Video: 'Cesar Chavez - American Civil Rights Activist | Mini Bio | BIO'

(Friday, April 23, 1993) — Cesar Chavez, the migrant worker who emerged from the poverty of an agricultural valley in Arizona to found America’s first successful union of farm workers, was found dead today in San Luis, Ariz. He was 66.

Chavez, who lived in Keene, California, and was in Arizona on union business, died in his sleep. An autopsy proved inconclusive, with the family stating that he had died of natural causes.

Blending the nonviolent resistance of Gandhi with the organizational skills of his mentor, the social activist Saul Alinsky, Chavez captured worldwide attention in the 1960s.

Leading an initially lonely battle to unionize the fields and orchards of California, he issued a call to boycott grapes that soon became a cause celebre.

Chavez, who was described by Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 as “one of the heroic figures of our time,” was widely acknowledged to have done more to improve the lot of migrant farm workers than anyone else.

Fighting growers and shippers who for generations had defeated efforts to unionize field workers, and later fighting rival unionists, Chavez for the first time brought a degree of stability and security to the lives of some migrant workers.

Video: 'Cesar Chavez: From the Fields to Victory'

Largely because of him, the California Legislature in 1975 passed the nation’s first collective bargaining act outside Hawaii for farm workers, who are largely excluded from Federal labor law coverage.

“For the first time,” Chavez said when asked to describe the union’s achievement, “the farm worker got some power.”

Asked what had motivated his stubborn fight, he said, “For many years I was a farm worker, a migratory worker, and, well, personally — and I’m being very frank — maybe it’s just a matter of trying to even the score.”

But he ultimately failed to realize his dream of forging a nationwide organization. In most of America, farm workers continue to toil for low wages, without job security, vulnerable to exploitation. Even in California, he found it difficult to translate the early triumphs of what he called La Causa into a viable labor organization.

The union that Chavez founded, the United Farm Workers of America, became troubled by dissent and other problems and was unable to organize more than 20 percent of California’s 200,000 farm workers.

The tactics that he used so effectively in the 1960s and early 70s — strikes and boycotts, fasting, and the long march — eventually lost their magic. And, as the United Farm Workers were no longer seen as a social cause but as a conventional labor union, he was disappointed by the disaffection of politicians and other supporters.