Cesar essays

Cesar essays One of five children, Cesar Estrada Chavez was born on a small farm near Yuma, Arizona (that his grandfather homesteaded during the 1880s), on March 31, 1927. His parents, Juana Estrada and Librado Chavez, were Mexican-American migrant workers. Cesar at the age of 10, in 1937, his parents lost their farm that had been in the family for three generations due to the Depression and broken land agreement by a dishonest Anglo. The next year, Chavezs family became migrant workers, packing their belongings and heading to California in search of work. Most of the time they lived in overcrowded quarters or farm labor camps without running water, bathrooms or electricity. At times when no shelter was available, they would live in their cars, pickup trucks, or sleep in the dirt. This difficult way of life provided Cesar with little formal education. Cesar did not like school as a child because he spoke only Spanish. Teachers were mostly Anglo, only spoke English, and doubted his intelligence because of his color of his skin. The schools permitted only English to be spoken, Spanish was forbidden. In the schools he had to listen to a lot of racist remarks. He attended at least 36 schools and was only able to complete the eighth grade before he had to quit school entirely and help support his family. Father had been in an auto accident and Cesar didnt want his mother to work in the fields, so he worked full time in the fields. Unfortunately his mother was unhappy with his decision, because she wanted her children to receive an education. But he did learn how to read and write from his uncles and grandparents. Learned from his mother that violence and selfishness were wrong. While his childhood school education was not the best, later in life, education was his passion. The walls of his office in La Paz (United Farm Worker Headquarters) are lined with hundreds of books from philosophy, economics, cooperati...