Winners of Cesar Chavez Writing Contest Honored : Culture: The first competition receives 450 Spanish and English entries in L.A. school district. Students celebrate a Latino hero’s life and influence.

It began as a simple question by the daughter of Los Angeles school board member Victoria Castro: “Why don’t we (Latinos) have leaders like Martin Luther King?”

The end result was 450 entries from students throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District for the first Cesar Chavez Essay/Poetry Contest. On Thursday, the winners in three categories for Spanish-language and English entries were honored at the Mexican Cultural Institute, which helped sponsor the event.

“Cesar Chavez was not only a leader among Mexican Americans, but a world leader,” Castro said at the ceremony on Olvera Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Winners were given cash awards of $150, $125 and $100 for first, second and third place.

The contest had students write on the theme “Cesar Chavez: The Benefits of His Work.”

Entries were received from second-graders to high school seniors. In the elementary school English category, the winner was Rosario Luis, a fourth-grader from McKinley Avenue School in South-Central.

Her essay compared her grandfather to Chavez, both with kind eyes, she said, both heroes to her. “I’m proud to be a Mexican American,” she wrote.

Winning first place in the high school Spanish language category was Leslie Rivera, a senior at Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley. She wrote a poem, which in part said: “Your goodness was such, that no one could repay you, even with all the gold in the world.”

A third-place winner in the middle school English category was Sepulveda Middle School ninth-grader Andrea Alicia Alarcon, daughter of Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alarcon. “I’m here today not as a politician, but as a father,” Alarcon said. “I am very proud. My daughter honors me with her writing.”

The students were not the only ones to have learned something. Manuel Ponce, director of the district’s Mexican American Education Commission, said he had not known much about Chavez before the contest. But after reading all 450 entries as one of seven judges, he said, “I now live the man, I sleep the man, I eat the man. I feel I now know him man to man.”