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Mr. Chávez was a labor leader, community organizer, businessman, and Latino civil rights activist in the United States. He co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Dolores Huerta, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to create the United Farm Workers. His ideology was a blend of radical politics and Roman Catholic social teachings.
Chavez, who was born in Yuma, Arizona to a Mexican American family, began his working life as a manual laborer before serving in the United States Navy for two years. After relocating to California and marrying, he became active in the Community Service Group, where he aided laborers in registering to vote. In 1959, he was appointed national director of the CSO, a position based in Los Angeles.
In 1962, he left the CSO to co-found the NFWA in Delano, California, where he established an insurance scheme, a credit union, and the El Malcriado newspaper for farm workers. Later that decade, he began organizing farmworker strikes, including the successful Delano grape strike of 1965–1970.
In 1967, during the grape strike, his NFWA merged with Larry Itliong's AWOC to form the UFW. Chavez, influenced by Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, emphasized direct but nonviolent tactics, such as picket lines and boycotts, to pressure farm owners into meeting strikers' demands. He instilled Roman Catholic symbolism into his campaigns, including public processions, masses, and fasts. He was being watched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation despite receiving a lot of support from labor and leftist groups.
In the early 1970s, Chavez attempted to broaden the UFW's influence beyond California by establishing branches in other states. Viewing illegal immigrants as a major source of strikebreakers, he also promoted a campaign against illegal immigration into the United States, resulting in violence along the U.S.-Mexico border and schisms with many of the UFW's allies. He founded a remote commune in Keene because he was interested in co-operatives as a form of organization. His increased isolation and emphasis on unrelenting campaigning alienated many California farmworkers who had previously supported him, and the UFW had lost most of the contracts and membership it had gained in the late 1960s by 1973.
His alliance with California Governor Jerry Brown aided in the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, though the UFW's campaign to have its policies enshrined in the state constitution was unsuccessful. Chavez, influenced by the religious organization Synanon, re-emphasized communal living and purged perceived opponents. The UFW's membership dwindled in the 1980s, as Chavez shifted his focus to anti-pesticide campaigns and real-estate development, causing controversy for his use of non-unionized laborers.
Chavez was a divisive figure, with UFW critics concerned about his autocratic control of the union, purges of those he deemed disloyal, and the personality cult built around him, while farm owners saw him as a communist subversive. He became an icon for organized labor and leftist groups in the United States, and a 'folk saint' among Mexican Americans after his death. His birthday is a federal commemorative holiday in several U.S. states, and many places are named after him. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1994.
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