The Spartan Daily: Students engage in Cesar Chavez re-enactment march

The march began near the Fourth Street garage, traveling down Paseo de San Antonio and through the Cesar Chavez Memorial Arch to the Student Union Amphitheater where activists, farm workers and Chavez’s grandson spoke.

"It’s really good to see activities happening here, basically where some consider the movement started in San Jose," said Paul Chavez, grandson of the civil rights leader.

March organizer Gustavo Bueno, a Gamma Zeta Alpha fraternity member, said the purpose of the event was to educate people about Latino culture.

"He (Cesar Chavez) is a great leader for Latinos," Bueno said. "He motivated people to strike and get rights for farm workers."

Gamma Zeta Alpha president Gustavo Rocha said the fraternity planned the march on March 16 because it was the day Cesar Chavez started a 340-mile march from Delano, Calif. to Sacramento.

"The reason we don’t do it on his birthday is because it’s a holiday, so there’s no school," Rocha said.

Speaker Merlyn Calderon, a United Farm Workers national vice president, said that for more than a century, farm workers were treated as modern day slaves.

"Besides just the basic things that farm workers need, the dignity and respect deserved was nonexistent," Calderon said. "There were many attempts to organize farm workers, but they had failed."

Calderon said this motivated Cesar Chavez and democratic labor leader Dolores Huerta to create the National Farm Workers Association, which later became United Farm Workers.

"To change that situation, Cesar Chavez knew that he nor Dolores could do it alone," Calderon said. "They needed community, the churches, students to start to fill that union. They also needed support of political leadership and the law."

Calderon said a woman named Maria died recently because of insufficient care for her heat stroke.

She said workers do not have the amount of water or shade required by law.

"Maria was one of 15 farm workers that died from heat illness from 2004," Calderon said.

She said the United Farm Workers now work to make sure that the laws in the books are also the laws in the field.

Rosa, identified only by her first name, told attendees that she has worked in grape fields since 1976 and now has a union contract.

She said besides health care and pension, being in the union provided the benefit of seniority in the fields, as well as sufficient water and shade.

Esperanza Villalobos, who also spoke in the amphitheater, said she was unable to gain a union contract in her 25 years of work in the fields.

Having a union contract would have helped her gain respect and dignity, as well as health care and a healthy working environment, she said.

Villalobos said farm workers desperately need immigration reform.

Cesar Chavez’s grandson Paul said that while organizing the predecessor to the United Farm Workers of America in San Jose, his grandfather did not forget the harsh conditions in the fields.

"During that time frame, he worked and organized in the fields, often traveling hundreds of miles a day by the car," Chavez said. "My father, Fernando, his oldest son, missed school driving him around from labor camp to labor camp."

Chavez said his grandfather’s work is still important today.

"His effort and his ideals are more present now than ever," he said.

Senior accounting major Stefani Calderon said she enjoyed the march and the speakers that followed.

"It’s a learning experience," Calderon said. "About the UFW – and I didn’t know Cesar Chavez’s grandson would be here, so that was really cool."

Paul Chavez said it was important for a major figure from the Cesar Chavez Foundation speakers bureau to attend the event.