Farmworkers, poverty and Chavez’s legacy

Re “UFW: A Broken Contract,” four-part series, Jan. 11

I was disturbed by this series. I am the daughter of farmworkers from the San Joaquin Valley. I started my career working in the fields on my summer vacations and winter breaks. I know about the injustices that farmworkers faced. I also attended marches and the meetings that the United Farm Workers had with my parents. I experienced the unity, representations we needed and the courage and pride that Cesar Chavez brought to farm laborers. We finally had a voice and hope for the future.

There was and is a need for the UFW. An organization does not exist if it is not providing a service. The UFW continues to rally for farm laborers.

Chavez’s “Si se puede” (“Yes, it can be done”) inspired me to continue my education and receive my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. I’m now a businesswomen in Orange County. The UFW assisted me in being the person I am today.

ADELAIDA “ADDY” PEREZ-MAU

Westminster

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In 1997, I worked with the legal team that supported the UFW’s efforts to organize the strawberry industry in Watsonville and Salinas, Calif. No one in this country is more committed to helping farmworkers than the UFW personnel I worked with. Over the last 10 years, the UFW has spent more than 50% of its budget on organizing. During the strawberry campaign, the UFW put hundreds of organizers into fields. For a time, it was the largest organizing campaign in the country.

Chavez and Dolores Huerta proved that organizing farmworkers could be done, but it isn’t easy to do. A recent report by the U.S. Department of Labor found that more than “three-fifths of farmworker households were in poverty.” We all would have been better served by a series of articles about the true causes of this poverty and investigating what we might do about it.

ADAM MURRAY

Los Angeles

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I am pleased that the horrendous living conditions of many farmworkers are being brought to light by your recent series. What worries me is the attack on Chavez’s legacy. Union membership across the board has dwindled in the last 30 years because of factors unrelated to UFW policy or Chavez’s union leadership while he was alive.

JUAN RIZO

Pomona

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The Times’ series is a tough pill for many to swallow, but long overdue. More than 30 years ago, many of us spent long hours organizing, picketing and boycotting on behalf of the UFW. We faced hostility at supermarkets, violence from anti-union goons and long hours of oppressive 120-degree heat picketing in the vineyards. But this was nothing compared to the suffering of exploited farmworkers. They were, and are, our heroes.

Now, however, we see the union leaders reaping the benefits of these struggles, not for the workers but for themselves.

How can Chavez family members dedicate themselves to farmworkers when they spend much of their time swinging real estate deals and fundraising to maintain their high-roller salaries? Shame on them! The legacy of Chavez should be organizing poor farmworkers, not cashing in on the founder’s image.

MARK DAY

Vista, Calif.

Day is the author of “Forty Acres: Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers” (Praeger, 1971).