When I ask my students who comes to mind when they think about immigrants’ rights, they inevitably bring up Cesar Chavez. After all, he founded the United Farm Workers union, a central force behind the farmworker movement of the 1960s and 70s in central California. The union proudly claims to be led by “longtime champions of immigration reform.”
This vague phrasing highlights the UFW’s complex historical relationship with undocumented workers. While today the union represents all farm laborers regardless of immigration status — and lobbies for comprehensive immigration reform — its legacy on the matter is painful and complicated.
At a time when few in the United States took seriously the rights of the undocumented, Corona worked to empower immigrants in cities too, especially but not only in California.
In fact, for a time, Chavez and his union led a brutal and violent campaign against the undocumented. And while Chavez is an admirable figure in many ways, if we want to deepen the fight for the rights of undocumented immigrants, I tell my students to look to the legacy of Humberto “Bert” Corona instead, the man largely responsible for shifting the UFW’s stance.
Corona died in 2001, leaving behind a legacy of immigrants’ rights activism spanning half a century — his entire adult life. It’s a shame that so few know of his story or its lessons.
In the late 1960s, the farmworkers union had made tremendous strides, gaining some two hundred contracts representing 70,000 people. But over the course of a few years, the movement lost its way.
While the causes remain a matter of debate, what’s clear is Chavez began to turn his focus sharply on the undocumented, whom he viewed as the cause of the union’s struggles. In 1973, the union even set up its own “wet line,” a private border vigilante corps led by Chavez’s cousin Manuel, which turned over immigrants to the Border Patrol and at times resorted to violence against border crossers.
Corona worked to find a different, more humane solution. As a longtime immigrants’ rights and labor activist, he believed that immigration did not have to be a zero-sum game for organized labor. The fight in the fields did not have to be one that pitted native-born laborers against the undocumented.
He believed that fighting for the undocumented could lead to victories — rather than defeats — in the fields. And Corona was not alone in his appeals; many others saw the problems with Chavez’s philosophy and approach. But Corona was the savviest.
He did not attack Chavez, as some others did. Rather, he offered empathy, telling him that he understood the gravity of the problem while offering solutions, showing him how undocumented immigrants could be turned into valuable union allies or even members themselves.
But Corona’s efforts went well beyond the fields. At a time when few in the United States took seriously the rights of the undocumented, Corona worked to empower immigrants in cities too, especially but not only in California.
He also led an important hearts-and-minds campaign, crafting and articulating his vision for an Immigrants’ Bill of Rights, which asserted the rights of these workers to adjustment of status, to labor protections, and to human rights.
Corona connected the struggles of those south of the border to those north of it. And he pushed for both social and political change on their behalf, believing that the emancipation of the Chicano people could not be accomplished without that of their undocumented peers.
He was instrumental to the growth of a pro-immigrant consciousness among brown Americans and to the monumental shift in organized labor’s stance on the undocumented, which today is much more receptive toward their struggle, a position that’s often taken for granted.
Corona, then, offers a better role model for activists, students, and organizers than Chavez, at least on immigration.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.