Once I visited the Nationwide Chavez Heart earlier this summer time, the solemnity of the positioning hit me the second I parked.
It sits on 187 attractive acres within the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains, on the finish of a winding forest highway. Throughout are outdated buildings — homes, barns, trailers — which might be what’s left of La Paz, the kibbutz-like neighborhood Cesar Chavez established within the Nineteen Seventies and the place his ultimate resting place is.
Ready to greet me on the entrance was Andres Chavez, the middle’s government director.
Andres can also be Cesar’s grandson.
“See these steps proper right here?” he stated as we started our tour. He gestured to the trail as much as the gravesite of his grandparents, surrounded by rose bushes in entrance of a fountain with 5 spouts to recollect the folks killed whereas protesting at United Farm Staff actions. “I used to skateboard right here earlier than college.”
What many think about sacred grounds Andres additionally is aware of as his childhood residence.
The 2-story home the place Cesar and Helen lived? Andres remembered “stacked” Christmas Eve events the place Helen gave out socks to her grandchildren as presents. A playground behind a chain-link fence? Andres and his pals used to trip their mountain bikes down the slides. The soup kitchen that Andres plans to reopen to host guests? He cleaned dishes and swept flooring there as a child throughout neighborhood meals and acquired paid in cheeseburgers.
We handed by the refurbished headquarters of the United Farm Staff and the Cesar Chavez Basis, the 2 organizations by means of which the labor chief launched his people-power revolution. We went into the customer heart, which gives a brief documentary in regards to the historical past of the place, images from el movimiento, a duplicate farmworker shack, and Chavez’s workplace the best way he left it on the time of his dying in 1993, right down to brimming bookcases and a notepad with a to-do checklist.
Andres pressed a button to launch a brief narrated program full with spotlights on totally different components of the workplace.
Nothing occurred.
“Huh,” stated a sheepish Martha Crusius. “It wouldn’t cease enjoying, and now it received’t play in any respect.”
Crusius is the Nationwide Park Service program supervisor who helped put together the documentation to determine the César E. Chávez Nationwide Monument, devoted in 2012 by President Obama and consisting of the graves of Cesar and Helen Chavez, in addition to the customer heart.
Andres smiled. “We’ve acquired work to do right here.”
He’s been in command of the Nationwide Chavez Heart since April, however had already made a reputation for himself within the Central Valley past his pedigree. He helped begin one of many few political radio exhibits in California hosted by Latinos and helped with COVID-19 vaccine rollouts all through Kern County. Proper now, he’s coordinating logistics for the ultimate stretch of the United Farm Staff’ march from Delano to Sacramento, scheduled to finish this Friday.
Family and friends see in Andres the religious and spitting picture of Cesar, right down to the identical heat smile and eyes, empathetic countenance and wholesome head of hair.
“He’s a really strategic and good thinker,” stated Cal State Bakersfield President Lynnette Zelezny, who appointed Andres to her Latina/Latino Advisory Committee. She credit him with serving to his alma mater open the campus for COVID testing and vaccines, and for working with Dolores Huerta to persuade the tutorial senate to supply ethnic research. “Andres has that capacity to deliver folks collectively. He’s a magnet.”
“He doesn’t give thundering speeches that provide you with chills. He simply talks to folks, identical to my dad,” stated Paul Chavez, who heads the Cesar Chavez Basis and is Andres’ father. “He’s acutely aware of the message that he has. Nevertheless it’s a romantic notion that the 2 are comparable. Every is their very own man.”
The 28-year-old downplayed any comparisons, or any ambitions on his half to burnish his personal picture. His job proper now could be to raise his grandfather at a time the place he stated curiosity in Cesar is larger than ever.
“Lots of people checked out themselves over these previous couple of years and requested, ‘What extra can I do?’” he stated as we concluded our tour. “In order that they regarded again in historical past. And so they discover the farmworker’s motion. The UFW was by no means massive. However there have been thousands and thousands of people that had been impressed.
