10/01/2024 Lupe Murguia’s humble life was spent fighting for equality & respect with the farm worker movement

Lupe Murguia escaped his impoverished village in the Mexican state of Jalisco in 1952 to journey north as a bracero farm laborer only to discover humiliation and injustice in California agriculture. It sparked a struggle to be recognized as an equal and as a person deserving of respect and value. He devoted a lifetime seeking to be heard through his selfless service with the United Farm Workers. Lupe Murguia, 93, peacefully passed away on September 27, at his home in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., according to Kathy Murguia, his wife of 57 years.

Jose Guadalupe Murguia was born on March 5, 1931. As a 19-year-old bracero, first in Arizona, his wages disappeared to pay for food and housing at the bracero camp where he lived. He later toiled in California lemon and orange groves and lettuce and tomato fields, where he averaged $1 a day. Lupe heard about Cesar Chavez in 1962 and joined his fledgling union that became the UFW.

When he lost the fingers of one hand from a work accident in 1964, Cesar came to see him in a Fresno hospital, telling him about the movement in Delano. "I was strengthened by all the talk of el movimiento," he recalled. Lupe joined the staff of the California Migrant Ministry to organize with the UFW. He also began linking his Catholic faith with the justice he believed farm workers deserved. "The union is something spiritual because even in the Bible there are stories about justice and struggle," he said. "Dios ha puesto su mano en mi camino (God has put his hand in my path)."

What followed were decades of organizing, where he always felt at home. They included helping workers at the huge E&J Gallo wine grape vineyards win a union contract in 1967; laboring as a "submarine" while secretly signing up pickers inside the giant Giumarra table grape corporation ahead of a big strike that year; registering voters in Oxnard, Ventura and Santa Barbara for Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign and then campaigning for RFK in East Los Angeles until he was assassinated.

In the early years, Lupe worked on the boycott in the winter months and organized farm workers during harvest seasons. He ran the grape boycott in San Francisco and worked on the East Los Angeles boycott that forced most California table grape producers to sign their first UFW contracts in 1970. He spent springs and summers in the Coachella Valley with grape workers as they organized and struck.

Meanwhile, in 1967 Lupe met Kathleen Mary Lynch, a U.C. Berkeley student, veteran of the 1964 Free Speech Movement and a farm worker advocacy group, and a UFW activist since the 1965 Delano grape strike started. They married, raised his three children-Ana, Delores and Joaquin-and together had five more, Ricardo, Maria, Mundo, Benito and Salvador.

In April 1970, Cesar asked Lupe and Kathy to move to La Paz, a 187-acre property the movement just acquired at the Tehachapi Mountain town of Keene east of Bakersfield. The Murguias became the first residents in May, where they remained with their family for 13 years.

When grape growers handed their UFW contracts to the Teamsters, many thousands of workers walked out in protest. Lupe returned to the Coachella Valley for strike duties. As walkouts spread north to the Central Valley, he was among thousands of nonviolent workers arrested for violating anti-picketing injunctions issued by rural judges. Lupe was jailed more than 30 times. Hundreds of strikers and UFW staff were beaten by Teamster goons and rural cops. Lupe was beaten twice. Two grape strikers, Nagi Daifallah and Juan De La Cruz, were murdered within a few days that August.

UFW attorneys challenged the strike-related misdemeanor convictions of Lupe and five other union members. They argued Kern County law enforcement "engaged in a deliberate systematic practice of discriminatory enforcement of the criminal law against UFW members and supporters." The case, Murguia v. Superior Court, went to the California Supreme Court.

In 1975, the state high court unanimously ruled for Lupe and the other workers. Famed Justice Matthew Tobriner wrote the prosecution was based on "invidious discrimination [that] becomes a compelling ground for dismissal of the criminal charges." This landmark decision was "enshrined as the Murguia Motion," which stated that a defendant could be "entitled to a dismissal of criminal charges upon a showing of selective prosecution for improper purposes," according to former UFW staffer Elaine Elinson. Many others cited the Murguia Motion. It was used in San Francisco to single out criminal prosecution of gay men in the 1980s.

Lupe returned to La Paz, handling maintenance and upkeep. He also traveled with Cesar's security detail and did security at La Paz. He organized farm workers after the Agricultural Labor Relations Act passed in 1975. Lupe graduated from the school Cesar set up to train organizers in 1976. He worked in the union's print shop at La Paz for seven years.

After leaving the union in 1990, Lupe was assigned by the National Farm Worker Ministry (successor of the migrant ministry) to work with supporters in Orange County. He helped with a California Rural Legal Assistance lawsuit for exploited sheepherders. His last three decades saw him volunteering with St. Vincent De Paul Society ministering to inmates at Tehachapi state prison and collecting and distributing donated food to area poor people.

When Cesar died in 1993, Lupe returned to La Paz to work on security at night, rekindling memories of the years he, Kathy and the family spent there.

Lupe identified his entire life with the poor. He was certainly never rich, according to a narrative from Lupe and Kathy: "His riches will be the memories of his struggles and his successes in fighting for both him and others to be heard. This richness is the spiritual nourishment which gives meaning to his humble work in a union movement."

Lupe Murguia is survived by his wife, Kathy; children Delores, Joaquin, Ana, Ricardo, Maria, Mundo, Benito and Salvador; 16 grandchildren; and many great-grandchildren.

Services and a celebration of life are being planned for early November at St. Malachy Catholic Church in Tehachapi.

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