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The United Farm Workers Movement: Cesar Chavez Essay

Decent Essays

During the 1960’s, many movements rose such as the counterculture movement, the hippie movement, the environmental movement, the SCLC, the SNCC, the Native American movement, Women’s civil rights, United Farm workers, etc. During the 1960’s the American culture would start to change because of these movements. The United Farm Workers movement for example fought for the rights of Mexican americans. Their goal during the 1960’s was to get decent working conditions and more job opportunities. The United Farm Workers movement was led primarily by Dolores Huerta, Gilbert Padilla, and Cesar Chavez. Cesar Chavez coordinated the protests, and was at the time the President of the United Farm workers movement. Like Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez …show more content…

With the increase in salary many Mexicans would feel the money made would be enough to support their family, and live a more comfortable life. The growth of immigrants sparked around the 1970’s, and continued to grow as decades passed. According to the pewhispanic.org the immigrant population had a seventeen fold increase from the decades before. (seven hundred sixty thousand immigrants were currently in the United States in the nineteen seventies.) Even with the increase in salary Mexican americans were still unsatisfied, and believed they deserved more money, more respect, and less racial segregation. The leader of the United Farm Workers movement Cesar Chavez helped organize boycotts and strikes against the farm owners, and got others to stop buying grapes; this severely hurt the grape growing business. Not only did the increase in salary encourage others to immigrate to the United States, but better working conditions did as well. With more immigrants entering the United States, many Mexicans would find themselves to be illegally in the US. Chavez was strongly against those who were in the US illegally and would refuse to help them. Though these people were not receiving the UFW benefits, it encouraged them to apply for citizenship.
Before the United Farm Workers Movement,

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