The 1965 Grape Boycott: A Case Study in Strategy

The United Farm Workers' Union
The 1965 Grape Boycott: A Case Study in Strategy

Farmworkers using short-handled hoes. From California Heritage collection.

"The strike began three years ahead of schedule. The fuse was lit in the Coachella Valley south of Delano, where in the spring of 1965, Filipino grape pickers, most of whom were members of the AFL-CIO's Agricultural Workers' Organizing Committee, balked at being paid less than the braceros who worked beside them in the fields. Under a US Department of Labor edict, the braceros were getting $1.40 an hour base pay, while domestic workers were receiving twenty to thirty cents an hour less, in spite of the Labor Department's stipulation that domestics were in no case to be paid less than the braceros. Joined by several hundred Mexican-American pickers, the Filipinos staged a walkout."

"On the fifth day, the bosses began to get scab labor. From the Mexicans in Delano, from Arvin, from all over. Our people wanted to beat up the scabs. That's when I went to see César and asked him to help me." Larry Itliong, chief AWOC organizer in Delano."

"Backed into a corner, his hand forced, Chavez finally decided that it would be far worse to ignore the strike than to join it. On the night of September 16 he called for a strike vote. Hundreds of workers were packed into the Filipino Hall on the West Side of Delano. Chavez stood before the crowd, dressed in work pants and an old sport shirt."

"You are here to discuss a matter which is of extreme importance to yourselves, your families and your community," he said. "So let's get to the subject at hand. A hundred and fifty-five years ago, in the state of Guanajoto in Mexico, a padre proclaimed the struggle for liberty. He was killed, but ten years later Mexico won its independence. We Mexicans here in the United States, as well as all other farm workers, are engaged in another struggle for the freedom and dignity which poverty denies us. But it must not be a violent struggle, even if violence is used against us. Violence can only hurt us and our cause. The law is for us as well as the ranchers. The strike was begun by the Filipinos, but it is not exclusively for them. Tonight we must decide if we are to join our fellow workers."

"The vote for the strike was unanimous."

Text from Delano: the story of the California Grape Strike, by John Gregory Dunne. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967, pp77-80, passim.)
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