Examining the ‘Fight in the Fields’ and in Chavez

The United Farm Workers Union is currently in the midst of an effort to organize 20,000 strawberry pickers in California--a struggle against not only growers but also some farm workers who are dubious of the union’s promises of improved wages and working conditions.

This struggle is the union’s most ambitious task since the death nearly four years ago of its legendary co-founder, Cesar Chavez. If the union and its supporters need inspiration in their current daunting effort, they need look no further than a documentary airing tonight on PBS.

“The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers’ Struggle” is a thorough, compelling two-hour examination of the man who was born into a farmworker family and devoted his life to bettering the lives of those who also found themselves laboring in what writer Carey McWilliams termed the “factories in the fields.”

The documentary, by Bay Area filmmakers Ray Telles and Rick Tejada-Flores, covers much of the same ground seen in “Chicano!”--last year’s multipart PBS series chronicling the Mexican American civil rights movement. But here the filmmakers focus on a singular chapter of the movement, enabling them to explore in-depth California’s agricultural history and the conditions that led to Chavez’s life’s work.

The history begins just as the Gold Rush is ending and the fast-growing population is seeking new ways to live off the Golden Land. By the 1930s, horrendous working conditions had led to the first, ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to organize farmworkers.

It was this atmosphere that was absorbed by a young Chavez. Born in 1927 near Yuma, Ariz., he moved with his parents and siblings to California when the small family farm was lost during the Depression. Chavez left school after the eighth grade to work in the fields, absorbing lessons in nonviolence preached by his mother.

It was that belief, later reinforced by his studying the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, that was the basis of Chavez’s approach to organizing and negotiating, even when met with violence from law enforcement authorities and opposing Teamster union members, and when forced to confront the impulses of UFW members who had tired of turning the other cheek.

Following Chavez’s path from a community organizer to his co-founding of the National Farm Workers Assn. (with Dolores Huerta) in 1962, the documentary goes on to detail the history of the UFW and its much-publicized strikes, marches and boycotts, as well as Chavez’s dramatic 1968 fast, which brought him and his cause to national attention.

Artfully utilizing a treasure trove of archival film footage and photographs, the filmmakers incorporate interviews with two of Chavez’s siblings and two of his children to personalize the man who would become the icon of the Chicano movement. We also hear from several colleagues, some of whom left the UFW when they felt their leader had become too controlling and unyielding, and from some of the growers and union opponents who offer their own grudging respect.

It all adds up to an intimate portrait of one man whose quiet charisma and understanding of power made a huge difference, who overcame less-than-humble surroundings to learn and teach valuable lessons of empowerment. And the program suggests that, despite the tremendous strides made by the UFW, Chavez’s death from natural causes at the age of 66 may have been brought on by the burden of knowing that, indeed, some things never change.

The documentary will also provide more fodder for critics of public television who claim the taxpayer-supported network is partial to liberal causes.

But, at this juncture in history, whatever your politics, the program provides one timely, stark reminder: The strawberries on your breakfast table may have been bought at the market, but that’s not where they came from.

* “The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers’ Struggle” airs 9-11 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.