Rendering Unto Cesar What Is Cesar’s Due

In the old days, we referred to him just by his first name. Simply Cesar. That was enough to know who we meant.

Cesar, the small and unassuming man who rallied the nation around the rights of farm workers. Cesar, the intensely spiritual person who stopped eating to spotlight the plight of those who put food on our tables. Cesar, the leader who turned his celebrity into a weapon against rich, strong and scary enemies.

In those days, saying Cesar was like saying David. He was the Mexican American hero who brought the Goliath growers to their knees.

Today, the children of those he championed barely recognize the name Cesar Chavez. It’s on school buildings and boulevards, but not in the hearts and minds of the new generation.

That is almost as sad as the way the labor leader died in 1993--alone in the borrowed bed of a friend’s humble house, shrouded by the court papers from a grower’s lawsuit. Cesario Estrada Chavez, 66, died defending yet another court challenge to his union’s already dwindling domain.

You could say his enemies wore him down, but time eroded his gains too. The mighty UFW--the farm workers union whose distinctive red flag bore an angular silhouette of a black eagle--had been steadily losing ground. Workers themselves at some ranches were voting to switch allegiances to other labor groups. Some even chose to have no union at all, saying the growers were good to them.

But at least they were voting, thanks to Cesar.

Now, there is a movement afoot in Sacramento to make March 31 a state holiday marking the birthday of the late labor leader. Sponsors are actively seeking support for a bill that would honor Chavez the same way we honor Martin Luther King Jr. Government workers and schoolchildren would get a day off in tribute to another pacifist who never rested in pursuit of civil rights for society’s outcasts.

Only about 100 people showed up in Santa Ana Saturday--King’s birthday--for a rally to support the Chavez holiday bill. I know that a few people are bothered even to see the two leaders’ names in the same sentence. A couple of readers complained to me once when I mentioned Chavez and King together as civil rights figures.

A King admirer called to say Chavez can’t compare. The reader even took offense to my implicit equalizing of the two men’s stature. Then again, others take offense when King is compared to Gandhi.

Silly jealousies. How pointless to try to establish who is the greatest among great men. Whoever attempts such a small-minded exercise has missed the high-minded message of humility and solidarity common to all three of these leaders, who combined politics and spirituality in a potent amalgam for change.

Anyone who was ever in the presence of Cesar Chavez knows he was no ordinary man. He never gave a memorable speech, like King’s “I Have a Dream.” In fact, Chavez tended to be a monotonous, even droning orator.

But somehow, he compelled you to listen. His voice was as steady and sure as his convictions. The reason we followed him is because he was so convinced he was right. Rare are people of such pure, unadulterated principle.

I met him twice as a student journalist. One encounter was inspiring, the other disturbing.

In the early 1970s, I learned from a UFW volunteer that the FBI was investigating a plot to assassinate the union organizer. I caught up with Chavez after a speech, and he responded sternly to our plans to report the plot in a Chicano student paper at UC Berkeley. The revelation could jeopardize his life and complicate his work even more than it was, he warned me.

We broke the story, but I never got over the guilty feeling of having betrayed him.

The other time we met had been earlier and more pleasant. I waited hours for him at his Delano headquarters for an interview, which he finally granted in a car on the way to yet another speech. Driving through the Central Valley fields in the dark, Chavez recalled that he had met my father in San Jose in the 1950s. At the time, Chavez was working for the CSO, a community organization, when my father dropped in to discuss opening his family practice in town.

From that sole encounter, Chavez remembered that my father had become San Jose’s first Spanish-speaking doctor. I was stunned. After a quarter-century, he had recognized my father’s name, which is the same as mine.

Now, a state holiday would ensure that we never forget the man named Cesar.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com