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From the Archives: Remembering Cesar Chavez

Articles | March 31 2017
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From the Archives: Remembering Cesar Chavez
Feb. 2, 1979: Cesar Chavez speaks to members of the United Farm Workers during a rally in the Imperial Valley. The UFW was staging a lettuce growers strike. (Steve Fontanini / Los Angeles Times)

By Scott Harrison (Los Angeles Times)

March 31 is Cesar Chavez’s birthday and a holiday in California, Colorado and Texas.

When Chavez died on April 23, 1993, staff writer George Ramos wrote The Times obituary published the next morning. He reported:

Cesar Chavez, who organized the United Farm Workers union, staged a massive grape boycott in the late 1960s to dramatize the plight of America’s poor farmhands, and later became a Gandhi-like leader to urban Mexican-Americans, was found dead Friday in San Luis, Ariz., police said. He was 66.

Authorities in San Luis, a small farming town on the Mexican border about 25 miles south of Chavez’s native Yuma, said the legendary farm workers’ leader apparently died in his sleep at the home of a family friend.

“He was our Gandhi,” said Democratic state Sen. Art Torres, a prominent Chicano politician from Los Angeles’ Eastside, upon hearing news of Chavez’s death. “He was our Dr. Martin Luther King.  (Read more)