Just days after sexual abuse allegations were published about the late labor leader Cesar Chavez last March, the city removed the bronze statue of his likeness. After the large sized mural that also bears his image was vandalized with blue paint, the city fenced it off.
Now, the City of San Fernando is holding community engagement meetings to receive input from local residents on what they would like to see changed at the memorial site.
The first meeting was held on Saturday, Sept. 12, at San Fernando Recreation Park with fewer than two dozen in attendance. Ruben Rodriguez, the executive director of Pueblo y Salud, was one of them. He said that most of the people who attended were from the Cesar Chavez Commemorative Committee or used to be members of the city’s Cultural Arts Commission.
The second meeting took place at Las Palmas Park on Wednesday, Sept. 16.
During the first meeting, they were divided into two groups and given a questionnaire. They were asked if the mural should stay that includes Chavez’ image. The consensus said no, and then they were asked, what the new theme should be.
Several ideas were thrown around, but one theme that Rodriguez hopes will remain the same is that of the labor movement.
“The cause was and is still good,” Rodriguez said. “That was … the legacy of Chavez and the farmworker movement.”
To reflect that idea, one suggestion put forth was to use imagery representing Filipino farmworkers and their role in building the labor movement in the United States. While most may recognize the names and contributions of Chavez and Dolores Huerta, many tend to forget that the Delano Grape Strike that eventually led to the movement’s national prominence began with Filipino workers.
On Sept. 7, 1965, Filipino members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) voted to go on strike against table grape growers in the Kern County city. Larry Itliong, one of the main organizers of the strike, approached Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to join them, which they did on Sept. 16. The two groups would merge to create the United Farm Workers (UFW) union in 1966. However, Itliong soon left citing differences and the farmworkers movement gained national prominence under the leadership of Chavez, Huerta and other key members of the union.
Other ideas included using monarch butterflies as a symbol of migration, as they are known to travel from Mexico to the U.S. and Canada in the spring to breed before returning in the fall; historical figures like Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican nun, poet, philosopher and composer who is considered one of the country’s greatest writers; and general education imagery, like young children using laptops or reading books.
One theme the group stayed away from, though, was including the likeness of modern figures to hopefully avoid the risk of future controversies.
“It’s a 100-foot mural, and it’s long enough that a lot of these elements can and should be incorporated,” Rodriguez said. “These are flawed human beings,” he added, in reference to Chavez, “but it does not distract from all the incredible work and all the improvements that were made in the field and all the motivation and inspiration it engendered in music, art, writing and plays.”
After the Wednesday meeting, city staff will take all the feedback they’ve received and bring it to the Cesar Chavez City Council Ad Hoc Committee, which in turn will provide a recommendation to the council based on the responses at a future meeting.
Once a new direction has been decided, the artist who painted the original mural, Ignacio Gomez, will make the changes.