Cesar Chavez’s 36-Day Fast and UFW Boycott of Grapes

Richard Rodriguez’s vitriolic, caustic opinion (Opinion, Aug 28) demeaned and berated not only Cesar Chavez but also an event that brought together thousands of people (including me), who had traveled for several hours on a scorchingly hot day to Delano to express our support and to pay respect to a man and a cause that affects us all.

Rodriguez demeaned Chavez, whose humility and tenacity were somehow interpreted as being “too Mexican.” He belittled a hunger strike (a fast), which he described as a “moral tantrum.”

Perhaps the heat of the day may have caused Rodriguez a bit of cultural confusion because in his first paragraph he aligns himself with Mexican-Americans, “people of the city, more apt to work at construction sites than in the fields.” Then, in the last part of his cynical diatribe, he observed that people around him sat, “As Mexicans do, oblivious of one another.” Rodriguez saw the brown faces of poverty. He obviously did not see me and my companions. I am a second-generation contemporary woman of Mexican descent, a middle-class professional, proud to be a Chicana. And I observed the great diversity of people under that mammoth tent which kept us from broiling in the Delano sun.

Yes, the poor with beautiful brown Indian faces were there in large numbers, and so were the Kennedys (Ethel and her family), Jesse Jackson, and the very visible, dedicated movie stars including Edward James Olmos, Ramon Estevez (aka Sheen), Rose Portillo, Julie Carmen, Robert Blake, Lou Diamond Phillips, Ysai Morales, et al.

In conclusions, it would seem that one man’s cause is regretfully another man’s opportunity to demonstrate insensitivity to a critical issue which sits at our dinner table every day.

GLORIA MORENO-WYCOFF

Montebello