San Fernando School Honors the Labor Leader

Dressed as a mariachi, in slim-legged black pants with silver buttons running down the sides, counselor Stan Leandro stood before hundreds of seventh-graders and clapped his hands like the late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez.

“This is how Cesar Chavez began his meetings,” he told the largely Latino student body, as they exploded into a choppy sea of rhythmic clapping.

“It begins with one person, who passes it along to another, until it gets louder and louder and you can feel the energy.”

In a celebration of Chavez’s birth and to promote the creation of a paid state holiday in his honor, state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar) and students at San Fernando Middle School crammed into the auditorium Friday to listen to mariachis, sing “De Colores” (which is often sung at United Farm Workers rallies), and watch grainy snippets from a documentary about the labor organizer’s life.

“It is important for young people to realize what Cesar Chavez’s legacy was,” said Alarcon, who spoke at three consecutive school assemblies.

In this small, well-tended city in the northeast Valley, most residents are Latino and working-class. Relatives of some students still work in the fields, and many teachers lived through the heyday of Chicano activism in California, experiencing firsthand the effects of Chavez’s organizing. That, they say, allows them to teach that chapter of history with the passion of having lived it.

“I grew up in the ‘70s,” American history teacher Mary Anne Kurzen said. “I’ve seen history happening. I remember students who boycotted Gallo grapes.”

Many students who knew who Chavez was seemed proud of the Mexican heritage they share with him. But others had only a hazy notion about the diminutive man shown in the film rallying farm workers.

“He was fighting for something, for the good of the people,” blurted Jennifer Sandoval, 12, her words jumping between Spanish and English. “He didn’t eat for 25 days.” She couldn’t remember exactly why.

“He was one of the people who fought for the Mexicans,” 12-year-old Zulema Rojo, who played a violin in the mariachi band, said.

The son of migrant workers from Mexico, Chavez grew up working the fields of the American Southwest with his family. He became a charismatic leader who battled for farm workers’ rights, including restroom facilities and drinking water.

He fought for an end to the government’s bracero program, which funneled workers from Mexico to California farms at wages far lower than American laborers would accept. He organized marches, undertook hunger strikes and, in 1962, became the head of what would become the United Farm Workers union.

When he died in 1993 at the age of 66, Chavez was mourned in the Latino community as a Gandhi-like figure.

Alarcon told the students of his grandfather, who was a janitor at the school before being fired for refusing to give up his Mexican citizenship, and of his mother, who was a student there.

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Alarcon was himself a student teacher at San Fernando Middle School when he was studying at Cal State Northridge. He said he and fellow Mexican American teachers painted a mural that still splashes across a school wall.

“What I want you to understand is Cesar Chavez is like you, from humble beginnings,” he told the students. “We owe a lot to him. I would not have been elected if not for Cesar Chavez.”

He then told students he expected the governor would soon sign a bill, which was stalled in the Assembly this week, making Chavez’s March 31 birthday a paid state holiday.

The seventh annual Cesar Chavez March for Justice will take place Sunday at noon. The march will begin at Brand Park, 15174 San Fernando Mission Blvd., and finish at San Fernando Recreation Park.

For more information, call (818) 837-2272.