Requiem for a Volunteer

The labor movement has created many heroes, not the least of whom are those who have been willing to risk their lives for the salvation and dignity of the working class. The history of collective bargaining glows with their names.

Simultaneously, it has created legions of less heralded workers whose achievements have been more difficult to define, who have been less leader than eager contributor, who have carried banners for their causes without demanding podiums.

Such was the nature of Artemisa Guerrero.

For 20 years she was the ultimate volunteer, the “godmother,” of the United Farm Workers, a close friend of Cesar Chavez, a tireless and dedicated worker on behalf of her campesinos.

She was cook, marcher, pamphleteer and confidante. She was an ear to listen, a voice to confront, a shoulder to cry on. She was feisty when she had to be and loving when it mattered. Chavez called her his only permanent staff in L.A.

Divorced, she raised three daughters on her own, and when she retired as a retail clerk, she adopted the entire UFW as her family and became absorbed in a historic effort to achieve stature for its 100,000 members.

When peril dogged the steps of the farm workers and there was no one to picket, Guerrero would picket alone, more committed to a cause than to her own safety, a slight woman with towering determination.

When she sprained an ankle and couldn’t walk in a mass protest, she “marched” in a borrowed wheelchair, waving the red flag of the United Farm Workers, its proud Aztec eagle a permanent statement of her own beliefs.

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Everyone called her Artie. In the last decade of her life, she suffered from epilepsy, but that never damped the fires of her devotion to the Farm Workers Union.

Hospitalized once, she was visited by the ever-attentive Chavez, who, in an effort to enhance her recovery, said, “I need you.” It was all that mattered. She drew strength from need. Guerrero left the hospital and never went back.

She joined the farm workers’ movement in 1972. Passing a park on the edge of downtown L.A., she noticed people camped there in tents. She asked why and was told they were farm workers gathering to campaign against a proposition that would cripple their right to strike and boycott.

It was a cause that appealed to her, and she became a part of it in a manner that characterized her giving nature. She asked, “You guys hungry?” Then she went home and cooked for them.

If there were more vocal volunteers in the UFW, no one knew of them. Daughters Lydia Apodaca and Ruby Medrano recall many occasions where their mother confronted those she perceived to be enemies of the movement.

In one, they had met for lunch at a restaurant during a UFW-sponsored lettuce boycott. Lettuce was served with their food. Their mother became outraged and, to the dismay of her daughters, made it loudly clear to anyone who would listen how she felt about a place that had failed to honor the boycott.

“You can’t imagine our embarrassment when she’d do that,” Ruby says. “But people would listen to her. She’d make friends for the union.”

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When Chavez died two months ago, Guerrero said simply, “He still lives.” She may have been referring to the strength of his spirit, UFW attorney Rees Lloyd says. Or she may have believed that Chavez, like the Mexican hero Emiliano Zapata, was simply hiding in the mountains, waiting to return.

“She was strong,” Lloyd says. “She wanted to continue on with what we had to do.”

Continue on she did, cooking, organizing, cajoling, marching, offering ideas, caring. She was present every day at the recent UCLA student hunger strike on behalf of a Chicano studies department. When it ended, she called daughter Ruby and asked, “What shall I cook for them?”

At 68, she lived simply on Social Security and a small pension, but her apartment in Monterey Park was always open to the hungry, and to those with no place else to go. She told friends that when she died she wanted to be buried in a pine coffin, the way Chavez was, as a symbol of her simplicity.

Last week, someone, they don’t know who, took advantage of the openness of her apartment, entered it and stabbed Guerrero to death. She died amid the elements of her own commitment . . . the emblems, leaflets, badges and flags.

Five hundred people, union leaders and campesinos, attended her funeral. UFW President Art Rodriguez gave the eulogy. It was a requiem fit for a leader, and offered to a volunteer.

Artemisa Guerrero was buried in the simple pine coffin she had requested. The red and black flag of the union she loved was draped over it.