Cesar lived a tough yet peaceful life more people should be like him and live with peace within themselves. My person was Cesar Chavez an amazing peacemaker against violence. Cesar was born on March 31, 1927 in Yuma Arizona, his family had lost there home due to the great depression, they then moved to California and began a new life as a migrant farm worker and he was soon aware of the hardships and injustices of a farm workers life.
During the course of his school life, Chávez attended over thirty-six schools. In 1942, he graduated from eighth grade. He did not return to high school because his father became injured in an accident and he did not want his mother Juana to have to work in the fields. Chávez began working full-time. From April 22nd to May 5th 1927 the Mississippi flood of 1927 happened effecting over 700,000 people from Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Chavez modeled his methods on the nonviolent civil disobedience of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. employing strikes, boycotts, marches and fasts — to draw attention to La Causa. And he drew inspiration from the social teachings of the Catholic Church and from the life of St. Francis. He learned about justice or rather injustice early in his life. Cesar grew up in Arizona; the small adobe home, where Cesar was born was swindled from them by dishonest Anglos. Cesar’s father agreed to clear eighty acres of land and in exchange he would receive the deed to forty acres of land that adjoined the home.
127 our experts are availableright now
The agreement was broken and the land sold to a man named Justus Jackson. Cesar’s dad went to a lawyer who advised him to borrow money and buy the land. Later when Cesar’s father could not pay the interest on the loan the lawyer bought back the land and sold it to the original owner. Cesar learned a lesson about injustice that he would never forget. Later, he would say, The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being but it is also the most true to our nature.
“I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of humanity, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non violent struggle for justice.” Those words by Cesar were communicated in a statement that had to be read for him because of his weakened condition from a 25-day fast. The purpose of the fast was to send a message to some farm workers who began to speak of responding in kind to the violent assaults against them by growers. Cesar lost 35 pounds on the fast and had to be carried to a park where the fast was to end.
Surrounding him were thousands of farm workers who had been moved by Cesar’s message. The talk of violence was over. Chavez leads a 1,000 mile march through the Central Valley of California, in order to call attention to the union elections. Moorpark farm workers join the 1,000 Mile March in California in August 1975.
The march was a 59 day trek organized by the UFW, from the Mexican border at San Ysidro to Salinas, CA and then from Sacramento down the Central Valley to the UFW’s La Paz headquarters at Keene, southeast of Bakersfield. Tens of thousands of farm workers marched and attended evening rallies to hear Chavez and organize their ranches. Overall Cesar Chavez was one of the most peaceful people ever and we all should strive to be just like him.
Bibliography
- AFL-CIO (2019) Cesar Chavez. Accessed 11 November, 2019. https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/cesar-chavez
- The People History http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1927.html
- https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/cesar-chavez
- https://www.humanrights.com/voices-for-human-rights/cesar-chavez.html
- http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1927.html
