"A Biography for Readers Who Find Real Human Beings More Compelling than Icons"

"Chavez was constantly praying and fasting, and talking about the importance of sacrificing for the cause. As it often does in American social movements—from abolition to civil rights and beyond—such rhetoric resonated powerfully with people. But basing a movement on sacrifice had its limits. It enabled his cult of personality, since few could beat him in a sacrifice contest. But it also fueled Chavez's obstinacy on points that led to the disintegration of his organization: the impractical insistence that staff should be volunteers rather than be paid. ('Giving up a paycheck, he argued, was a liberating experience.') Even worse, he was outright contemptuous of the 'materialistic' aspirations of the workers he represented, who did not want to be poor like Jesus. Like most people, they wanted to be middle class, with cars and big TV sets."


Liza Featherstone in the Los Angeles Times reviews Miriam Pawel's The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography.