Helen Chavez, the widow of Cesar Chavez, who supported her family's activist path in protecting farmworkers, died this week of natural causes. She was 88.
The Chavez family suggests making a donation to the UFW in lieu of flowers.
Pesticide use, in the era when organophosphates (no longer widely used in vineyards) were widely used in grape growing, led to the deaths of hundreds of farmworkers in California and to Cesar Chavez's decision to fast.
Today farmworkers in vineyards are still subject to many toxic substances, but often the harmful effects take a longer time to manifest than they once did when harsher chemicals were used. There are still health impacts despite improvements in worker safety.
For more on Helen Chavez's life, see this article on the UFK web site.
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