Baldemar Velásquez

Baldemar Velásquez was born on 15 February 1947 in Pharr, Texas, the third of nine children of migrant farm workers who followed the harvests through Texas, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, travelling in a canvas-covered pickup and often sharing a single room; he began helping in the fields at four. One year an employer paid his father half the wages owed. In 1954 the family settled in Gilboa, Ohio, working the fields in summer and a cannery in winter, and he entered first grade knowing almost no English.

He co-founded the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, now affiliated with the AFL-CIO, and has led it as president ever since, building a union of agricultural workers in the Midwest and beyond. In 1989 he was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 1994 Mexico awarded him the Order of the Aztec Eagle, its highest honour for a non-citizen.

How the name is written

Texas-born to Mexican-American parents, he writes Velásquez with the accent, though most U.S. references drop it.

Sources

Facts in this profile are drawn from the Wikipedia article(s) linked below, consulted on 21 September 2026; the text is original. Wikipedia (English)

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