The Moral Vision of César Chavez: Agriculture, Food and the Environment in Catholic Social Teaching

This course presents the vocation of César Chavez to investigates the dramatic changes have taken place in our modern agrofood system over the past century. Chavez was profoundly influenced by a Catholic vision of society, and this played a key role in inspiring him to organize Mexican farm workers to fight for their dignity. He addressed human rights, racism, labor organizing, farm workers’ conditions, environmental protection, food safety, and food access; through his moral vision and agency he challenged people around the world to do the same. This course will provide an overview of Catholic perspectives on agriculture, food and the environment, but also labor organizing and immigration, to examine how Chavez went about achieving this vision using a spirituality of nonviolence. Class assignments will probe his spiritual and moral vision, and explore how it is — or could be — carried forward today.

Course description

This course has two sections. The first half of the course presents Chavez’s biography, background, vocation, spirituality, and farm labor organizing activities. This section will include an introduction to the industrialization of agriculture and ag labor, as well as the origin of Catholic social teaching about human dignity and justice in society. It will ask: what was Chavez’s moral vision? How did it develop over time, and why? The second half examines the status of farm workers, farm labor unions, and immigrant farm workers today. This half will ask: what would it mean to carry his vision forward today? Were he still alive, what would César do? Course assignments will address these questions in the context of this, the 15th anniversary of his death.

Student learning goals

1. To understand the origins, vocation, moral vision, and impact of César Chavez’s life.
2. To learn about the relationship between a “moral vision” and ethical engagement with social injustice.
3. To understand the development of Catholic social teaching as a coherent body of ethical thought, and how Chavez advanced it through his vocation.
4. To learn about the field of “agrofood studies” and to survey the dramatic changes that have taken place in the relationships between the environment, agriculture, food, and culture over the past century.
5. To be able to trace the development of Catholic social teaching about human dignity, labor organizing, immigration and agriculture through time.
6. To carry forward Chavez’s moral vision to the challenges we face today with race, agriculture, social justice, immigration and sustainability.
7. To reflect on the meaning of our vocations in light of Chavez’s moral vision.

Course evaluation Worth Due

Tracing your family history to farming (or alternative assignment) 10% Ap 10 Describe and explain an aspect of Cesar Chavez’s moral vision 15% Ap 29 Compare one of Chavez’s discourses with a contemporary one 15% May 8 Popular education poster: immigrant roots 10% My 13

Character based learning plans 20% My 29 Final: a position paper addressing an agro-environmental dilemma 20% Jun 10 Class participation 10%

Total 100%

Required Texts

Dalton, Frederick John. 2003. The Moral Vision of Cesar Chávez. Maryknoll: Orbis Press.

Ferriss, Susan, and Ricardo Sandoval. 1997. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Cesar Chávez and the Farmworkers Movement. Harcourt.

Garcia, Mario. 2007. The Gospel of Cesar Chávez. Sheed & Ward.

National Conference of Catholic Bishops. 2004. For I Was Hungry and You Gave me to Eat: Catholic Reflections on Food, Farmers and Farmworkers. Washington, DC: USCC.

Martin, Philip L. 2003. Promise Unfulfilled: Unions, Immigration, & the Farm Workers. Cornell.

Wright, Angus. 2005. The Death of Ramon González. Austin: University of Texas Press.

NOTE: YOU MUST PURCHASE THE REVISED 2005 EDITION

****Jesse. 1994. Gary Soto. Scholastic. To be provided by Keith & the Ethics Center.**** Reader for Envs 161: The Moral Vision of Cesar Chavez

1. Andrews, David, CSC. 2004. Eating is a Moral Act. Blueprint, LVIII 3, 1-7.
2. Warner, Keith Douglass, OFM. In preparation. The Farm workers and the Franciscans.
3. Wolfteich, Clare. 2005. Devotion and the Struggle for Justice in the Farm Worker Movement. Spiritus 5 (2005): 158–175
4. Allen, Patricia, Margaret FitzSimmons, Michael Goodman, Keith Warner. 2003. “Alternative food initiatives in California.” CASFS Research Brief.
5. Warner, Keith Douglass. 2007. Agroecology in Action: Extending Alternative Agriculture Through Social Networks. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Introduction & ch 1.
6. Wirth, Strohlic and Getz. 2007. Hunger in the fields
7. Mexican Farmers Protest US Trade Pact. 2008.

Schedule:

Lesson 1: Spanish language mass, Concelebrants: Jesuit Fathers Paul Locatelli, Luis Calero and Paul Fitzgerald, Noon, Mission Church

Lesson 2: Ethics at Noon: “‘Amnesty, Ethics, and Immigration: Catholic Perspectives From Both Sides of the Border,” Kevin Appleby, Director, Office of Migration and Refugee Policy, US Conference of Catholic Bishops Conference; Erica Dahl-Bredine, Catholic Relief Services-Mexico Country Representative. Co-sponsored by the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education. 12 p.m., Wiegand Room; Professor Mario T. Garcia, History Department, UC Santa Barbara, “The Spiritual Journey of Cesar Chavez” ; Lecture: “On Ethics and Immigration,” Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano

Lesson 3: Mariachi Music, Noon, Mission Gardens

Lesson 4: CSTS Symposium on pesticide alternatives by Keith at noon. Details TBA

Course outline and reading assignments (FIF=Fight in the Fields; GCC=Gospel of Cesar Chavez; MVCC=Moral Vision of Cesar Chavez; FIWH=For I Was Hungry; PU=Promise Unfulfilled; DRG=Death of Ramon Gonzales; R: Copycraft reader)

This syllabus pertains to when the course was offered in 2008