature had enacted a law that gave farm
workers the right to organize unions and negotiate contracts without
employer interference. Most growers had reacted to the law with
contempt and continued to treat their workers like peons and unions
as the work of communist agitators. Once the union had organized a
ranch, it had to get the employer to the bargaining table. More often
than not, the growers refused to go.

Stockton was a hotbed of grower defiance of the law, complete with
terrorist vigilante groups. The alleged leader of the vigilantes was
one Ernest Carvalho Jr., a tomato grower and labour contractor. Mr.
Carvalho had a fearsome reputation, having once yanked a union
organizer up from the ground by his mustache. He had met the server
of a labour board subpoena with a shotgun. During the organizing
campaign, two of his workers, union supporters, had been savagely
beaten. No one doubted that the attacker had been paid by Carvalho.
Miraculously, the union had won the election, but Carvalho had
refused to recognize and bargain with it, forcing the union to file
charges. My job was to testify as to how much money Carvalho's
refusal to bargain had cost the campesinos. Cesar would testify, too,
because this was the first case of its kind. A large judgment against
the grower would send a strong message to others.

We arrived at the municipal building early. Our lawyers had to talk
to some of the witnesses, farm workers huddled in a group at the rear
of the room. They were tense and fearful, but the sight of Cesar
eased them greatly. He had a bond with them difficult to describe but
readily seen. He was of them but above them. He was their leader; he
had asked them to be here; they were here. As he spoke with them, I
thought of the Zapatistas in Orozco's painting. Like them, these
campesinos stood straight and tall in front of their commander, in
sharp contrast to their stooped and suppliant bodies out in the fields.

By the start of the hearing, the small room was packed. The rows of
folding chairs were separated by a narrow centre aisle. We sat on the
left, Carvalho and company on the right. I read a book once that said
that The Grapes of Wrath was not a great novel, because the growers
were presented as one-dimensionally evil people. The writer should
have seen this crew. Big-bellied, fat-jowled, cold-eyed men dressed
in jeans and boots and cowboy hats, sniggering among themselves,
giving us hard stares. They looked exactly like pigs, and Carvalho
was their pig-leader. When I glanced at him, I had an image of him
strangling Cesar with his bare hands, grunting, spit dripping from
his chin. I was sure that he stank no matter how many showers he
took. No, these were evil people. They were capable of unprovoked
violence. Had I thought about it, I would have argued that Steinbeck
had been too generous. Because up and down the valleys there are men
like these. They are the bedrock of California agriculture, the shock
troops for the big corporate growers with their smooth-as-silk
lawyers and suave manners, who wouldn't think of beating or hitting a
farm worker but wouldn't mourn her death either.

The hearing was raucous and unruly. We petitioned to have testimony
translated into Spanish, but the judge refused. He said we would
never finish a bilingual hearing, but then he had to admonish us to
keep quiet a dozen times as we whispered translations to the
campesinos. Carvalho stood up and shouted that he "wasn't gonna
negotiate with no bunch of goddam comanists." He said, "I'm just a
dumb fuckin' Portagee, but I ain't dealin' with no comanists." When
the judge warned him about his language, he grinned and said, "I
don't know no other words. I'm just a dumb Portagee." His lawyer
tried to calm him, but Carvalho shoved him away. He pointed at Cesar
and taunted, "Hey Cesar. Let's me and you settle this. Let's go in
the next room. Me and you. If you come out first, I'll recognize your
commie union. If I come out, hey, we'll just all go home and forget
this fuckin' hearing." Cesar sat immobile and stared ahead, but his
bodyguards tensed. The judge kept pounding his gavel, but his power
had deserted him. I turned to watch the other growers. The only thin
man among them returned my stare with a grin. He made his hand into a
gun and silently pulled the trigger. Carvalho said, "See, you're not
a man, just a fuckin' comanist." The judge recessed the hearing until
the next morning. When the union asked for Carvalho's employment
records, which had been subpoenaed and which he had brought with him
in a large cardboard box, Carvalho snapped them up and strode out of the room.

