Cesar Chavez Memorial
Cesar Chavez Memorial
2001, Bronze
8.5 ft x 7 ft x 3 ft
Chavez Park, Sacramento City Hall, California
In March 1966 Cesar Chavez lead an historic march from Delano to the State Capitol in Sacramento, in order to call attention to needed legislation to ensure decent human rights for the United Farm Workers.
At the time, my parents had been involved in supporting the United Farm through volunteer efforts. Prior to the march, a representative of the UFW came to a Democratic Club meeting that my mother and her friend, Albie Davis, were attending. This representative asked if anyone at the meeting would be able to assist the marchers when they arrived in Sacramento with food and temporary housing. My mother and Albie volunteered to organize this. Originally, about 250 farmworkers began the march, but by the time they arrived in Sacramento the number was over 2000 marchers. Albie recounted this story to me, and said it was like the biblical story of the loaves and the fishes; how people came forward and volunteered: one man with meat in his freezer, a Girl Scout leader offering to bake cookies, and eventually, enough housing and food was provided for all. My family and I joined the march up Highway 99 for a few of the days, so I experienced firsthand the incredible inspired and determined energy of people nonviolently marching for their rights. The night before Cesar Chavez and the marchers arrived at the State Capitol, everyone gathered at a church in Sacramento with festive food and celebration, but also to hear Cesar Chavez speak. As an 11-year-old, I saw Chavez as both a powerful and inspiring activist, and as a soft-spoken heroic saint. The following day, when the thousands of people joined together in protest at the Capitol grounds, the Governor, Pat Brown, was not there to greet and to listen to them. My 11-year-old sense of injustice at this lack of respect was great. How could the Governor of the State of California refuse to be present when these people had walked for so long and such a great distance in order for their cause to be heard?
In the year 2000 the Mayor of Sacramento, Joe Serna, instigated a call for artists to create a Memorial Artwork for Cesar Chavez, to be placed in Chavez Park across the street from Sacramento City Hall. When I heard of this call to create an artwork about Cesar Chavez and about the United Farm Workers Movement, the memory of the March from Delano to Sacramento was clear in my mind. I now had an opportunity to correct an injustice: to create a sculpture that would be a permanent presence in Sacramento, in bronze, of the historic march, that march that was ignored by the politicians in Sacramento in 1966.
In May 2001 my sculpture was installed. The sculpture shows Cesar Chavez as the figure in front leading the March. On the left-hand side is a female marcher holding a huge flag that becomes the backdrop for an image of all the people in the march, depicted in varying depths of high to low relief. Nearly every person portrayed in this scene of marchers was actually in the 1966 march, or connected in some way with the Farmworkers Movement. On the right-hand side of the sculpture you see the United Farm Workers flag. The central image is an eagle designed by Cesar Chavez’s brother, Richard Chavez. I used the UFW flag as a backdrop for mural-like images that depict the issues, the struggles, the stories, and the wins and celebrated victories of the United Farm Workers Movement led by both Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Dolores Huerta is depicted in the sculpture above the eagle holding a sign that says “Huelga”, meaning “Strike”, in Spanish. Some of the images included in the sculpture are of the migrant housing conditions, of child labor, and of workers in the fields being sprayed with pesticides by a crop duster flying overhead. There is a cornucopia overflowing with the vast amount of produce we all enjoy because of the hard and unfair labor conditions for migrant workers. There’s an image of Cesar Chavez breaking his “Fast for Peace” with Bobby Kennedy, and an image of Richard Chavez holding the first Union labeled box of grapes. The strikes and the boycotts are represented, and an intimate depiction of Cesar Chavez being helped by his daughter, as they walked along the March with his injured foot. The sculpture is set on a granite base that has quotations by Chavez etched into the surface.
To have had the opportunity’s to create meaningful sculptures about the lives of Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez has been the greatest of honors for me as a person and as an artist.
