Cesar Chavez

Discourse and Group Identity

There are many immigrants in the United States, from various countries. This paper will concentrate on the Mexican - American heritage and their outstanding spokeperson Cesar Chavez. The people of this culture are some times called Latinos, Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Chicanos. Mexican is specifically for the nationality of the inhabitants of Mexico and the term is used appropriately for Mexican citizens who visit or work in the United States. The term Mexican is insufficient to designate those people who are citizens of the United States, or born in the US and of Mexican ancestry. It is important to explain why these people feel it is important to make such a distinction. US citizens who are troubled by this often point out that most immigrants do not distinguish themselves by point of origin first, but simply as Americans. In the next paragraphs I will explain why many US citizens of Mexican extraction feel that it is important to make the distinction.

About 150 years ago, approximately 50% of what was then Mexico was appropriated by the US as spoils of war, and in a series of land sales that were coerced capitalizing on the US victory in that war and Mexico's weak political and economic status. A sizable number of Mexican citizens became citizens of the United States from one day to the next as a result, and the treaty declaring the peace between the two countries recognized the rights of such people to their private properties, their own religion, and the right to speak and receive education in their own tongue. The descendants of this population continue to press for such rights, and many hold that theirs is a colonized land and people in view of the fact that their territory and population was taken over by military force.

Numerous classes of US citizens of Mexican extraction are descendants of, or are themselves, people who conceive themselves as temporarily displaced from Mexico by economic circumstances. As opposed to the waves of European migrants who willingly left their countries due to class and religious discrimination, and sought to make their lives anew in the new world and never to return to the old land, these displaced Mexicans typically maintain strong family ties in Mexico by visiting periodically, and by investing their incomes in homes or kin in Mexico, and usually intend to return to Mexico provided they can become economically secure. Religion, language and customs help the Mexican people maintain and nurture their children.

There is great tension within this population between those of Mexican birth who conceive of themselves as temporary guests in the US, and their descendants who are born in the US, are acculturated with the norms of broader US society in public schools, and are not motivated by the same ties that bind a migrant generation of Mexicans. This creates a classic niche of descendants of immigrants who are full-fledged US citizens, but who typically do not have access to all the rights and privileges of citizenship because of the strong cultural identity instilled in them by their upbringing and the discriminatory reaction of the majority population against a non-assimilated and easily identified subclass.

Chicanos are not the same as Mexicanos. Mexicanos, and instead spoke of themselves as Mesheecanos, in accordance with the pronunciation rules of their language An equivocal factor is that in vulgar Spanish it is common for Mexicans to use the "CH" conjunction in place of certain consonants in order to create a term of endearment. Whatever its origin, it was at first insulting to be identified by this name. The term was appropriated by Mexican-American activists who took part in the Brown Power movement of the 60s and 70s in the US southwest, and has now come into widespread usage. Among more assimilated Mexican-Americans, the term still retains an unsavory connotation, particularly because it is preferred by political activists and by those who seek to create a new and fresh identity for their culture rather than to subsume it blandly under the guise of any mainstream culture. Under the great Mexican American Leadership of Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Works made historic achievements by appealing to the best in people from all walk of life to help farm workers . Cesar Chavez used the motto, !Si se peude!( Yes we can!) as he developed and lived by a unique blend of values, philosophy and styles.

Cesar Estrada Chavez, was a great Mexican American labor union organizer, leader and An Agricultural migrant worker. He used nonviolent action to gain recognition and respect from the Migrant farm laborers. Cesar Chavez knew he needed recognition in order to negotiate in collective bargaining for the labor rights of the migrant worker. Agricultural growers and agricultural business corporations where rich and powerful and had never allowed any recognition of any union. Farm workers had been excluded from the right to collective bargaining that had been guaranteed to other workers by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (Zannos). It would not happen for forty years; later in 1975 through the efforts of Cesar Chavez, United Farm Workers Union (UFW) and the migrant workers that they secured for themselves the protection of the National Labor Relations Act and an Agricultural Relations Board.

Cesar Chavez was born in 1927, in a farm near Yuma, Arizona. In 1939, his parents lost their farm in a bank-foreclosure. During Cesar's childhood his family migrated to California where he became a migrant worker. Chavez had worked in the fields as a child and had encountered the reality of being poor, as well as a member of a discriminated class of people (Altman). The land shaped the thinking and emotional being of Cesar Chavez. The reality of hard work in the hot fields at low wages, the planting, hoeing and harvesting of the agricultural produce that was the foundation of a multi-billion food chain industry impressed Cesar. He discovered his place in the whole enterprise and that the workers were merely expendables obtained at the lowest price with the least personal protection and job benefits. Cesar Chavez had realized the workers were too weak to fight the agricultural business that controlled public, political enforcing and policing agencies. The powerful growers and corporations lacked the consciousness of putting into practice the fair integration of workers as partners in the agricultural enterprise. The situation of the migrant workers guided Chavez's actions and provided him with the emotional motivation to organize farm workers. There is no doubt that the land, the people, his family and cultural environment of his home shaped his character and motivated him in his efforts on behalf of migrant field workers.