Trampling Out the Vintage ?
By Duane Campbell
Frank Bardacke’s Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and
the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. (2011, Verso). is the view of a
well- informed observer who worked in the lettuce fields near
Salinas for almost a decade, then spent another 25 years
teaching English to farm workers in the Watsonville, Cal. area. His views on the growth and
decline of the United Farm Workers union – some of which I do not share– offer important points of history and reflection for unionists today, particularly those
working with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Trampling Out the Vintage, provides several insights
not previously developed in well informed books on the UFW including important
differences between grape workers and workers in row crops such as lettuce; the length of time
workers were in the UFW, the more
settled family nature of grape workers, the strength of each type of ranch committees, the leadership of ranch crews ( and thus the potential differences in
creating democratic accountability), and the differing histories of worker militancy
in different crops. The author correctly argues that each of these led to somewhat
different organizing environment in building the union. He also details problems of administrative
mismanagement in the hiring halls in the grape areas and alleged mismanagement of organizing within the
union sponsored health care insurance and clinic systems .
Based upon his own experiences and the histories of
workers in the Salinas
valley, Bardacke makes the case that farm workers- not Cesar Chavez –
created the union. They built
their union on a long history of previous collective work stoppages and
strikes. The union was created on
the ground in Delano, Salinas,
Watsonville, and surrounding towns- not in the union headquarters of La Paz. The author reveals his strong viewpoint in the title apparently referring to Chavez “Trampling out the Vintage”
where a union had been
created.
In
1962 Cesar Chavez made the decision to organize the settled mostly
Mexican American workforce in and around Delano - a grape growing region
in California’s Central Valley. Based upon his prior work with Community
Services Organization (CSO) [U1] and
his training by Fred Ross in the Saul Alinksy tradition, Chavez decided to organize entire families
into an association, not just the workers into a union. This required, for example,
organizing women as family members and as workers. Most of
the working families had settled in the area; they had roots, they stayed year- around rather than
migrating from place to place.
Chavez saw this population as a base for
building a permanent organization. The decision to focus on Delano and its semi-permanent
grape workers was a choice to not
focusing on recently arrived Mexican workers – those whom Bardacke worked among
in the Salinas valley. Bardacke
criticizes the decision by Chavez
and Dolores Huerta to organize the
more family-established Mexican Americans rather than the more migrant Mexican
workers in the vegetable and row crops.
Several of Bakrdacke’s central arguments are well established. Labor writer Steve
Early, for one, reviewing Randy
Shaw’s book, Beyond the Fields:
Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st.
Century, writes:
Chávez
was not accountable to anyone within the UFW. Rank-and-file critics of his charismatic leadership were
purged, then black-listed, and driven from the fields in truly disgraceful
fashion.
Over
time, Chávez further stifled "creative internal deliberation" by
replacing "experienced UFW leaders with a new, younger cadre, for whom
loyalty was the essential qualification,” Shaw reports. The result was a
dysfunctional personality cult.” (Steve Early, http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/a-union-of-their-dreams-becomes-a-nightmarehas-ufw-history-been-replayed-in-seiu/)
Part of the problem
in responding to Trampling Out the Vintage, is that supporters of the Farmworkers Movement
have spent so much time and energy defending the UFW and its members from
growers, from capitalists, and
from politicians. Recall
that the UFW’s major growth occurred while Ronald Reagan was governor of
California. In this
troubling times it was difficult to step back and examine internal union
development. Bardacke describes important union issues of the UFW failing to develop worker control over
their own union, the lack of democratic leadership, and the failure to develop
new worker leadership. He does not
deal with the highly contentious and controversial relevant issue of how the
Teamsters maintained control of the racially stratified and anti democratic
unions of mostly Mexican American workers in the canneries and packing sheds at
the same time.
Berdacke does provide
details of authoritarian
control of the union and the executive board, explaining them as a result of individual psychological
manifestations of Cesar Chavez’
power. For evidence of this abuse
and failure Bardacke , like Miriam
Pawell in A Union of Their Dreams,
uses the board’s own recorded meeting minutes.
