LA Causa

LA Causa describes the efforts in the 1960s of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to organize migrant workers in California into a union which became the United Farm Workers.

This is about the struggle of the migrant farmworkers and the role of their leaders, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, in organizing the United Farm Workers union in the 1960s. The authors spoke with Huerta, and all quotes are as recorded or remembered by the participants. The story is told with immediacy and drama: eyewitness accounts of the harsh working conditions, long hours, poor pay; the struggle to organize a scattered labor force always on the move; strikes and confrontations on the picket lines; and the long march to Sacramento. Influenced by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Chavez was committed to nonviolence, and the parallels with the civil-rights movement are emphasized. Notes at the end provide further background; there’s a brief bibliography, and several full-page drawings capture the stark confrontation.

Dana Catharine de Ruiz is a published author of several children’s books. Some of her published credits include: LA Causa: The Migrant Farmworkers’ Story (Stories of America) and To Fly With The Swallows: A Story of Old California (Stories of America).

Rudy Gutierrez is a published author and illustrator of children’s books. Some of his published credits include: LA Causa: The Migrant Farmworkers’ Story (Stories of America), Trapped!: Cages of Mind and Body and Malcolm X (Trophy Chapter Books).

Alex Haley, as General Editor, wrote the introduction.