LA CAUSA

by George Horwitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 1970

These are leisurely, low-key visits and chats in which writer Horwitz renews his friendship with several fighters for La Causa (Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers' Organizing Committee) that he first met in the Coachella Valley strike of 1968. With old Filipino farmhand George Catalan and Mexican migrant worker Macario Bustos in Delano, California, with young activist Amalia Uribe (in whom our author demonstrates more than a documentary interest) shuttling across the Mexican border from Calexico to Mexicali, and with organizer Pancho Botello in Yuba City, Horwitz talks about what brought them to the California valleys and how La Causa has changed their lives. There are also glimpses of Cesar Chavez and other union leaders and some of the devoted rank and file who have given the union its strength through five years of strike. The conversations convey a sympathetic feel for the migrant worker's life, the oppressive conditions of the past and the almost holy commitment on the part of these people to the promise of the union. But Horwitz also seems intent on exercising his powers of description as he accompanies his amigos on their daily rounds, and he throws in many details of people, place, and mood which round out his individual portraits but are not particularly germane to La Causa or engrossing for the reader. Perhaps the 120 photographs by Look's senior cameraman Paul Fusco will make this casual account more compelling. Otherwise the reader can find an excellent study of La Causa in Peter Matthiessen's Sal Si Puedes: Escape If You Can (1969).

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION