“Hailing Cesar”showing at AWC
Grandson of Cesar Chavez to present documentary
Eduardo Chavez was an infant at the time of the death of his grandfather, Cesar Chavez, the co-founder and leader of the United Farm Workers union.
“I believe I met him in person only a couple of times, with him holding me as a baby,” he said
Growing up, he knew he had a connection to a legacy of the farm labor movement, but he knew little about what led his grandfather to start it or about the beginnings of the UFW.
Those questions inspired him to direct and produce “Hailing Cesar,” a documentary film that follows Chavez in the 1960s and ‘70s as he led strikes and boycotts on behalf of farmworker rights.
Released in 2018, the onehour documentary earned accolades including selection for screening film festivals around the country. And on Tuesday it will come to Yuma for a showing at Arizona Western College’s Schoening Conference Center, 2020 S. Avenue 8E.
The presentation at 3 p.m. is free and open to the public and Eduardo Chavez will be on hand to speak and take questions from the audience after the screening.
The UFW leader was born in Yuma and died of natural causes in San Luis, Ariz., in 1993. His grandson says he doesn’t want the struggles for labor and human rights and social justice to be lost on generations that came after his death. He says he hopes the film will enlighten them as much as it did him when he was working on it.
“I think it’s super important to know what our history is, because over time that can get lost,” says Eduardo Chavez, a Californiabased filmmaker.
Cesar Chavez may be thought of as a farm labor organizer, his grandson said, “but really he was the biggest figure of Latino empowerment we have had.”
But no matter young people’s ethnic backgrounds, he says, he hopes the film can serve as a link to a past they need to understand.
“If it can give young people inspiration, that’s great, but at least it can inspire young people to learn about their history and where they came from.”
By his admission, Eduardo Chavez had “difficulty connecting with my grandfather’s life” while growing up. But having just graduated college, he reached a turning point where he wanted to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. With the help of a fellow student in an acting class, he embarked on the documentary project dedicated to Cesar Chavez.
For guidance, he approached his father, Fernando, Cesar’s oldest son and witness to the farm labor movement who later became a prominent attorney in the San Francisco area.
“I called my dad and said, ‘Where do I start.’ He said, ‘The first thing you need to do is go into the fields, to do the work to understand this labor that is deep in your family’s history.’”
As the camera followed him, Eduardo Chavez spent 30 days in Sonoma, Calif., picking grapes — ironically the same type of fruit harvest targeted for strikes and boycotts by his grandfather and the UFW.
The sequences of him at work appear midway through the film, which then delves into the history of UFW, going back to its founding in Delano, Calif. The film, however, does not focus on the Yuma area, where the UFW also had a presence.
Eduardo Chavez said he came away from the project “blown away” by his grandfather’s perseverance in his struggles for better pay and working conditions for farmworkers.
“Hailing Cesar” is his first credit as director and producer of a film. Having finished it, he says he’s currently seeking financing for a documentary on immigration.