Editing Cesar Chavez (section)

===Growing schisms: 1978–1982===
[[File:Cesar Chavez 40913a.tif|thumb|A photograph of Chavez taken in 1979]]

In June 1978, Chavez joined a picket in Yuma as part of his cousin Manuel's Arizona melon strike. This broke an injunction and Chavez was thrown into the county jail for a night.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=390}} By 1978, there was growing anger at the UFW among vegetable workers; they were frustrated by its incompetency, especially in the running of its medical plan.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=401}} In the 22 farmworker elections that took place between June and September 1978, the UFW lost two-thirds.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=402}} To stop the loss of its contracts and members, Chavez launched his Plan de Flote, an initiative to regain the trust of the vegetable pickers.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=402–403}} Chavez organized a new strike over wages, hoping that salary increases would stem the UFW's losses; the union made its wage demands in January 1979, days after its contracts had expired.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=403}} Eleven lettuce growers in the Salinas and Imperial Valleys were included in the strike,{{sfn|Bruns|2005|p=101}} which caused lettuce prices to soar.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=404}}

During the strike, the picketers trespassed on the [[Mario Saikhon]] company fields and attempted to drive away those still working. The foreman and other employees opened fire and one picketer, Rufino Contreras, was killed.{{sfnm|1a1=Bruns|1y=2005|1p=102|2a1=Pawel|2y=2014|2pp=404–405}} Chavez urged the strikers not to resort to violence and with Contreras' father led a three-mile candlelit funerary procession, attended by 7000 people.{{sfnm|1a1=Bruns|1y=2005|1p=102|2a1=Pawel|2y=2014|2p=405}} In June, Ganz and other strike organizers planned a show of strength whereby strikers rushed onto the Salinas field to cause disruption. This generated violent clashes; several people sustained stab wounds and 75 were arrested.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=409}} Vegetable growers accused Chavez of [[terrorism]] over the incident;{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=410}} Chavez criticized Ganz for organizing this without his approval.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=409}} He then led a 12-day march from San Francisco to San Jose, beginning a fast on the sixth day.{{sfnm|1a1=Bruns|1y=2005|1p=102|2a1=Pawel|2y=2014|2p=411}} Arriving in Salinas, he met with strike leaders at a UFW convention. He argued that the strike was proving too costly for the UFW—it cost the union between $300,000 and $400,000 a month—and that they should end the strike and switch to a boycott campaign. The strike leaders rejected these suggestions.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=405, 411–412}} To end the strike, in August and September, several growers signed contracts with the UFW but many held out and the union was broke.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=413–415}} Chavez continued arguing for a boycott, suggesting that the union could use alcoholics from the cities to run the boycott campaign, an idea most of the executive board rejected.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=414–415}}

Under the new contracts, the growers agreed to pay for paid workers' representatives whose job it would be to ensure a smooth relationship between the growers and the UFW. Chavez brought these paid representatives to La Paz for a five-day training session in May 1980.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=416}} Ganz, who was becoming increasingly distant from Chavez, helped tutor them.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=418}} Chavez called all staff to a meeting at La Paz in May 1981, where he again insisted that the UFW was being infiltrated by spies seeking to undermine it and overthrow him.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=425}} He arranged for more of his loyalists to be put on the executive board, which now had no farmworkers sitting on it.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=425}} At the UFW's Fresno convention in September 1981, the paid representatives nominated some of their own choices, rather than Chavez's, to go on the board.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=425–426}} Chavez's supporters responded with leaflets claiming that the paid representatives were puppets of "the two Jews", Ganz and Cohen, who were trying to undermine the union.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=426}} This brought allegations of [[antisemitism]] against Chavez.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=427}} Seeking to undermine the paid representatives, Chavez proposed a measure that if 8% of workers at a ranch signed a petition, the representatives of that ranch would be obliged to vote for Chavez's chosen candidates. The measure passed.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=426}}

