---
title: "Timeline photos "In the early 1970s, Chavez and the UFW set up a…"
date: 2020-06-14
source: facebook
type: Archer T. Ships added a new photo.
---

# Timeline photos "In the early 1970s, Chavez and the UFW set up a…

*June 14, 2020 · Facebook*

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![](img/2020-06-14-fb-005-img01.webp){style="max-width:100%; margin:1em 0"}
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\"In the early 1970s, Chavez and the UFW set up a little-known operation titled the "Wet Line." Under this sordid practice, UFW leadership sent teams of thugs to attack, beat, and rob migrant workers attempting to cross into the United States from Mexico. The title for the operation came from the derogatory term "wetback" used for migrant workers, because so many of them waded or swam across the Rio Grande.\
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The UFW spent \$80,000 a week on the "Wet Line" operation. According to official protests lodged by Mexican trade unionists, hundreds of workers were attacked and tortured by UFW gangs. Houses of migrants were firebombed, cars were set alight, and workers were whipped, disrobed, cut, and left for dead in the cold desert night. Two men were castrated by UFW thugs while others were drowned. Tapes of UFW executive board meetings proved that Chavez conspired with his cousin, Manuel Chavez, to bribe Mexican officials to attack Mexican workers so the UFW could cut expenses for their terroristic campaign against immigrants.\
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Also in the 1970s, Chavez developed the "Illegals Campaign" by which he sought to scapegoat migrant workers for a series of defeats suffered by the UFW as workers grew disillusioned with UFW-negotiated sellout contracts. Chavez attacked the Nixon administration and US Border Patrol for their ostensibly lax immigration policy and set out to compile lists of undocumented workers that the UFW wanted to expose to the government for deportation. In one impoverished neighborhood of Fresno, Chavez claimed he had a list of 2,200 undocumented workers who he was prepared to denounce for deportation.\
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Chavez's militant xenophobia undercuts his well-advertised image of non-violence and pacifism. "They're wets, you know," he once told his sidekick, Dolores Huerta. "They're wets, and let's go after them."\
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[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/04/12/ufw2-a12.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/04/12/ufw2-a12.html){target="_blank"}
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