Chavez Legacy

* As an ex-farm worker and former United Farm Workers organizer who knew Cesar Chavez for 27 years, I agree with the conclusion in Ruben Navarrette Jr.’s article (“What’s in a Name?,” Opinion, Dec. 5) but not with much of his reasoning.

The Fresno City Council’s recent reversal of an earlier action renaming a major thoroughfare for Chavez was an insult to all Latinos. The politicians responsible should be held to answer by the Hispanic community.

However, I challenge Navarrette’s inference that Chavez was selected for the honor due to a vacuum of past and present Latino heroes. In his haste to distinguish himself from earlier generations of Latinos, Navarrette misses some key points.

For Cesar Chavez not only inspired Latinos--and many others--to be organizers and social activists, he also taught us what it meant to be men and women. He did not do it with rhetoric or by writing books. In 1968, when some grape strikers discussed resorting to violence during the third year of walkouts that had yet to produce much result, Chavez fasted for 25 days. He demonstrated for his own people the importance of winning without the stigma of violence. That ended the discussion.

Sen. Robert Kennedy was with Chavez in Delano when the fast concluded, calling him “one of the heroic figures of our time.” In a statement read for him, Chavez said, “The truest act of courage . . . is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to sacrifice for others. God help us to be men.” Those are still powerful words--and deeds--in the face of that part of the Mexican American culture that tells its young men how you’re not a man unless you respond to indignity with violence.

Chavez nearly starved to death again 20 years later by fasting for 36 days in 1988, to focus the rest of us on the tragedy pesticides visit on farm workers and their children.

The UFW founder’s greatest monuments are the gains his union won for farm workers as well as its ongoing efforts. But it was also his willingness to risk his life on behalf of principle that continues to inspire and educate--especially at a time in America when even risking one’s career because of idealism seems strangely out of vogue. Such commitment and spirituality are sorely lacking in Navarrette’s thoughts.

JOE SERNA JR.

Mayor of Sacramento