It happened years before she was born, but Miriam Villanueva has seen the scars and knows the burdens her parents withstood through decades of migrant labor.

Her father worked in fields as a young man, traveling wherever the crop was plentiful.

He was traveling through Memphis to pick the new strawberry crop the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

Villanueva’s mother worked as a migrant laborer in meat packing plants and factories in Houston and McAllen. It was as a migrant worker that her mother’s finger was sliced in two. On a migrant worker wage, there was no money to reattach the finger.

"They wanted to charge her more to reattach, so she just let it grow deformed," Villanueva said.

Such was the life of a migrant family.

But Villanueva, a sophomore at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, is quick to credit the actions and advocacy of one man with helping to improve migrant conditions — labor leader and Hispanic civil rights champion César Chávez.

"He fought for migrant worker rights when they didn’t have any," Villanueva said. "He changed everything. He made their problems real issues to be known to the world."

Through his leadership with the United Farm Workers union and through public, nonviolent protests, Chávez focused national attention on key migrant issues including low wages and miserable working conditions.

La causa — the cause — was draped in a red and black banner bearing the image of an Aztec eagle that Chávez said served as a symbol of the dignity he fought to secure for migrants.

Hunger strikes, peaceful protests and a 340-mile march from Delano, Calif., to Sacramento were some of Chávez’s tactics that eventually helped the union gain better contracts for workers and protection of their civil rights.

It is these contributions, and above all, these methods, that students at A&M-Kingsville will honor today with a César Chávez Memorial March. The march will commemorate Chávez’s historic 340-mile march.

Tina Garcia, president of the pre-law society, which is co-sponsoring the march, said students can glean much from Chávez’s civil engagement and peaceful, dignified approach to fighting for change.

"It was amazing everything he was able to accomplish through nonviolent protest," Garcia said. "Our march is only about half a mile, which pales in comparison to his famous pilgrimage, but for me it’s something we can do to honor his accomplishments."

For students like Villanueva, who is part of the university’s College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), paying homage to Chávez’s struggle is personal. Her parents weren’t able to pursue higher education. Her father didn’t complete middle school. But Villanueva intends to finish school with an ultimate goal of working in government in foreign policy and diplomacy.

Today she will march for her parents, for their struggle to give their children opportunity and for Chávez’s life work and legacy.

"It is really good to be able to organize something like this that means so much to me," Villanueva said. "It shows we haven’t forgotten what our parents have done for us and the big impact César Chávez had on our world."

Former staff reporter and Corpus Christi native Adriana Garza is pursuing a master’s degree in political science at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. Contact her at adriana.garza@tamuk.edu.