June 12, 2013

Cesar Chavez movie: La Raza instead of La Causa

In 1969, St. Cesar Chavez led a giant protest march against illegal immigrants, because they drove down wages for member of his United Farm Workers. Fellow marchers included Sen. Walter Mondale and Rev. Ralph Abernethy, Martin Luther King's successor at the famous SCLC (not SPLC). He also had his brother lead a goon squad of UFW staffers who beat up illegal alien scabs. 

Why? Because Chavez understood the law of supply and demand. And, before he went crazy later in life and stopped being an effective union leader, he specifically chose La Causa over La Raza.

From the NYT:
Cesar Chavez Film to Avoid Immigration Debate

By MICHAEL CIEPLY 
But this time is different. 
Participant and its partners are getting ready to offer a Latino hero in their still-unfinished movie “Chavez,” about Cesar Chavez and his struggle to unionize farmworkers. But they are largely avoiding the overriding Latino issue of the moment — immigration reform. 
Mr. Chavez, perhaps the best-known Mexican-American activist, fought for better wages and conditions for workers but held complex and evolving views on the status of unauthorized immigrants, some of which would be at odds with the changes many Hispanics and others are seeking today. 
That has created a challenge for Participant, which is usually eager to have its films become talking points in a national debate. 
That debate has intensified this week as the Senate has begun a three-week push toward immigration reform, which might include offering a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants living and working in the United States and expanding legal entry to the country for some workers. Some of the proposals could soon become law, or be swept into the maelstrom of midterm Congressional elections next year. 
Either way, Participant and its partners, including Pantelion Pictures, a joint venture between the Lionsgate entertainment company and the Mexican media giant Televisa, are mostly staying outside the fray. At a meeting two weeks ago, the film’s backers began laying plans to sell the movie as a tale of American values and social justice, without much reference to the thorny issues now in the spotlight.
“It’s an American story, and that’s the way we’re treating it,” said Paul Presburger, Pantelion’s chief executive. 
While no release date has been set, the movie is expected to open next year around March 31, Mr. Chavez’s birthday, which several states, including California, will observe — and when backers hope the possible declaration of national holiday in his honor will give the film a point of entry. 
The producers’ aim, Mr. Presburger said, is to make the country’s large and vibrant Hispanic audience — which accounts for about 26 percent of domestic ticket sales, outstripping the 17 percent Hispanic share of the North American population — the core support for a more broadly based hit. 
Immigration issues, noted Jonathan King, a Participant executive who is closely involved with “Chavez,” do not directly figure in the film, which instead focuses on Mr. Chavez’s leadership of a strike and grape boycott that began in 1965 and lasted five years. 

Immigration issues are what made Chavez's 1965 strike and grape boycott feasible -- specifically, the ending of the bracero guest worker program in 1964.
“That’s apart from this story,” Mr. King said of the immigration issues. “This story is about the boycott.” 
Born 86 years ago in Yuma, Ariz., Mr. Chavez fiercely opposed the Bracero Program, which until the mid-1960s allowed growers to import cheap seasonal labor. This practice undercut efforts by the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers union), which Mr. Chavez co-founded, to improve wages and working conditions. 
Under Mr. Chavez, the union, in its fight against strikebreakers, sometimes reported undocumented immigrants to officials, and only in the early 1970s, according to a spokesman for the Cesar Chavez Foundation, dropped its support for legal sanctions against employers who hired workers without legal status in the United States. In 1986, however, Mr. Chavez became a backer of the Reagan-era immigration reform, including its amnesty provisions. 

