Chavez Home: Humble Heart of the American Farm Worker Movement

The Chavez Home in 2016 when Helen still lived there

NPS Photo

In 1971, United Farm Workers established its official national headquarters at Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz (La Paz), a 187-acre property north of Keene, California in the Tehachapi Mountains. UFW’s La Paz site would be the first permanent agricultural labor union established in the history of the United States.

César and his wife Helen would move to the property with seven of their eight children. The family would reside in the Chávez home, a small wood-frame two-bedroom home on the grounds with a chain-link fence.

When César first considered acquiring La Paz as part of the farmworker movement, Helen was reluctant about the choice. She was brought to the area as a child in the 1930s. She was separated from her family and forced to live in a facility on the property for children who were believed to be malnourished. Returning here was difficult for her, but she ultimately agreed, in support of Cesar and his beliefs.

With the previously existing maintenance and infrastructure from the property’s original construction as a rock quarry and, later as a sanatorium, in disrepair, members and volunteers worked to fix the old buildings in the early days of the UFW headquarters.

Though four new buildings were constructed between 1970 and 1984, 14 of the UFW headquarters buildings were from the sanatorium era. One of these buildings was the Chávez home.

The home would be the setting for the organization of two major boycotts and the fight for the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975. While the La Paz headquarters was in operation, farm workers and UFW supporters from across the country would visit La Paz to meet, learn, train and volunteer with movement leaders to negotiate contracts and organize.

The Chávez home would serve as the center of the American farm worker movement, until César’s death in 1993. It would continue to serve as the residence of his wife Helen Fabela Chávez until her passing in 2016. Today, the house is kept exactly as she left it.In the kitchen, small mementos decorate the walls and a child’s drawing of a fish is held to the refrigerator with a magnet. In the living room, bookcases hold a large collection of framed family photos. The house’s modesty and simplicity depict the values of the Chavez family.

Though the house is closed to the public, the Chávez home remains as a lasting symbol of the history of American farmworker movement in its successes and the continued struggles of workers’ rights.

Quick Facts

LOCATION: César E. Chávez National Monument
SIGNIFICANCE: The epicenter of the United Farm Workers (UFW) movement and residence of César and Helen Chavez
DESIGNATION: National Register of Historic Places (2011)
OPEN TO PUBLIC: No

The kitchen in the Chavez home

NPS Photo