Can Chavez Survive?

The sun beat down on the dusty highway until the temperature reached the mid-90s, but the men doggedly marched on, carrying a coffin heaped with flowers. Before them, behind them, some 5,000 striking vineyard workers and their supporters trudged along. Some of them carried the blackeagle flags of the United Farm Workers Union, others a banner portraying the Virgin Mary. They sang hymns in honor of the man whose body lay in the coffin. He was Juan de la Cruz, 60, who had been among the first to join Cesar Chavez's campaign to organize the farm workers of California. While picketing at a vineyard south of Delano, De la Cruz had been shot down by rifle fire from a passing car. Now, at the grave-site in the small farming town of Arvin, Chavez told the strikers: "He is not dead; what will die are the abuses of the growers."

With the death of De la Cruz, and another striker killed only two days earlier in an altercation with police outside a barroom, violence returned to the vineyards of the San Joaquin Valley as Chavez struggled to save the union that he had welded together in the late 1960s. Three years ago, Chavez seemed victorious. He had signed contracts with 150 vineyards--most of the major ones in the U.S.--and had begun to organize workers in other fields, such as lettuce and strawberries. The grape producers were still bitter, and eager to rid themselves of Chavez.

This year, only a few of the producers renewed their contracts with the U.F.W. The rest signed new agreements with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents the truck drivers who haul grapes to market and wants to extend its control to the fields. The Teamsters contracts called for $2.30 an hour, 10-c- less than the U.F.W. demanded but 25-c- higher than the workers received in 1972. The contracts also abolished the requirement that workers be hired through union hiring halls (which the growers claim are in efficient) and restored the old practice of hiring from labor contractors (whom the U.F.W. charges with corruption).

The U.F.W. called a strike last April, but the Teamsters only intensified their own recruitment efforts. Today, Chavez's union has only twelve contracts; its membership has shrunk from 40,000 to 6,500. By court order, police kept pickets 100 ft. apart, and when the pickets disobeyed, 3,000 of them, including 76 Roman Catholic priests and nuns, were swept off to jail. Now the union has run out of money, including a $1.6 million strike fund provided by the AFL-CIO.

Another Boycott. At the heart of Chavez's weakness is a changed public attitude toward him and his crusade for the Chicano farm workers. In the late 1960s, la causa not only won the sup port of most Mexican Americans, but it also became a favorite issue among believers in good works. Urged on by national figures like Senator Robert F. Kennedy, conscience-troubled housewives across the country boycotted grapes -- and pressured growers into negotiating contracts with the U.F.W. But now, the public seems to have grown tired of causes. Today, few housewives even know that Chavez has called for another boycott and still fewer observe it. Even in the vineyards, Chavez has failed to ignite much enthusiasm among the workers. Most of them need any chance for work, even in the face of harassing catcalls by U.F.W. pickets.

Chavez has denounced the Teamsters agreements as "sweetheart contracts," products of a "conspiracy" that sold out the workers. He charged that many of the signatures on petitions asking for Teamsters representation had been forged. Some of his charges apparently had an effect in the higher region of organized labor. Under pressure from AFL-CIO President George Meany, Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons last week repudiated 30 contracts that the Teamsters had signed with growers in the Delano area earlier this month. (He did not, however, repudiate the 47 other contracts signed previously with growers elsewhere in California.) One labor leader explained the concession by saying: "The biggest, richest and most powerful union in the country was picking on one of the smallest, the newest and weakest. That didn't do much to help its image."

Chavez said that the Teamsters move was "important," but he added that the battle was "not over by a long shot." The Delano growers agreed. Declared their spokesman, Vineyard Owner John Giumarra Jr.: "In our judgment the Teamsters' contracts are valid."

Chavez, however, was already at work trying to revive the strategy of the past. He ordered that the grape boycott be expanded to stores in 62 cities, most of them Safeway stores in the West and A. & P.s in the East. Then he turned up at a convention of the American Federation of Teachers and appealed for support of his boycott. The teachers gave him a standing ovation and sang a chorus of Solidarity Forever. But whether the activism of the 1960s is still alive in 1973 remains very much the question.

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