Cesar was not a good speaker. His voice was soft, and he possessed
none of the tricks of the speaker's trade: the pregnant pause, the
change of rhythm, the crescendo, the pointing finger. He was utterly
without physical powers. Yet right away, he captivated you, made you
listen, made you want to do what he said. He had a way of making you
feel like an important person, that what you were telling him could
change the course of the union, put it over the top of that long hill
it had been climbing so slowly. Maybe it was his eyes. They were
guileless eyes, the eyes of a child. You could not refuse them.

He was a master of symbolic action. He often played the saint,
fasting like Gandhi, adding power by subtracting it. He would carry a
cross on Good Friday, staggering under its weight, suffering for
those whose lives are bounded by the short-handled hoe, the endless
march, the early death. Once he had to appear in court to answer
charges that union members had ambushed a train and shot rifle
bullets into refrigerator cars. The local papers were full of
righteous editorials and grower letters accusing the union of
shameful hypocrisy, preaching but not practising non-violence. On the
day of the hearing, some two thousand members and supporters lined
the street leading up to the county courthouse and the steps and
hallways leading to the courtroom. Cesar walked between them,
staggering from a recent fast. The crowd remained eerily silent; only
Cesar and the police moved. When he reached the topmost step,
everyone knelt down, in unison, with machine-like precision. Within
an hour, all the charges were dropped.

Every Saturday afternoon, we went out to the fields surrounding our
compound to work in the garden. Sometimes this would be preceded by a
community meeting. Presumably, these were town meetings in which we
would air our grievances and collectively govern ourselves. But while
we would act like brothers and sisters, we were the children of
Cesar. He ran the meetings, and we discussed what he wanted to
discuss. Flanked by his farting and belching guard dogs, Cesar would
command us, cajole us, mock us, threaten us, all the while pretending
that everyone was equal. I loved these meetings at first, but I soon
noticed that it was dangerous to criticize Cesar. Once he told us
that a friend of the union wanted to donate several washing machines
and dryers, but he wasn't sure he would accept them because we
wouldn't take care of them. We'd fucked up everything else. We
couldn't keep the place clean. There was dog shit all over the place.
Around the room hands shot up. Did Cesar realize that we had to drive
fifteen miles to do laundry, which meant we had to have access to a
car. And laundry cost money, which nobody had. One person's complaint
gave the next person courage, and soon the room was a babble of
complaining voices. Cesar was unimpressed. He said that he really
didn't care about this chickenshit. He didn't have to worry about his
laundry anyway. This macho response was met by a chorus of boos.
Cesar's eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened. He spat out, "I work
eighteen fucking hours a day, every day. For the union. Which of you
can say the same? You're wasting my time with this chickenshit." We
sat very still for more than a minute. Ricardo Reyes, the union's
treasurer, said, "Cesar, don't forget about the water." Cesar's voice
softened and he told us that we could once again drink the water.
With that the meeting ended.

I liked the gardening, at least in small doses. It was good to use my
muscles after sitting at a desk all week. And working on a community
project with a melting pot of humanity­ Filipinos, Mexicans, Anglos,
men and women, young and old­gave me a feeling that the muck and
slime of the real world could be overcome and, as the song went,
"peace will rule the planet and love will steer the stars." Cesar
loved the garden. He was an expert on organic gardening and lectured
us about its subtleties, from the proper fertilizer to planting by
the moon. After a while we would break for a picnic lunch, and he
would tell us something of the history of the union. We were eager
disciples. He spun his stories of the growers and the campesinos as
Christ must have told his parables. People lowered their heads to
hide their tears.

Then we had to return to work, monotonous and physically exhausting
in the 80 degree February heat and high altitude. Guilt kept me hard
at it, long after the warm glow of brotherhood had worn off. I wanted
nothing more than to go back to my room, shower, change clothes, and
begin my "day off." I would race down the mountain to Bakersfield,
which, after a week of isolation at La Paz, had been transformed in
my mind from the nation's biggest truck stop, carrot capital of the
world, and birthplace of Merle Haggard, into a shining metropolis. I
would rent a room in the Downtowner Motel, order cartons of Chinese
food, eat myself sick, take a long bath, and sleep until noon. Or I'd
take some friends and go to a Mexican bar to shoot pool and drink
beer. We could go to a place where we would be the only Anglos and
not worry about a racial confrontation because we were with the
union, though it wasn't wise to root against the Mexican boxer who
would be fighting on the television above the bar. Only a few more
wheelbarrows of manure. Only a few more blisters on my hand. I was
glad I had a little money and happy I wasn't a farm worker.