Did Chavez favor the corruption that led to growers getting the other half of the deal -- workplace enforcement -- turned into a dead letter? He was pretty loony by then, so I don't know?
Mr. Chavez’s changing posture toward unauthorized immigrants has led to a contemporary debate over whether he would have approved current reform proposals. 
Ruben Navarrette Jr., a columnist who has publicly argued that Mr. Chavez would have opposed contemporary reform proposals, reiterated that belief in a recent e-mail. “The deal breaker would be the guest worker program, where maybe another 200,000 guest workers would be imported and not allowed to join the union or not able to join in any practical way because they’d be temporary,” Mr. Navarrette wrote. 
Arturo S. Rodriguez, the U.F.W.’s president, and a son-in-law of Mr. Chavez, has spoken in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, and helped advise lawmakers in shaping legislative proposals. He argues that Mr. Chavez, who died in 1993, would do the same, though in his day a much smaller percentage of field workers came from abroad. 
“We have no doubt Cesar would have enthusiastically supported immigration reform today because he did so before,” Mr. Rodriguez said in an e-mail. Advocates of the new reform measure invoked Mr. Chavez, at least indirectly, when a version of the measure was approved by the Senate judiciary committee last month. “¡Sí se puede!” they chanted in the committee hearing room, echoing a slogan — roughly, “Yes, we can!” — that was a signature phrase of Mr. Chavez’s union movement. ...

What proportion of NYT subscribers do you think will utterly miss the point of this article, will take away the message: "There go those cowardly Hollywood rightwingers failing to show that Cesar Chavez was a great activist for more immigration just because they are terrified of the power of anti-immigrant racists like Karl Rove"?

I'd love to do social science experiments in which college students read New York Times articles that try to get across a subversive point in an understated manner and see what percentage of them actually get the point. I bet it's not high.

The movie sounds like it's going to be a waste of its star Michael Pena's sense of humor. It will probably be a dud, and then nobody will ever make the film Pena was born to star in: "The Lee Trevino Story."

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

This much is true. If he were alive today, he would be for amnesty.

Anonymous said...

One reason for the shift - in 50s / 60s America, when the USG was 25% of GDP vs. as much as 50% today, the laws of Supply&Demand had a greater impact on quality of life than the laws of Voting&Lobbying.

Anonymous said...

He also had his brother lead a good squad of UFW staffers who beat up illegal alien scabs.

Good squad or goon squad? Freudian slip?

B.B.

Anonymous said...

"Vibrant"!

Can someone pull Mr. Cieply aside and ask him what the hell exactly he means by that? At least the "Dream" cliche is explainable.

Anonymous said...

So would Barbara Jordan. But that won't stop Steve. Nor should it. Of course no one here gives him half the crap they give the tea party for liking Allan West.

Anonymous said...

On cinema tickets have you ever read that The Fast and the Furious series was designed to appeal to La Raza motorheads?

Anonymous said...

Love in the 21st century.

Anonymous said...

Interestingly, Afro-Americans have have also been cool toward immigration since their emancipation in the Civil War. In the Roaring Twenties when restrictive immigration was enacted, many black civil rights activists supported legislation to sharply curtail immigration. They viewed the immigrants from southern and eastern Europe as the white man's attempt to avoid hiring blacks to fill the newly opened manufacturing jobs. They may have been right. Here in Arizona many building contractors hired illegal Mexicans because they didn't want to hire blacks. I used to hear them say that blacks were lazier than Mexicans and would demand higher salaries than what Mexicans were willing to accept.

Anonymous said...

http://www.npr.org/2013/06/12/190743651/bob-dylans-tribute-to-medgar-evers-took-on-the-big-picture

Template or Trayvon.

No song for Knoxville horror victims. Not even from country singers.

Anonymous said...

I've seen an early treatment for The Lee Trevino Story, the opening scene where young Lee swims across the Rio Grande with a bag of golf clubs strapped to his back while white racists Border Gestapo (They're hoping to get Leonardo DiCaprio and Chris Waltz) rain down heavy machinegun fire on his family is pretty stirring. They are updating it a little: looking at Morgan Freeman to play Jack Nicklaus and Samuel L. Jackson as Gary Player. In the coda scene Lee marries Rosa Parks at Augusta National.

Unknown said...

