Meeting Latino legend Cesar Chavez
Cesar Chavez. (AP Photo/Alan Greth, File)
How do you prepare to meet a living legend?
What do you say to that individual who, in your eyes, has shaped the destiny of campesinos across our land and influenced the lives of millions?
At an age when most youngsters draw stick figures, my daughter Andrea was painting her own version of the United Farm Workers’ eagle on the walls of child-care centers.
Even before then, I remember holding my infant child during a Chicano march to protest police brutality in San Jose, Calif. With the rest of us, she thrust her little clenched fist upward.
In protest? Perhaps.
It was at park rallies following such marches that she saw and heard the catalysts of the Chicano movement — Bert Corona, Jose’ Angel Gutiérrez, Willie Velasquez, and of course Cesar Chavez.
For years, Andrea, now 16, has listened to these men speak of a better future for determined sons and daughters like her. But of all these Hispanic heroes, Chavez remained the idolized one.
Several times she came close to meeting this champion of the campesino cause. Each time, she missed the opportunity.
Then this fall, at the annual Chicano/Latino Youth Leadership Conference in Sacramento, Calif., Andrea came across UFW Vice President Dolores Huerta. She asked about Cesar Chavez and was told that he was going to Stockton, some 50 miles to the south, to participate in a rally there.
“I used to live there,” my daughter said, making the connection.
The next day Andrea’s friend Chacho González drove her there, to St. Mary’s Hall, where Chavez was attending Mass.
“Imagine,” she told me later, “being able to extend the sign of peace to Cesar during Mass.”
Religious encounter with Cesar Chavez
After that religious encounter, Chavez charged the overflow crowd with the spirit of unity and caring. He told the campesinos and the others about some of the struggles his gente had endured. He reminded them that some 30 years earlier, in that very same room, he and Dolores Huerta had organized the Stockton farm workers.
The more Chavez spoke, the more my daughter’s eyes swelled with tears. As they trickled down her brown cheeks, she recalled the many chats we had about respect for other human beings, the suffering of migrant children, and the reasons for the marches.
She remembered her own humiliation when, at school, she had tried to enlighten insensitive students and teachers about pesticide dangers. As the tears washed out those memories, she found herself face-to-face with the man she, and her father as well, revered “next to God.” He had noticed her and moved toward her, asking her name.
This was the moment she had long waited for, had written about, and had feared would never arrive.
There was the formality of name exchanges and abrazos — hugs. Photos were taken. Ideas were shared, exciting new hopes within her.
TV news cameras, reporters, campesinos, and curious on-lookers gradually edged the two apart.
Standing alone again, she pressed her little red and black button with the black eagle on it. She looked at the makeshift altar where the Virgin of Guadalupe looked down on her and César’s other followers. She closed her eyes and recited a simple prayer:
“God bless him. God bless him.”
Chavez was ushered out of the hall to a waiting car. Andrea stood alongside the driveway for a final glimpse. Once again, his eyes caught the glistening of her tear-stained face.
Cesar Chavez ordered the driver to stop. He called her name. “Give me your address and come visit us someday,” he told her.
“I will,” she said ” I will.”
(Andy Porras, of Del Rico, Texas, writes a regular column for the bilingual weekly, El Hispano, in Sacramento, Calif., and for other publications.)
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