As best I can tell, the trouble began with the mail announcement. I
had been in Oxnard helping a union local negotiate a piece rate
proposal with a tomato grower. The grower, William Fontin, prided
himself as an intellectual, a libertarian who loved Barry Goldwater
and William F. Buckley. More than a few economists are libertarians.
They babble about free markets and free choice and individual
liberty, but when their privileges are threatened, as when the lower
orders have the nerve to form, say, a union, they are quick to put on
their jackboots and goose step. Fontin was no exception, although I
was amused by the slogan he had printed on every box of his tomatoes,
"Unsubsidized Product of the Free Capitalist Economy of the United
States." He smoked a pipe and was usually polite, but he would agree
to nothing. He refused to negotiate in Spanish though he spoke it
fluently. He referred to me as "that professor of yours." I had
gotten to know the union negotiating team. The handsome president of
the committee had invited me to a party at his house where I'd gotten
drunk enough on tequila to dance. I wanted to help, but we were just
going through the motions. Fontin was as tough as Carvalho. He
wouldn't settle until the workers showed that they could make his
tomatoes rot on the vine.

When I returned to La Paz, I heard about the mail fiasco from two of
my friends, Daniel and Carl. They came to my room, looking up and
down the hall before closing the door. "Did you hear about the mail
shit?" asked Daniel. "Orders from Cesar. From now on all of your mail
is going to be opened before you get it."

"You're kidding," I said, wondering to myself if anything in any
letters to me could be suspect. "Why?"

"They say it's because some contributions people sent to the union
are missing, but that's bullshit. It's just more of Cesar's paranoia."

I had been waiting for something bad to happen. Right before I had
gone off to do the piece rate proposal, Cesar had asked for
volunteers to participate in a retreat at a drug and alcohol
rehabilitation clinic run by a friend of his. This place, Dalanon,
had achieved some notoriety complete with an exposé in the local
newspapers. The founder, Ron Wood, had become something of a guru and
his organization a spiritual centre with its own unique methods for
curing drug addiction. Each newly admitted addict was compelled to
participate in the "game," as Ron called it. The game was nothing
more than a thought control device, common to many cults. People in
the group would gang up on the new people, accusing them of all sorts
of bad deeds while at the same time giving them maximum attention.
Combined with sleep deprivation and a bad diet, this regimen often
succeeded in making people feel helpless unless they gave themselves
up to the group. Given a benign reading, this may be just what a
person ruined by drugs needs, a new life so to speak. A more cynical
person might see in this a form of mind control aimed primarily at
enhancing the power of the leader. My instinct told me that the
latter interpretation was more likely to be true. My gut reaction was
reinforced when someone told me that Ron's disciples had placed a
poisonous snake in the mailbox of the reporter who had written the
exposé. Ominously, the people chosen to be in the game were all in
Cesar's inner circle of relatives, bodyguards, and personal aides.

Gossip about the mail and the game abounded. A young maintenance
worker, Roger, boldly posted a petition protesting the opening of our
mail. I signed it, and so did most of my friends. This created
tension. People began to avoid us, and most people stopped talking
about anything that had to do with the union. I began to suspect that
Cesar's bodyguards were watching us carefully. One of them
mysteriously showed up at the first session of a labour history class
that some staff had asked me to teach. No one with whom I was close
volunteered for the game.

The tension was broken somewhat by two events­Cesar's fiftieth
birthday party and the trip to Los Angeles to campaign for the mayor.
Hundreds of notables came to the party. We started it out at six
o'clock in the morning with a serenade at Cesar's house, complete
with mariachi band and shots of tequila. Then we ate menudo (tripe
soup) to ward off the effects of the liquor and took up our posts at
the giant barbecue in honor of our leader. My job was to dole out the
sauce, a fiery concoction that went on the meat and rice. The Anglos
would say "not too much," but the Mexicans would say "más, más."
During a break, I went to my office to get a book, and I came upon
Jane Fonda, the famous actress and brave critic of the war in
Vietnam, bitching at her kids for tormenting Cesar's dogs. "Can't you
children behave anywhere?" she moaned. Even the rich and famous have
their troubles, I thought. I stumbled into bed hours later and fell
right to sleep. But I was awakened too soon by the sounds of loud
talking from the room across the hall. I put my ear up to my door and
listened. I recognized the voices of two of Cesar's bodyguards. They
were giving the third degree to Chris, one of the union's youngest
volunteers. "Why did you sign the mail petition? You called Cesar a
dictator! Man, you're a fucking traitor. Cesar wants you out of here.
Tomorrow." When they left, I quietly went back to bed, too afraid to
go over and comfort Chris.

