Dispatches from the present
On August 3rd, farmworkers began marching from Delano, California to Sacramento, demanding the right to conduct union elections by mail, without workplace intimidation. Nearly three hundred miles and thirteen days later they arrived at the Capitol and asked Governor Gavin Newsom to sign a bill guaranteeing that right. So far he has refused. Accompanying the marchers part of the way was Roberto Bustos, who knew the route well. César Chávez appointed Bustos “El Capitán” of the 1966 farmworkers march from Delano to Sacramento. Born in Eloy, Arizona in 1942, he began picking cotton at the age of ten. He picked fruits and vegetables and organized on farms in Arizona and California for the next four decades. He reflects here about the 1966 march and expresses his hopes for farmworkers’ futures.
There were no rest periods, it was just work, work, work, bending over, in the heat, in the cold. There were no toilets. There were no protections. We had to fight for things, especially water. There were no cups for each person, only one cup, with a string attached to a canister. People would get blisters in their mouths. There were infections, because of the can.
I remember my first check that I got. It was a hundred dollars. I said, “Wow, that’s great.” “Yeah,” they said. “But you worked a hundred hours.”
We heard about the union strike, people talking in the fields and asking us to join. My brother after we came home from work told me, “Let’s go to the meeting tonight. This man has been yelling, “Huelga.” He’s going to be there.”
So we went. It was a farmworker home, a small house, but there was about sixty or seventy of us there on the lawn. And then someone started talking. I had to move around a little bit because there were so many people there and they were blocking me, and then I saw this man talking. I didn’t know César Chávez back then. I thought he was going to be a big man, sombrero type, mustache. But he was a small, five-foot-five man. When he started saying things about farmworkers, I said, “That man is talking about my father. That man is talking about my brothers and sisters working in the fields.” I went up to him and I shook his hand. He asked me, “Do you want to join the strike?” I said yes.
César came to a meeting one night. There were twenty of us organizers, we were talking about the day’s events, how many people came out of strike, what problems we had. Back then we had a lot of problems. Especially with the police. They were trying to run us over and spraying us and keeping us away from the workers so we wouldn’t talk to them. César said, “Guys, what do you think if we go to Sacramento to tell the governor what’s going on? A lot of people don’t know about the strike. The company is telling the workers wrong things about us, that we’re outsiders, that we’re troublemakers, which is not true. We’ve been there many years working for them. And they know that.” And I said, “Let’s go. We’ll do a caravan. It’s only, what, a three-hour drive?” With his head down, he said, “No. I’m talking about marching.”
I say, “What the hell is this guy talking about? Está loco este hombre. We never been involved in marches before in our lives.” At the end of the meeting he told us, “Well, think about it, guys.” And he left. We all started laughing. We said, “Maybe all the pesticides in the grapes affected his brain!” We talked and talked and talked and finally we all agreed, “You know what, maybe it can be done. Maybe.” Sí se puede type of thing.
Seventy-seven of us took the challenge. We had the Virgin Mary in front, we had the union and the American flag and the Mexican flag right behind them. Once we started, just as we were making a right turn, boom, here comes about thirty police cars. They blocked us. They said, “No, you cannot march.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t have a permit for this parade.”
“Parade? This is not a parade. This is a pilgrimage,” I told them. “You see any floats behind us?”
Finally there was a call that came in, and all of a sudden they started opening up, moving the cars out of the way. There were hearings there in Delano and Bobby Kennedy was there, and I think he made the call: “If you don’t let my people go, you’re gonna see a big civil liability suit against the city.” That’s when the march started.
When we got to Porterville, we were welcomed by a group of about twenty people outside the city limits. They had a guitar and an accordion. When we heard that music, man, that gave us a lot more energy. The two musicians, they told me, “We want to march with you to Sacramento.” So we had music every day. The main song was “De Colores.” “We Shall Not Be Moved” was another one, you know: “We shall not be moved, just like a tree that was planted in the river.”
Also in Porterville, a company from LA donated a hundred pairs of boots. That helped us a lot. Because we were marching in shoes. We didn’t know anything about marching. Good thing that we had a nurse with us. She was busting a lot of blisters with a pin. But when they donated a hundred pairs of boots—wow, next morning, we felt like we were stepping on clouds.
After that we started getting better. Every town we went to, people came out, they gave us water, they gave us fruit, they gave us lunches. Half of those 53 towns that we went through, we spent the night. Most of us slept in a park. We slept in the parks or along the roadways or in the front yard.
We opened the eyes of America about the issues of farmworkers. Every town that we were hitting there were articles. The line grew from 77 of us to a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred people. First it was single line, one line, then two by two, then three by three, then four by four, and we were marching into Sacramento.
Listen to this: in 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act. It gave millions of workers the right to organize. But it said, “except farmworkers.” Why? I asked César the question. We were marching to Sacramento. He says, “Roberto, listen. Look. Farmworkers don’t have any friends in Congress. Farmworkers don’t have anyone to fight for them. That’s why we’re here.”
This latest march, they went to Sacramento again. I talked to them at the beginning: “Don’t worry. We paved the way for you guys. The roads have been open for you guys. Just follow our footprints, and you can get to Sacramento.” But why do we have to protest? We feed the people. We’re picking all the fruits, vegetables, so you can have something at home. And sometimes the way it is, the family [of farmworkers] doesn’t even have enough for their family. Because we don’t win enough.
With the new law [farmworkers] want them to pass, they can vote from home, drop it off. Just like we do with general elections. This law is just to have more protection, so they won’t get intimidated and harassed by the foremen, the supervisor or the owner, by being there and looking at them when they’re voting.
I would like to see every farmworker unionized. But it’s still not happening. We have contracts, and as soon as it expires, boom: right away [the growers] sign with somebody else. What about the workers? How come you didn’t contact them? We cannot lose a union, we cannot lose a contract, we cannot lose our fight—because if we do, it might take another hundred years before farmworkers are recognized again.
Photo credit: San José Public Library (CC BY / Wikimedia)