‘Every one of my Tata’s causes are current-day issues. Vegetarianism. LGBT equality. Environmentalism. Police brutality.’
Andres Chavez, the grandson of Cesar Chavez and the executive director of the National Chavez Center in Keene, speaks with schoolchildren on a field trip to the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Keene. He is in charge of shaping his grandfather’s legacy. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
By GUSTAVO ARELLANO |
By GUSTAVO ARELLANO |
PUBLISHED: August 26, 2022 at 4:45 a.m. | UPDATED: August 26, 2022 at 5:28 a.m.
When I visited the National Chavez Center earlier this summer, the solemnity of the site hit me the moment I parked.
It sits on 187 gorgeous acres in the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains, at the end of a winding forest road. All around are old buildings — houses, barns, trailers — that are what’s left of La Paz, the kibbutz-like community Cesar Chavez established in the 1970s and where his final resting place is.
Waiting to greet me at the entrance was Andres Chavez, the center’s executive director.
Andres is also Cesar’s grandson.
“See these steps right here?” he said as we began our tour. He gestured to the path up to the gravesite of his grandparents, surrounded by rose bushes in front of a fountain with five spouts to remember the people killed while protesting at United Farm Workers actions. “I used to skateboard here before school.”
What many consider sacred grounds Andres also knows as his childhood home.
The two-story house where Cesar and Helen lived? Andres remembered “stacked” Christmas Eve parties where Helen gave out socks to her grandchildren as presents. A playground behind a chain-link fence? Andres and his friends used to ride their mountain bikes down the slides. The soup kitchen that Andres plans to reopen to host visitors? He cleaned dishes and swept floors there as a kid during community meals and got paid in cheeseburgers.
We passed by the refurbished headquarters of the United Farm Workers and the Cesar Chavez Foundation, the two organizations through which the labor leader launched his people-power revolution. We went into the visitor center, which offers a short documentary about the history of the place, photos from el movimiento, a replica farmworker shack, and Chavez’s office the way he left it at the time of his death in 1993, down to brimming bookcases and a notepad with a to-do list.
He’s been in charge of the National Chavez Center since April, but had already made a name for himself in the Central Valley beyond his pedigree. He helped start one of the few political radio shows in California hosted by Latinos and helped with COVID-19 vaccine rollouts throughout Kern County. Right now, he’s coordinating logistics for the final stretch of the United Farm Workers’ march from Delano to Sacramento, scheduled to end this Friday.
Friends and family see in Andres the spiritual and spitting image of Cesar, down to the same warm smile and eyes, empathetic countenance and healthy head of hair.
“He’s a very strategic and brilliant thinker,” said Cal State Bakersfield President Lynnette Zelezny, who appointed Andres to her Latina/Latino Advisory Committee. She credits him with helping his alma mater open the campus for COVID testing and vaccines, and for working with Dolores Huerta to convince the academic senate to offer ethnic studies. “Andres has that ability to bring people together. He’s a magnet.”
“He doesn’t give thundering speeches that give you chills. He just talks to people, just like my dad,” said Paul Chavez, who heads the Cesar Chavez Foundation and is Andres’ father. “He’s conscious of the message that he has. But it’s a romantic notion that the two are similar. Each is their own man.”
The 28-year-old downplayed any comparisons, or any ambitions on his part to burnish his own image. His job right now is to elevate his grandfather at a time where he said interest in Cesar is bigger than ever.
“Every one of my Tata’s causes are current-day issues,” Andres said. “His ideas were radical for his time. Vegetarianism. LGBT equality. Environmentalism. Police brutality. He even did yoga before it got mainstream. A lot of what he’s known for is pretty glossy now, but there’s so much more.”
Gustavo Arellano is a Los Angeles Times columnist. ©2022 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
No comments:
Post a Comment