A Statue of Cesar Chavez Will Soon Stand on His Namesake Street

Community and political leaders pledged the continued revival of Cesar Chavez Drive at an 80th birthday celebration for the civil rights leader at the City Hall Rotunda, revealing plans to create a statute of the icon this summer.

“He wasn’t just an icon in the Mexican community; I just want to make that clear, he belongs in American history,” said Congresswoman Gwen Moore at the celebration for Cesar Chavez on March 31.

March 31st would have been Cesar Chavez’s 80th birthday and was marked with a celebration which included various politicians, dancers, and cake. It was also a celebration to help promote The Farm Project, which is three-year plan to help bring small business, culture, and arts to Cesar E. Chavez Drive. This is said to result in a more creative and enterprising culture for the Southside.

Various politicians and supporters of The Farm Project spoke at this event.

The Farm Project is also planning to create a statue of the icon this summer that will be located on Cesar Chavez Drive just south of El Rey. The sculpture will be designed by Milwaukee-based Inspired Artisans but the community will also have an input to how the icon will look.

Alderman of the 12th District Jose Perez thinks this is a great idea, saying, “It’s an amazing way to memorialize a man who meant so much too so many people.” Perez said, especially since “Latinos have very few national leaders.”

When Moore took the podium, she said that Chavez “learned very early about injustices.” Chavez moved to California when he was 12 with his parents and moved up and down the state working in the fields. Through that experience, he encountered corrupt labor contracts, small wages, and miserable migrant camps.

Moore commented on Chavez’ tactics referring to “how he fasted and prayed for justice and when he got too sick he passed it on to other people.” She then began to list big names like Jesse Jackson, Martin Sheen, and Carly Simon. The people whom she listed supported and some even marched beside him, she said.

She ended by saying, “He left us to pick the grapes of wrath and to stomp out the injustice.” This is in reference to Chavez, who led a boycott of table grape growers in California because they failed to pay their workers minimum wage and failed to provide sufficient living conditions.

Ivan Gamboa, who is on the board of the Business Improvement District for Cesar Chavez Drive, said Chavez was important to Latinos.

“Cesar Chavez made us feel proud to be Latino and inspired others to be leaders as well,” he said.
He is incredibly passionate about the improvement of the Cesar Chavez Drive and called for artists to contact him if they want to exhibit their artwork or if community organizers yearn to organize any events on the drive. He said he wants to “make it a cultural center of the state of Wisconsin.”

Co-chair for the Chavez community, Peggy West, came to the podium saying that, “We want kids to drive down the street and to ask who he was and learn more about him.”

Lupe Martinez marched with Chavez and carried his casket to the march of 40 acres where Chavez hosted his first fast that brought the farm workers movement national attention. He said, “May his name, his birth, his statue never be forgotten.”

The Salsabrosa Dance Company closed the celebration with a dance in honor of Chavez.

Cesar Chavez was born in 1927 and was a Hispanic civil rights activist, labor leader, and a farm worker who founded the National Farm Workers Association which is a labor union for farmer workers in the United States. This union helped raise wages, working conditions, and treatment of farm workers. Prior to Chavez. living conditions for farmers were crowded and unsanitary since there was a lack of plumbing and electricity. Chavez notoriously led nonviolent boycotts, marches, and hunger strikes for his cause. Some of his hunger strikes lasted as long as 36 days. He died in 1993.