The Crusades of Cesar Chavez Read Free

ended, they headed to Oxnard for beans, Beaumont for cherries, or Hemet for apricots. They packed apricots in Moorpark in June and then at Mayfair Packing in San Jose in July, picked plums around Gilroy, shook walnuts from the trees in Oxnard, and harvested grapes in the San Joaquin Valley, where the season began in mid-August. Late summer offered the most choice—lima beans, corn, chiles, peaches, plums, and tomatoes, which stretched into fall.
    The moment the cotton came in, they rushed from grapes to cotton because the work was piece rate (paid by the weight of the bag) and more lucrative. Cesar preferred cotton because he could work as long and fast as he wanted. He felt the increased freedom was a good trade-off for the physical duress. There was more oversight in the grapes, 4 where supervisors inspected boxes and criticized the pack, scolding if they spotted unripe grapes.
    For entertainment, the teenagers relied on pastimes that cost little if any money. Richard and Cesar listened to Joe Louis’s bouts on the radio. Boxing appealed to them as the only arena in which a poor Mexican could become a star. Cesar learned to play handball, a poor man’s sport that required only a hard ball and a solid wall. When the family moved to the San Joaquin Valley city of Delano, they lived in a cluster of small cabins in a dusty courtyard next door to a handball court. Cesar and his brothers would duck underneath the fence in the evenings and play on a regulation court. He became skilled and would play with a fierce competitive spirit for many years. Just a block away from their cabin was the Comisión Honorifica Mexicana hall on Fremont and Seventh Street, where the teenagers went to dances most weekends. Rita taught her brothers to jitterbug, and Cesar chaperoned his sister.
    Family was the one constant in Cesar’s life, at play and at work. He and Richard were outsiders, shut out of ball games and marbles each time they moved to a new school. They grew even closer to one another. Gradually they assimilated to the pastimes in their new world. In Oxnard, where the movie theater showed the new episode of The Lone Ranger every Sunday, the boys scrounged tinfoil and bottles to raise pennies to buy tickets to the serial.
    Another relative entered Cesar’s life during this period, a cousin who became an important lifelong friend. They called each other brother, a Mexican tradition reserved for the closest of cousins. Manuel Chavez, two years older than Cesar, also had grown up in the Gila Valley. He had dropped out of school in fifth grade, lost his mother when he was fourteen, and lived with a succession of relatives, most of whom could not control the boy. Juana and Librado took Manuel into their home in Brawley. Where Cesar was quiet and shy, Manuel was bold and brash. He had not been raised by Juana and her strict moral code. At sixteen, he was grown-up and prone to trouble, but just as apt to charm his way out of scrapes. Along with Richard, the practical down-to-earth member of the trio, Manuel became Cesar’s closest friend.
    When he turned eighteen, Manuel joined the navy, following the path of many Mexican Americans who sought a way out of dead-end jobs and discrimination. He lasted less than six months before deserting. Manuel turned himself in eighty-five days later, served his punishment, and was restored to duty, only to go AWOL again after punching an officer. He was court-martialed and dishonorably discharged 5 on April 18, 1945. By then, the war was winding down.
    Cesar had just turned eighteen. Unlike Manuel, Cesar had stayed out of trouble, with only one arrest 6 for fighting, charges that were dismissed. After the war ended, the United States still needed military to guard enemy territories and U.S. installations and solicited volunteers. On March 20, 1946, Cesar went to the recruiting substation in Bakersfield and enlisted in the navy.
    On his application, 7 he listed his most recent job as a field hand and