Have you noticed the publicity blitz going on about Cesar Chavez (1927-1993), the co-founder, along with pro-abortion Dolores Huerta, of the United Farm Workers union?
He would have been 83 on March 31. Lots of news articles are appearing about him. A report (click on this post's title) notes that the Cathedral is hosting an exhibition about him.
The Los Angeles archdiocesan newspaper at http://www.vida-nueva.com/ had a cover story about Chavez, and other stories about him are in that issue, too.
A campaign, which the far Left is part of, has been going on for two years or more to make March 31 a Cesar Chavez national holiday. That date is already a California observance.
And now it turns out that Obama, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis -- abortion zealots all -- will have the National Park Service study various places, such as Delano, California, as Chavez-oriented possible historic landmarks or even new parts of the national park system. You can read about that here:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/02/nation/la-na-cesar-chavez2-2010apr02
My point is simply that Chavez does not deserve the
unqualified and
uninformed adulation that the Left demands we have for him.
The Left has always loved Chavez, but not all farm workers did. It is obviously true that farm workers were terribly exploited and that they still endure difficult conditions. It is also obvious that they deserve the best representation.
It is also true that Chavez and the UFW did win reforms that have helped farm workers. But the fact remains that many farm workers wanted, and want, nothing to do with the UFW.
And
since when is the Left ever a totally sincere defender of workers and ever without ulterior motives?
The following info about Chavez is interesting. (Now, it is from a Wikipedia entry, and we all know that those are not necessarily the best scholarly sources. But we also know that properly footnoted sources in Wikipedia entries are legitimate.) Here goes:
"On a few occasions, concerns that undocumented migrant labor would undermine UFW strike campaigns led to
a number of controversial events, which the UFW describes as anti-strikebreaking events, but which have also been
interpreted as being anti-immigrant. In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valleys to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of undocumented immigrants as strikebreakers... [emphasis added]
"In its early years, Chávez and the UFW went so far as to report undocumented immigrants who served as strikebreaking replacement workers,
as well as those who refused to unionize, to the [INS]. [emphasis added]
"In 1973, the United Farm Workers set up a "wet line" along the United States-Mexico border
to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the United States illegally and potentially undermining the UFW's unionization efforts. During one such event in which Chávez was not involved,
some UFW members, under the guidance of Chávez's cousin Manuel,
physically attacked the strikebreakers, after attempts to peacefully persuade them not to cross the border failed."
[emphasis added]
Today's pushers of amnesty for illegals never mention these inconvenient facts.
Of course, the left will smear all criticism of Chavez as being anti-labor, but that charge is obviously not true at all. Quintero wholeheartedly subscribes to Catholic social justice doctrine, which reminds us all that we must believe in and support all the dignity and rights of labor.
We must all remember, too, that of the four sins that Scripture says cry to Heaven for vengeance, two involve sins against workers -- oppressing the poor and cheating workers of their wages. (The other two such sins are murder and sodomy.)
