Back in 2018, Eduardo Chavez, the grandson of labor rights activist Cesar Chavez, released his debut documentary titled Hailing Cesar, which follows Eduardo’s journey towards understanding his grandfather and his legacy as an activist. Since then, Eduardo has spoken at over a hundred colleges across America, screening his documentary and sharing his story. Yesterday, on October 23rd, Eduardo presented his story and documentary in an auditorium at Foothill, to an audience of Foothill and non-Foothill students and faculty.

Having grown up in an affluent suburb near San Francisco, Eduardo’s childhood was a stark departure from the struggles his father and grandfather faced working on California farms picking crops. As a result, it wasn’t until Eduardo’s adulthood, after the death of his grandmother, Helen Chavez, that he began to reflect on the grandfather that everyone seemed to know better than he did. In his film, Eduardo documents the journey he took across California to visit important landmarks from Cesar’s life, such as the first headquarters ever made for the United Farm Workers of America, a union founded by Cesar Chavez. For a week, he also picked grapes on a farm alongside other farm workers to see what the conditions were like and to connect with the farm workers for their perspectives.

To Eduardo, Cesar Chavez and his accomplishments go beyond being simply a part of Californian or even Mexican-American history. “This is American history,” he said during the Q&A. Despite the great strides made locally regarding farm worker rights and protections, federally, they still are not covered under the National Labor Relations Act, which allows employees to form their own unions. Like any civil rights movement, the fight for national unionization of farm workers is still ongoing. Eduardo laments over the ways in which Cesar Chavez’s legacy has begun to fade from the consciousness of younger generations, and hopes that with his efforts, he can continue Cesar’s work in his own way. As of late, Eduardo has been working on a podcast called We Are Latinx, as well as a potential children’s book adapting Eduardo’s journey of reconnecting with his family roots.