My dad was a volunteer union organizer. He was very well respected and a member of the [New Mexico] state legislature. But he was expelled from the legislature because he got into a fight with José Montoya, who later became a congressman. My dad didn’t tell me the story, José Montoya did. I was lobbying José Montoya in Congress and I told him that my father had been a state legislator. He asked, “What’s your dad’s name?” and I said “Juan Fernandez.” He said, “Oh, I remember him!” The Montoyas were big growers in New Mexico and had a lot of obreros, and he and my dad got into an argument.

My mother was a very wonderful woman. When she and my dad divorced, she moved to California and worked two jobs—in the cannery at night and as a waitress during the day. But she saved enough money to establish a restaurant. When World War II broke out, because they were going to be doing food rationing, she gave up the restaurant and took over the hotel of one of the Japanese who had been relocated. That was good for her because we were able to live in the hotel. All the family lived there. It was a 70-room hotel, a real big one. We kids had to do all the work. We were janitors; we had to do the laundry and iron the towels, iron the sheets, and take care of business, and so she was able to provide for us.

I think my mother was a feminist for her time. She was what I call an “equal-opportunity” mother because even before she had the restaurant, we all three had to do the housework. My older brother and my younger brother and I split up the chores evenly. We had to do dishes. And there was a chart, and after you did your chores you got to put an X on there. We had to sweep and mop the floors, make the beds, and do the dishes and do the laundry. All of us equally. So my brothers learned that growing up. My mother never made me do anything for my brothers, like serve them. I think that’s an important lesson, especially for the Latino culture, because the women are expected to be the ones that serve and cook and whatever. Not in our family. Everybody was equal. She didn’t have my personality. She was one of these very quiet people who just did a lot. And she was a leader in the community. She was one of the founders of the first Latino chambers of commerce. She was just a doer. Because of the old way of thinking, when we were very small my mother would always say to us, “When you see that somebody needs something, don’t wait to be asked. If you see somebody who needs something, you do it. Second thing: You don’t talk about what you did. Once you talk about what you did you take the grace of God away from that act. And you never take any money for anything. When you do something for somebody don’t ever accept any money, because, again, that takes away the grace of God.” And that’s wonderful because I think that really insulates you against corruption.

Not really, because anybody who knew César knew that we were just very blessed to know someone like him and to be able to work with someone like him. When he did his first fast, he went five days without eating. “Oh, César, bless his fasting,” I thought. I told him, “I feel so bad when I fight with you.” He said, “Don’t ever stop. Don’t ever stop fighting with me. You’re the one that really helps me think.” You know, he was just a person, not a saint. He was a great person, but he was a human being, and he would make mistakes like other people.

César was always the one who was important. For César, that was also painful. When he first started organizing, he said one of us would have to be out there in front. He was uncomfortable with that role, you know. One time we were going into a meeting, with all the workers yelling, “¡Viva Chávez!” And he had this really pained look on his face. I said, “What’s the matter César?” He said, “I remember some of these people that wouldn’t even give me a meeting when we started.” He was a very practical person in terms of his own image. He wouldn’t let us put his pictures on posters for a long time. When he was in jail one time we made this button and he got really mad at us because—as he was being dragged off to jail—he said, “Boycott the hell out of them!” So we put that on the button. Ooh! He was so mad. We had to change it to “Non-Violence Is Our Strength.” While he was in jail, a whole month, his cousin started running him for governor. We had bumper stickers all over the state. He was very upset. He was not into the glory thing. It’s kind of interesting now because there are all these streets and everything named after him. That was not César; he wanted people to get the work done, to work hard. He’s buried right near the entrance to headquarters. I said he wanted to make sure people were coming early and leaving late. He worked very hard and set the example for everybody. 

You have to start people at their level. I like to tell this little story about my daughter, Juanita. When she was three years old we were doing a training session for organizers. She was walking in and out with her dolls. When we got back to our boycott house in New York City, she was on the line with her play telephone. I said, “What are you doing?” She said, “I’m calling the people.” I said, “Are you calling them to picket?” [She said,] “They’re not ready to picket; they’re just going to leaflet.” A lot of the time activists want people to go out and get arrested right away or to go on the picket line. Maybe they’re not ready to do that yet. You have to have activism at different levels, at the level people feel comfortable at, then evolve them into stronger positions.

I really realized this when I was beaten up by the police [in 1988 while peacefully protesting then-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush’s views on pesticide use] and I was disabled for a few months. It’s not only the physical disability, but also the emotional disability. I found that I was so emotional that during our board meetings… I told them, “I’m not going to be able to fight with you like I usually do.” I’d just start crying right away. It took a long time to get my emotional stability back after that beating. It just did something to me. I couldn’t be in crowds, I’d just panic. The physical disability healed in months, but my emotions took about a year and a half. That made me understand a lot about people, when you ask them to come and they’re not ready.

What lesson did you learn from that?

The lesson I learned was about dependency, because I had to be so dependent on my children. I’m very fortunate my son is a doctor and my daughter’s a nurse. If not, my hospital stay would’ve been a lot longer.… And then when your children are telling you what to do. It meant something that I don’t think young people understand. I’ve said this to some of my friends, that when I was disabled, as a parent you’re not used to your children telling you what to do. It’s very hard. It’s very painful for a parent and people need to understand that. You know, I think a lot of people say, “I’m not going to take this, I’ll just die. It’s easier for me to die than have my kids order me around.”

Even last night, we wanted to go see this reggae band and my daughter, Lori, who’s the second oldest, but you’d think she’s the mother, says, “Mother, you’ve got to get to bed. You’ve got to get up early tomorrow. I don’t think you should go out.” I said, “Okay,” and everybody else went out dancing except me.

I love it all. I love classical. I love opera. I love Spanish, all kinds— boleros, corridos, salsa. I love to dance salsa. But of all those, jazz is really my absolute favorite.

That’s so important. All cultures revere older people except for us. I don’t know what it is. I guess it’s the Anglo culture. But in all the Asian cultures, and in the Latino cultures, the elders are respected. The creation of more home health care workers I think is really important because they want to stay in their own homes; they don’t want to go into a nursing home. They want to take care of their gardens and see their grandchildren.

I hope my legacy will be that I was an organizer; that I have passed on the miracles that can be accomplished when people come together, the things they can change. And I look at… when we passed the pension bill, the voting in Spanish, the getting driver’s licenses in Spanish—all these bills we’ve passed. The fact that you can build and you can make nonviolent change through organization; that’s what I would want my legacy to be. And hopefully we’ll see the day when we don’t have discrimination against women, against minorities, against workers. And working for a just world. Showing people how to accomplish this, what they can do to make a difference.