Gucumatz
JS, secretly Rod Serling
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2011
- Messages
- 6,181
I have been reading books about Chavez and have found that recent research/literature is seemingly painting a negative image of Cesar Chavez. Chavez split from the CSO believing that established unions/organizations were doing basically nothing for farmworkers. Miriam Pawel and Matthew Garcia (The Crusades of Cesar Chavez and From the Jaws of Victory, their respective books) largely paint a picture that Cesar Chavez's first victories were largely due to the Filipino AWOC union that the UFW absorbed.
After this period of growth and success in the 1960s and very early 1970s, Chavez tried to consolidate power, purging organizers accusing them of being communists or separatists. Chavez began destroying the UFW internally, attacking subordinates and wasting resources on basically a cult he was trying to establish in La Paz (based off of the Church of Syanon and the growth of other cults of the era like the Davidians of Waco). Various documents (and now discovered tapes from Chavez) show him basically destroying the movement internally. Today the legacy of Chavez is nonexistant in the fields of the southwest, except for the glaring results of his failures
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Which brings me to my question... what is the legacy of Cesar Chavez? Whether you agree with emerging research on the decline of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union or not, it seems clear little of the UFW's work from the 1960s-1970s survives today. Does the largely positive legacy Chavez still maintains in urban communities, outweigh his seeming failure in the rural?
After this period of growth and success in the 1960s and very early 1970s, Chavez tried to consolidate power, purging organizers accusing them of being communists or separatists. Chavez began destroying the UFW internally, attacking subordinates and wasting resources on basically a cult he was trying to establish in La Paz (based off of the Church of Syanon and the growth of other cults of the era like the Davidians of Waco). Various documents (and now discovered tapes from Chavez) show him basically destroying the movement internally. Today the legacy of Chavez is nonexistant in the fields of the southwest, except for the glaring results of his failures
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Which brings me to my question... what is the legacy of Cesar Chavez? Whether you agree with emerging research on the decline of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union or not, it seems clear little of the UFW's work from the 1960s-1970s survives today. Does the largely positive legacy Chavez still maintains in urban communities, outweigh his seeming failure in the rural?
