Photo: The funeral procession of
Nagi Daifullah, 1973 Photographer: Cris
Sanchez for the El Diario La PrensaLamont, California, August 1973 ―
For decades farm workers were considered as the most replaceable part of the
economy. They were not paid consummate to their labor; they lived in horrible
conditions and endured terrible brutality because they were migrants who spoke
little English and did not understand their rights.
This began to change in the 1960s
when Cesar Chavez of the National Farm Workers Association (FWA) brought the
members of his organization to join with the Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee who were mostly Filipino Americans. They struck against the vineyards
and table grape farmers on September 16, 1965.
The two groups vowed to remain
non-violent and slowly they gained support from the churches, local newspapers
and other labor groups. The public began to support them for 5 years of various
labor actions. What became known as The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott was one
of the first successful farmworkers advancements.
While this was effective, there
were 30 producers, who were growing 85 percent of the table grapes in the Central
Valley of California who signed a contract with the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters. Chavez regarded these as poor substitutes for the contract he had
worked out. In just a few short years another strike was seen as necessary. The
United Farm Workers (UFW) called for the strike in April. This strike though
immediately brought resentment and antagonism, and as the strike continued
through summer the strike became lethally violent.
At the beginning of August things
were extremely tense throughout California’s San Juaquin Valley. Three
sheriff’s offices had turned the Fresno County Fair Grounds exhibit halls into makeshift
holding cells. The three counties, Fresno, Kern and Tulare, had made 3,000
arrests of UFW picketers. This was controversial and many church leaders in the
community had gone on hunger strikes to protest. Kern County District Attorney
Albert Leddy also announced that his office would not be prosecuting some 500
strikers for misdemeanor contempt of court violations.
The tensions brought on by these
aspects of the strike led to buses of picketers being forced off roads and
windows shot out in the buses, some picketers vehicles and grape producers,
houses and vehicles. There were also reports of firebombing of the Kern County
Sheriff’s substation, a sheriff deputy’s truck, a farm laborers’ home and vineyards
foreman’s truck. On August 11 three men attempted to bomb an irrigation pump.
The three were arrested and the bomb never went off.
Into this pool of anger arrived another
immigrant group to fall under the crushing wheel of corporate farming. Since
the middle of the 1960s farmers from Yemen had been coming to the California.
Yemen then, as it is now, one of the poorest countries on Earth and these
immigrants were coming to grasp their piece of the American dream.
One of these Yemeni farmers soon become
one of the most important leaders of the Grape and Lettuce Boycott. The young
man, Nagi Daifallah, was a small man in physical stature being only five feet
tall and weighing one hundred pounds. Yet he was gifted and spoke three
languages, Arab, Spanish, and English. He was an interpreter, good communicator,
and a charismatic speaker. He had become a strike captain organizing the pickets
focusing on specific places and times for attention.
In the very early morning, 1:15
am, of August 15 Daifallah was meeting fellow strikers and outlining the day’s
activities when Kern County Sheriff Deputies approached after they had been
surveilling for days. These deputies began their violence before the organized
picketing began for the day. As the deputies started swinging their nightsticks
into the crowd of strikers Daifallah turned to run away, and deputy Gilbert
Cooper went after him. Cooper hit Daifallah with his heavy service flashlight,
14 inches long and heavy from 5 D-cell batteries.
This assault snapped Daifallah’s
spine from his head without breaking the skin. Daifallah collapsed and Cooper
and another deputy grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him across the Smokehouse
Café parking lot and across the street and threw him into a cruiser, over 60
feet.
The report the deputies filed,
and Cooper’s own was filled with lies. They stated that the strikers we drunk
and disorderly and the deputies were breaking up the mob when Cooper was hit by
a beer bottle in the eye, or cheek and so he had to run down someone half his
size and hit him.
Richard Gervais, the Kern County coroner,
reported that there was no way that the flashlight could have harmed Daifallah
as it hit his shoulder. Inexplicably he never explained how or why Daifallah collapsed
unconscious, as reported, from a blow to the shoulder.
