Lawyer speaks about childhood, Cesar Chavez
Abel Orendain’s experiences as a teenager were unlike those of his peers.
A posed picture of Latino civil rights activist Cesar Chavez taken in the 1960s during a march in Delano, Calif., shows the then 10-year-old Orendain carrying a United Farm Workers flag with “huelga,” the Spanish word for strike on it.
He remembers his father, Antonio Orendain, making him stand outside of the local grocery store to picket because of the fruits and vegetables that were sold.
“It was hard to see your classmates who already thought you were less cause you were Mexican and you were broke,” Orendain told an audience of University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College students during a lecture Thursday.
The presentation was in honor of Farm Worker Awareness Week which was from March 24 until today, which would have been Chavez’s 86th birthday.
Despite his struggles as an activist outcast, Orendain said he always felt special.
“I always felt special in a different way,” Orendain said. Not many teenagers had the chance to rub shoulders with the likes of Sen. Robert Kennedy and Chavez himself, he said.
Orendain’s father, Antonio, established the Texas Farm Workers Union during the lettuce strikes in the state.
When he was growing up, Orendain said his father and Chavez emphasized the importance of education.
“The first word he ever taught me was education,” Orendain said of his father. “He said, ‘To get a good job, you need a good education.’”
Orendain said watching farmworkers toil in the fields made him realize he had to work hard at school so he could have an easier life in the future.
Now, the 55-year-old works as a lawyer based in McAllen. He said his experiences in the farmworkers’ union led him to become an attorney.
“I always saw my dad behind bars and it got me thinking, ‘Do we have any lawyers?’” Orendain said while chuckling during the lecture.
Though farmworkers are still not unionized, he said his father’s work led to having fresh water in the fields, as well as outhouses.
“I want people to know that Mexicans in the (Rio Grande) Valley have actually been activists for social change,” Orendain said.
Noel Rodriguez, director of the College Assistance Migrant Program at UTB, said it’s important for students to learn these stories. The program helps students who have been migrant workers or come from migrant families become acclimated with college. Each year about 45 freshman students are welcomed into the program, Rodriguez said.
The plight of farmworkers has been largely forgotten except for the common mention of Chavez’s leadership, Orendain said during the lecture.
Rodriguez agreed.
“It brings awareness of the local history,” Rodriguez said. “Unless they are written in the school books and the college books, this is the only way.”
Fabiola Torres, whose parents work in the cornfields of Kansas, said the lecture was interesting and informative.
“I understand more of my roots now as a migrant worker,” said Torres, 19, who is also part of CAMP.