THE DREAM AND NIGHTMARE OF A VALLEY FARMWORKER

By Juan Montoya
When Wenceslado Lerma –or Wence for short – left Brownsville in 1968, he never figured that in the 37 years he spent in Salinas California before returning home, he would be organizing farmworkers alongside Cesar Chavez, demanding and achieving rights for his fellow workers, and then live under cloud of suspicion for 22 years for the murder of his wife.

But back in 1968 when Lerma was only 16, he and his father travelled to the Salinas Valley in California to harvest the crops that have made it the fruit and vegetable garden of the United States. Like many poor families of the time, Wence and his family had worked in the fields in the Rio Grande Valley picking okra, onions, carrots and thinning sugar beets. Their wages for a day laboring in the fields ranged from a low of $4 to $10 when the getting was good.

So when they got to Salinas, they marveled at getting paid $3.25 an hour picking strawberries, thinning vegetable fields, picking lettuce, grapes and strawberries. But one day when they were out in the fields with their mandated short hoes, farmworker organizers under Cesar Chavez's United Farm Worker Association, they listened to the message of the huelguista organizers and walked off the field.

"They were advocating for the use of long-handled hoes so the people – including women like my mother – wouldn't have to be stooping all day long in the hot sun," he said. "They were also demanding that the ranchers provide portable toilets in the fields, 15 minute breaks, provide fresh water, and raise our wages. I walked out and so did many others."

The UFWA soon recognized Wence's organizing skills and placed him among the cadre in the Salinas office, one of about 11 spread across California. Armed with the simple message that better working conditions and wages "Si se Puede," they fanned out in groups to spread the word and urged their fellow farmworkers to join them and demand that the ranchers sign contracts with the union.

(In the photo at right, Wence, at right, celebrate the union's victories in Salinas and other cities in Washington, D.C. At left is Salomon Ramirez and Humberto is at center.)

It was not as easy and as romantic as many thought it would be. The UFWA was aligned with the AFL-CIO, btu the ranchers preferred to negotiate sweetheart contract that limited farmworkers rights with the rival Teamsters union and the battle was carried out in the verdant fields of produce. There were busted heads and mass jailings as ranchers charged the huelguistas with criminal trespassing for urging workers to join them.

"One time there were about 500 of us and I didn't think they would arrest us," he recalled. "But they did. They sent the California National guard and sent us off to jail. I spent a month in jail convicted criminal trespassing."

During one period, Lerma was without work for about a year as a result of the conviction and the union carried him until he was hired.

"Cesar would come in and talk to us about how we were doing, and what we could expect in the fields," he recalled. "He was a very unassuming man. He dressed very simply and wasn't affected by his position at all. He was a very humble man. But he had a power that struck you immediately when you met him."

The union lawyers eventually freed the strikers, but the criminal conviction haunted Lerma for the rest of his life, often deterring him from employment. Nonetheless she continued to organize alongside Chavez and eventually the workers gained what appear today to be small gains, but to the workers were great advances: Workers could now use the long hoe, had the right to take 15-minute breaks from the labors, had fresh water available to slake their thirst from the searing Salinas Valley sun, had portable toilets.

Farmworkers saw their wages rise from $3.25 to $7.25 after the strike. Ranchers and agribusiness conglomerates like Salinas Strawberries and Sun Harvest that had fought the union eventually signed contracts with Chavez and were bound to negotiate with the farmworkers.

They achieved some other rights that they only dreamed could be possible. The UFWA provided numerous services for its members. Among them were immigration services and legal representation, citizenship classes, medical and dental care, notary public services, English as a Second Language classes, and translation services, union wages, and pensions.

(In the photo at left, farmworkers celebrate union victories in San Francisco. One of the women in front is his mother.)

All his family were UFWA members and he married Martina, an 18-year-old woman from General Teran, near Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. They had a  daughter they named Martha. They were a happy, united family, and one her brothers was their daughter's godfather, or padrino.

Then, on the morning of August 8, 1997, Wende had scheduled a dental appointment and was allowed to leave his work cutting celery for Sun Harvest to go. His wife Martina, 20, had also gotten the day off to take care of their daughter and she was at home waiting for him so both could go.

When he got home he knocked on the door and it was locked. After a while of waiting and getting no answer, he climbed in through a bathroom window and walked into the bedroom. He saw his wife dead on the bed in a pool of blood and his baby daughter sitting next to her trying to wake her up.

"She was telling me the "cucuy" had done it," Lerma recalls.

Little did he know that his nightmare was about to begin.

Next: Part 2