Aug. 10: How Some Are Teaching Farmworker Labor History Post Cesar Chavez’s Downfall

Support for this podcast comes from the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, connecting communities with the resources, infrastructure, and networks to ensure a vibrant local free press. From KVPR in Fresno, this is Central Valley Daily. I'm Sarith Hawk. It's been nearly five months since sexual abuse allegations against Caesar Chavez came to light. And now, as we near the start of the school year, how will instructors teach about Caesar Chavez and his legacy? The movement was much broader than one individual, and so I think it underscores, you know, thinking about the legacy of the Farmerker movement as the UFW movement, a movement of people. We speak with a Bakersfield College History professor about how he'll approach the topic. That conversation in just a moment. Summer in the Valley brings triple-digit temps and the KVPR $10,000 drawing. Your $100 ticket gives you a chance to win $10,000, thanks to our sponsor Fresno Mazda. Tickets are limited to 800 sold. Runner-up prizes are a two-night stay in Pizmo Beach and $250 to dine at restaurants in your community. Purchase tickets at kvpr.org slash 10K. And now to our feature story. In the weeks that followed the revelations of sexual assault allegations surrounding civil rights leader Caesar Chavez, several public institutions began the process of taking down his name and image. But another kind of dismantling is happening within classroom walls. This fall, students will return to a reframing of history in the farm worker labor movement. I spoke to Oliver Rosales, a Bakersfield College professor and Kern County Civil Rights historian. He told me how his students first reacted to the news of Chavez and how he's adjusted his curriculum to reflect this moment of upheaval. I read it when it came out at 7 a.m. and I had to walk into a classroom a couple hours later and teach a unit on the farm worker movement. So that was a very interesting experience, but I was very glad to be in Delano with students who come from farm worker backgrounds, whose experience within labor history, right, is sometimes understood and not understood, right? I was able to leverage that moment to kind of have that conversation with students about the article. We read some of it together, as well as the statement that had been issued by Delors Svarto. Yeah, and, you know, just thinking back to a lot of the reaction that was happening then, people felt shock. It was almost like a gut punch. How did you kind of see that reaction unfold with your students?

You know, it's interesting being, like I said, a classroom because as a historian of, you know, labor civil rights in the Central Valley, I've always taught a very complex farm worker history that didn't shy away from some of the issues that historians have been bringing to light the past decade or so about the farm worker movement, whether it was... you know, marginalizing the contributions of Filipino Americans or some of the controversial positions that the UFW had toward undocumented immigrants in the mid-1970s. So in that sense, this was sort of a continuation of, you know, reexamining the legacy of the Farmerker movement. But I think the thing that caught students, you know, off guard, as you said, or like the gut punch was the testimony of Dolores Huerta. Like that was the thing that was really hard for some folks to swallow. Because, again, the Dolores-Worte Foundation, not only Dolores herself, but, you know, so many students do internships with the organization. They've done, you know, voter registration drives, political education, all kinds of stuff throughout the county, and especially in Delano. So to have her have this testimony that she'd been sitting on, really, for, you know, over five decades was just like hearing your grandmother. Right. So it was, that was tough. And the reaction that we saw to this was very quick in terms of action. You know, we saw names being changed. We saw statues taken down. Do you think that your students and your academic peers really felt this more acutely because of Caesar Chavez's history in that area? The short answer is yes. I mean, very quickly, I had been on a text chain that I think had maybe had been going on for about 24 hours prior to this. And no historian that I knew that was writing on the UFW knew anything about this. I mean, it was really new. Even among, you know, folks like, I believe, you know, Miriam Paul, who you've interviewed before and Matt Garcia and others, I think for Matt, he knew about some of this because... folks who had read his book had contacted them and he put them in contact with the times but you know it took five years to do the the investigation was a thoroughly researched article um but it was a shock to i think the the historical community uh who hadn't known about this they'd known maybe about allegations of infidelity but but not about abuse Now, your line of business is teaching history and ethnic studies at Bakersfield College. I'm just wondering, did you automatically begin considering, oh, I have to sort of pivot now or adjust my curriculum? Was there anything that you were considering off the bat? You know, off the bat, I think my first thought was just to run straight to this and to use it as an opportunity to highlight, you know, why the history of the farm worker movement matters, why the stories that are hidden and buried within homes and in your grandparents' memories and your aunts and uncles' memories are important. I mean, I've, for over a decade, I've done oral histories with, you know, students in rural Kern, rural Tulare.

