Cesar and the Big Man

Mr. Chavez in his younger days

It has frequently amazed me, as I drive upon a street named for Cesar Chavez or past a high school with his name on it.  I wonder if people who believe that he was an advocate of the illegal alien know that he really wasn't.

He called an area just North of Yuma his home: Bard Valley.  When I first came on duty in the Border Patrol, his folks were still living - and that's where they lived.

Chavez became an organizer at a young age (notice the photo above).  He traveled throughout Arizona and California on behalf of what was, at first, known as the Valley Farm Workers.  The organization, later, morphed several times and changed its name along the way.   In the early days, Chavez' outfit was composed of I-151 (green card) holders or of full-blown U. S. citizens.  All of them were migratory workers who traveled mostly between California and Arizona.  Occasionally, they'd get as far East as the Carolinas if the work was slow in the West.

It was some time in the early 1970's that the Valley Farm Workers were having a huelga - a strike - on the citrus growers in Yuma County.  The growers, not wanting their citrus crops to rot on the trees, began to let it be known around the border towns in Sonora and Baja California that they were willing to hire Tonks to harvest the citrus.

True to union form, the Valley Farm Workers were willing to call a scab a scab.  Illegal aliens were coming into Arizona to pick citrus and to, effectively, put a damper on whatever smoke the Farm Workers' strike was generating.  Chavez and the Farm Workers weren't going to sit still for that.  One morning, about a hundred of them showed up en masse just East of the Port of Entry at San Luis, Arizona.  They spread out Eastward from the Port with one Farm Worker about every couple of hundred yards.  Every one of them was armed with impact weapons: clubs, chains, baseball bats, etc. .

By noon time, several Tonks had tried to run the Farm Workers' gauntlet - with the predictable result.  All available Border Patrol Agents on the day shift were ordered to leave their assigned areas and to report to the desert area East of San Luis. The Senior Patrol Agent In Charge showed-up as well.  Our job, on that day, was to defend innocent life: the innocent life of the Tonks (all of whom were unarmed).

The SPAIC, was a big guy; he was called Big Man.  It didn't take long for the Agents to begin herding the Farm Workers into a manageable gaggle while Big Man sought out Chavez, the leader.  Big Man spoke quietly with Chavez and asked him to take his entourage back to the union hall in San Luis.  It was at that point that Chavez lost it and, loudly, threatened Big Man's life.  Many Agents and Farm Workers heard it.

At that point, Big Man had a decision to make.  He could arrest and prosecute Chavez for the communicated threat (and make Chavez a martyr).  He could ignore it.  Or he could let Chavez know that, since the threat that was made had no time stamp upon it, that, for his own personal safety, Big Man would shoot Chavez on sight for reasons of self-protection.

Of all those three possible courses of action, Big Man chose the latter.

Some years later, Big Man retired and is still living in Yuma County to this day.  And Chavez?  He never came back to Yuma County.  Until the day he died, he conducted his organizing in California and Texas.  When he needed something done in Arizona he'd send his subordinates.  Big Man had a big iron on his hip.