The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez

The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez
Author: Luis D. Leon
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2014-11-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520959485

The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders maps and challenges many of the mythologies that surround the late iconic labor leader. Focusing on Chavez's own writings, León argues that La Causa can be fruitfully understood as a quasi-religious movement based on Chavez’s charismatic leadership, which he modeled after Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. Chavez recognized that spiritual prophecy, or political spirituality, was the key to disrupting centuries-old dehumanizing narratives that conflated religion with race. Chavez’s body became emblematic for Chicano identity and enfleshed a living revolution. While there is much debate and truth-seeking around how he is remembered, through investigating the leader’s construction of his own public memory, the author probes the meaning of the discrepancies. By refocusing Chavez's life and beliefs into three broad movements—mythology, prophecy, and religion—León brings us a moral and spiritual agent to match the political leader.

The Gospel of César Chávez

The Gospel of César Chávez
Author: Mario T. García
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2007
Genre: Latin America
ISBN: 1580512232

Best known as the leader of the farm workers' struggle and of the Latino civil rights movement, Chávez, like Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, was a deeply religious figure whose faith and spirituality guided his public life. The Gospel of César Chávez uses the prolific leader's own words to bring attention to his profound faith and the way this faith shaped his leadership.

The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

The Crusades of Cesar Chavez
Author: Miriam Pawel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2014-03-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 160819714X

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Winner of the California Book Award A searching portrait of an iconic figure long shrouded in myth by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of an acclaimed history of Chavez's movement. Cesar Chavez founded a labor union, launched a movement, and inspired a generation. He rose from migrant worker to national icon, becoming one of the great charismatic leaders of the 20th century. Two decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino leader in US history. Yet his life story has been told only in hagiography-until now. In the first comprehensive biography of Chavez, Miriam Pawel offers a searching yet empathetic portrayal. Chavez emerges here as a visionary figure with tragic flaws; a brilliant strategist who sometimes stumbled; and a canny, streetwise organizer whose pragmatism was often at odds with his elusive, soaring dreams. He was an experimental thinker with eclectic passions-an avid, self-educated historian and a disciple of Gandhian non-violent protest. Drawing on thousands of documents and scores of interviews, this superbly written life deepens our understanding of one of Chavez's most salient qualities: his profound humanity. Pawel traces Chavez's remarkable career as he conceived strategies that empowered the poor and vanquished California's powerful agriculture industry, and his later shift from inspirational leadership to a cult of personality, with tragic consequences for the union he had built. The Crusades of Cesar Chavez reveals how this most unlikely American hero ignited one of the great social movements of our time.

Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez
Author: Jacques E. Levy
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2013-11-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1452913544

Mexican-American civil rights and labor activist Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) comes to life in this vivid portrait of the charismatic and influential fighter who boycotted supermarkets and took on corporations, the government, and the powerful Teamsters Union. Jacques E. Levy gained unprecedented access to Chavez and the United Farm Workers in writing this account of one of the most successful labor movements in history-which also serves as a guidebook for social and political change.

The Rhetorical Career of Cesar Chavez

The Rhetorical Career of Cesar Chavez
Author: John C. Hammerback
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2003-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781585443024

Although born into one of the least powerful segments of American society, César Chávez led the farm-labor movement to unprecedented heights. His powerful effect on audiences is well known, but award-winning scholars John C. Hammerback and Richard J. Jensen offer the first explanation of how Chávez achieved that effect. Although other studies of Chávez exist, none has examined so thoroughly his rhetoric nor analyzed in depth such a large number of Chávez's own texts--scores of which have previously been unstudied. Chávez was an indefatigable speaker, writer, and non-discursive communicator who developed a well-thought-out approach to his rhetorical discourse and placed his speaking and writing at the very center of his career. By merging thought and character in his themes, arguments, and explanations, and in his first and second personae, Chávez was able to identify with the character of his listeners. That identification induced many audience members to support Chávez's agenda for union activism. The authors have developed a model "to help explain Chávez's startling transformation of some audiences and persuasion of others." Hammerback and Jensen reveal that Chávez's world view motivated him to work tirelessly and directed him to the particular rhetorical qualities and techniques that characterized his discourse. The authors also demonstrate Chávez's surprising effectiveness as a rhetor despite his soft-spoken style, uncharacteristic of most powerful orators.

Mexican American Religions

Mexican American Religions
Author: Gastón Espinosa
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2008-07-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0822388952

