OUR ANNUAL TRIBUTE TO CESAR CHAVEZ ON HIS BIRTHDAY

By Juan Montoya
For Cameron County employees it means a day off.
For others, it means honoring a man who fought for the rights of the lowly farmworker.
Some even want to make March 31 a national holiday in his honor.
As a former agricultural migrant, I know what Chavez must have felt as a kid when he looked at the unending rows in the fields and felt his body ache after a day of good labor in the soil.
He was born in Sal Si Puedes, Arizona on March 31, 1927, and worked in the fields as a youngster. In 1944 he joined the Navy and was honorably discharged two years later.
From there on, he led his life organizing farmworkers with the help of Saul Alinsky's Community Services Organization. Over the course of his lifetime he helped organize the United Farmworkers Union, led boycotts against grape and lettuce farmers in California, and eventually led to the adoption of legislation guaranteeing better wages for farmworkers there.
His activism also helped to protect farmworkers in Texas, Ohio, and all over the Midwest and Southeast.
But he didn't stop there. Recognizing that pesticides in the fields ended on consumer dinner tables, he organized across the country to limit the amount of pesticides and other poisons that the agricultural industry used on fruits and vegetables.
I met Cesar Chavez when he made a stop in Saginaw, Mich., where I worked as a reporter for the Saginaw News. His stop was sponsored by the local UAW and he spoke passionately (but softly) about the dangers of pesticides on everyone, not just farmworkers. (At the time my hair was still dark brown and I had all my teeth.)
Dressed in jeans, a gray sweatshirt and a simple jacket, he exuded a messianic air not lost on his listeners. You knew he wasn't going to blow you over with his rhetoric, but at the same time one felt the force and strength of the man who almost single-handedly proved those wrong who said farmworkers could not be organized.
Saginaw, a labor union town, embraced the farmworker leader warmly and the rank-and-file members, many of them resettled Mexican-Americans who had transitioned from the field to the factory floor, greeted him like a brother.
We have a day dedicated to a bunny, one to a turkey, and others to black rights leaders like Martin Luther King, and presidents dead long ago. Isn't it about time we honored someone who not only embraced the same principles that King and Gandhi did to bring about positive social change to their respective countries, but that also dedicated his life to making this nation better for all of us?