Luis D. León has written an important and challenging work. Much recent scholarship on Cesar Chavez has dwelt on Chavez's shortcomings, particularly towards the end of his life. Highly critical studies by Frank Bardacke, Matthew Garcia, and Miriam Pawel undercut the traditional hagiography of Chavez, focusing on his authoritarianism, his paranoia and purges of faithful organizers, and his inexplicable fascination with Charles Dederich and his “attack therapy.” León chooses not to engage the debate directly. While acknowledging Chavez's faults, he points to the overall positive effect Chavez had: “The sum of his triumphs and tragedies was to leave the world better off than he found it” (31). Chavez “empowered millions” of “Chicana/os and Latina/os to command the respect and dignity they had regularly been denied” (69).
León is more interested in what he calls the “political spirituality” of Chavez. According to León, Chavez invented and founded a new form of civil religion that sought “mass conversion and social change” (12). He states, “My thesis . . . is that through myth and ritual performances Chavez scripted a political spirituality and a spiritual mestizaje that transmuted La Causa into a religious movement; this is what I call religious politics” (12). León convincingly argues that La Causa was both a “spiritual community” and “religious system” (118). It had its own theology—the importance of sacrificial love, redemptive suffering, commitment to non-violence and social justice—its own prophets, Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez; its own rituals, symbols, holy days, martyrs, songs and a hymnal, sacred spaces, and mythology. Its goal was social transformation through the “rehumanization” of “colonized” and racially degraded peoples, such as, but not limited to, the farmworkers. León argues that Chavez undertook the same spiritual enterprise as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
The study is divided into three main chapters entitled “Mythology,” “Prophecy,” and “Religion,” with the latter chapter being what León calls the “crux” of the book (15). Chapter one addresses the “mythology” surrounding Chavez. Previous interpretations have been too simplistic, and fail to capture Chavez's complexity. He was not simply a labor leader, nor a Catholic leader, but a “spiritual and moral leader” (xiii), who could not be limited to one cause or faith, but rather pushed for a transformation of all people. To accomplish this, Chavez adopted multiple personalities to engage a wide diversity of people and faiths. León calls Chavez a “nepantlero,” one who thrives in the complexity of the borderlands, who easily transverses boundaries and borders, feeling at home within a variety of religions and cultures. León adopts Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of “mestizo consciousness” (26) to describe Chavez's “tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity . . . [an] ability to negotiate disparate cultures.” (26–27).
León concludes that Chavez promoted a new “humanism,” which he dubs Chavez's “lost gospel,” encapsulated in the simple phrase “service to humanity” (173), which Chavez believed was his central calling. More significantly, the new humanism called for the creation of a new definition of “macho,” which emphasized non-violence, suffering for others, the equality of women, and the acceptance of the LGBTQ community. Or, put more simply, it stressed that “love” (175) was to be at the center of the new humanism.
Significantly for León, Chavez addressed the most important issue of modern times: “The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of the spiritual line—a socially constructed ideological border that separates the sacred from the profane” (176) and separates much else. Chavez's greatness lay in his ability to grapple with and transcend these boundaries: “His ability to negotiate and reconcile human difference is his largely undocumented contribution to the twenty-first century” (177).
While the book's central argument is engaging, I would have approached the topic differently. León at times relies too much on ideological constructs—of Foucault, Campbell, Erikson, and so on—that seem to shape his interpretation rather than letting his narrative emerge from Chavez's lived experience. In one odd assertion, León writes that Chavez joined the Navy during World War II, “demonstrating a commitment to the very American imperialistic project he protested, albeit indirectly. “(43)”
More troubling is León's limited understanding of Catholicism. While he acknowledges the importance of Catholicism to the farmworkers' movement and to Chavez, he seeks to downplay that influence as much as he can. León correctly asserts that Chavez appealed to a broad religious spectrum—Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Atheists, and even Muslims—and that several of his top advisers, Chris Hartmire and Jim Drake, were Protestants. More significantly, León contends that we can never truly know how authentic a Catholic Chavez was—“the sincerity of his faith is irretrievable” (60). (This did not prevent León from suggesting that “he was a make believer rather than an outright believer” [10]). Despite León's assertions, and for all its ecumenical appeal, the movement remained centered in Catholic ritual (Mass), symbols (Our Lady of Guadalupe), and language (peregrinación, penitencia). Each of Chavez's fasts was broken with reception of the Catholic Eucharist. Given Chavez's interfaith approach, it is amazing the movement remained so visibly Catholic. In addition, León doesn't seem to understand that Catholic Social Teaching is not directed solely to Catholics, but is directed toward all people; nor does it conflict with “service to humanity.” Several times León asserts that Chavez rejected (15) or eschewed (150) “dogma” or “orthodoxy,” but these terms meant little in the fluidity of the post-Vatican II Catholic Church. Minor details: León refers to Christian Brother Gilbert (LeRoy Chatfield) as a priest (129), he mistakes Reynaldo Flores OFM with Bishop Patricio Flores (121), and he is unaware that Chavez's attempt to found a new religious order called “Los Menos” (117), was likely influenced by the Franciscan example (the lesser brothers).
Nonetheless, León's central argument that the political spirituality of Chavez created a civil religion through La Causa and dramatically transformed society is not contingent upon his discrediting the importance of Catholicism to the movement. This is an important book that will generate much discussion and debate.
