Has the history of the Texas Farm Workers Union been effectively preserved?

This is part 3 in a series looking at the history of the Texas Farm Workers Union. Check out the rest of the series here.

Alejandro Rosel, like the children of many farmworkers, grew up with his siblings in the fields. 

His father, Hipolito Rosel, was a bricklayer in their hometown of Progreso, Texas. But the allure of the money that could be made from farmwork in the Midwest took the family to Lansing, Michigan, one summer when Alejandro was 4.

”At that time, there was no such thing as, you know, care for the children,” Alejandro tells me. “So children were out there in the fields working or playing around.”

Their father hauled cucumbers, and Alejandro and his older sister, Manuela, often enjoyed riding in the back of his truck after he unloaded the vegetables. 

It was a harmless game, until one day.

“So that particular day, my dad didn’t announce that he was going to move it,” he explains.

Alejandro and his sister raced to catch up to the truck and hop on. But when Manuela jumped onto the side, the tire caught her hip, running over her.

His eyes stare ahead as he speaks, his voice softening as his memories return to a painful moment.

“I saw all of that. And I remember just freezing there. I couldn’t move,” he said. “And so we transported her to the hospital. And, you know, I remember clearly how she kept yelling, ‘Mom, áma, áma…’ 

And when they took her inside, they shut the doors and I didn’t hear her anymore. And I knew she was gone. And she died. And we never went back.”

Curricula and legacies

Alejandro says his sister’s death haunted his father for the rest of his life. But when the family returned to Texas, Hipolito met Antonio Orendain, then the head of the Texas UFW, and found an outlet for his grief. 

“That’s what motivated even more for him to go out there and advocate for these people that have to deal with situations like this,” Alejandro said. 

A master bricklayer, Hipolito oversaw the construction of the building that became the headquarters for the farmworkers – a building called “El Cuhamil.”

Hipolito imparted a fixture that still stands at the front of the building – a structure bearing an Aztec eagle, the iconic symbol of the UFW. And though a label or plaque was never placed to denote it, Alejandro says his father intended it to be a memorial to Manuela.

“My dad would always talk about that,” Alejandro said. “He would always say, you know, ‘that project right there is for my daughter, Manuela.’”

As a kid, Alejandro participated in the TFWU and even joined their march to Washington, D.C. He was called “Chapulín,” known for a mischievous nature that often landed him in trouble with his father or the union’s standard-bearer, Don Claudio Ramirez, who became something of a mentor to the young Alejandro.

Now, he’s a social studies teacher, and he draws from the memories of his TFWU days to get his students excited to learn about history – sometimes bringing in guest speakers, some of his old flags or banners, or copies of the union’s paper that shared the name of its headquarters, El Cuhamil.

“This is all using the community as a learning tool,” Alejandro said. “And what best – real experiences. Stories from perhaps their grandparents, their great-great grandparents.”

But it’s not without challenges. Rosel’s classes are an outlier: Covering the TFWU is not listed in the curriculum standards for history or Mexican American studies courses in Texas public schools. César Chávez and the United Farm Workers are included.

”And so kids, when they take the state tests at the end of the course exam, they see César Chávez. They don’t see anybody else, other than maybe Dolores Huerta,” Rosel said.

While Chávez and the UFW loom large over Latino history in the U.S., their presence and work was largely based in California, as were their victories. So how did the UFW make it into the Texas curriculum, but Antonio Orendain and the Texas Farm Workers Union did not?

Marisa Perez-Diaz, the State Board of Education member for District 3, says the process of determining who gets included in school curriculum is hashed out in committee debates. 

Many photos that depict the TFWU’s history make up the personal photo collections of individual participants, such as this one kept by Norma Ramirez. Raul Alonzo / Texas Standard

The deliberation over the people to include is a long, drawn out process, but ultimately it hinges on their impact and how it fits in the limited time instructors have.

“There are a ton of phenomenal individuals who have been incredible in terms of the contributions they’ve made to the U.S.,” Perez-Diaz explains. “But if we put all of those names in, we have to think about what that means for instructional time, for the amount of standards that an educator would have to meet in the course of a year.”

Perez-Diaz says it also comes down to the makeup of board members. She points out she is currently one of only two Latinas out of 15 setting standards for a K-12 population that’s at least 50% Latino.

“I think that what happens oftentimes when we’re looking at specifically ethnic studies courses is things like the United Farm Workers union, the more national narrative that people maybe understand a little bit, is what’s included. Because it was more on a national stage,” Perez-Diaz said. 

And because the history of the TFWU hasn’t been formally taught before, Perez-Diaz says board members like her are just coming to learn about it.

