The idea was to celebrate Cesar Chavez Day in the Oxnard school cafeteria where Chavez gave some of his first speeches as a labor activist.

But the crowd Sunday at Cesar Chavez Elementary School — known as Juanita School when Chavez lived nearby in the La Colonia neighborhood — was far too big for the cafeteria. Organizers had to set the stage up outside, where about 300 people gathered to recognize Chavez’s legacy.

"It’s a great problem to have," said Denis O’Leary, a teacher and school board trustee in Oxnard and an event organizers.

The crowd started small, with a Mass at Cristo Rey Chuch, where Chavez worshipped when he lived in Oxnard. It grew as hundreds of people marched down Cooper Road from the church to the school, chanting, "Si, se puede" ("Yes, we can"), a slogan Chavez made famous.

When Chavez became famous, he was based in the Central Valley, but he had his roots in Oxnard. His family moved to Ventura County when he was a boy, and he worked in the fields around Oxnard as a teenager. In the 1950s, he started his activism with the Oxnard-based Community Service Organization.

Sunday’s event at Chavez School was a blend of union rally and cultural celebration. Aztec dancers entertained the crowd first, followed by a speech from Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers since Chavez, the union’s co-founder and first president, died in 1993.

Speaking in Spanish, Rodriguez talked about the union’s triumphs and current battles. Wages and working conditions are much better than they were when the UFW started in 1962, but farm workers are still subject to discrimination and abuse, he said.

He added that one of the UFW’s biggest victories in recent years was in Ventura: the unionization of PictSweet, now under new ownership and known as California Mushroom Farm. It was "a victory for all us."

To celebrate the UFW’s 50th anniversary, the organizers of Sunday’s event presented 50 people with plaques to acknowledge their work on behalf of farmworkers in Ventura County.

"It was wonderful that these people get recognized for their work," said Mary Pinto-Casillas, who accepted an award on behalf of her father, Arturo Casillas. "It highlights the struggle that farmworkers have gone through and that they’re still going through."