{{Quote box
| quote = Now we come to this 1981 convention facing yet another assault on our beloved union. An assault even more menacing than the past conventions. More menacing because it is clandestinely organized by those forces whose every wish and desire is our destruction. Obstruction by those evil forces visible and invisible who work at every chance to destroy us—the growers, the teamsters, disaffected former staff, scoundrels, and God knows who, some unwittingly trying to each the same goal—that is to bury our beloved union.
| source=— Chavez at the 1981 convention{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=426}}
| align = left
| width = 25em
}}

By October, all of those who had opposed Chavez's choices at the convention had been fired.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=427}} They responded by launching a fast in protest outside the UFW's Salinas office.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=429}} Nine of them then sued Chavez in a federal court, claiming that he had no right to fire them from positions that they had been elected to represent by their peers in the fields.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=429}} Chavez responded with a counter-suit, suing them for libel and slander.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=430}} He acknowledged to a reporter that in doing so, he was trying to intimidate the protester's lawyer, something which brought negative publicity for the UFW.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=430}} One of the protesters, [[Chava Bustamante]], got work with the [[California Rural Legal Assistance]] group, at which the UFW began picketing their offices, trying to get Bustamante fired.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=430–431}} In court, Chavez denied that the paid representatives were ever elected, alleging that they were appointed by him personally, but produced no evidence to support this claim. The [[United States federal judge|US District Court Judge]] [[William Austin Ingram|William Ingram]] rejected Chavez's argument, ruling that the sacking of the paid representatives had been unlawful.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=434–435}} The UFW appealed the ruling, which dragged out for years, until the paid representatives ran out of funds to continue.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=435}}

Opposition to Chavez's hostility to illegal migrants led senior UFW members in Texas and Arizona to break from the union and form their own groups, such as the [[Texas Farm Workers Union]] and the [[Maricopa County Organizing Project]].{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=419}} Chavez and his cousin Manuel went to Texas to try and rally opposition to the schism.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=419}} Manuel also went to Arizona, where he introduced a range of measures to undermine the new group.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=420}} This led to the investigative journalist [[Tom Barry (journalist)|Tom Barry]] looking into Manuel's activities. It was revealed that under a pseudonym he had become a melon grower in Mexico, and that he was initiating strikes among U.S. melon pickers as a means of improving the market for his own produce.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=420–421}} The UFW's reputation was further damaged after the magazine ''[[Reason (magazine)|Reason]]'' exposed that the union had improperly spent nearly $1 million in federal funds. Federal and national investigations followed, confirming these allegations.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=431–432}} The government asked the UFW to return over $250,000 in funds while the [[Internal Revenue Service]] ruled that the union owed $390,000 in back social security and federal unemployment taxes.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=433}}

In 1982, the UFW held a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of its first convention at San Jose.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=436}} It was in October that year that Chavez's father died, with the funeral being held in San Jose.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=437}} Chavez was also involving himself in a broader range of leftist events. He co-chaired [[Tom Hayden]] and [[Jane Fonda]]'s fund-raising dinner for their [[Campaign for Economic Democracy]].{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=436}} In the summer of 1982 he also appeared at [[Peace Sunday]], an anti-nuclear event.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=436}} The UFW had established itself as one of the largest political donors in California.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|p=444}} Its political donations were often concealed from the public, funneled through intermediary committees.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=444–445}} It donated thousands of dollars to [[Howard Berman]]'s campaign to unseat [[Leo McCarthy]] as the Speaker of the [[California State Assembly]] because of McCarthy's role in defeating Proposition 14. Many Democrats feared that Berman would be beholden to Chavez and so backed [[Willie Brown (politician)|Willie Brown]], who won.{{sfn|Pawel|2014|pp=433–434}} The UFW subsequently also donated to Willie Brown.{{sfnm|1a1=Bruns|1y=2005|1p=108|2a1=Pawel|2y=2014|2p=444}}