Teachers like Alejandro Rosel still have the flexibility to talk about it in classrooms. But he says he’s pleaded with his district to emphasize the local history more broadly.

“I wish all schools would take notice of this,” Rosel said. “There’s worry it’s getting lost. That’s why I feel that it’s getting lost.”

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Historian Timothy Bowman, who is currently writing the first book on the TFWU, says he feels part of the reason the union gets overlooked is because talking about its history means touching on controversial aspects of Chávez’s legacy.

It means getting into some of the more hawkish immigration positions the UFW took or digging into the reasons many of those who were part of the UFW’s heyday left. Or if they stayed, were later purged because of perceived disloyalty to Chávez, as chronicled in books like Miriam Pawel’s “The Union of Their Dreams.”

“It’s a story that’s shoved to the side because it doesn’t fit with the larger narrative, right? And the larger narrative is, you know, sacrifice, nonviolent civil disobedience – all these sorts of lofty things that people want to be an established part of the narrative,” Bowman said. 

“They don’t want to remember César Chávez who was angry or yelled at people or threw people out of the union or whatever.”

A constant march

As Alejandro Rosel sorts through photographs piled on his dining room table and occasionally retreats to another room to dig out one of his old TFWU banners, I get a sense of how his students must feel. Listening to him speak about the union days, you’re spurred by a desire to hear more.

And while I look at the photos, I also can see the experiences that undoubtedly feed his own passion to tell these stories.

I gaze at one photo, in particular, of three children sitting in the backseat of a car, the two boys smiling and facing toward the camera. The young girl in the middle stares off to the side, slightly out of focus – a crease from the aged photograph going down her left eye.

Alejandro Rosel’s sister, Manuela, is seen sitting beside Alejandro and his older brother in a photo from their childhood. Raul Alonzo / Texas Standard

“That’s Manuela,” Alejandro tells me. “That’s me, Manuela, and my older brother.”

Going down the stack of images are numerous black-and-white photos of a construction site – of men in cowboy hats laying bricks, some at work as children watch them. These are photographs of the building Hipolito Rosel oversaw the construction of, El Cuhamil.

When the TFWU and the UFW split, the building became a main point of contention.

The two unions shared the building under tense circumstances, until the TFWU members were forcibly evicted. Important work was still done from the building in subsequent years, with the Texas UFW under Rebecca Flores winning reform laws benefiting farm workers. 

And today, the building houses the nonprofit that Chávez and Dolores Huerta founded, La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), which continues organizing around workers rights and other issues while providing essential services to the RGV community.

When I visited last year, I thought of the way these events of the past flow. I toured the grounds, admiring the many murals, before coming upon the memorial Hipolito Rosel is said to have dedicated to his daughter. Beside it was a newer fixture – a plaque dedicated in 2017, with funding from the Hidalgo County Historical Commission, boasting the seal of the UFW at the top. 

It talks about the 1966 Starr County Strike, the construction of the building and its transfer to the César Chávez Foundation. There were no mentions of Hipolito Rosel, Orendain or the TFWU.

“It’s just shocking to see that,” Alejandro Rosel says, when I show him a photo of what it reads. “It’s difficult to absorb.”

The TFWU members who have sought to get the history more widely known, would like to see the mention of individuals like Orendain or recognition of the union in such markers. Lasting monuments is what they feel is missing for their own union’s legacy.

After the 1977 march on Washington, the TFWU remained active, though funding and other hurdles limited its impact before it finally ceased to exist in the early 1980s. 

But while those lasting monuments may not be there, there has been some recognition of the Texas Farm Workers Union. 

In 2014, the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg held a small exhibit of the 1977 march. Antonio Orendain himself was able to view it. A few years later, Orendain’s family and other organizers put together a commemorative march to mark the 40th anniversary of the March to D.C. 

But still, for those who’d like to see more, they say the task of telling the story remains their own.

In the years before the leaders of the Texas Farm Workers Union died, Orendain, Hipolito Rosel and Don Claudio Ramirez – the “Horsemen,” as Alejandro Rosel would call them – would get together and reminisce about old times.

They would often impart a plea to the young Rosel, one that he continues to carry with him long after the last of the Horsemen have gone.

“They would always tell me, ‘please keep it alive. Don’t let it die. You’re a teacher. You can do so much with this,’” Rosel said. “And I made a commitment to them that I would not let it fade away.”

Texas is no stranger to debates over how our history is told. And in the midst of these debates, much of that history gets left out.

But whether the story of Antonio Orendain and the Texas Farm Workers Union ever finds a permanent place in the popular consciousness, at least in Texas, in the way Chávez and the United Farm Workers has, remains to be seen. 

But in the meantime, those who carry the history with them, march on.

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