Cesar Chavez

📍Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, 29700 Woodford-Tehachapi Road, Keene, CA 93531, USA

“I grew up on my family's small farm near Yuma, Arizona, in the North Gila Valley, until we lost it during the Depression when I was ten. After that we became migrant farm workers in California, following the crops from the vineyards to the lettuce fields, living in camps and tents and sometimes in our car. I went to more than thirty schools and left after the eighth grade to work in the fields so that my mother would not have to. My mother taught me non-violence, and my grandfather and the priests I met taught me about justice. After years of organising farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley, and the long Delano grape strike and boycott that made our union known across the world, we needed a place to live, rest and plan. In 1971 the United Farm Workers moved its headquarters to a former tuberculosis sanatorium in the Tehachapi Mountains at Keene, between Bakersfield and the desert. We named it Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, Our Lady Queen of Peace, and everyone called it La Paz. My wife, Helen, and our family lived in a modest house among the oak trees there. La Paz was a home, an office and a school. Organisers trained there, families lived and worked together, and we held meetings, masses and celebrations in the hills. I kept a small office with my books and my two dogs, and from there I set out on the fasts and marches that kept our cause alive. In 2012 La Paz became the César E. Chávez National Monument, and my home, my office and the memorial garden, with its roses and its tributes to the movement, are open to all who come to remember farm workers' struggle for dignity.”

Sources: nps.gov nps.gov ufw.org ufw.org Wikipedia: Cesar Chavez