YUMA SUN

March 25, 2006

Cesar Chavez birth is commemorated

BY BLAKE SCHMIDT, SUN STAFF WRITER

SOMERTON, Ariz. — Thirteen years after farm-worker rights advocate and labor-movement leader Cesar Chavez's death, Chavez supporters from around Yuma County gathered during the week of his birth to celebrate the man they call a hero.

At a luncheon at the Casa de Gloria in Somerton on Friday, farm-worker advocates and community leaders — many of whom have been farm workers themselves — gathered to show support for Chavez, and to announce the winners of an essay contest honoring the civil rights leader from the Yuma area who died in San Luis, Ariz.

Jessica Campa of San Luis High School took first place for her essay about how Cesar Chavez has affected her life. San Luis High student Laticia Lara took second place.

Fransisca Montoya, the regional director of the Cesar Chavez foundation in Phoenix, a group that promotes the Chavez legacy in education, said many teachers in Arizona don't even know who Cesar Chavez is.

Montoya announced the foundation's plans to introduce the group's "educating the heart" program, which would educate local teachers about Chavez and his legacy.

"People don't know (about Chavez's legacy) because it hasn't been written in the history books," she said, "we have to hold our public schools accountable."

She called Chavez an "American hero" for advocating nonviolence, sacrifice and service of the needy, adding that his message is one that shouldn't just reach Latino populations.

San Luis Mayor Nieves Riedel agreed. Riedel, who came from a migrant farm worker family, was once a farm worker herself, like many people at the luncheon.

"We were migrant workers when being a farm worker wasn't ... in or cool," she said, adding that she made as little as 79 cents an hour as a farm worker.

Emma Torres, executive director of Campesinos Sin Fronteras, said Chavez's work contributed to better rights for migrants and farm workers due to his boycotts, hunger protests and organized strikes.

But she said farm-worker rights advocates today face new problems. There seems to be more undocumented workers now than there were in Chavez's days in the ’60s, she said.

"A lot of them have to live in the same or worse conditions than the people in the ’60s," she said.

Jose Cortez, a workforce development operations manager for Chicanos Por La Causa, was a labor movement organizer with Cesar Chavez in Phoenix, playing a part in the United Farm Workers union.

A former migrant farm worker himself, Cortez said that a lot of agricultural work that was done by migrants is now being done by newly arrived immigrants.

"That presents a greater problem because they're more vulnerable to unscrupulous employers," he said.

A recent Pew Hispanic study estimated there are 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

Estimates by farm-worker advocates in Yuma County put the percentage of the farm worker labor force in Yuma County at as high as 50 percent or more.