Bardacke claims of authoritarian control are supported by
other sources. Marshall Ganz in
his excellent book, Why David Sometimes Wins; Leadership, Organization, and
Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement, (2009) says, “Between 1977
and 1981, Chavez undid the UFW’s strategic capacity. The changes irrevocably altered the character of the UFW
leadership. Instead of a diverse team with both strong and weak ties to
multiple constituencies, it became a narrow circle of people with strong ties,
often Chavez family members or dependents.” ( p.247.)
We can agree that a consolidation of power occurred and that
it led to a weakening of the union and harm to its members. We need not agree to the psychological
interpretation Bardacke gives for why this consolidation was successful. It’s here I think Bardacke’s case is
weak.
The author
tells the story of
centralizing recognition and power
in the person of Cesar Chavez .
Like all authors, Bardacke
selects what to tell to develop his narrative. His selections in deciding what
to report about in 1962 lead
to his conclusions about what happened in 1984. If you are going to create a historical record to argue your
viewpoint, you need to present your evidence in the context of the historical
period
In most cases Bardacke does this. At others, times,
however, he argues for what could
have been rather than what actually existed. For example, he tells the story of Henry Anderson’s focus in the 1962 on building local leadership and union locals. He uses this to claim that centralized
power got out of hand in the nascent farm worker movement. That is he is telling the story
backward after arriving at his conclusions. There is nothing wrong with reasoning from history, but it does make the issue of
union democracy or lack of democracy seem more determined that it necessarily
was.
The author could have told other stories of other events to emphasize a different
conclusion. For example the author makes the case that
Chavez and Huerta, among others, had a strong critique of the method other unions used, such as focusing only on the worker and
not on the family, or of Mexican
American workers always led by
Anglo leaders, etc. That is
an alternative and valid perspective on worker participation that is not
developed in Trampling Out the Vintage.
Among the more contested issues raised by Barnacke is his
view of the UFW’s relationships with undocumented workers in 1975 period, the so called “Wet Line”. Bardacke makes the case that the UFW used violence and
terror against “Wet Backs.” This
is the same argument being made
today by various militia groups , Tea Party advocates and posted on Wikipedia .
In truth we don’t know what actually happened in the dessert
near Yuma, Arizona in 1975.
Was there violence? How
much violence? Who was hurt? Barnacke takes one side, and the
official UFW histories take the other, saying the union was stopping strike breakers who happened
to be undocumented.
Having worked up close with the issue of immigration
for decades I have a different view. The one
memo cited by Barnacke as
evidence, a confidential one, is not definitive proof that violence was union policy. ( P. 492) Note, the other memo
on the same page
takes the opposite position.
We can agree that Chavez made some high handed, perhaps
opportunistic mistakes, but where Bardacke
cites the worst case reports of violence, knifings, even murder in Arizona, he
admits these charges could not be independently verified.
Rather than take Bardacke’s view on the role of the Wet
Line, I prefer Bert Corona’s.
Bert was a leading voice on immigration issues and organized undocumented workers in the organization Hemandad Mexicana. He was also a friend of mine, and we
worked together on immigration issues. Although critical of the UFW policy, Bert never took the highly destructive view
that Bardack promotes. There were
disputes over issues, and errors were
made but remember the context, which Bert for one did. The UFW was losing the strike as strikers were
replaced by with undocumented
workers crossing a border and a picket line to work in struck fields. These
undocumented workers, who knew little or nothing about the UFW or the long,
violent, bitter and costly strike
they were breaking, were nonetheless breaking a strike on a movement for
justice and equality.
Ultimately in 1975 the UFW
convention took a formal position
to organize the undocumented and to allow them to vote in elections as a part
of the California Agricultural Relations Act. That is the official UFW position on the
undocumented. Bardacke uses the records of who won union representation elections and where to argue
that the pro undocumented position was the better position, and that strike
breakers should have been reasoned with and treated with respect . UFW lost elections to Teamsters in the grape fields of Delano but split the vote in Salinas. Bardacke argues that UFW won elections in the Salinas Valley
because they had supported
successful strikes in Salinas, had not imposed troublesome hiring halls, and had not campaigned
against undocumented workers.
