The dedication of the newly erected Cesar Chavez statue on the West Mall implores us to explore the legacy of a man whose shadow will be forever cast upon our campus. What did this now-immortalized man do to deserve all the hubbub and festivities that have transpired this week?
He is said to be the first person to successfully organize low-paid, migrant farm workers in California and other southwestern states, therefore improving the lives of those seemingly subjugated citizens. Also to his credit, Chavez declined to accept anything but the ascetic pleasures of life and only took a minuscule salary during his tenure as head of the United Farm Workers, an organization that he founded.
Chavez's actions and lifestyle captivated the gullible, leftist romantics of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and led to their adoration of Chavez. Many other not-so-savvy ignorant youths followed their compadres and jumped on the bandwagon of Chavez's trendy cause. His movement became so in vogue that masses of people throughout the United States waved flags, sang hymns and led marches in support of him.
At its pinnacle, "la causa," a popular phrase for the movement, supported a boycott of grapes, maintaining the five-year strike against the California grape growers. In 1970, the boycott finally made a breakthrough, coercing the Californian grape growers to sign with the farm workers. Five years after this signing, Gov. Jerry Brown, a close ally of Chavez, caved into the popular movement and put the Agricultural Labor Relations Act into effect, driving the first collective bargaining agreement in agriculture.
But beyond all this, what is Chavez's legacy today? What is left of his work other than a bunch of statues, parks and streets that brandish his name? Few people know that after the Labor Relations Act was put into place in California, Chavez's organization came crashing down. United Farm Workers membership declined from 70,000 in the mid-1970s to only 5,000 today. And only half of the revenue raised by the union is raised from member dues - the other half comes from those same ignorant liberals who still believe in their saint's lost cause.
So what caused Chavez's legacy to go terribly askew? Perhaps it was his zealous lust for personal power, as he purged his organization of many well-informed officials who dared to give the union an alternative perspective. Or maybe pure economics triumphed over the fashionable, activist trends of the '70s. Unions only work in a market economy, where they can manage the supply of labor or when the amount of skilled workers is few enough to where they cannot be replaced. The workers who Chavez was protecting could not have been further from this. They were not highly skilled and there was an abundance of them in the work force, making them easily replaceable.
So, when the migrant farmers went on strike, their employers could easily replace them with other migrant workers from Mexico who were overjoyed at the opportunity to live and work in America. Then, the apparently expendable migrant workers in the union were left without a job, and Chavez's organization could do nothing to help them, making their membership in the union worthless. Nonetheless, it was a favorable thing that the group failed. Had it been successful, nothing but raised wage rates and unemployment would have reigned. The workers would have been forced to move back to Mexico.
By looking to history, Chavez knew that to dupe the liberals into joining the fray, he would have to create an activist platform on which they could stand for everyone to see. Chavez's battle against the grape growers is just another example of how immovable forces and principles of economics easily overcome bleeding-heart liberal schemes every day of the week. Economically, it would have been more beneficial for everyone if the liberals who participated in the boycott purchased and consumed as many grapes as they could have rather than boycotting the product. This would have raised the demand for grapes and thus would have increased both the employment rate and wages of the workers, solving the issue without radical activism.
So yes, Cesar Chavez did a stand-up job of informing the public about the dire straits of the impoverished migrant workers - I will not refute that. However, rather than being a political activist, Chavez should have acted more as an advertiser, promoting the various products the workers labored for. That would have better served the people and helped to improve their conditions. Sadly, looking at what is left behind, one can see that Chavez was just another smooth-talking, charismatic man who exploited the far left's emotions so that his agenda could advance through their propaganda.
Earnest is an economics freshman.
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