Editing Cesar Chavez (section)

===Immigration and legislative campaigns: 1973–1975===
[[File:Cesar chavez2.jpg|thumb|right|Chavez speaking at a 1974 UFW rally in Delano, California]]

In September 1973, the UFW's first constitutional convention was held in Fresno, representing the final step in the organization becoming a full union.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=273–274}} A new constitution was announced that gave the group's president, a post occupied by Chavez, significant powers; he feared that greater democracy would paralyze the group.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=275}} At the convention, the UFW agreed to scrap monthly membership fees in favor of charging members 2 percent of their annual income.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=276}} It also announced that volunteers who had worked for the UFW for more than six months could become members with voting rights. Previously, membership had been restricted primarily to farmworkers.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=276}} The new executive committee, which included Huerta and Richard Chavez, was racially mixed, although some members expressed dissatisfaction that it did not contain more Mexican Americans.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=276–277}}  By 1974, the UFW was again broke and its boycott was floundering.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=286}} That year, ''[[The New York Times Magazine]]'' opened with a headline: "Is Chavez Beaten?".{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=285}} Chavez flew to Europe to urge the unions there to block the imported goods that the UFW were sending there. He traveled through London, Oslo, Stockholm, Geneva, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Brussels, and Paris, although he found that the unions were cautious about joining his campaign.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=286–287}} In Rome, he met with [[Pope Paul VI]], who commended his activism.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=287}}

Chavez increasingly blamed the failure of the UFW strike on [[illegal immigration|illegal immigrants]] who were brought in as strikebreakers.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=293}} He made the unsubstantiated claim that the CIA was involved in part of a conspiracy to bring illegal migrants into the country so that they could undermine his union.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=313–314}} He launched the "Illegals Campaign" to identify illegal migrants so that they could be deported, appointing Liza Hirsch to oversee the campaign.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=293}}<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/strawberryfields0000well|url-access=registration|quote=ufw undocumented.|title=Strawberry Fields: Politics, Class, and Work in California Agriculture|first=Miriam J.|last=Wells|pages=[https://archive.org/details/strawberryfields0000well/page/89 89]–90|publisher=Cornell University Press|location=New York|year=1996|isbn=978-0801482793}}</ref> In Chavez's view, "if we can get the illegals out of California, we will win the strike overnight."{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=294}} This was a reiteration of an early view he expressed concerning the problems the UFW boycott faced in 1972. Chavez believed that any strike undertaken by agricultural workers could be undermined by "wetbacks" and "illegal immigrants".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/189746|title=Chavez explains the need for boycotts - Bay Area Television Archive|website=diva.sfsu.edu}}</ref> Huerta urged him not to refer to migrants who had come to the U.S. illegally as "illegals" but Chavez refused, stating: "a spade's a spade."{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=294}} Some UFW field offices refused to collaborate with the campaign,{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=294}} and the [[National Lawyers Guild]] (NLG) refused to allow its interns to work on it, at which Chavez cut the UFW's links with the NLG.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=294}}

{{Quote box
| quote = Chavez pulled up to my Laurel Canyon house in an old car with a German shepherd dog named Huelga—Spanish for strike. We talked for several hours about whether the proposed state law or any labor law could actually help farm workers. Chavez repeatedly said that his boycott was a much better organizing tool because the law would always be corrupted by the powerful economic interests that control politics. I argued with him and said that a law would be his best protection. He finally agreed but remained skeptical.
| source=— Jerry Brown on his relationship with Chavez{{sfn|Bruns|2005|p=67}}
| align = left
| width = 25em
}}

While Chavez had been in Europe, his cousin Manuel Chavez had established a UFW patrol, or "wet line", along [[United States-Mexico border|Arizona's border with Mexico]] to stop illegal migrants crossing into the United States.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=288}} There were rumors that this patrol was employing violence against these migrants, beating and robbing them and in one case castrating a man. These allegations soon appeared in the local press.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=288–289}} A Mexican investigation determined that the UFW had bribed [[San Luis, Arizona|San Luis]] city officials to prevent them from interfering in these activities along the border.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=290}} A Mexican union, the [[Confederation of Mexican Workers]], broke its links with the UFW over the issue.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=289}} Chavez dismissed the reports of violence as the smears of paid provocateurs,{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=293}} a claim which many of his supporters accepted.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=295}} Chavez protected Manuel,{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=291–292}} while the executive board kept silent on his activities, regarding him as useful.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=292}} The Chicano activist [[Bert Corona]] staged a protest against the UFW wet line, at which Chavez directed Jerry Cohen to launch an investigation into the funding of Corona's group.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=294}}

In 1974, Chavez proposed the idea of a Poor People's Union with which he could reach out to poor white communities in the San Joaquin Valley who were largely hostile to the UFW.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=296–297}} Meanwhile, the UFW announced that it would launch a boycott of the [[E & J Gallo Winery|Gallo Wine]] company.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=303}} In February 1975, the UFW organized a four-day march from San Francisco to the Gallo headquarters in Modesto, where a crowd of around 10,000 protesters amassed.{{sfnm|1a1=Bruns|1y=2005|1pp=87, 89|2a1=Pawel|2y=2014|2p=304}} The Modesto march had been a means of trying to rekindle the successes of the late 1960s and a public display of strength despite the setbacks that the UFW had experienced.{{sfn|Bruns|2005|p=87}}

In November 1974, the Democratic Party's candidate, the [[Modern liberalism in the United States|modern liberal]] [[Jerry Brown]], was elected governor of California.{{sfnm|1a1=Bruns|1y=2005|1p=88|2a1=Pawel|2y=2014|2p=302}} At this point, farm-worker's rights took center stage in the state's political agenda.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=302}} Chavez met with Brown and together they developed a strategy: Brown would introduce a bill to improve farmworkers' rights, at which the UFW would support a more radical alternative. Brown would then negotiate a law with other stakeholders that included all the UFW's bottom lines.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=305–306}} The purpose of this law would be to guarantee farmworkers the right to a secret ballot in which they could decide which union, if any, should represent them in their negotiations with their employer.{{sfn|Bruns|2005|p=89}} Brown signed the [[California Agricultural Labor Relations Act]] (ALRA) into law in June 1975.{{sfnm|1a1=Bruns|1y=2005|1p=91|2a1=Pawel|2y=2014|2p=307}} This was widely seen as a UFW victory, as California now had the most favorable labor bill in the country.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=308}} Chavez nevertheless worried that it would kill the movement's spirit, stating that the cause would now lose "the essential fight of recognition, which is the one that appeals to the human mind and the heart", instead focusing on more prosaic issues such as wages and benefits.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=308}}