Chavez would take high road on Portland street renaming

By Gosia Wozniacka, The Oregonian

DELANO, Calif. — The old adobe building sits among open fields, past the edge of the small San Joaquin Valley town. No sign leads you here, no plaque or statue reveals that a Mexican American named Cesar Estrada Chavez led a five-year strike and a national boycott that broke down powerful grape growers and improved conditions for America’s farmworkers.

The man, it turns out, was as unpretentious as the United Farm Workers office that continues his life’s work.

So if the road to his former headquarters isn’t even named after him, what would Chavez think of Portland’s two-year controversy to rename a street in his honor?

"He would scold everybody for wasting so much time on it," said his son, Paul Chavez. "He would remind us there’s so much work to be done, and that’s what we should spend our time on."

Granted, naming something after Cesar Chavez is an important recognition, Paul Chavez said, but his father would want it to go hand in hand with education and action.

"If it’s just the street signs and holidays, that’s nice, it’s how you honor people; but it’s got to be more," Paul Chavez said. "If you have an educational component, then it would represent who he was and (then) I could see him say, ‘Yes, let’s do the street renaming.’"

Chavez spent his life shunning praise and focusing the attention on the plight of farmworkers. Reluctantly he conceded his place as a role model for Latinos, family and friends say.

"He would have seen that there was a point of pride for people in this (renaming) debate," said Marc Grossman, Chavez’s longtime aide and spokesman. "He would have seen people honoring him as a symbol that was more than just about him."

Cesar Chavez was a modest man who had a difficult time accepting personal recognition or gifts, Paul Chavez said.

"He was very humble," his son said. "He knew there were countless workers who sacrificed and made the work possible. So recognition should not be lavished on him."

Born in Arizona in 1927, Chavez, his siblings and parents became destitute during the Depression and traveled to California as migrant workers. At the time, farmworkers were paid below poverty wages, slept in fields and cars, sent their children to work, were discriminated against because of their race and ethnicity, and sometimes were not even given water to drink.

Once he became an organizer, Chavez did not distinguish himself from the farmworkers, family and associates say. He never owned a car or a house, never earned more than $6,000 a year, worked grueling 16-hour days and left his children no money when he died.

From his base in Delano, Chavez traveled the length and breadth of the valley to organize workers and convince them that they were going to take on the rich, powerful agricultural establishment and that they were going to win.

"It was the whole underdog thing; it was a very American concept," Paul Chavez said. "Taking on the good fight, the good will trump over evil."

Cesar Chavez empowered farmworkers and persuaded hundreds to join the picket lines.

"Cesar used to say that the organizer’s job was to help ordinary people do extraordinary things," Grossman said. "He told people that what everyone did was important. He made people believe in themselves."

It was Chavez’s movement that coined the famous phrase "Si, se puede" — "Yes, we can."

His cause touched a nerve because it was about restoring human dignity, his son said. Although they lost all possessions, strikers remained on the picket lines for five years in Delano, pressuring grape growers to sign contracts with them.

"My father used to say, ‘There’s no one fight that determines the future. There’s a series of skirmishes,’" Paul Chavez said. "He never, never gave up."

Despite the growing popularity of his cause, Chavez didn’t consider himself a Latino leader, peers say.

"When people tried to say Chavez is the leader of the Chicano movement, he would say, ‘No, I’m the leader of the farmworker movement,’" union co-founder Dolores Huerta said. "He never identified himself like that, never tried to play that role, although people bestowed it on him."

Chavez was a practical man, said Paul Chavez, and "was wary of spreading himself too thin. He knew there was so much to do for farmworkers."

Politically savvy, Chavez knew how to choose his moment. He spoke often, especially at schools and universities, to bring Americans from all walks of life to support the farmworkers.

Hundreds of students, priests, activists and others responded to the grape boycott and organized across the United States and Canada, asking consumers not to buy grapes. At least twice, Chavez fasted in support of the boycott, ending the first in 1968 with U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy at his side and the second in 1988 alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

By 1975, a Louis Harris poll showed 17 million American adults were honoring the boycott. A lot of leaders were developed as a result, Huerta said, and the Chicano movement grew out of it.

"It empowered people who otherwise would not be active," she said.

Eventually, Chavez accepted himself as a role model to Latinos.

"He came to see how his work had transcended farm labor," Grossman said. "He realized that in the process of creating the farmworker movement, it inspired a lot of other people."

In a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California in November 1984, Chavez recognized the union’s importance to Latinos and Latinos’ impact on the United States.

"The union’s survival — its very existence — sent out a signal to all Hispanics that we were fighting for our dignity, that we were challenging and overcoming injustice, that we were empowering the least educated among us — the poorest among us," he said.

"The message was clear: If it could happen in the fields, it could happen anywhere — in the cities, in the courts, in the city councils, in the state legislatures. … The coming of our union signaled the start of great changes among Hispanics that are only now beginning to be seen."

Since Chavez’s death in 1993 at age 66, numerous streets, schools, bridges and parks have been named after him. Eight states celebrate Chavez’s birthday as a holiday.

Many of the renamings were controversial — even in California’s Central Valley, where Chavez started his movement. In 2002, the school district in Delano paid $100,000 for the renaming to the local grape grower who had donated land for the school. The grower, who was one of the first to be hit by the UFW strike, made the district liable for damages if it gave the school any name that causes "extreme embarrassment and emotional stress."

Paul Chavez wasn’t aware of the controversy in Portland over the street renaming. But he also didn’t feel like he should interfere.

"It’s not my place to tell you how to honor my father," he said. "Every community has to make that decision. But it was his universal values that inspired people from all over the place and these are not values just for farmworkers or for Latinos."

Remembering Cesar Chavez should be done institutionally, across the country, Paul Chavez said.

"Wouldn’t it be a shame," he said, "if Dr. (Martin Luther)King’s legacy was only relegated to the South, because that’s where the civil rights struggle took place?"

The National Farm Workers Service Center, which Cesar Chavez founded and Paul Chavez now runs, carries on the movement’s legacy "to farmworkers, Latinos and all working people." It includes an educational institute that helps students succeed in school, an affordable housing program and a radio station. The center also develops community service projects with school districts across the United States.

"The ‘Si, se puede’ attitude is a message of hope to kids, especially now in the midst of the recession," said Sonia Rodriguez, the center’s vice president. "It teaches them that you don’t have to be a victim, that you have to take responsibility for yourself, for your community."

In Woodburn, where Latinos tried to name a school for Chavez in the late 1990s, the naming process turned into the chance for such teaching, said Alejandra Lily, coordinator of Woodburn-based Voz Hispana, a group that fought for the name change.

Although Chavez’s name did not get the honor, the school district promised that on Chavez’s birthday it would implement a special curriculum and an annual celebration of his legacy. This year, students and parents participated in a service day, building four community gardens.

"We showed the kids that they can benefit their whole community," Lily said. "Cesar would have liked that."

— Gosia Wozniacka; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com