What’s Up (TX): César Chávez: the man, the day, the legacy

Some feel the decision echoed a broader trend of ignorance about Chávez, the celebrated Chicano farm worker, civil rights activist and labor leader who founded the United Farm Workers of America.

“It seems to me systematic, it’s institutional that many don’t know who César Chávez is,” said Adam Martínez, UTEP student and member of MeCha, a national organization that advocates for Chicanos and Mexican Americans. “When we tell students about César Chávez many students ask, ‘Who’s that? Is it a boxer?’”

According to the center, 6 out of 10 farm workers don’t have a stable place to live.

“The situation for farm workers right now is very hard,” said Carlos Marentes, executive director of the Centro de los Trabajadores Agrícolas Fronterizos (Border Farm Workers Center).

He said farm workers are among the hardest hit by the economic recession, which has forced them to compete with each other for ever-more-scarce jobs, leading many to settle for lower salaries and poorer working conditions.

At the center’s entrance, there is a large poster of a U.S. Postal Service stamp bearing Chávez’s portrait.

“Dignity and justice for farm workers are the most important cause for us, and we believe it fundamental to keep alive the struggle of César Chávez,” Marentes said.

Chávez was born in Yuma, Ariz., in 1927 to a migrant farm worker family. Although he attended 37 different schools growing up, he barely finished the eighth grade. Afterward, he worked in farms in California until he joined the Navy at 17. After four years of service, he got married to Helen Chávez and moved to San José, Calif., where he met people who inspired his interest in nonviolent resistance and organizing.

In 1962, he founded the United Farm Workers with Dolores Huerta and organized the workers of California’s grape industry, whose owners he would fight many times to gain collective bargaining and other rights for employees.

“He fought for many other things too. He protested when the state of California attempted to end assistance to low-income families to go to college, and when there were attacks on ethnic studies in Arizona schools. He also fought when there was talk of cutting back affirmative action programs, and for fair housing and healthcare,” Marentes said. “His legacy is universal.”

“I think he was a man ahead of his time,” said Tony Payán, associate professor of political science at UTEP. “He saw economic injustice in ways that no one else did. He saw how the American economy was dependent on the labor of those it despised the most.”

Payán sees the quarrel between the Republican Party and organized labor today as reminiscent of Chávez’s political fights.

“He understood the best ways, and by that I mean techniques, to resist. In that sense, the man was a visionary,” Payan said.

Throughout his life, Chávez continued to champion several causes, leading boycotts, hunger strikes and other peaceful acts of resistance. In 1993, Chávez went to Yuma to testify on a lawsuit by a grape grower against the United Farm Workers for revenues lost during one of the boycotts organized by the group. On April 23, Chávez gathered some of his closest friends and colleagues, urging them to take care of themselves. He died in his sleep that night of unspecified natural causes.

“He was here with us in El Paso one month before that,” Marentes said. “We don’t want people to think that just because he died, there is nothing left to do. The fight goes on.”

Marentes said his center and other organizations that mobilize the Hispanic community learned of UTEP’s decision around mid-December of last year. The local media began covering the issue when classes started, and organizations united to issue a response.

The decision was made by the Faculty Senate, which votes on UTEP’s academic calendar, said Richard Adauto, vice president of Institutional Advancement at UTEP, according to the El Paso Times.

Adauto said all Texas universities were asked to cut the days they suspended classes, and that there were other ways the university could recognize the holiday.

Both Payán and Marentes agreed that the community’s response — which included a rally of hundreds of students and noted alum Pete Duarte returning his Gold Nugget award to UTEP — was merited.

When the day was reinstated, UTEP President Diana Natalicio said in a press release that the decision had resulted from a misunderstanding of state holiday requirements, which have had no impact on UTEP’s academic calendar. She said UTEP regretted the confusion, and that the Faculty Senate never intended to dishonor Chávez’s legacy.

The Border Farm Workers Center is inviting the public to its annual César Chávez Day March, said Marentes. The march will start at the center at 9 a.m., meet for a rally at San Jacinto Plaza at noon, and finish with a party back at the center at 2 p.m.

MeCha is also organizing events at UTEP to remember César Chávez.