The next week Cesar pulled the entire staff out of headquarters and
into an abandoned high school in East Los Angeles. From there we were
sent into the streets with farm workers from throughout the state to
march door-to-door, urging people to vote for the incumbent mayor. As
usual, Cesar gave us no warning, just orders. Some of the older staff
were upset by this. The union had more pressing business, namely
scores of organizing drives and numerous contracts to negotiate. They
wondered aloud why we were doing this instead, especially since the
mayor had little competition and eventually won by a large margin. I,
too, thought that the trip was unnecessary, but the whole thing again
demonstrated Cesar's amazing ability to get people to do what he
wanted and the union's capacity to organize complex logistics on
short notice. East Los Angeles was fascinating, like being in another
country. The tiny houses and shabby apartments and hotels exuded
poverty, but the pastel colors and warm breezes deceived you. Somehow
tropical poverty didn't seem as real from the outside as did the
slums of the great Eastern cities. As I chatted in my bad Spanish
with the campesina with whom I had been paired, I wondered what would
happen when we got back to La Paz.

Cesar marched into the community meeting room followed by four of his
bodyguards. Usually he chatted with someone seated in front and
waited for us to stop talking so that the meeting could begin. But
this time he just stood and stared at us, as did the guards. From the
rear came voices urging quiet. I looked around the room. It was
jammed; people were standing in the doorway on tiptoes craning to
see. The sudden quiet was eerie because it was so unusual. Even the
babies and young children were silent. The last sound I heard was a
guitar chord. We always sang songs at our meetings, "No Nos Moverán"
or "De Colores," but there would be no singing tonight.

"Some people here are trying to undermine the union." Cesar said this
without emotion but he might as well have screamed at us. I felt a
knot forming in my stomach, and my throat became dry. I noticed that
the bodyguards were still standing; two were wearing dark glasses,
reminding me of Tonton Macoutes. Something was terribly wrong.
"There's a cancer growing in the union. We know now that some people
have gone over to the growers. We go to a fucking meeting and they
knew our proposals. We plan to organize a ranch and they know about
it before we fucking start. Some people here are traitors. And
they're going to have to leave."

"Who are these bastards, Cesar?" asked the chubby old man sitting
next to me. He was a Filipino, Ricardo Ochoco, an officer of the
union who had defended Cesar's tirade about the washing machines.
There was a certain tension between Filipinos and Hispanics rooted in
the fact that while the Filipino minority had actually started the
union, the Hispanic majority, led by Cesar, had taken control of it,
some said in a less than democratic manner. Cesar always spoke highly
of the Filipino brothers and sisters, and Ochoco was proof of the
multi-ethnic leadership of the union. But Ochoco was a weak man, a
sycophant always trying to prove his loyalty to Cesar.

"Wait a minute, Cesar, how do you know ..." Juan Reyes, a tough
little Chicano and chief of the maintenance staff, jumped up to ask a
question, but he was drowned out before he could finish by shouts
that seemed to come from all around the room.

"Juan is one of them."

"He's always complaining. His name is first on the mail protest."

"He called Cesar a dictator."

To my right, Nico, Cesar's youngest son, stood up and yelled,
"Listen, listen." He reminded me of a puppet, waving his hands. Nico
had never impressed me. He was a whiny teenager with an unpleasant
nasal voice and without much talent. Like most of Cesar's inner
circle, his main virtue was doing what his father wanted. Like them,
he was nothing without Cesar.

"Listen, I think Juan is selling out the union. Juan Salazar saw him
in Bakersfield talking to some growers. He's one of the leaders of a
clique here, always badmouthing the union. At every meeting he
opposes Cesar. He's a fucking traitor."