And it's always a transformative experience for them. So I think in some ways, like I said, it humanized the subjects. Again, somebody like Dolores, who's sometimes on a pedestal, you know, we see her in a more familial way. And some of the hard conversations that at least my students have had through oral history projects, the meaning behind extracting those hard histories became, you know, more paramount. On another level, you know, I was thinking about some of the teacher education projects that I've done and, you know, just trying to leverage the moment. I mean, Dolores said as much when she was, I think, being interviewed with ABC about, you know, using this as a catalyst moment to have hard conversations about, you know, sexual abuse, gender abuse, sexual violence. I appreciate it, for example, you know, Judy Baca, you know, not erasing Caesar from her artwork in LA, but maybe changing it, right? And I know Gustave Ariano also wrote a column about how he wasn't taking his picture or his photo of Caesar down and rather using it as a catalyst to talk about patriarchy and abuse within social justice movement. So I think I felt similarly that, to me, it just leveraged the moment and uses this as opportunity to teach the importance of a complex, diverse farm worker movement that goes within and beyond Caesar Chavez. And do you think that these revelations with Caesar Chavez, does it change anything with... ethnic studies at all, and particularly the farm worker movement in studying that movement. I think it does. I think it brings to the fore some of the contributions of folks in ethnic studies and gender and sexuality studies about the need to incorporate those methodologies, those theories within how we teach history, particularly at the secondary level. I mean, it underscores the importance of AB 1460 and, you know, bringing ethnic studies to the kind of K through 12 level, in addition to the college university level, because why was this history silence for so long? Maybe young folks. don't have the tools to talk about these things. And so again, it underscores the importance of those fields of study, filtering down to a lower level, if you will, so people can talk about these things. Yeah, and you mentioned earlier, you know, that you also teach about the Filipino American farm workers who were part of this movement. And that is a story that we actually saw emerge even more after this, particularly Larry Iliang. Do you think that this kind of opens the way to reshape the narrative a little more, not just for yourself, but for the whole ethnic studies? Yeah. I mean, I've had the distinct pleasure of watching, you know, Johnny Et Leong and the Filipino American Historical Society do tours of Delano for over a decade now. And...

Oftentimes, it's Filipino youth that come from across California and the diaspora and, you know, having intergenerational conversations among the Filipino community. And I've always felt welcomed by them as an ethnic Mexican. But I think it underscores, again, how this needs to go even broader than that. And, you know, I, again, applaud the work that Johnny and the other itliang children are trying to do to bring attention to their father's legacy. But at the same point, I think, you know, we can't replace one individual with another. Even, you know, somebody. who was important as Lariatliang, the movement was much broader than one individual. And so I think it underscores, you know, thinking about the legacy of the farm worker movement as the UFW movement, a movement of people. And while the historiography may be vast and growing, it's not done by any stretch. There needs to be additional rank and file histories of the United Farmworkers. You know, the scholar Christian Paice at UC Berkeley has a great new book out on the rank and foul movement of the UFW in Coachella Valley, but that has not been done in Kern County. That has not been done in the Central Valley. So lots of work remains to be done on unearthing and narrating a history of the UFW movement. And I'm glad that you brought up that takeaway that it's not just about a person, it's about a movement. So that really doesn't kind of change the spirit at all, right, of what you're teaching. No, not at all. Yeah. You know, if anything, it underscores, I think the ultimate legacy of the UFW movement may not be, you know, wages and contracts, right? It may not be what was achieved in the field, but what was inspired by a rural movement for social justice that went well beyond the fields. And the legacy of the UFW is a training ground, a civil rights and social justice training ground for organizing and activism beyond the fields. Randy Shaw's book from UC Press several years ago scratches the surface on that, but again, a lot more work needs to be done on it. And again, for those of us in the Central Valley who care about rural California, you know, like the Oaky Migration, like the history of water and power, the UFW is one of our great, you know, kind of cultural capital. moments that needs to be taught, it needs to be researched, needs to be archived, and needs to be explored. I mean, so much of this is a problem of archives, you know, memory is archived, right? But unfortunately, we, you know, researchers and students have to travel to Detroit, you know, to Wayne State University to learn more about the UFW movement. So I'm all as a historian and public practitioner of history for the building of archives and hopefully that this can be a catalyst moment to create that kind of preservation movement. So you've been sitting on kind of the fallout of all this. You guys have all had a chance to take in that news. And now we're getting into the fall semester soon. How are you changing what you're doing for your incoming students? You know, immediately I did teach summer school. And so I rewrote my lecture on the UFW. Essentially like into a part one, part two, where part one, I tried to explore the long-term origins of the pharmaic movement that date well before 1965, really to give students an appreciation for why the UFW was so significant in achieving what had not been done before. So you really have to understand, you know, what was going on from like the New Deal Depression era.

through the 40s and the failed strikes and vigilanteism to have an appreciation for the coalition that the UFW built. And then part two gets a little bit more into the declension. And again, the role of patriarchy and sexual violence within the movement in light of some of these new allegations, I was able to work that in. But again, I'm also thinking about... you know, how to do this from a teacher professional development point of view. The federal courts did rule, right, that the Doge cancellations of the National Endowment for the Humanities grants were, you know, constitutional. And so we were able to get some funding back through CSU Bakersfield. And so we're optimistic that we. can do a teacher professional development program next summer. And, you know, this is going to be a front and center issue about how we reteach this history at a kind of K through 12 level. So, but it's a, these are exciting times. These are exciting moments. And, you know, it is history. You know, Cesar Chavez has been dead for over three decades. And, you know, we have some critical distance. And so it's, it's our responsibility, I think, as educators to try to make this into a kind of usable, teachable past. But it's going to take effort and resources. Yeah, definitely witnessing a living history moment. Oliver Rosales, Professor of History and Ethnic Studies at Bakersfield College, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Thank you so much. And that's today's show. Today's episode was produced by Jonathan Linden and KVPR. I'm Sarith Hawk. Find the latest local news anytime at kvpr.org.

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