KEENE — About 150 high school students from the Coachella Valley on Monday witnessed President Barack Obama designate the home of Latino labor leader Cesar Chavez as a national monument.

“Being in front of your nation’s leader is just a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Desert Mirage High School senior Brandon Ulloa, who estimated he was about 15 yards away from Obama during the ceremony. “It empowers you to be a better leader, encourages you to overall just succeed.”

Obama called Chavez a hero who brought hope to millions of poor, disenfranchised farmworkers who otherwise might have remained “invisible” to much of the nation.

“Today, we celebrate Cesar Chavez,” Obama said at a ceremony at La Paz, the California farmhouse where Chavez lived and worked for more than two decades. “Our world is a better place because Cesar Chavez decided to change it.”

About 150 students from the Thermal school spent 10 hours on a chartered bus Monday to attend the designation ceremony at the invitation of the United Farm Workers, the school district said.

“Most of our parents are campesinos and work in the field and are slaving out in the heat,” Ulloa said. “It means a lot to us that (Obama) came and blessed the monument.”

The Coachella Valley bears reminders of Chavez’s presence in the area, where he frequently clashed with grape growers to fight for better working conditions. He led a march from Coachella to Calexico in 1969 to protest the hiring of illegal immigrants as strikebreakers. Murals in Coachella and Mecca remember his work. Cesar Chavez Elementary School in Coachella was the only school named after Chavez while he was still alive.

Chavez, who died at age 66 in 1993, is buried on the site where the monument was dedicated. His widow, Helen, still lives there.

The 187-acre site, known as Nuestra Senora Reina de la Paz (Our Lady Queen of Peace), or simply La Paz, was the union’s planning and coordination center starting in 1971. Chavez and many organizers lived, trained and strategized there.

Obama’s action designates 105 acres at the site near Bakersfield as a national monument, the fourth monument he has designated under the Antiquities Act.

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The action could shore up support from some Latino and progressive voters for Obama, whose 2008 “yes we can” slogan borrowed from Chavez’s motto, “Si, se puede.”

When the Arizona-born Chavez began working as an organizer after World War II, “no one seemed to care about the invisible farmworkers who picked the nation’s food,” Obama said. “Cesar cared. And in his own peaceful, eloquent way he made other people care, too. Where there had once been despair, Cesar gave workers a reason to hope.”

As head of the United Farm Workers of America, Chavez staged a massive grape boycott and countless field strikes, and forced growers to sign contracts providing better pay and working conditions to the predominantly Latino farmworkers.

He was credited with inspiring millions of other Latinos in their fight for more educational opportunities, better housing and more political power.

Obama seemed to tie Chavez to his re-election bid, saying: “Even though we have a difficult road ahead, I know we can keep moving forward together.” Obama’s 2012 campaign motto is “Forward.”

Helen Chavez and son Paul Chavez were among those attending the ceremony. Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Chavez of the UFW, and current union president Arturo S. Rodriguez also were present, as were Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Gov. Jerry Brown.

The Associated Press contributed to this report