On one of the hottest days last week, the heat and the need to make it to class on time didn't prevent passersby from stopping to notice the Cesar Chavez Day activities on the West Mall last Thursday. UT students and alumni gathered around the steps to honor Cesar Chavez, the father of the workers' rights movement, and strengthen their connection with their past. Student organizers from We are Texas, the Latino Leadership Council and the Mexican-American Culture Committee spent a month organizing the event, which included singing, dancing and skits.
One woman watched the celebration from the sidelines. She had at one time been a student walking over the very same West Mall. Deeply involved with the original workers' movement 30 years ago, Anita Quintanilla was part of the Mexican American Youth Organization during her college days in the '70s. At the height of her activism, after years of dedication to Chavez's cause, Quintanilla worked as Chavez's first and only female bodyguard.
For Quintanilla, a career of protests and rallies began her in freshman year when she took a role in the fight against the Texas Union cafeteria's use of non-union lettuce.
"Getting involved and learning that I actually had some power, and I could actually do something that would make a difference was really exciting for me," Quintanilla said. "Here I was at 20, and I had some power to change something."
It didn't take long for Quintanilla's enthusiasm to turn into disappointment after her efforts were met with a lack of support from the student body or acknowledgement from the administration. One of the problems Quintanilla faced early on was the realization that perhaps her hard work and endless hours spent on protests and rallies were not affecting as sizable of a crowd as she had hoped.
"It is hard to reach people and make them be supportive or empathetic when they have so much distance from the issue, and they can't even relate," Quintanilla said. "They just think, 'So what? It's not me.'"
"It's our job to get out and make people aware of the worker's rights movement," public relations sophomore Matt Reyes, secretary of MACC said. "If people can actually see something and talk about it with their peers, it opens up discussion, and Chavez won't be forgotten."
Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, delivered a speech challenging students to involve themselves in the movement and think of the difference they are expected to make as the "leaders of the next generation."
Anchia agrees with Reyes and he said that students should be involved with and learn from their culture's history.
To learn more about her culture, Quintanilla took a semester off in 1972 to travel into Mexico City, intending to brush up on her Spanish and Mexican-American culture. While there, she also witnessed the mistreatment of farm workers in the area. This event inspired Quintanilla to leave UT-Austin and her major in sociology behind in order to pursue a greater cause, La Causa, the movement for farm workers' rights.
A year later, what started out as a road-trip to Boston in the spring of 1973 ended with a full-time job working for the United Farm Workers of America boycott staff in New York City and eventually the title "bodyguard."
"I had never been to the East Coast before, and it was just something fun to do with my friends," she said.
In 1977, the boycott staff traveled to California for the annual UFW convention held by Chavez. Though they had met previously, it was during this time that their mutual interest in farm workers' rights brought Quintanilla and Chavez together in a professional setting.
"Cesar Chavez was trying to organize the farmers into unions so that they could get the benefits that all the other workers in unions were getting," Quintanilla said. "Having clean water to drink and toilets in the fields - these are not benefits, but rights that every human deserves."
Soon after the convention, Chavez asked Quintanilla to be his full-time female bodyguard.
Though Chavez was deemed "saintly" by his followers and allies, other unions did not feel as passionately positive toward him. In some cases, opposing unions would threaten Chavez's life for his effort to build a farm workers' union.
There were never any attempts on his life, but continuous death threats prompted Chavez to hire 10 bodyguards to be with him at all times or to watch building entrances.
"At first, the head of the security department assigned me to just office work until Chavez got mad at him and insisted that I also go on the road with them," Quintanilla said.
On the road, Quintanilla's job consisted of driving the "suicide car." Strategically placing her vehicle between anything that seemed suspicious and the car in which Chavez was riding ensured his safety from vehicular threats. Though Quintanilla used this safety precaution, there was never a real threat to Chavez's life while on the road.
"One time I was driving the station wagon, and I was parked on the other side of the street watching Cesar's car, but then a big truck pulled up beside his car, and I didn't even think about it until later, but I sped around the other side," Quintanilla said. "Nothing dangerous ever happened, but I came close a few times when I wasn't paying close attention."
At the time, 27-year-old Qunintanilla's petite build was less than ominous, but she truly believed in her work and keeping Chavez safe. Her comrades, she said, were not typical body guards.
"Those boys were just goofy and always joking around," Quintanilla said. "But when it came time to work, the jokers would focus on keeping Cesar safe."
As guards, the team lived and worked in La Paz, Calif. They stayed in a children's sanitarium-turned-cooperative-living-center close to Chavez's house.
"Sometimes I would see my friends running out from behind the house saying that they heard children crying, there were ghosts, but I never heard any of them," Quintanilla said.
The full-time staff received $5 a week, but all their housing expenses were paid for by the UFW. Quintanilla thought the weekly stipend was sufficient for her lifestyle.
"It was really a 24/7 job. The window in my room overlooked his house, so I would always keep an eye out for anything suspicious even when I wasn't technically working, and I was in my room," Quintanilla said.
Twenty-eight years later, Quintanilla has returned to her native Austin. She still attends marches and demonstrations supporting the farm worker's movement. She still remembers her time protecting the father of workers' rights fondly.
"When I headed for the East Coast, I was telling my friends at UT that I was going to go make sociological observations," Quintanilla said, "And I did."
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