At this, Juan Reyes made a rush for Nico but was quickly surrounded
by the guards. "That's a bunch of fucking lies," he shouted. I waited
for others to defend Juan, but none did. Those who weren't shouting
insults at him sat rigidly on the uncomfortable seats. They were
afraid, and I was too. "Let him go." Cesar commanded. He walked over
to Juan Reyes and said quietly, "Brother, you're screwing the union.
It would be better if you left." Juan looked at him in disbelief. He
was close to tears. I waited for him to respond, but he didn't. He
just walked out of the room.

Before anyone could react, Maria Quiñones was pointing a finger at
David Young who was sitting next to me. "David is always with Juan
Reyes. He's a traitor too." David tensed and looked at her. He had
contempt for Maria, as did I. She was the daughter of the union's
first vice president, Domenica Quiñones, a legendary union organizer
who had faced down more than one gun and had been arrested countless
times. But Maria was not the equal of her mother. She was nosy and
obnoxious, La Casa's telephone operator and notorious for listening
in on our calls. She often slept with Charlie, the guard, who
occupied the room above me, keeping me awake with their noisy
quarrels and lovemaking. Outside the union she was just another
unpleasant person. You could ignore her. But here she was important.
She could ruin your life, and she had just begun to ruin David's.

"You're full of shit," David said, but his words were drowned out by
accusations from every corner of the room. The same stock phrases
hurled at Juan Reyes were now directed at David. It struck me
suddenly that this had all been planned. This was "the game." This
was what they had learned at Dalanon. I was witnessing the
transformation of the union into a cult. A sense of detachment came
over me, and I watched the show trial unfolding before me as if I
were watching a horror movie, afraid but curious to see what would happen.

David stood up and demanded, "Am I on trial here. What are the charges, Cesar?"

"Isn't it true that you said that campaigning for Mayor Bradley was a
waste of time?" Cesar was agitated and speaking in an
uncharacteristically loud voice.

"So what. So did lots of people."

"Haven't you been criticizing me, saying chickenshit stuff behind my
back, saying it was my fault the union lost the Initiative?"

"That's bullshit. Who told you that, that fucking wimp over there."
David pointed at Nico, who took his cue to launch into a tirade,
accusing David of being an agent for the growers. Other voices joined
the chorus. No one spoke in David's defense.

Before he could be stopped, David hopped over two rows of chairs and
stood next to Cesar. No one made a move to subdue him."Am I being
charged?" David asked. He was standing straight, almost at attention,
dwarfing the diminutive Cesar beside him. The guards made a move
toward him, but Cesar waved them away. David's actions had surprised
him, threatening to unravel this carefully choreographed meeting. It
was up to the rest of us now. Many of us were David's friends. None
of us believed that he was an agent of the grower or anything else
but a brother dedicated to the union. But he could never stand up to
Cesar alone. Would we defend him?

"The union constitution says that no one can be expelled without a
fair hearing. What are the charges against me? Who is making them? I
have a right to defend myself. This whole thing here tonight is illegal."

"You don't have any fucking rights, brother. You're working for the
growers. We know it. You're a cancer here, a disease. Admit it, man.
Hey, let's put it to a vote, right here. Who thinks David should go?"

The same voices that had been yelling for blood all night cried out
in unison, "Go. Go. Go." Some others joined the chorus. Mark Wilson,
Carlos's secretary, began to clap his hands. Soon the chanting and
clapping filled the room, the noise rising to a fearsome level. Sweat
glistened on the blank faces of the believers; they were in the grip
of a religious frenzy. They wanted blood, and they would have it.

Suddenly, Cesar raised his hands and silenced the howling mob. "Who
thinks David should stay?" No one raised a hand. The ferocity of the
crowd cowed us completely. I thought, maybe he is guilty. I was
grateful that it wasn't me. I looked at Sister Denise. She was
looking at me with sad and frightened eyes. Then she raised her hand.
Cesar's eyes blazed at her with hatred, but he quickly looked away.

"See, brother. The community wants you to leave. Leave now brother."
Cesar then addressed us in his usual soft voice. "This meeting is
over. Don't forget. We'll be going to the garden tomorrow after
mass." Cesar's words broke the unbearable tension, and, with visible
relief, people filed out of the room. But David did not move; he
simply sat down on the floor and said, "I'm not leaving until I hear
the charges against me and until I have a hearing." Cesar ignored him
and walked away, speaking in Spanish to the guards. A few people
glanced down at David as they passed, but not many. Within a few
minutes the room was empty except for David, Sister Denise, and me.
Someone had turned out the lights, and the darkness compounded the
silence. I heard dogs barking, and a radio sounded faintly in the
cool night air.

