Monday, March 15, 2010

The Impact of Cesar Chavez

Writing in The Wilson Quarterly, Richard Rodriguez on the man and the movement:

Cesar Chavez similarly cast his campaign for better wages and living conditions for farm workers as a religious movement. He became for many Americans, especially Mexican Americans (my parents among them), a figure of spiritual authority. I remember a small brown man with an Indian aspect leading labor protests that were also medieval religious processions of women, children, nuns, college students, burnt old ­men—­under the banner of Our Lady of ­Guadalupe.

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