Stockton Record: Call grows for a national Cesar Chavez holiday

STOCKTON – Ramona Gonzalez vividly recalled the horror of having no restrooms when she worked as a teenage migrant laborer in the Central Valley.

When a female worker needed a restroom break, a group of women followed to form a human wall around her for privacy.

Summer weather often reached triple-digit temperatures, yet employers were not required to supply adequate water, shade or even protection from chemical exposure.

Gonzalez remembers being sprayed or having the wind kick up pesticides. "My skin would just peel," she said.

Those days are behind Gonzalez, who owns a Lodi bridal boutique. But her story and those of millions of others serve as reminders of the labor movement spearheaded by Cesar Chavez, who founded the United Farm Workers labor union in 1962 with Stockton-raised Dolores Huerta.

As admirers remember Chavez on his March 31 birthday, a nationwide petition to make it a federal holiday is being circulated by the Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday coalition. Supporters say remembering Chavez’s birthday will not just serve to honor his work in galvanizing farm workers and whole communities in massive agriculture boycotts and marches from the 1960s through the 1980s, but it will remind people that more work needs to be done.

Last summer, at least three occupational heat-related deaths were reportedly connected to agriculture, including that of Lodi’s Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old who suffered heatstroke in May while pruning in a Farmington vineyard.

It was the sort of conditions against which Chavez fought.

"We were all united. We were part of a national movement to make change," said Richard Soto, a literature instructor at Tracy Adult School who organized college caravans that provided food and clothing to marchers and farm workers.

Chavez died April 23, 1993, at age 66. In 2000, California recognized his birthday as a state holiday. Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin also recognize the day.

Chavez is remembered by local people who took part in the demonstrations as a gentle, humble, charismatic, intelligent and poised leader. Chavez practiced Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of non-violent protesting.

"Cesar, believe it or not, I would consider, probably, that the good Lord gave him a don," said John Fernandez, brother of Huerta and former organizer. "A don in Spanish means you have like a gift from God.

"He had kind of like a disarming smile," Fernandez said.

Chavez along with dozens – sometimes hundreds – of marchers usually stopped in Lodi, Stockton and Tracy as they walked hundreds of miles through California. They slept wherever there was room at the homes of supporters. They ate whatever communities provided them.

"I bet you at one time I had 100 people at my home," Fernandez said.

Chavez encountered hatred, too. One evening, local supporters recalled, he was hidden in an undisclosed Tracy home, because he had learned he was the target of an assassination plot. Bodyguards surrounded Chavez whenever he marched to block any potential attacks.

The year he died, Stockton honored him with the Cesar Chavez Central Library. In 2005, another tribute followed with the opening of Cesar Chavez High School. Chavez was an avid reader and ardently promoted education.

Community advocates are planning celebrations to educate new generations about what the holiday represents.

"I find that many young people do not know who Cesar Chavez is," said Mercedes Silveira, coordinator of the Tracy Unified School District’s English Language Development department. "It’s sad that they say ‘Is he the boxer (Julio Cesar Chavez)?’ "

Education about Chavez became an issue recently in the Lincoln Unified School District, when trustee Ted Bestolarides wrote in an e-mail, "I thought that Cesar Chavez was a communist organizer?" in response to an event invitation from the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

Said Gonzalez, "I think we need to accept the fact that this is a man who gave his life for social justice just like Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life for social justice."

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Contact reporter Jennie Rodriguez at (209) 943-8564 or jrodriguez@recordnet.com.