Cristal Meza
English 1A
Knapp
May,06,2012
Cesar Chavez
On March 31 1927, . His parents had been born in Mexico but came to California to seek a better life for their children so they lived in their own farm. Chavez’s father Librado ran a pool hall and he also owned a gas station, they were doing well, however this was during The Great Depression in the 1930’s when businesses and banks were not doing well and many people were losing their jobs but what was more severe for the farm workers was the drought in The Gila River because they needed water for their crops to grow and without it their business would not succeed. Chavez’s father had begun struggling with finances and by 1937 he could no longer pay his taxes, therefore his property was taken from him and his family. Because of this Chavez and his family had to change their lifestyle and become a migrant family because they no longer had somewhere to live. Chavez family had to move from farm to farm and usually had to stay in tents or shacks. Chavez went to school for a couple of months but then would stop going because his family had to move to another farm. In his home he spoke only Spanish but when in school he was forbidden to speak Spanish and if they did they would be punished for doing so, because it was seen as un-american.
working conditions/pay
Chavez’s lifestyle changed drastically when him and his family and to move farm to farm to find work in order to at least be able to have enough money to eat each day. He was not at all happy under what living conditions migrant workers had to go through each day. The working conditions for the migrant farmworkers were not at all pleasant. This was because much of the time the growers took advantage of the fact that there were many families desperately searching for jobs. Therefore they knew they had the opportunity to exploit them by giving long hours,low pay and bad working conditions. Chavez family was one example of this when “the first year they picked peas for less than a penny a pound”(Holmes 23). Chavez had a different perspective about being a migrant farmworker because he hadn’t lived like that before and he knew the difference rather than people who had been living as migrant farmworkers since they were born. “We were poor, but we had liberty. The migrant is poor and has no freedom”(Holmes 24). Chavez was very right in the fact that
discrimination.
Apart from having to deal with the daily hassle of being a migrant farmworker, Chavez also faced discrimination during his earlier years as a teen. As mentioned, he felt he was being discriminated when he was not able to speak his natal language, Spanish at school because only English was seen as American. However the main thing that caused an effect in him was when he saw the sign “NO DOGS OR MEXICANS ALLOWED”(Holmes 25). This brought him more pain when he actually had an experience while entering a diner that had a sign that said “WHITE TRADE ONLY”. Cesar and his friend didn’t think much of it when they saw the sign but once they entered a woman at the counter asked him “Whats the matter, you cant read”(Holmes 26). Chavez said “it seemed to cut us off the human race”(Holmes 26). Discrimination was happening everywhere from restaurants to shops but the reality is that it was far much more difficult to make sense of why people where being separated by their color.
Chavez knew he didn’t want to keep living like this for much longer. He joined the navy when he was seventeen and after two years he was excited to come back home and see his family again. Chavez had seen the struggle his father had to deal with in order to sustain his family and had also witnessed attempts to form unions but noticed how many of the migrant farmworkers stopped because they didn’t have any income coming in because they were protesting.
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