Among the victims of massive immigration are African-Americans. Prior to restrictive immigration legislation in the Roaring Twenties many emerging manufacturers preferred hiring Polish and Italian immigrants to hiring blacks. In the seventies and eighties many building contractors preferred hiring Mexicans to hiring blacks for construction projects. Does anyone believe that blacks will come out ahead once the H1B visa program is expanded? No, the hi-tech companies will just give those high-paying jobs to people from South Asia, and blacks will get screwed again.

Heil Hizzle Mein NIzzle said...

Steve-

Anne Coulter just name-checked you in her most recent "Daily Caller" article. You're usually like Voldemort (even to mainstream conservatives) but she actually said your name.

Anonymous said...

Historical revisionism is at work here.

Anonymous said...

To Anonymous at 5:43 PM,

What "vibrant" means to me is to make sure I get out of that area before it gets dark.

Whiskey said...

Blacks are not victims in mass open borders immigration. Just more voters to extract money from Whitey!

Its win-win. More Obamaphones, more gas money, more mortgage money, from Obama's stash.

The whole point of Black/Hispanic/Elite politics is to overwhelm Whitey with numbers and force him into tax slavery. To put it bluntly.

About 48% of Detroit adults are illiterate. Does anyone think most of the Black underclass is employable? Even capable of pushing a broom? The Black middle class is just make-work AA placeholders, where real work is done elsewhere and damage fixed. The Philly disaster (Black crane operator high as he could be on weed) is a good example of the Black workforce. There are a few exceptions. But not in the mass of the population.

So ... get Whitey.

gonna get you sucka said...

"Higher pay for low-skill labor" doesn't resonate as strongly with the African American community as "Fuck Whitey" does.

Dr Van Nostrand said...


Mr. Chavez, perhaps the best-known Mexican-American activist, fought for better wages and conditions for workers but held complex and evolving views on the status of unauthorized immigrants, some of which would be at odds with the changes many Hispanics and others are seeking today. "


Love the weasel words "complex" and "evolving" views. It is complex only to the idiot writer. And "evolving" is implicit libel as the writer is imposing his views on what Mr Chavez shouldve been vs what he was.

Chavez views are very simple- as Steve pointed. He didnt want more (illegal)workers to drive down the wages of his workers. Even if the illegal workers were of the same ethnic group as he.
This is apparently "complex"

Anonymous said...

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/4956/full

Auntie Analogue said...


I'll pass on this Chavez flick. I already get more than enough hispano-shadows-vibrant-dream (& plenty of other immigrant) puff pieces from PBS, the network that guilt trips White Americans and promotes illegal invasion-colonization.

Anonymous said...

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/5016/full

Elliott Abrams is a jerk who won't go away.

Anonymous said...

http://www.edwestonline.com/?p=93#more-93

If you dont have chillun, you is a chile.

Anonymous said...

Profile of the world's third richest man, and the richest who didn't get that way through a questionable monopoly.

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/08/zara-amancio-ortega/

Anonymous said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2340700/Video-half-naked-female-Israeli-soldiers-pole-dancing-rifle-emerge-days-racy-pictures-women-recruits-posing-weapons-underwear.html

sexual harassment or her-ass-ment.

Anonymous said...

http://youtu.be/bQwOoz6gcwc

Pat Buchanan on amnesty on the Laura Ingraham show

Anonymous said...

White people being wiped from the face of the Earth is a "complex" issue.

In fact, our dying is just a form of "evolving".

And everyone knows, if you don't believe in evolution, you're some kind of backwards, backwoods, toothless, three-toed, sister-shtupping, bible-thumping redneck Nazi monster!

Anononymous said...

http://www.nationalcenter.org
Joe R. Hicks ... will testify before Congress ... opposition to spending public funds honoring the late United Farm Workers union organizer. ... In 1976, Hicks spent time in the then-Soviet Union and was a member of the Communist Party USA. Hicks was in the company of Chavez on several occasions, interacted with his organizers on a routine basis and trained UFW activists in "revolutionary theory" classes.

