Chavez Will End His Fast Sunday

Farm labor leader Cesar Chavez plans to end his water-only fast to protest the use of pesticides on Sunday at an outdoor Mass to be held at the United Farm Workers compound in Delano, union officials said.

Chavez’s decision to end the fast, which began July 17, came amid concerns of irreversible damage to his health. Chavez, who has refused to take medication, has already lost 30 pounds of his original body weight of 174 pounds, union officials said.

“Cesar’s condition has deteriorated,” said his physician, Dr. Fidel Huerta, in a statement released Thursday. “He is increasingly experiencing nausea, vomiting and cramping.”

If the fast continues until Sunday, Chavez, 61, will have gone without food for 36 days, easily surpassing his longest fast of 25 days in 1968, UFW spokeswoman Lorena Parlee said. That fast ended when Chavez broke bread with the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Parlee said that the Rev. Jesse Jackson may attend the 11 a.m. Mass on Sunday and break bread with Chavez during a celebration almost certain to draw thousands of farm workers and leaders from other unions throughout the country.

Chavez has avoided reporters since he began the fast in a small room located at a retirement village at the union compound. However, Parlee said he has continued conducting some union business from a cot in the room. Chavez also reads from the Bible and from books by leaders of nonviolent protest, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Parlee said.

Last Sunday, he met briefly with former presidential candidate Jackson, who vowed to fast for three days when Chavez resumes eating. When Jackson ends his fast, actors Martin Sheen and Robert Blake have said they will, in turn, not eat food for three days in an effort to continue “the chain of suffering.”

In a July 19 statement on the fast, Chavez indicated that the threat of pesticides was one of a host of concerns that had been “raging within me for several months.”

“As I look back at this past year, I can see many events that precipitated the fast,” Chavez said, “including the terrible suffering of farm workers and their children, the crushing of farm worker rights, the denial of fair and free elections and the death of good-faith bargaining in California agriculture.

“All of these events,” he added, “are connected with the great cause of justice for farm worker families.”

In the same statement, Chavez urged consumers to boycott California table grapes at supermarkets. The UFW currently has no labor contracts with table grape growers.

The union has targeted Ralphs, Safeway and A&P; supermarket chains, which have experienced a surge in pro-union pickets and sympathy rallies over the last week. In one case, union supporters staged a sit-in demonstration in the produce section of a Ralphs store in Los Angeles.