Fourteen years ago, during the funeral for César Chávez, someone said a wonderful prayer: “We have come here to plant your heart like a seed. Farm workers will harvest the seed of your memory.”



During this Hispanic Heritage Month, that prayer resonates in our hearts like a prophecy fulfilled. The legacy of that legendary leader manifests itself in front of us like a tree with graceful branches and a strong trunk, a tree that, day after day, bears the fruit of hope.



This farm worker son of farm workers —armed with peaceful resistance, a faith made of steel and unwavering dignity— taught us that we must never cooperate with something that is humiliating, that we all have the right to live a dignified life and the obligation to rebel against injustice.



“César fought with all his being to give so many people a dignified life,” remembers Dolores Huerta, who fought shoulder to shoulder with Chávez for the rights of tens of thousands of farm workers and in the early 60s founded what would become the United Farm Workers Union. “We all must remember his patience, his strength and his passion to fight for justice.”



Perhaps his most legendary victories were won trying to eliminate those terrible pesticides that poisoned the workers and their families. Often, mothers who spent the whole day toiling in the fields would come home with their clothes covered with pesticides, which, involuntarily, they would transfer to their children while embracing them. It was no wonder cancer incidence among farm workers was up to 800% higher than the national average.



Through peaceful protest that included several hunger strikes —among them one of 36 days in 1988 when he “only had water and the ...