Feds seek historic status for key sites in Cesar Chavez’s life
In 1972, farmworker activist Cesar Chavez went on a 24-day fast at the Santa Rita Center in Phoenix to challenge Arizona legislation that barred farmworkers and their supporters from organizing boycotts and strikes.
Chavez believed the law, backed by the American Farm Bureau Federation, interfered with the workers’ basic human rights. He maintained that boycotts, strikes and organizing were key for addressing their inhumane work conditions on fruit and vegetable farms in Arizona and California.
Migrant farmworkers endured various abuses: frequent exposure to skin-burning, disease-causing pesticides; long hours with few breaks; little to no pay; beatings by police or residents; decrepit living quarters; and constant threats of deportation.
Marc Roseman, who was then Chavez’s press aide, said he and others at the Santa Rita Center, a community center near Buckeye Road and 10th Street, recall that at the end of the fast, some supporters said it was futile. Arizona refused to budge on its boycott-and-strike ban.
Defiant, Chavez said, “Si. Si se puede.” (Yes. Yes we can.)
The famous phrase has outlived Chavez, who died in 1993. President Barack Obama echoed the motto in his 2008 run for the White House with the English translation, “Yes, we can.” Demonstrators in Latino marches and protests also chant the phrase.
Now, 40 years on, as supporters honor the labor-rights leader today on Cesar Chavez Day, a holiday in California, Texas and some Arizona cities, the federal government is planning to preserve his legacy by saving five sites it considers key places in his historic farmworkers movement, including the Santa Rita Center.
Chavez, leader of the United Farm Workers organization, is hailed as a hero among many Latinos and immigrants for leading peaceful protests that forced farms and agricultural businesses to improve conditions for workers in California, Arizona, and later in Texas and Florida from the late 1950s through the 1980s.
Although the Arizona anti-boycott proposal became law, Chavez’s fast prompted farmworkers statewide to unite and demand better treatment.
The U.S. Department of the Interior is expected to put the Chavez sites in the care of the National Park Service through special historic designations. This would qualify them for federal preservation funds for preserving the structures.
Federal protection also would enable the department to help address criticism that the Park Service has few attractions relevant to minority communities and their history.
Minority attendance at Park Service properties has lagged for years, Park Service surveys show. Critics have blamed it on the lack of minority-relevant sites.
5 places in Chavez’s life
For two years, the Park Service and Center for Oral and Public History at California State University-Fullerton studied 84 potential sites linked to Chavez’s farmworker movement.
In a draft report released last year, the Park Service zeroed in on the five.
The Park Service said those properties fulfill the four federal criteria that determine whether a site is of “national significance for cultural resource”: outstanding examples of a particular type of resource; possessing exceptional value in illustrating or interpreting natural cultural themes of the nation’s heritage; a great opportunity for public enjoyment or scientific study; and a high degree of integrity as a true, accurate and fairly unspoiled example of a resource.
Under a special measure that Congress approved in 2008, the Interior Department’s recommended protections for the Chavez sites must be approved by Congress.
Roseman, a spokesman for the Cesar Chavez Foundation, said Chavez supporters are awaiting word from the Interior Department about the recommendation, which has not yet been discussed by Congress.
Abraham Arvizu of Phoenix, who grew up in the Golden Gate community where Santa Rita Center sits, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Congress waited awhile to discuss historic status for the Chavez properties because of upcoming elections.
But he is hopeful that community leaders can begin working on plans to add a museum to the site and restore the Santa Rita Center.
Santa Rita Center
The Santa Rita Center, which was the headquarters of Chicanos Por La Causa, a community-development and non-profit social-services group founded in 1969 by Latino residents, was a gathering place for parishoners of the nearby Santa Rita Chapel who lived in the local barrios.
CPLC allowed the United Farm Workers to share the center when they began to hold rallies and boycotts in Phoenix to fight for Arizona workers’ rights, recalled Arvizu, 55, who was a young boy at the time.
Since then, the community has undergone a dramatic transformation. In the 1970s, Sky Harbor International Airport used eminent domain to seize properties and expand the airport. Longtime residents were ousted from the barrios that made up the Golden Gate neighborhood southwest of the airport.
Now, few buildings from the barrios remain. Sacred Heart Church at 16th Street and Buckeye Road is surrounded by gravel and fences and is opened once a year, on Christmas Day. It is a national historic site, which protects it from demolition.
A few blocks away, at 10th and Hadley streets, sits a locked-up and aging Santa Rita Center.
Edmundo Hidalgo, president and CEO of CPLC, said the building needs significant repairs to be made safe. It is opened four times a year for a community event.
Hidalgo said preservation of the Santa Rita Center is important, “as Cesar’s legacy is more widely understood, as our young people, especially, are looking for that historical perspective and impact that he had beyond even the farmworkers and the Chicano (civil rights) movement.”
In Phoenix for a mural dedication Thursday at Cesar Chavez Elementary School, south of downtown Phoenix, Chavez’s son, Paul, 55, who is head of his father’s foundation in Keene, Calif., said his father would not want such attention on himself but would appreciate that the nation is raising awareness of human rights.
“It would recognize Latinos’ contributions to the United States,” he said.