This collection presents a rich, multidisciplinary inquiry into the role of religion in the Mexican American community. Breaking new ground by analyzing the influence of religion on Mexican American literature, art, activism, and popular culture, it makes the case for the establishment of Mexican American religious studies as a distinct, recognized field of scholarly inquiry. Scholars of religion, Latin American, and Chicano/a studies as well as of sociology, anthropology, and literary and performance studies, address several broad themes. Taking on questions of history and interpretation, they examine the origins of Mexican American religious studies and Mario Barrera’s theory of internal colonialism. In discussions of the utopian community founded by the preacher and activist Reies López Tijerina, César Chávez’s faith-based activism, and the Los Angeles-based Católicos Por La Raza movement of the late 1960s, other contributors focus on mystics and prophets. Still others illuminate popular Catholicism by looking at Our Lady of Guadalupe, home altars, and Los Pastores dramas (nativity plays) as vehicles for personal, social, and political empowerment. Turning to literature, contributors consider Gloria Anzaldúa’s view of the borderlands as a mystic vision and the ways that Chicana writers invoke religious symbols and rhetoric to articulate a moral vision highlighting social injustice. They investigate the role of healing, looking at it in relation to both the Latino Pentecostal movement and the practice of the curanderismo tradition in East Los Angeles. Delving into to popular culture, they reflect on Luis Valdez’s video drama La Pastorela: “The Shepherds’ Play,” the spirituality of Chicana art, and the religious overtones of the reverence for the slain Tejana music star Selena. This volume signals the vibrancy and diversity of the practices, arts, traditions, and spiritualities that reflect and inform Mexican American religion. Contributors: Rudy V. Busto, Davíd Carrasco, Socorro Castañeda-Liles, Gastón Espinosa, Richard R. Flores, Mario T. García, María Herrera-Sobek, Luís D. León, Ellen McCracken, Stephen R. Lloyd-Moffett, Laura E. Pérez, Roberto Lint Saragena, Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, Kay Turner

César Chávez

César Chávez
Author: Richard Griswold del Castillo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 206
Release: 1995
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780806127583

This biography of Chavez by Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard A. Garcia is the first to approach Chavez's life - his courageous acts, his turning points, his many perceived personas - in the context of Chicano and American history. It reveals a shy, quiet man who was launched by events into a maelstrom of campesino strikes, religious fervor, and nonviolent battles for justice. Among his friends and supporters he counted Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and millions across America who rallied to his cause. In Griswold del Castillo and Garcia's biography, Chavez's life mirrors major events in Mexican American history: Mexican immigration during the 1920s; forced repatriation in the 1930s; segregation in public schools; Mexican American contributions during World War II; the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles; formation of Mexican American organizations to advance civil and political rights; the Chicano movement of the 1960s and early 1970s; the emergence of a conservative political backlash in the 1980s; and, finally, the "new immigration" in the 1990s. Cesar Chavez was touched by all these events, and his story is both private and part of a collective experience.

Beyond the Fields

Beyond the Fields
Author: Randy Shaw
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2008-11-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520942240

Cesar Chavez is the most prominent Latino in United States history books, and much has been written about Chavez and the United Farm Worker's heyday in the 1960s and '70s. But left untold has been their ongoing impact on 21st century social justice movements. Beyond the Fields unearths this legacy, and describes how Chavez and the UFW's imprint can be found in the modern reshaping of the American labor movement, the building of Latino political power, the transformation of Los Angeles and California politics, the fight for environmental justice, and the burgeoning national movement for immigrant rights. Many of the ideas, tactics, and strategies that Chavez and the UFW initiated or revived—including the boycott, the fast, clergy-labor partnerships and door-to-door voter outreach—are now so commonplace that their roots in the farmworkers' movement is forgotten. This powerful book also describes how the UFW became the era's leading incubator of young activist talent, creating a generation of skilled alumni who went on to play critical roles in progressive campaigns. UFW volunteers and staff were dedicated to furthering economic justice, and many devoted their post-UFW lives working for social change. When Barack Obama adopted "Yes We Can" as his 2008 campaign theme, he confirmed that the spirit of "Si Se Puede" has never been stronger, and that it still provides the clearest roadmap for achieving greater social and economic justice in the United States.

Encyclopedia of Cesar Chavez

Encyclopedia of Cesar Chavez
Author: Roger Bruns
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2013-04-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1440803811

This book is a unique, single-volume treatment offering original source material on the life, accomplishments, disappointments, and lasting legacy of one of American history's most celebrated social reformers—Cesar Chavez. Two decades after Cesar Chavez's death, this timely book chronicles the drive for a union of one of American society's most exploited groups—farm workers. Encyclopedia of Cesar Chavez is a valuable one-volume source based on the most recent research and available documentation. Historian Roger Bruns documents how Chavez and his United Farm Workers (UFW), against formidable odds, organized farm laborers into a force that for the first time successfully took on the might of California's agribusiness interests to achieve greater wages and better working conditions. Set against the backdrop of the 1960s, a time of assassinations, war protests, civil rights battles, and reform efforts for poor and minority citizens, the approximately 100 entries in this encyclopedia provide a glimpse into the events, organizations, men and women, and recurring themes that impacted the life of Cesar Chavez. It also contains a section of primary documentation—useful not only to enhance the understanding of this social and political movement, but also as source material for students.

César Chávez

César Chávez
Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2010-02-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Labor leader, social justice advocate, Chicano leader, and humanitarian are only some of the multifaceted renderings of César Chávez. Ilan Stavans has compiled essays and first-person narratives that capture the multiple dimensions of this storied figure. To that end, Stavans's collection of timely articles separates fact from fiction, or as he puts it the "objective is the opposite of hagiography." Broken into two sections, César Chávez explores a variety of topics central to understanding the actual person instead of a shadowy apparition. The first part, "Considerations" offers critical assessments of Chávez's life that utilize different approaches to understanding his life, including cultural studies critiques, historical narrative that provide invaluable context, and even eulogies following his untimely death. The second section, "Voices" includes personal reflections on Chávez's life that explore his religiosity, his role as an "everyman," and the decline of the United Farm Workers union. The title is certain to assist readers in better comprehending this groundbreaking labor leader.