[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Page 4901]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    INTRODUCTION OF THE CESAR ESTRADA CHAVEZ LANDS LEGACY STUDY ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. HILDA L. SOLIS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, February 27, 2003

  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, I proudly introduce the Cesar Estrada Chavez 
Land Legacy Study Act. This bill will look for ways to honor Cesar 
Estrada Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers and passionate 
champion of human and civil rights.
  Specifically, the bill directs the National Park Service to look for 
ways to recognize Chavez's contributions to our society through 
historical sites and park areas. It is the first step in honoring his 
tremendous accomplishments and the local communities where his 
footprints were made.
  Cesar Chavez was a humble man. Little did anyone know the greatness 
that he would bestow on future generations.
  In his early childhood, Cesar Chavez was raised as a farm worker in 
Yuma, Arizona. Raised during the Great Depression, his family lost 
everything and was forced to join the thousands of farm workers that 
wandered the Southwest to find work. During his youth, the Chavez 
family migrated throughout the Southwest, working in various farms that 
fed our country.
  The young Cesar Chavez experienced first hand the hardships and 
injustices of the thousands of farm workers at that time. His home was 
barely livable and his school hardly fit to be called schoolhouse.
  Unfair labor practices--harassment, abuse, long hours, low pay, 
hazardous working conditions and limited education opportunities kept 
farm workers from being self-sufficient and empowered citizens.
  Witnessing and experiencing this lifestyle, Cesar Chavez sought to 
make changes in the way farm workers were treated.
  He united many others who also suffered similar atrocities with those 
who empathized with the struggle to become part of the union movement. 
In 1952, he left the fields and joined the Community Service 
Organization. There he conducted voter registration drives and 
campaigns against racial and economic discrimination.
  In 1962, he took his vast experience, his compassion, and his 
brothers and sisters in this multi-ethnic struggle and started the 
National Farmworkers Association--today's United Farmworkers of 
America.
  The UFW succeeded in organizing the oppressed. They overcame this 
oppression through boycotts and pickets, and when all else failed, 
hunger strikes.
  Chavez was a student of Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent philosophies. He 
knew that you cannot unite people through violent means, but you can 
connect them by joining hands in peaceful demonstration.
  Since its inception, the UFW has achieved incredible results through 
its organization. Fair wages, health care coverage, pension benefits, 
housing, pesticide regulations, and countless other rights and 
protections are more a reality because of the UFW and in turn because 
of its founder--Cesar E. Chavez.
  In the past, we have honored other heroes, like Martin Luther King, 
Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, through national parks and land. The 
life of Cesar Chavez and his family provides an outstanding opportunity 
to demonstrate and interpret the history of agricultural labor in the 
west through the National Parks Service.

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