Roberto De La Cruz, a farmworker activist who was trained by Cesar Chavez, dies at 75
Longtime farm-labor activist Roberto De La Cruz, who dedicated much of his life to helping the poorest and most exploited workers in America, died earlier this month.
He was 75 years old upon his passing on May 7.
De La Cruz’s family helped pioneer the United Farm Workers of America, and he attended as a teenager the founding convention of what became the UFW in Fresno in 1962.
Nicknamed “Bobby,” De La Cruz went on to be trained by Cesar Chavez and Fred Ross, and immersed himself in farmworker strikes, boycotts, and legislative and political campaigns in the central San Joaquin Valley and cities throughout California.
His efforts, along with those of other activists, would help farmworkers fundamentally change their lives by showing them how to organize and outthink and outwork their opposition.
“Roberto De La Cruz was a one-man campaign who had an impact in California and across the country,” Service Employees International Union treasurer Eliseo Medina said in a news release. “This world needs many more Robertos.”
De La Cruz’s mother, Jessie, and his father, Arnulfo, helped organize migrant farmworkers when Chavez first began to build the UFW union in the early 1960s.
It was considered a historic era, as the UFW won the first union elections, signed the first contracts in the history of agricultural labor relations, drove approval of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act and secured bans on first-generation pesticides through the economic pressure of strikes and boycotts and the political and moral pressure of its combination of civil-rights and labor organizing.
For his part, De La Cruz used nonviolence tactics in facing down angry Teamsters, picket-line violence and other attempts at strikebreaking.
He traveled around the country and even in Canada to participate in boycott and political campaigns. During the early 1980s, De La Cruz served as political director and executive board member of the UFW, and negotiated and administered union contracts and directed UFW regional offices.
De La Cruz, who served four years in the Navy during the Vietnam War prior to becoming a farmworker activist, eventually left the UFW but continued to work on labor-related issues.
He joined the Service Employees International Union in 1991 and led successful organizing drives in industrial, health care and public sectors in Illinois, Florida, California, Nevada, Arizona and Wisconsin — and in Puerto Rico, where he helped to pass a historic law enabling public employees to organize and bargain collectively for the first time on the island.
He consulted on many political campaigns, coordinating field work and union political activity in several national and statewide elections even after his retirement in 2015.
De La Cruz is survived his six children, Robert Jr., Alegría, Arnulfo, Anamaría, Alejandro and Xochil; 11 grandchildren; his partner, Karen May; brothers Raymond, Arnold Jr. and Alfredo; and sisters Virginia and Susan.
This story was originally published May 16, 2022 at 5:00 AM.