This is part 1 in a series looking at the history of the Texas Farm Workers Union. Check out the rest of the series here.
Most histories of the United Farm Workers’ founding will mention, of course, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. Occasionally you’ll see Gilberto Padilla’s name. Or sometimes you’ll just see “César Chávez and others.”
But if you look long enough, you might start catching glimpses of the man some have called “the César Chávez of Texas.”
His name was Antonio Orendain.
Known for his handlebar mustache and wide-brimmed black hat – a foil, the story goes, to the white hats worn by the Texas Rangers – Orendain was for years Chávez’s man in Texas, overseeing operations of the UFW’s branch in the Rio Grande Valley.
He garnered the position following years of dedication to the movement, notably as a founding member of the National Farm Workers Association – the union Chávez, Huerta, Orendain, Padilla, “and others” started that later became the UFW after merging with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in 1966.
Orendain served as secretary-treasurer for the union, his signature even appearing right next to Chávez’s on membership cards.
But at some point a fracture formed, and Orendain split from Chávez and the UFW, focusing instead on organizing farm workers in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley.
In 1975, Orendain and those who followed him from the UFW formed a new group: the Texas Farm Workers Union.
It’s a split that had long been simmering, but perhaps the main turning point can be traced to a strike in Texas’ Starr County.
The seeds of the split
To date, the most prominent academic overview of the Texas Farm Workers Union history is a master’s thesis from Timothy Bowman, a professor of history at West Texas A&M University – that is, until Bowman completes a forthcoming book he’s writing about the union.
Bowman notes the fissures between Orendain and Chávez had always been apparent.
“I think there were always personality differences and ego clashes that could potentially develop between the two,” Bowman said.
For one, Orendain had entered the U.S. and settled in California as an undocumented immigrant when he was younger. This later informed part of his strategy in the Texas union, which sought to organize workers on both sides of the border, regardless of status.
On the other hand, some of the UFW’s policies against undocumented workers have earned renewed focus, and sometimes criticism, when assessing the legacy of Chávez.
Chávez also cultivated a very spiritual persona, embracing Catholic imagery and famously engaging in fasts as part of his strategy of nonviolence. Orendain, on the other hand, was a secularist who often voiced his opposition to Chávez’s fasts – even at one point showing his back to the UFW leader as a form of protest.
“He very much has this kind of revolutionary sort of aesthetic about him that I think resonated with a lot of people in the Valley who were really poor,” Bowman said.
But perhaps the main sticking point centered around the lack of progress Orendain felt the NFWA/UFW had made in organizing workers in Texas.
In 1966, the NFWA/UFW had become embroiled in a wildcat strike among melon harvesters in Starr County. Bowman says Chávez didn’t really want to be part of the struggle but was compelled to due to the role his Texas grape boycott director, Eugene Nelson, had taken in organizing the strike.
Nelson had initially formed his own independent union, the Independent Workers Association, in May of 1966 in anticipation of the looming strike. His group soon voted to affiliate with Chávez’s union, becoming NFWA Local No. 2.