June 13, 2014
I began my research at Wayne State University’s Reuther Library in Detroit, MI, where I looked at the United Farm Workers’ files for documents regarding the union and its historical stance on undocumented immigration. My next post will move into a discussion of undocumented immigrant life in Central California.
To hear UFW leaders’ rhetoric on illegal immigration and the plight of undocumented people, and to then study its trajectory and its previous stance on the issue is truly revealing—and disheartening. Today, the union’s leaders call themselves “long time champions of immigration reform.” The historical record, however, reveals an uglier and more complicated story.
Chavez and the UFW were so against “wetbacks” that they
formed their own private Border Patrol.
Cesar Chavez was, in fact, deeply hostile toward “wetbacks,” as he (and many others of this time) called them. He was relentless in his efforts to halt immigration from Mexico and was active in pursuing the deportation of those already here. Chavez claimed that undocumented workers were driving down wages, and crucially, being used as strikebreakers. Both complaints had merit, of course. Mexican immigrants were routinely used to break strikes; their desperate situation often led them to take whatever work they could get, even if it meant clashing with the UFW’s goals. And certainly, all of these dynamics played a role in wage depression.
What is disturbing about Chavez and the union’s actions is how rigid and unwilling they were to consider that the issue was more complicated. Some Chican@ organizations and leaders, among them Bert Corona, cautioned Chavez that alienating undocumented workers was a disastrous mistake. Others complained that Chavez was spending entirely too much of his (and the union’s) efforts on the “Illegals Campaign.” Others still worried that Chavez was making enemies of people who in fact were allies in this class and social struggle.
Did the “wetback” issue and the union’s stance on undocumented immigrants cause its phenomenal downfall? Probably not. As Matt Garcia has argued in his controversial but much-needed study on the rise and fall of the UFW, Chavez and his union took numerous missteps and made a plethora of mistakes. Frank Bardacke and Miriam Pawel have made similar claims. But we should not be surprised to find that many undocumented immigrants today are unwilling to join a union that just a few decades ago vilified and blamed them for all of the union’s problems.
The UFW today is largely ineffectual. And although today it supports the legalization of the millions of people already here, the anti-immigrant legacy of its leader created a monster whose impact is still felt in our day. By alienating immigrants, by focusing on the wrong “enemy,” and by refusing to consider the advice of knowledgeable and forward-thinking people, Chavez and his union contributed to a toxic and troubling trend of immigrants scapegoating and internal fracturing. To correct this, the union will have to do more than pay lip service to the plight of the undocumented. It will have to show it truly is committed to all farm-workers, legal and undocumented alike, and that is prepared to learn from its past mistakes.
Eladio Bobadilla