Kern County DA Albert Leddy said
he had trouble believing that the deputy wasn’t responsible after reading the
coroner’s report and that he planned on bringing charges against Cooper and
other deputies for the killing of Daifallah. Leddy added that he had at least
20 witness statements of Cooper hitting the smaller man.
The threat by the DA forced the
coroner to hold an inquest with nine jurors. The two-day inquest had 20
witnesses, 13 of them UFW members, Deputy Cooper and the two other deputies, Dr.
Robert Raskind the neurosurgeon who tried to save Daifallah at the hospital and
Kern County pathologist Dr. Dominic Ambrossechia. Both doctors stated Daifallah
died from multiple traumatic head injuries, but they failed to explain why there
were no wounds or marks to the head that would result from such trauma.
In the end the jurors at the
inquest went against the evidence and stated that the death was accidental.
Chavez and other UFW immediately spoke out. Chavez said this was typical Kern
County justice. UFW Attorney Jerry Cohen said there was no way a jury free of
corruption could not see it as death at the hands of another.” The UFW began
trying to get the Justice Department to become involved.
Two days after his death, on
August 17th 10,000 picketers, United Farm Workers’ members, and
supporters marched four miles in silence to the memorial service for Daifallah
at the United Farm Workers’ headquarters.
That same day a laborer, 60-year-old
Juan de la Cruz was killed on the UFW picket line along the highway
between Arvin and Weedpatch, California. Near the end of the day a truck with scab
pickers came out of a field across the highway from the pickets. In the truck
someone began firing guns. de la Cruz reacted quickly pushing his wife down to
the ground. As he turned to see the truck de la Cruz was hit just below the
heart by a 22 shell.
Because of witnesses the truck law
enforcement was able to find the truck and make two arrests. Two Filipino farm
workers, Ernest Baclig and Bayani Advincula, were taken into custody. A week
later DA Albert Leddy dropped charges against Ernest Baclig, stating he had
just been driving from the field.
The case against Bayani Advincula
for the shooting death of Juan de la Cruz became a long twisting road through
the American judicial system. His trial was delayed twice then the charges were
appealed by his defense. In early 1974 Advincula had his charges reduced to
manslaughter by judge P.R. Borton. D.A. Leddy appealed this to the Fifth
District Court, which reinstated the murder charges. This back and forth went
on until the summer of 1976. By this time the prosecution’s primary witness driver
Ernest Baclig had been killed in an unrelated car accident. Finally on July 21,
1976, Advincula was found innocent of all charges.
During this violent month of August 1973 UFW leader Caesar Chavez nearly had close personal losses as well. On August 15 in Tulare County his son Fernando was shot at as he was picking up picketers. Fernando escaped unhurt from the incident. Then on August 20th in Bakersfield California Chavez’s close associate and UFW second in command Ray Olivas had the windshield shot out of his car, Olivas and his wife were unhurt.
All the violence worked to end the strike. On August 20th Chavez and the UFW executive board agreed to suspend the pickets and work stoppage against the polling of his membership. Chavez spoke at Juan de la Cruz’s services about his belief they would still win. “The force that is generated by that spirit of love is more powerful than any force on earth. It cannot be stopped,” he said. “We live in the midst of people who hate and fear us. They have worked hard to keep us in our place. They will spend millions more to destroy our Union. But we do not have to make ourselves small by hating and fearing them in return. There is enough love and goodwill in our movement to give energy to our struggle, and still have plenty left over, to break down and change the climate of hate and fear around us.”
Although it took two years Chavez
was right, the union did win. After the strike ended, the union changed its
tactic to boycott the produce and union staff and volunteers spread out across the
country, organizing popular support for the boycotting of table grapes, lettuce
and Gallo wine.
The boycotts had an incredible impact,
polls showed that by 1975 there were 17 million Americans boycotting table
grapes, lettuce and Gallo Wines. This, along with pressure from supermarket chains,
forced growers to negotiate for a new contract. Then in 1975 a one-of-a-kind state
law guaranteeing California farm workers the right to organize, vote in
state-supervised secret-ballot elections and bargain with their employers wins
passage. This remains the only state law of its kind 50 years later.
Sources:
https://farmworkermovement-csun.org/juan-de-la-cruz-funeral/
https://ufw.org/research/history/ufw-chronology/
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