In addition to pages of fascinating local histories on
various campaigns and strikes, Trampling
Out the Vintage makes a major
contribution in arguing that the issues that defeated the UFW in elections and
in the fields included the antidemocratic structures
of the UFW created and honed by
Cesar Chavez himself, along with
no established locals and the divisions
that grew up between the staff, veteran union members and new
workers.
In the midst of
several life and death struggles over power against corporate
agriculture and the political power of the state, the UFW executive committee
did not develop democratic union structures . They often responded to
conspiracies with conspiracies weakening the union and preventing it from
organizing.
The
author also spends a great deal of
time on the purges of UFW activists, organizers, and volunteers in 1977 -1981 period. While often presented as anticommunist decisions by Chavez, many of the dismissals were for lack of loyalty to Chavez
and his decisions as the final arbiter of all issues in the union. Some of the “purges” were based upon left politics, and some
of the dismissals were based upon other differences, including differing views
of the best direction for the union.
There were dismissals and
staff leavings for a variety of
reasons. Some of the
most significant dismissals were not about left nor right, but were about
issues of both policy differences and personal loyalties.
In my view
Bardacke underanalyzes the nature of the racial state and the interaction of racial and economic
oppression in the fields of California and in the U.S. .While he makes some brief references to a role of Chicano or Mexican nationalism within
the UFW, these are not analyzed in
depth. Specific incidents of
police and political repression are treated as abuses of power rather than a racially constructed system of
oppression. After all, the
previous attempts to organize farm workers were broken with violence along
racial lines.
The role of
racism, and the individual reactions to systemic structural racial oppression are complex
and vary in part based upon the
differences in experiences of the participants. As the Chicano movement argued at its core- the experiences of U.S. born and reared Mexican Americans and Chicanos were
different than the experiences and the perceptions of racism of Mexican
immigrants, both documented and undocumented. There are a diversity of racisms and a diversity in the
manner in which workers learn
to respond to oppression. Chicanos and Mexican Americans grew up,
were educated, and worked in an internal colony. Their schools, their unions, and their political experiences
were structured along racial
lines. They learned
colonized structures.
Bardacke recognizes this
structural oppression in the lives of several UFW leaders including specific
descriptions of the early lives of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta , though he
does not acknowledge the struggle of the UFW and the Chicano
Movement in breaking this colonial legacy.
Mexican
migrants had a difficult life under an oppressive one-party state at home, but usually did not suffer
this internalized colonialism.
Bardacke reports on these differences in his descriptions of the early lives of rank and file leaders Mario
Bustamante, Hermilo Mojica, Marcos Munoz and others.
Their struggle in the fields
was initially primarily a workers struggle for economic justice.
Marshall Ganz in
Why David Sometimes Wins,
does a better job than does Bardacke in describing some of the racial
fault lines of farm worker
organizing. Ganz was director of organizing for the UFW in Salinas and a long time
member of the UFW executive board.
He notes, the unions were organized
along ethnic lines- as were the growers and the political power of dominant Anglo political forces. ( Ganz P.161) Since the organizations were structured
along racial and , ethnic and lines, it is peculiar then to have Bardacke describe conflicts between the UFW and its
opponents as if they were primarily economic in nature. Barnacke discusses the volatile issues of racism
as primarily about
Chavez’s liberal supporters – by which he means largely white or Anglo
supporters.
As the author chronicles, Chavez
knew well some of the failings of
unions in the 1960’s, including the problems of a growing internal
bureaucracy, but the UFW was not able to create a viable democratic alternative. Chavez’ own
history and personality structure, and his manipulation and dismissal of
activists occurred in part because
the executive board was unable to free itself from the dynamics of a group
under constant siege.
Marshall Ganz also argues that
Chavez deconstructed the organizational strength of the UFW in the 1979 -1981
period in an effort to keep personal control of the union. (Ganz, p. 247 ) Today the UFW has about
5,000 members and few contracts.
The lack of unions in the fields and the declining strengths of unions nationwide
indicate that we do not yet know how to build a progressive union movement. These problems are overwhelming-
even more so when added to the
problems of trying to build a union for poor people in a racialized state such
as rural California in the 1970’s-
1990’s.
