In a previous issue, a farmworker comrade told of incidents of workers' organized violence against the growers in California in the 1960's and 1970's, the opposite of the pacifist line pushed by and about César Chávez. The history continues here.

Another violent incident happened during the years of the past farmworkers' strikes in California.

It was the time when the farmworkers no longer respected the pacifist philosophy of Chávez; they fully took up organized violence as the best weapon in the struggle and strikes.

In Shafter, a town in the Delano area, there is a labor camp which at that time was the nest of a great many scabs who left at dawn every day to work and break the strike. One morning, a big group of us strikers arrived at the camp. We blocked the exit and did not let them leave. We made those who tried to leave turn back by stoning them.

A scab ventured out with his camper full of people. It drove toward the strikers and passed them, but the back door of the camper was open and as it passed, a shower of rocks hit them. In a little while, they returned to the camp as fast as they left. They had several injured scabs due to number of rocks coming in through the door as they drove by. The police who were 100 feet away only observed but didn't intervene at all.

And where was Chávez? Chávez was in his office praying. The scabs left the camp.

All the Scabs Left the Fields

Another morning before dawn we blocked two of the main roads out of Delano to prevent the scabs from leaving to break the strike. Since it was dark, the scabs didn't expect that these places would be blocked. When they realized it, they were in front of the strikers. Those who could, put on their brakes and went into reverse, but others had no choice but to continue ahead. But for those who returned as well as those who continued, none had any good windows left in their cars, and maybe one or another scab was broken up too.

The Kitchen Knife

One more incident was in 1973. The growers refused to renew the contracts that they had with the Farmworkers' Union and they gave them over to the Teamsters' Union. So we farmworkers had to declare a strike against the growers to get the contracts back. The Teamsters, for their part, organized a group of thugs to protect the growers' property, and they spent their time provoking the striking farmworkers. But one day they went too far. They went to Lamont, a town south of Delano, where there was a farmworkers' picket line, including many women, where the goons carried out an attack as they pleased, beating up men and women strikers.

With that "victory" the goons were more emboldened, so much so that they decided to go another day to McFarland where there was another farmworkers' picket line and do the same thing. I was on that picket line. We got together and agreed to give them a welcome.  The women were told that those who didn't bring something, even if only a kitchen knife, shouldn't come to the picket line the next day. The next morning, the women discreetly came to me and said, "Look what I have!" And truly in their clothes they carried a kitchen knife. The men brought other weapons.

But the "party" we were preparing for never took place.  The police told the thugs we were waiting for them, and they never came. We never saw them again in the whole area.

What I have related here is to refute what Chávez said and what is still said, that the farmworkers' struggles were won only with prayers and passivity, and that they have never used violence.

While these experiences came from the farmworkers' struggle for better conditions, the lessons show that there were no permanent gains from reform struggle. To end exploitation, we need to fight for communist revolution, a struggle that will not be a pacifist one. From these accounts it is clear that workers will step up with courage and strength against the class enemy when it is necessary.