Resident donates Cesar Chavez poster to San Luis
SAN LUIS, Ariz. — A poster of Cesar Chavez, given to a Yuma-area resident by the late farm labor leader’s widow, is now on permanent display in the city cultural center here named for Chavez.
Maria Robles, to whom Helen Chavez gave the poster, donated the poster to the city recently on the occasion of the observance of Chavez’s birthday last month.
“It’s a gift to me years ago by Helen Chavez, who was Chavez’s wife,” Robles said. “I can continue keeping it in my house, but how much better it would be in an exhibition in the Cesar Chavez Cultural Center.”
The poster is a copy of a work created by famed Mexican painter Octavio Ocampo in 1993, the year Chavez died in San Luis. Titled “Retrato de la Causa” (“Portrait of the Cause”), the work is a collage of images of Chavez in the years he led the United Farm Workers in strikes, boycotts, marches and other activities on behalf of farm workers.
“It expresses the history of the Cesar Chavez’s struggle for justice and dignity of work,” Robles said recently as she presented the poster to the city at a recent San Luis City Council meeting.
Accompanying her at the presentation was Miguel Sandez, a San Luis resident who took part with Chavez in many of the union’s activities.
Robles said Helen Chavez sent her the poster as a gesture of thanks for her efforts to promote her late husband’s legacy.
Helen Chavez died in Bakersfield, Calif., in June at age 88.
Cesar Chavez was born March 31, 1927, in the Yuma area and was co-founder and leader of the UFW. He died in April 1993 in San Luis, where he had been staying while attending a civil trial in Yuma involving the union.