The UFW was overwhelmed by the negative forces against it,
including capitalists, growers, racist cops and politicians, liberal Democrats,
union bureaucrats and more.
Union democracy did
not grow and antidemocratic forces flourished. The UFW
leadership failed to build a competent administrative structure to deal
with union contracts, and failed to expand the organizing structure and union culture rapidly enough to bring in the
thousands of new farm worker
members to create an active,
democratic union life.
The failure to gain strength is not
surprising. Compare the period
of decline of 1977-1986 in the UFW
to the complex battles of the
Reuther Brothers to gain control and to keep control of the United Auto Workers, including the
UAW’s relationship with the AFL-CIO . (1949- 1970). The UAW went from 1.5 million members in 1979 to 390,000 in
2010, and the United Steelworkers and other unions suffered similar declines. Is it any wonder that the
smaller, less established, less well funded UFW suffered dramatic declines from racial oppression and the brutal assault on the union in the fields of Texas, Arizona and California?
A shorthand for this debate is: how do working people combine
the strengths of civil rights movements with the institutionalization of
unions? How do organizing
social movements differ from organizing in a union? What can organizers in each learn from one another ?
Did the UFW decline? Yes. Did farm workers lose the substantial gains in wages and
working conditions they had won in the 1970’s? Absolutely. How do unions build
a movement when undocumented workers can replace strikers ? This issue has continued to divide and
defeat unions in the U.S.
We know that social movements
emerge, are organized, grow and then are institutionalized – or they decline. Few
unions have been able to create democratic internal culture. Few social movements have been able to
maintain their momentum for more than a decade and they leave behind little of
institutional power except small
advocacy groups. Where are
the examples of unions building a democratic process which fights for their
jobs? Certainly not the rival
Teamsters union in the canneries and packing houses of California.
How do we build an activist,
democratic union with democratic leadership and locals ? How do we build a union that
contributes to the liberation of a people? How do we build a union that educates its members on the
politics of their own struggle and develops and promotes its members to become its future leaders ?
Trampling out the Vintage
gives one view of how the UFW effort failed, but we have yet to learn
how to create a powerful democratic organizational vehicle. Bardacke, and other left critics of the
UFW experience argue that the destruction of the UFW was a result of the
personal control of Chavez and his allies and their failure to build a
democratic union. Well, Cesar
Chavez has now been dead for over 17 years. Why has no vital, democratic union grown up in the fields to
continue the effort to build a union for some of the most exploited workers in
the U.S.?
There are numerous other important
issues raised in this history including the role of Catholicism and Catholic
symbols, the importance of non violence, the problems of working with Jerry Brown and the Democratic
Party, including Bardacke’s sub title for the book, Cesar Chavez and the Two
Souls of the United Farm Workers. These issues are beyond the scope of this review.
I recommend the book for serious students of the Farmworker Movement
who wish to learn of the diverse perspectives of the struggles in the
fields. I do not recommend
it as a sole or primary source on UFW history or the history of Cesar Chavez. Rather it should be read in conjunction with other sources on the
UFW including Marshal Ganz’s Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership,
Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement, Randy Shaw’s Beyond the Fields; Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle
for Justice in the 21st. Century and the extensive sources
available on the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project http://www.farmworkermovement.us/
1. Duane Campbell,
“Bert Corona, Labor Radical.” Socialist Review. 1989, p. 51. , See also. Randy Shaw, Beyond the Fields; Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and
the Struggle for Justice in the 21st. Century, p. 196.
Duane Campbell , professor emeritus
of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at California State University-Sacramento, worked with the UFW as a volunteer from
1972-1976. He then collaborated with Bert Corona on immigrants-rights efforts.
His most recent book is Choosing
Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. (2010) He is currently chair of Sacramento Democratic
Socialists of America and chair of the Chicano/Mexican American Digital History
Project for the Sacramento region For information on the projects, go HERE
[]
I want to thank Mike Hirsch for
his comments on this review.
This is the 50th
Anniversary of the UFW. http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=news&inc=_page.php?menu=news&inc=/50/anniversary.html
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