SACRAMENTO — This Sunday, March 31, is Cesar Chavez Day. The state vacation celebrates the labor chief’s life and achievements within the farm fields of America.
One Stockton man has made it his mission to assist a brand new era of farmworkers.
A typical day for Luis Magaña: The labor chief ventures into the agricultural fields of the Central Valley to coach farmworkers about their rights.
On a blustery, sunny afternoon, Magaña visits with employees from Oaxaca, Mexico. They’re pruning grape vines on the outskirts of Stockton, simply in time for spring.
He greets each with a handshake and a smile, despite the fact that he isn’t at all times welcomed by farm homeowners.
Again at his workplace, Magaña walked right into a room stuffed with cultural artifacts and reminders of his homeland. Art work and murals hold on the partitions and inform the historical past of California’s farmworkers, together with his personal.
In 1967, Magaña and his household moved from Michoacan, Mexico to California’s Central Valley, often known as the breadbasket of the world.
The transfer was made attainable as a result of his grandfather was a part of the Bracero Program, a federally funded settlement that allowed 5 million Mexican employees to legally work in america.
On the age of 14, Magaña discovered to arrange.
“At this age, I began college. I needed to collect a bunch of migrant college students as a result of the White children would beat us up,” Magaña mentioned. “This occurred within the Manteca college district, and that was my first time organizing a bunch of children.”
Within the years to return, Magaña, now a devoted organizer, would cross paths with labor chief Cesar Chavez.
In 1987, he invited Chavez to talk to Mexican migrant employees in San Joaquin County.
“He motivated me as a result of my struggle for farmworkers’ rights started within the Nineteen Seventies and in social actions that my dad and mom have been part of,” Magaña mentioned.
This was the time Chavez launched a marketing campaign to attract consideration to pesticides poisoning grape employees and their youngsters. Magaña mentioned it stays an issue in the present day.
“There’s lots of people that maintain getting sprayed and affected by a whole lot of agriculture chemical substances,” he mentioned.
For the reason that Sixties, United Farm Employees introduced change to the farm fields of America.
Nonetheless, Magaña mentioned the brand new era of migrant employees, a lot of whom come from indigenous components of Mexico and Central America, face the identical previous challenges.
“From accidents, extortions, coming as topics in a system that borders on slavery to be able to work within the farm fields,” he mentioned.
Magaña spends most of his time consulting migrant employees on wage theft, reporting harassment and job accidents. He feels compelled to select up the place his predecessor left off.
“It is like Cesar Chavez’s legacy stayed put in historical past books and never within the farm fields the place employees stay,” Magaña mentioned.
On Cesar Chavez Day, Magaña plans to carry a small gathering at his Stockton workplace to honor the labor chief. The general public is welcome to attend.
