When Yuba College Professor Salvador Soto recalled Cesar Chavez, he remembered the farmworker leader calling him by name and talking over the phone.

Soto, who has taught Mexican American history at the community college for more than 30 years, said he was so moved and honored that he could hardly speak.

"I picked up the phone and heard this calm, gentle voice on the other end,” Soto said. “I knew it was him immediately. He said he had heard all the good things I was doing to help the farmworkers and the UFW and wanted to thank me. I was speechless.

“I wanted to say so many things and could think of nothing. It was like when the president calls.”

Soto spoke about his firsthand encounters with the late United Farm Workers leader on Thursday at the Yuba College campus in Linda. He spoke during a panel discussion celebrating Chavez’s birthday on Saturday.

The event was organized by MEChA, a club for Mexican American students, and the Crossing Borders and Building Bridges cultural series directed by Professor Neelam Canto-Lugo. About 60 people attended the event.

Chavez, who moved farmworker masses in the fields from the 1960s to the early 1990s, died in 1993. After his death, a drive began to commemorate his life in several ways. He received the Presidential Medal of Honor in 1994.

Marches, celebrations on his birthday, the issuing of a stamp, and the California Legislature declaring his birthday, March 31, a state holiday are among other honors he has received posthumously.

Soto recalled marching many times with his wife, Maria, through fields and down roads with Chavez. The attention these events got and the focus that Chavez brought to the hard reality of being a farmworker in America were contributions that have had a lasting impact.

“Things have changed since I was a farmworker,” Soto said. “I was a farmworker until I graduated from college. At that time for Mexican Americans, it was like a caste system we had in California and Texas. It was difficult to get a job other than field work.”

Soto specifically cited “dehumanizing” experiences in which he was sprayed with pesticides that have had lasting effects on him even today.

“Crop dusters would spray us in the fields. Later we found out that was harmful. Under the leadership of Cesar, they started to investigate that many of the birth defects farmworkers were experiencing were the result of pesticides,” said the professor.

As to the condition of farmworkers today, some improvement has occurred, according to Soto, who lived in labor camps until he went to college. But he said much work is still needed.

He cited a 2005 case in which farmworkers were not allowed fresh drinking water.

Rita Montejano, who is a co-advisor of MEChA and a secretary in the nursing department at Yuba College, recalled memories of working in the fields as a young child. She urged students to take part in commemorative Chavez marches in Sacramento and other celebrations on Saturday.

“I too am the face of a farmworker from 1964 to 1969,” Montejano said. “We moved here to California when I was a child and I. too. was sprayed on. And if it wasn’t for Cesar, I would have back problems because I was one of the very last users of the short-handled hoe.”

The short-handled hoe has been outlawed in California.

The presentation also included slides and video clips on Chavezs life by student Matt Henderson and Sandra Graciano, a professor of economics and co-adviser to MEChA.