"David, are you all right," Sister Denise asked softly.

"Yeah, but I think we're in deep shit."

"What do you think they'll do?" My stomach felt the way it did when I
told my wife I was in love with another woman. What had begun in such
high spirits was ending in horror. My mind wandered crazily, but with
its immediate focus on myself. How would I get my lecture notes,
which my friends at school had mailed to me so that I could teach the
class in labour history? Would the guards be visiting me tonight? Was
I in physical danger? How would I get out of here? I wanted to be
back on Route 66 headed east across the great desert.

"I think they're going to have me arrested. I think Cesar told Juan
Salazar to get the police here."

I said, "Arrested for what? Peacefully protesting this crazy shit?
That would be some irony."

"No, for trespassing. You forgot. I don't live here anymore. Cesar
threw me out."

"But what about the union's constitution? What about what's fucking right?"

"Cesar couldn't care less. And neither will the cops. Don't you know.
Cesar is the law here, and it was pretty apparent that most people
don't have a problem with that. But you two ought to get out of here.
You haven't been accused of anything."

"No way. I didn't have the nerve to speak out in the meeting. I'm
gonna stay. They can arrest me too."

"They won't. Cesar won't want a professor and a nun in jail. I'm just
a carpenter, less likely to cause embarrassment you know."

"Maybe I should go talk to Cesar now," said Sister. "Tell him how
crazy this is. Maybe this wasn't his idea. Maybe he's calmed down by
now. Maybe..."

"Sister, don't you see. This whole thing was planned, by Cesar with
his little group of flunkies. This was 'the game.' Juan Reyes and I
were just its first victims."

We sat in the dark rooms and talked. La Paz seemed like a tomb, still
as a stalking cat in the mountain desert. The only sounds we heard
were those of the guards who were piling David's belongings on the
walkway in front of his room. At least that's what we thought was
happening after we heard a voice commanding, "Take his shit out to
the sidewalk."

When the screen door slammed and heavy footsteps sounded on the
hallway floor, I knew that David was right. Someone hit the light
switch, and by the time my eyes focused, four cops were moving toward
David. I made out the words "Mojave Police" on one of their badges.

The largest of the four, a red-faced man with a donut shop belly and
a fat ass, said, "You David Young?" He seemed uneasy, as if he
grasped the incongruity of arresting a union staff person at union
headquarters. He'd busted a few union heads on picket lines and stuck
his billy club between the ribs of his share of Mexicans. That's what
cops did. But this was something different, new terrain, so to speak,
and he didn't have a map.

"That's me. What can I do for ya?"

"Just get up so I can get these cuffs on you. You're under arrest."

"You gonna read me my rights?" The cop tensed and his face turned
crimson. One of the others tightened the grip on his billy club and
fingered his revolver.

"Don't get smart, buddy. It was your folks called us out here. We
ain't never been here before. You must be a real bad actor. Now just get up."

David didn't move and just looked up at the cop with an almost
whimsical expression on his face.

"I think he's on a sit-down strike. Ain't that right, buddy?"said one
of the fat cop's partners. "We're gonna hafta carry him out. Good
thing there's four of us. He's a big fella."

"Suit yourself. By the way, what are the charges?"

"They say you're trespassing. They asked you to leave and you said
'fuck you.'"

"That's a lie, he never said that," I shouted. "And how can he be
trespassing? He lives here. I'll show you his room."

"That's not what they say. You got proof you live here. A lease or something."

"What do you think?" David said. "Look, just carry me out of here and
get it over with. That's what you're here for. You got TV at your jail?"

"You're such a wise ass, buddy, maybe we'll just...."

"Shut up, Joe," spit the big cop, glaring at us. "Yeah, big guy, we
got all the amenities of home. You'll see." He looked at his men and
said, "Grab him." Then they carried him out. We followed them to the
police car and watched as they shoved him in the middle of the back
seat and drove away.

"Sister, I'm getting the hell out of here, now. I'm packing my stuff
and I'll drive up to Mojave and try to bail David out of jail. What about you?"

"I have to stay. I'll try to put David's things in my room."

