Eugene Nelson, “Huelga! the First Hundred Days of the Great Delano Grape Strike”

HUELGA By Eugene Nelson THE FIRST HUNDRED DAYS OF THE GREAT DELANO GRAPE STRIKE Farm Worker Press Delano, California - 1966 - First Printing, February 1966 Second Printing, March 1966 Third Printing, April 1966 Fourth Printing, September 1968 Fifth Printing, February 1969 Sixth Printing, September 1969 Copyright 1966 by FARM WORKER PRESS, INC. P.O. Box 130, Delano, Calif. Picture Credits: George Ballis, Harvey Richards, Bill Berg, Bill Esher. Mid-Cal Publishers FOREWARD “The verdant San Joaquin Valley, California’s ‘fruit bowl’, has again become the principal battleground in organized labour’s decades-old fight to organize the workers in the fields. Unlike the bitter clashes of the late 1930’s between the Communist-led farm labourers and the entrenched gentry which exploited them this confrontation is between the mammoth American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organizations and the shadowy but sophisticated and equally powerful family corporations which have inherited and consolidated the valley’s agrarian wealth until they control the economy of Central California. “But although the agricultural workers are not being rousted from their shacks in the dead of the night by armed mobs of vigilantes and American Legionaires as they were before the war, and in spite of the absence of the Communist agitators, the new conflict reflects the same basic struggle that John Steinbeck chronicled in ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and ‘In Dubious Battle’. “The battlecry is ‘huelga’ (Spanish for ‘strike’) a word which is now heard not only in the fields, but also in boardrooms and banks, where it has assumed great meaning in the vocabularies of the men who control the destiny of America’s largest agricultural State. “The focal point of the unions’ organizing drive is Delano, an unattractive vineyard community of about 11,000 in northern Kern County. Situated between Fresno and Bakersfield, it straddles US Route 99, a ribbon of motorway which traverses California like a concrete backbone. “The town is divided by the highway—and by the huelga, which began September 8 when 3,000 Mexican-American and Filipino-American grape pickers walked off the job. The stoppage resulted from the refusal of the growers to recognize their collective bargaining agents, the AFL-CIO Agricultural Workers’ Organizing Committee and the National Farm Workers’ Association. The two unions had jointly asked for a wage increase from $1.20 to $1.40 an hour. “Most of the workers in the Delano grape harvest are members of migrant families who eke out marginal livings by ‘following the crops’ around the United States. They live in primitive rented quarters in employer-owned labour camps, and, in many instances, are forced to purchase their food from farm-owned stores. “In Delano $1.40 an hour will buy 3.2 gallons of low-octane petrol for a dilapidated second-hand car or four loaves of factory bread, or a quart of sulphurous cheap wine. “The growers, better organized than the unions, speak through ‘protective associations’ such as the Agricultural Labour Bureau, the Council of California Growers, and the California Farm Bureau Federation. All have steadfastly refused to deal with the unions as lawful representatives of the workers, and their members have methodically set about the task of breaking the strike. But the time-honoured anti-labour practices which proved so effective 30 years ago don’t seem to work any more. “The first step was the wholesale eviction of the strikers from their rented homes. Immediately, caravans of food and clothing and donations of money from other AFL-CIO unions flowed in, and alternate housing was found for most of the families. “In spite of the fact that non-union workers have been able to harvest the fruit from the vineyards, the growers have found their markets are dwindling and some transportation has been strangled. Twice in two weeks, for instance, export shipments of table grapes were turned away from the docks in San Francisco and Oakland by longshoremen sympathetic with the strike. “Another, unexpected blow to the growers has been the mounting pressure brought against them by the Churches. Any attempts at intimidation have been thwarted by the presence of dozens of clergymen, joined by university students and labour leaders who have helped to man picket lines around ranches and vineyards. “At a recent conference in Fresno sponsored by the San Joaquin Valley Presbytery and the Northern California-Nevada Council of Churches, spokesmen for the growers’ association complained bitterly of clerical interference. “’We must be aware of the urgency of our time,’ responded church council president Dr. Richard Norberg of San Francisco. ‘This problem is not an isolated one. It is touching the whole world’. “Sofar