“He was a cool-ass dude,” Andres concluded as we lastly settled in a bench underneath the shade of an oak tree. “However there are much less and fewer individuals who labored with him. Quite a lot of youthful folks, they don’t know what my Tata did,” utilizing a Mexican Spanish time period of affection that roughly interprets as “Grampy.”
Andres by no means acquired to satisfy his grandfather, who died 9 months earlier than Andres was born. However he was at UFW rallies virtually from the second he may stroll. His father, aunts and uncles all carried on their patriarch’s work by means of the organizations he had arrange.
Nonetheless, persevering with within the household enterprise wasn’t preordained.
He moved out of La Paz at 18 and earned a bachelor’s diploma in public administration in 2016. Then, he moved to Sacramento to work with a nonprofit that targeted on instructional outreach for farmworkers, after which the California State Honest.
“I didn’t know what I wished to do,” he admitted.
A few yr into his gig, Andres referred to as his father.
“He stated, ‘I’ve been considering — I wish to come again,’” Paul Chavez stated. “‘I wish to be a part of the motion.’”
Paul employed his son as an assistant on a 10-year strategic plan for the Cesar Chavez Basis, which is concerned in every little thing from inexpensive housing to curriculum coaching to public well being initiatives.
“Being within the motion, you’re uncovered to different folks, however you’re sheltered from the outer world,” Paul stated. “We knew we would have liked a special focus, and it was apparent he was the man to try this.”
When the Nationwide Chavez Heart government director function opened up and Andres expressed curiosity, Paul had a frank speak together with his son in regards to the promise and peril of the place.
“I instructed him, ‘Hear, mijo, in fact there’s lots of advantages of being your grandfather’s grandson,’” Paul stated. “‘However you gotta perceive you’re going to have some robust occasions too. And it's important to be comfy with coping with conditions that many people old-timers get defensive about.’”
Paul was referring to revelations in books and newspapers —together with this one — over the past 20 years about Cesar’s therapy of former colleagues which have soured his repute in some progressive circles. And the Chavez household has lengthy fended off accusations that the community of nonprofits they work for and management exploits their patriarch’s identify whereas forsaking the plight of migrant staff.
It’s a previous that Andres was greater than keen to debate with me.
“There have been some issues he may’ve achieved higher — we acknowledge that,” Andres calmly stated. “It's a must to be sincere while you assume there have been issues that would’ve been achieved higher, but in addition have a look at the longer image.”
I requested about his grandfather’s use of the time period “wetback” and long-standing opposition to unlawful immigration, stances which have made him an unlikely cudgel for anti-immigrant activists.
“Is that one thing we’re happy with? Completely not,” Andres stated. “However my Tata supported [the 1986] amnesty. By calling him anti-immigrant, you give firms a giant move on the atrocities of what they had been doing. They don’t care about staff — my Tata did. We have to get context like that on the market.”
Sustaining and defending his grandfather’s legacy is simply a part of Andres’ tasks as head of the Nationwide Chavez Heart, which additionally helps handle the monument with the Nationwide Park Service. He’s overseeing the refurbishing of the outdated La Paz buildings in time for the centennial of Chavez’s start in 2027, in addition to making the world extra of a area journey vacation spot.
“Children from town need to be up right here within the wilderness — it’ll be one of many few occasions they go away an city atmosphere,” he stated.
He needs to get his grandfather’s presence extra into the trendy age, with gestures as massive as a e book of his quotations and as small as a Spotify playlist (Cesar was an enormous jazz fan, with Coleman Hawkins a selected favourite).
Extra importantly, although, Andres needs the world to know that Cesar was extra than simply the fields.
“Each one in all my Tata’s causes are current-day points,” he stated. “His concepts had been radical for his time. Vegetarianism. LGBT equality. Environmentalism. Police brutality. He even did yoga earlier than it acquired mainstream. Quite a lot of what he’s identified for is fairly shiny now, however there’s a lot extra.”
We regarded on the car parking zone, the place increasingly more folks had been exhibiting up.
“There’s now lots of Subarus,” he joked, “as a substitute of simply Chevys.”
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