I don't have a very clear memory of the next few days. I did bail
David out of jail. One of our friends, Leila, the union organizer who
was negotiating with Mr. Fontin in Oxnard, called her parents in San
Jose and made arrangements for David to stay with them for a while. I
drove him there and stayed the night. Leila's parents were old left
Communists, appalled that their daughter had converted to
Catholicism, the better to serve the campesinos. The next morning, I
headed south and then east toward home.

The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939. A lot has changed since
then; working people began to make a fairly good living, buying good
cars and houses and sending their kids to college. But for farm
workers the changes haven't been so great. They're still dirt poor.
They're still sickly, from bad food, from pesticides, from fouled
water. They still don't often live past fifty. And their kids still
don't go to school. Their skin colors change, but their lives don't.
And what's true here is true everywhere in the world where the big
growers own the land. Money is what they want, money in a ceaseless
and growing flow, and the way to get it is to have a large reserve
army of people without land whose only choice is to harvest the crops
for nothing or die. The big growers will do whatever they have to do,
including kill people, to ensure the existence of the landless
masses. And this is true in the United States, in Mexico, in El
Salvador, in the Philippines, in Indonesia, everywhere the land and
its bounty have become merely things to buy and sell.

But everywhere the big growers enslave people, some of the people
catch on. Some of them figure it out themselves, and some of them get
help from the few outsiders who care. They come to understand why
they are poor while the bosses are rich. It's a simple thing really,
but hard to learn, because the whole of the power of all of the
forces that run a society­the owners, the presses, the schools, the
churches, the government­have blanketed the people with a heavy
weight of lies. Of course, it's a dangerous thing too; in most parts
of the world, you'll risk your life to learn it. Yet still some do
learn the great truth: that profits and poverty, profits and
landlessness go together. Just like winter and snow in the mountains:
where there is one, there is the other. And these people, when they
learn the truth, have to act on it. They have to tell others, and
then they and the others and the outsiders are transformed. They
begin to form study groups, base communities, co-ops, credit unions,
labour unions. They meet, they march, they strike, they form armies
and they fight to get the land back, to make a decent wage, to live a
life of dignity. The big people don't like this, and they torture and
kill and bribe and lie to stop it. Most times it stops, but sometimes
the poor people win and, when they do, they leave a lesson for those
who follow, those who must finally make the land and all of the
earth's wealth the equal property of all.

Cesar was one of the people who caught on and then did something
about it. What he did was wonderful, magnificent really. He built a
union where none had ever been able to exist. He gave people a
vision, and the vision made them do things they'd never been able to
do before. Mute people gained voices and spread the word across the
land. We are poor, but we know why, we know what to do, and we're
going to do it. Up and down the valley, they formed their unions and
won their contracts, and the growers took heed and were afraid.

But any movement of the poor is a fragile thing; it will be beset by
demons from without and within. The external enemies are well-known,
constant irritants and often overwhelmingly powerful. Those inside
the union are more subtle, yet nearly as destructive: leaders have
big and conflicting egos, gender and racial tensions are hard to
overcome, people have honest differences about goals and strategies,
and it is enormously difficult to create the selfless bureaucracy
that alone will ensure the movement's continuity. Cesar learned how
to get power and to use it effectively to combat the union's external
foes, but such power was also used inside to solidify his personal
hold on the movement. As he did this, he came to see the movement as
his movement, to shape as he pleased. Anyone inside opposed to him
was branded as an outside enemy and excised from the union. His
movement was not strong enough to contain him, and the results were
like those I have described above. In the years since then, things
have gotten worse. Nearly every officer, organizer, and lawyer has
been purged or has quit. Most of the membership drifted away, because
the union could not keep them under contract with the growers and
would not tolerate rank-and-file criticism of Cesar. In 1995, Cesar
died at the age of sixty-six. His son-in-law was made union
president, and his children now preside over a host of business
enterprises funded by government grants and money raised through mass
mailings. Cesar's union has become a racket, paying high salaries to
its officers while the mass of farm workers still starve. In the end,
it seems that a proletarian dictator is no better than any other.
--

Michael D. Yates is Associate Editor of Monthly Review. His most
recent book is In and Out of the Working Class. He encourages
correspondence and can be reached at mikedjyates@msn.com.

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