Juan Estevan Ortega and Freddie "Freak" Trujillo spent about an hour talking to students and adults in the audience about their experiences in the Chicano movement at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

"Most of us at our age are just one step removed from the fields," Ortega said. "To us, it was a regular way of life and as soon as Cesar Chavez came out, we all related to him."

He also inspired a generation of students.

Trujillo talked about his experiences at college and how he got involved with the United Mexican American Students and eventually began working with the United Farm Workers of America. He said he worked at providing support for the farmworkers as well as spreading information about boycotts throughout the state and holding debates on campus.

Trujillo said he, along with five others, traveled to Fresno, Calif., for the first convention of the UFWA.

Trujillo also talked about the taking of a CU campus building for three weeks in 1974 as a protest and two bombings that happened around the same time that cost the Chicano movement a number of its most promising members.

Those individuals were heroes, just as Chavez was a hero, Trujillo said.

Ortega talked about Chavez’s history and how he experienced discrimination in the 1930s in Arizona, moved to California and left school at 15 to start working the farms.

Ortega also talked about how Chavez fought for the rights of farmworkers through nonviolence and how the farmworkers’ flag, a red field with a block-shaped Aztec eagle in black, was designed to be easily reproduced and distributed.

Chavez fasted numerous times and led a march of 300 California workers to Sacramento, Calif., to demand bargaining rights with the growers in the state, Ortega said.

Earlier on Wednesday, City Councilman Ray Aguilera and County Commissioner Jeff Chostner declared Wednesday as Cesar Chavez Day.

The event featured several speakers and was hosted by Tom Duran and organized by the League of United Latin American Citizens.