For four years, Kailey Flores and Dulce Ramos-Gómez have organized an annual mural celebration in commemoration of the Cesar Chavez mural in Malcolm X Plaza.
Flores and Ramos-Gómez, members of the student organization, Movimiento Estudiantil para La Liberación de las Américas, have seen the event grow into celebrating far more than just Chavez as a figure, but the whole United Farm Workers movement and all farm workers collectively.
“Every year that we’ve done the mural celebration, we try to be really intentional about decentering one face or one person from the struggle,” Flores said. “We always call it the Farmworkers’ Day celebration, even though that’s not what it’s called. It’s called the Cesar Chavez Mural celebration. We also really center intersectional struggle.”
On May 1, MELA, alongside La Raza Student Organization, hosted the 31st annual Cesar Chavez Mural Celebration in Jack Adams Hall. This year’s theme was ‘Fruits of our love.’ The mural celebration was one of many events hosted throughout the day, including a tabling session in Malcolm X Plaza and an art gallery by MELA members. Members of GABRIELA SFSU, a Filipino grassroots organization, and General Union of Palestine Students were also in attendance.
Ramos-Gómez spoke of the importance of the event, especially given the current political climate.
“Our farmworkers are so vulnerable,” Ramos-Gómez said. “They’re being deported, I mean, as it was, they never were really being paid a living wage or a humane wage, they sometimes get paid cents a day. So it’s really important to try to, one, recognize their achievements and two, make sure that we’re all coming as a collective to uplift them and make sure that we’re doing as much as we can to protect them.”
Members of La Raza, GABRIELA SFSU and GUPS gave testimony to their own community’s connection to land cultivation.
“We try to get at least one other org [to] come to speak about the farmworkers’ struggle in their community because it’s so much more broad than Latine people and it always has been,” Flores said. “We’ve always been in a struggle together historically.”
Bee Burgonio, a member of GABRIELA SFSU, spoke of Larry Itliong, a Filipino American who played a crucial role in the 1965 Delano Grape Strike, although he doesn’t get as much credit as Chavez does.
“There’s a shared history that’s not really spoken about,” Burgonio said. “It’s usually Cesar Chavez who gets the credit, but Larry Itliong is also one of them.”
Jojo R., who preferred to not share their last name, is a member of La Raza. Jojo said that although invited organizations share different cultural backgrounds, their ancestors likely worked in the fields together.
“I know a bunch of people whose ancestors were part of the movement and that doesn’t just stand in the Latino community,” Jojo said. “That goes into the Palestinian community, the Filipino community, all these other organizations. We know that we have that in common, that oftentimes our labor has been exploited and that’s what brings us together.”
The United Farm Workers Movement was formed in 1962 by Chavez and Dolores Huerta in Fresno, but really picked up steam with their grape boycott, which resulted in strikes across the country. Notable members of the UFW include Itliong and Nagi Daifullah, a Yemeni leader of the 1973 Delano Grape Boycott.
Kennedy Lopez, a member of La Raza, gave testimony to her grandfather’s experience being a farm worker for 40 years. Lopez’s grandfather “would wake up at four in the morning and come back around 6 p.m. every day.”
“He’d come back sweating from the 100 degree heat, but even then, he never failed to give me a hug and a smile or to ask me how I was doing,” Lopez said. “We must uplift these voices. Our country runs on the labor that these people bring and our country is running on the people that we’re currently trying to ‘other’ under this administration. But I know how important my grandpa was to us and to our community and I hope today everyone else will too.”
