Geodog

The fight in the fields

Tonight, we watched one of my all-time favorite movies, Brother from Another Planet, by the great John Sayles. While rewinding the video, I stumbled across the movieThe Fight in the Fields, Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers' Movement playing on PBS. I stayed up watching it much later than I intended to, plus being me, after it was over I got on the web to find out more about the movie, the companion book Cesar Chavez, farmworkers, and the United Farmworkers Union.

What a moving story on so many levels! While it isn't clear to me how successful the UFW has been as a union, I imagine that victories like getting Porta-Johns in the fields and getting el cortito, the short hoe, banned from the fields, have made a significant difference for farmworkers' lives. And although there is evidence conditions in America's fields haven't changed that much since Ed Murrow's classic documentary 40 years ago, Harvest of Shame, life for many of the people depicted in the film clearly has. Like the union movement in general, which gave us such innovations as the weekend, through the experience of forming the UFW, many people who had been on the outside of society found dignity, self-respect, and recognition from the rest of American society. It also gave a lot of Mexican-Americans their first experience in speaking up in public, in organizing, and in politics. The Farmworkers' struggle sparked the rise of Latino political power in California. Given that 7 out of every 10 children born in California today is born to Latino-American parents, and that Republicans went out of their way to offend Latino-Americans in the 1980's and 1990's, I imagine that the children of the first wave of organizing will be the Democratic leaders of our state in the first half of the 21st century.

The Fight in the Fields is a very well done movie, that tells a very important story in the history of California and of the US. See the trailer (quicktime). Recommended.