What was the significance of César Chávez's leadership for the Mexican American community? What were the successes of the movement he led? What challenges/barriers were faced in their efforts?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The best-known Hispanic labor leader for economic empowerment was César Chávez, the Mexican American who crusaded to organize migrant farm workers. Efforts to organize agricultural laborers date back to the turn of the twentieth century, but Chávez was the first to enjoy any success. These laborers had never won collective bargaining rights, partly because their mobility made it difficult for them to organize into a unified group.

In 1962, Chávez, then 35 years old, formed the National Farm Workers Association, later to become the United Farm Workers (UFW). Organizing migrant farm workers was not easy because they had no savings to pay for organizing or to live on while striking. Growers could rely on an almost limitless supply of Mexican laborers to replace the Mexican Americans and Filipinos who struck for higher wages and better working conditions.

Despite initial success, Chávez and the UFW were plagued with continual opposition by agribusiness and many lawmakers. This was about the time the UFW was also trying to heighten public consciousness about the pesticides used in the fields. Chávez had difficulty fulfilling his objectives. By 2011, union membership had dwindled from a high of 80,000 in 1970 to a reported 5,000 . Nevertheless, what he and the UFW accomplished was significant. First, they succeeded in making federal and state governments more aware of the exploitation of migrant laborers. Second, the migrant workers, or at least those organized in California, developed a sense of their own power and worth that will make it extremely difficult for growers to abuse them in the future as they had in the past. Third, working conditions improved. California agricultural workers were paid an average of less than $2 an hour in the mid-1960s. Still, given the lack of regular harvesting, by 2011 a migrant farm worker's wages for a year rarely topped $12,000 doing labor few people would consider at three times that wage.