Hispanic Heritage Month | Cesario Estrada Chavez, Leading a Revolution of the Mind and Heart

What began as Hispanic Heritage Week in 1968 is now National Hispanic Heritage Month. Beginning on September 15 and ending on October 15, the annual celebration highlights the culture’s beauty and history as well as the influence and achievements of Hispanic Americans.

Cesario Estrada Chavez, also known as Cesar Chavez, is at the top of my list. A civil rights activist, organizer, Latino, and labor leader, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association alongside Dolores Huerta, an activist in her own right. The association later became the United Farm Workers (EFW) labor union. 

Chavez led the union for three decades and his leadership resulted in workers receiving fair wages, medical coverage, and pension benefits. It was the first successful union in American history, ensuring farmworkers had the right to collectively bargain for safe working conditions and fair compensation.

How did they win? Chavez’s strategy was clear. 

“There’s no turning back. . . We will win. We are winning because ours is a revolution of mind and heart,” he said.

The uprising started within and underscored the importance of the interior life. James Baldwin agreed. “Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world,” he wrote in “Nobody Knows My Name.”

Chavez understood that oppression is first internalized and that change must begin from the inside out. For change to occur, it must first be accepted in the hearts and minds of oppressed and marginalized people.

In his “Address to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco” on November 9, 1984, Chavez said, “Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.”

It sounds like somebodiness to me, which is prompted in part by an awareness of one’s inherent dignity and worth. Chavez also speaks to the importance of education, which goes hand and hand.

Because scientia potestas est or knowledge is power and sharing knowledge changes the power dynamic. Chavez believed, “The end of all knowledge must be the building up of character,” which upsets an empire built on the false binary of somebodies and nobodies.

Capitalism demands that most citizens live hand to mouth while a select few make money hand over fist. It drives up the cost of being and fully being known as oneself.

While this system prioritizes products and profits over people, Chavez was clear: “The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.”

He understood the need for awareness of one’s social condition and that the prescription for change was inner strength coupled with self-actualization. When talking about his early organizing, Chavez wrote in “The Organizer’s Tale,” “Most of them said they were interested, but the hardest part was to get them to start pushing themselves, on their own initiative.”

They needed to believe that the change they desired could and would start with them. They need not wait for the right conditions, a better time, or even a leader. 

Dolores Huerta came up with an affirmation during a fast in Phoenix, Arizona: “Si, se puede.” The phrase means “Yes, you can” in English and became the motto for the United Farm Workers. It remains a rallying cry for the immigrant rights movement, underlining the importance of self-dedication.

Chavez was convinced: “Self-dedication is a spiritual experience.” He reminded farmworkers of the cranium’s cosmos and the universe within. Because it is possible to think your way into another means of existing. 

From hand to mouth to mind and heart, Chavez was for the people and championed change by the people. He would go on to become a folk hero and remains one of mine.