Eliseo Medina - Early Life

Early Life

Medina was born in Huanusco, Zacatecas, Mexico, to Eliseo and Guadalupe Medina, both farm workers. In the 1940s and 1950s, his father was employed as a farmworker in the United States, sometimes as an undocumented worker and sometimes as a "bracero" (documented Mexican worker brought to the U.S. temporarily to work in agriculture). His mother's parents had been killed in the Mexican Revolution, and his mother had a strong sense of social justice which she passed to her children.

In 1954, the family moved to Tijuana and Medina's father worked as an undocumented worker in the U.S. for two years. His mother refused to allow the family to enter the United States until their father had obtained legal entry for them. The family settled that year in Delano, California, where his father, mother, and two oldest sisters began working as produce pickers in the fields. Eliseo and the other two youngest children were enrolled in public school. Although he spoke only Spanish when he entered school, he soon excelled not only in English but in his grades as well. He worked as a picker on the weekends and during school vacations to help earn money for his family. He graduated from the eighth grade with honors. After being told that Hispanic students should only take industrial arts classes in high school, Eliseo quit school and became a grape and orange picker permanently.

He broke his leg when he was 19 years old, which left him unemployed for six months. On September 16, 1965, he participated in a meeting called by the National Farm Workers Association (the precursor to the United Farm Workers) to decide whether to join a strike that had been started by a small Filipino union. That meeting launched the Delano grape strike. Although it took almost all the money he had (he literally broke open his piggy bank to pay his membership dues), he joined the union that day. Within weeks, he had become a "strike captain," helping organize the picketers and others who arrived to support the strike each day. In the spring of 1966, as the grape strike continued at various vineyards, Medina sought help in getting a job at one of the companies that had signed a contract with the new union, but was recruited by Dolores Huerta to be a union organizer in the UFW's attempt to form at union at the DiGiorgio Corporation. He met César Chávez as he was leaving the union office. He learned organizing techniques from Fred Ross, a community organizer and founder of the Community Service Organization. He was beaten by Teamsters organizers (who were vying with the UFW for the farmworkers) during the DiGiorgio organizing campaign. His experiences during the DiGiorgio organizing campaign attracted Chavez's notice, and Medina was sent to Chicago to lead the union's boycott of grapes in that city. He continued to rise within the ranks of the organization and became one of its leaders during its years of greatest strength.