Anononymous said...

Barack Obama, Cesar Chavez and Their Common Communist Roots

Hunsdon said...

Man, Elliot Abrams is the gift that just keeps on giving, isn't he?

Those who argue for intervention in Syria do not do so primarily because we favour free elections there, but precisely because we thought it in America's interests to bring down a key part of Iran's and Hezbollah's defence perimeter, and because we feared the growing arrival of jihadis in Syria to fight what they viewed as Sunni battles. (edited for space not meaning)

Hunsdon said: The "growing arrival of jihadis in Syria" are the "anti government elements" or "rebels" that Elliot is so eager to support. If al Assad had his way, the jihadis would be an integral component of a parking lot somewhere.

Hey, I didn't bring him up this time.

Rohan Swee said...

And everyone knows, if you don't believe in evolution, you're some kind of backwards, backwoods, toothless, three-toed, sister-shtupping, bible-thumping redneck Nazi monster!

Nonetheless, I say credit where credit is due to our bible-thumpin' fundie amigos:

King responded to the petition in a written statement.

“I have said before, and I will say again that Rector’s work is unassailable,” he said. “Nothing in this petition, or anything I’ve heard otherwise, discredits his meticulous and empirical data.

“I encourage all 1,200 signers of the petition [gathered by Coalition of Clueless Upper Midwestern Do-Gooders] to sit down and read all 102 pages of the Rector study. It is, after all, the only available academic assessment of the costs of amnesty.”


(And credit to the small-town newspaper for linking the study.)

Detecting Projection said...

I'd love to do social science experiments in which college students read iSteve articles that try to get across a subversive point in an understated manner and see what percentage of them actually get the point. I bet it's not high.

Dr Van Nostrand said...


Blacks are not victims in mass open borders immigration. Just more voters to extract money from Whitey!

Its win-win. More Obamaphones, more gas money, more mortgage money, from Obama's stash.

The whole point of Black/Hispanic/Elite politics is to overwhelm Whitey with numbers and force him into tax slavery. To put it bluntly."

DVN:To put it stupidly maybe more like it.

Look you can (well you do) assume the absolute worst about blacks that they put hatred of whitey above their rational self interest.
Could be that blacks have the same problem with their elites that whites do with theirs-neither represents their best interests.

Blacks sure do have lower IQ than whites but they arent THAT stupid.
They dont need to love whitey in order to see how Hispanic gangs viciously dealth with both black gangs and innocent blacks.
Blacks have no love lost of Hispanics. The portrayal of Hispanic in black themed movies in invariably negative. Case in point Friday 2 and Shaft(with Samuel L Jackson)



About 48% of Detroit adults are illiterate. Does anyone think most of the Black underclass is employable?"

DVN: Most of any underclass is employable given the right motivation and appropriate opportunity.


Even capable of pushing a broom?

DVN: Thats just stupid

The Black middle class is just make-work AA placeholders, where real work is done elsewhere and damage fixed.

DVN: oh shut up. Most AA types can be seen not in the middle class but upper class blacks ie Susan Rice, Condoleeza Rice ,Michelle Obama et al


The Philly disaster (Black crane operator high as he could be on weed) is a good example of the Black workforce. There are a few exceptions. But not in the mass of the population.

DVN: What did blacks ever do to you?

a very knowing American said...

"Should Americans pick crops"
George says 'No,
'Cause no one but a Mexican would stoop so low.'
After all even in Egypt the Pharaohs
Had to import
Hebrew braceros"

That was Tom Lehrer singing about Republican California governor George Murphy, back when liberals like Lehrer thought using guest workers to push down American wages was a bad thing.

Anonymous said...

Does this actually sound like a movie Hispanic audiences will watch?

Will there be a scene where Chavez fights a robot that shoots 3D laser beams?