the strike has affected only the food grape crops raised in the Delano district. It has not spread to the lush wine vineyards of Northern California or to the millions of acres of orchards, cotton fields, and vegetable farms which employ thousands of migrant workers in California every year. By concentrating all of their resources on winning the Delano strike, and by not scattering their efforts throughout the State as in previous, ill-fated attempts, NFWA and AWOC seem to have sharply improved their chances of success.” --MANCHESTER GUARDIAN-- Manchester, England December 8, 1965 TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWARD (from the Manchester Guardian) ..............................................................(v) I. THE DOVE SEASON IN DELANO.......................................................................... 1 II. BACKGROUND: WHY A STRIKE? ...................................................................... 15 III. THE PICKET LINE ............................................................................................... 31 IV. WHO IS CESAR CHAVEZ? ................................................................................... 45 V. MAXIMO’S HOUSE................................................................................................. 53 VI. DISPOTO & CO. .................................................................................................... 59 VII. THE DUSTY BISHOP........................................................................................... 71 VIII. POVERTY AND POLITICS................................................................................ 83 IX. THE GHOST OF JACK LONDON....................................................................... 91 X. FORTY FOUR........................................................................................................ 101 XI. AND THE RAINS CAME .................................................................................... 107 XII. HUELGA MEANS MORE THAN STRIKE....................................................... 115 ALSO….Sixteen Pages of Photos from the Grape Strike This book is dedicated to all those members and supporters of the National Farm Workers Association and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO) for whom “Huelga” has become a way of life; and to Mssrs. Cesar Chavez, C. Al Green, Ernesto Galarza, Henry Anderson, and Norman Smith, who have given their lives to the farm worker; and to the memory of Jack London, who, fifty years after his death, played a magnificent role in this strike. Acknowledgments I wish to thank Bill Esher and Norma Redman, for the editing of the manuscript of this book; and Mary Murphy, for its preparation in final form. Henry P. Anderson, for permission to refer to his monograph, “The Bracero Program in California,” in the preparation of the brief history of farm labor in California in Chapter II; Worth Hedrick, Henry Lopez, Robert Anderson, Morrie Turner, Mr. and Mrs. Pete Crabtree, and Mr. and Mrs. Todd Griffith, for encouragement and financial assistance; my wife Rima and my daughter Tamar for much needed inspiration; and Hong Lee, who got me interested in writing. 1 THE DOVE SEASON IN DELANO Pre-dawn, September 20, 1965 in a small California town. All is silence. Then the long lines of cars begin to move out through the morning dark, their headlights truncating the rows of vines that seem gently to strangle the small community they support with their luxuriant growth. An intersection at the edge of town. Our headlights strike a black sign whose white letters bear the mysterious inscription “HUELGA.” The sign bobs back and forth on a sea of darkness as we pull to the side of the road. Behind the sign we see a woman. She is blonde, svelte, beautiful, out of place in this cold early-morning scene. “Go back,” we hear her saying to some people in a car that has just stopped beside her. She is met by silence, as shadowy brown faces peer out in puzzlement. “Hay huelga aqui,” she goes on in Spanish. The driver of the vehicle nods uncertainly, puts the car in gear, and it turns down a side street and is gone. The blonde girl comes over with her sign. She is twenty-five year old Wendy Goepel, former member of Gov. Brown’s poverty program staff. She has been standing her alone in the cold night flagging down cars, talking to their drivers, explaining about a new word that soon may become a part of the English language: Huelga. “How are you doing?” a soft voice intones. A new form emerges from the darkness. A small dark man of thirty-eight, with large friendly eyes, a deceptively casual manner. It is Cesar Chavez, director of the National Farm Workers Association. “There haven’t been many cars so far. About half of them have turned back. Some don’t stop,” Wendy tells us, shivering. I look

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