Helen Fabela Chávez

Helen Fabela Chávez (January 21, 1928 – June 6, 2016) was an American labor activist for the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA). Aside from her affiliation with the UFW, she was a Chicana with a traditional upbringing and limited education. She was the wife of labor leader Cesar Chavez.

Early life Helen Fabela was born on December 15, 1928, in Brawley, California. She was a first generation Mexican-American. Her mother Eloisa Rodriguez was from Sombrerete, Mexico, and her father Vidal Fabela was from San Jacinto, Durango, Mexico. Both her parents immigrated to the USA separately after the Mexican Revolution, and eventually married in Los Angeles, California, in 1923. Both worked as migrant laborers, first in the Imperial Valley and later in the San Joaquín Valley and thus exposed her to the hardships of labor at an early age. She began working in the fields herself at age seven. After her father's death, when Helen was fifteen, she left high school to support her family which consisted of her mother, two sisters, and four brothers of whom she was the eldest. Helen worked in a grocery store and eventually made her way to working in the fields and vineyards full-time. They dated "inexpensively — a walk in the moonlight or perhaps a movie." The couple was married in a civil ceremony on October 22, 1948, in Reno, Nevada. At the time, she was 20 years old. Then the two returned to San Jose, California for a church wedding. Despite this, the couple remained married until César's death in 1993.

Union organizing Due to her father's involvement in the Mexican Revolution, Helen Chávez was influenced from a young age to be involved in political activism. She held the more 'traditional' role usually reserved for women. The traditional model for union organizing for women included the ability to "juggle the competing demands of family life, sexual division of labor, and protest in a unique blend of union activism."

Helen Chávez was played by America Ferrera in Diego Luna's 2014 film Cesar Chavez.

Death On June 6, 2016, Chávez died at a Bakersfield hospital at the age of 88. She had earlier been fighting an unspecified infection. Chávez is buried in Keene, California alongside her husband.