Cesar Chavez inspired a generation of local activists.
Good afternoon.
Juan Martinez remembers clearly this day 50 years ago, when he joined some 2,000 people at the United Farm Workers in Salinas for a march down Alisal Street to the Monterey County Jail. They were escorting Cesar Chavez, cofounder of the UFW, to the Monterey County Jail where he intended to turn himself in. A warrant had been issued for his arrest because he did not call off a lettuce boycott, despite an injunction obtained by Bud Antle, Inc. to stop it.
This was the heart of the farmworker rights movement, a clash between labor and corporate interests right here in Salinas, and it made national headlines. It was the only time Chavez was jailed. And for Martinez, who’d grown up in Gonzales and was 18 at the time, it was something of a coming out to his peers as a UFW supporter. “I was scared, but I was more fearful my people were going to find out I was a Cesar Chavez supporter,” Martinez says. “That friends
would not invite me to stuff, or I would not get offered jobs. Growers and their families told my dad [a property owner in Salinas] to evict people who supported the strike.”
The 2,000-person sea of people was partly meant to protect Chavez from potential violence. A few weeks later, when Chavez was released on Christmas Eve, Martinez says he joined other young men as bodyguards to escort him from the jail. “The fear was he was going to be assassinated,” Martinez says.
Others who marched on this day 50 years ago included an aunt of now-County Supervisor Luis Alejo, and a friend of his grandmother’s, who worked in Watsonville UFW office. He keeps a photo of them, flanking Chavez, in his office.
“It's these people surrounding Cesar Chavez that are another critical part of this movement, that joined something bigger than they were,” Alejo says.
Whatever your view of the UFW, the lettuce boycott or the labor movement in general, there’s a potent reminder that even a leader as iconic as Cesar Chavez is not bigger than their supporters allow them to be. A movement requires people and energy to reach critical mass, not just a leader.
A more contemporary battle to preserve the old jail where Chavez was incarcerated for 20 days has been waged, in large part by Martinez, in recent years. He lobbied the National Park Service to make the old jail the site of Cesar Chavez National Monument, but it didn’t make the cut. He’s since partnered with historic preservationists in the interest of keeping the old county jail standing, despite a 2002 permit to demolish it.
In 2018, the 1931 Gothic Revival-style building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And the hope is there will someday be an interpretive center there to share the history. To that end, Monterey County officials are hoping for state funding, but Covid-19 threw a wrench in those plans, delaying potential next steps.
“It's one thing to look at a photo, it's another thing to step inside a building and feel what it must've felt like when those individuals took those courageous positions,” Alejo says. “If we don't fight to preserve this building, our future generations will not have the opportunity.”
-Sara Rubin, editor, sara@mcweekly.com