One summer day in 1988, before the sun rose, my parents packed my three younger sisters and me into our beige Chevy station wagon. We drove from Oxnard to Delano, Calif., to stand in support of what would become César Chávez’s final fast. I remember the brutal heat, the crowded tent, the feeling we were part of something larger.
Chávez never came out to speak that day, He was too weak after 29 days of fasting. But we stayed. More than 3,000 of us waited there, believing in his campaign to draw attention to pesticide use in the fields where farmworkers labored with little protection from chemicals that he understood caused cancer among workers and birth defects in their children.
To learn now of the suffering Chávez caused — the sexual and emotional violence against young women, and against Dolores Huerta — is heartbreaking. It is infuriating. It forces a reckoning. Not only with who he was, but with the danger of turning people into symbols, placing them so high that their actions go unquestioned, and harm can happen in the shadow of that reverence.
There is no justification for his actions. It must be named clearly.
And still, the work that so many people fought for: the protections for farmworkers, the awareness of pesticides, the dignity of labor — that work remains. It never belonged to one person.
As a young bilingual teacher and community organizer in Oxnard — an agricultural town that smells of strawberries, celery and, at times, fertilizer — I founded the first César Chávez March and Celebration in 1998. The celebration included a district-wide speech contest for fourth- through sixth-grade students. The march and the speech contest have continued long after I stepped away.
Just days before the news about Chávez broke, I was hosting a community workday at Rio Farm — a 10-acre pesticide-free farm in Ventura County owned and operated by a local school district. A young man named Enrique and I worked side by side, weeding stinging nettle from rows of organic celery, which will be harvested and served in eleven school cafeterias. As we talked, he shared stories about where he had gone to elementary school. We realized our paths had crossed years earlier, when I was a brand-new teacher, and he had just arrived in this country.
Enrique told me he competed in the César Chávez Speech contest years ago. “The first time, I lost,” he said, the roots of the weeds dangling from his gloved hands. “I came back the next year determined to win — and I did.” He smiled, and I could picture the 10-year-old boy standing on stage, holding his plaque. “It helped me find my voice. It taught me to feel confident.”
This past year was likely the last César Chávez Speech Contest in Oxnard. I hope something new emerges that reflects the broader movement and recognizes the many people whose work has fought for the dignity and protection of farmworkers. This matters in a community like Oxnard, where so many of our students are the children and grandchildren of farmworkers — like Enrique. Like me.
Few remember that the march and speech contest were my idea, and that’s OK. I didn’t bring these events to life on my own. It took many talented and dedicated people then — and hundreds more over the years — to shape them, carry them forward and keep them alive.
That’s the nature of ideas. And of collective action. The ideas take root. They grow longer root systems. They move and change shape with others often without recognition. And the recognition was never the point.
I think, too, of a large framed print that hung in our home for years — Chávez’s face rising above the fields. Only when you looked closer did you see every feature — his face, his hair — was made from the images of many people.
Maybe that’s what this moment is asking of us. To widen the lens; not to honor a single figure, but the collective. To name the women in the movement. To name the contributions and sacrifices of Dolores Huerta. To recognize the organizers, the farmworkers, the families, the artists — the people whose labor and courage made change possible before Chávez, alongside him, and long after.
The organizers of this year’s march in Oxnard chose to move forward rather than cancel, unlike many other cities have. In doing so, those in Oxnard have widened the lens — shifting the focus to farmworkers and to the movement itself, one that will — and must — continue.
I keep returning to that tent in Delano. To the thousands of us gathered, waiting. At the time, I thought we were waiting for him. But we weren’t. The power was already there. It was us. It has always been us. And it still is.
Florencia Ramirez is the author of “Eat Less Water” and the forthcoming “The Kitchen Activist.” She is the founder and director of the Pesticide Free Soil Project in Ventura County.