Críticas Magazine

Bruce Jensen

Cesar Chavez Day
March 31, 2008

Libraries in the U.S. aren't usually named after union organizers.  Not here in Texas, anyway.  Maybe it's different where you live.

Aside from the Reuther in Detroit, I know of only a handful.  And all those are named for one man.  One extraordinary man.

Though March 31 is, for too many of us, not an official holiday, there's nothing to prevent you from taking a moment today to honor the birth of a soft-spoken fellow who knew how to raise his voice when it mattered, and who left this world a better place than the way he found it.  He was born near the Arizona-Sonora border on a day like today in 1927.  He grew into a learned man who read hungrily, an eduator who taught by example, a brilliant leader who got his points across with quiet patience and humble eloquence.

The Cesar Chavez Central Library of the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library system is closed  today, as is Laveen, Arizona's Cesar Chavez Branch of the Phoenix Public Library.

California has at least four others: the library of the city of Perris in Riverside County bears his name, though you'd never know it from the website.  The miraculous Salinas Public Library, revitalized and rising again thanks to passionate community support and the guiding hand of legendary City Librarian Elizabeth Martinez, named one of its three branches  after Chavez.  Salinas had a rich day of activities last week  to honor the library's eponym.

Los Angeles County has its Maywood César Chávez Library (and COLAPL offers a nice online collection of resources, curriculum materials, stories, a quiz, and a reading list about the man).  Oakland Public Library also has its César E. Chávez Branch.  (These two libraries
spell his name with accented letters, as Chavez himself generally did not.  In English-speaking lands there's nothing unusual about folks deliberately dropping the accents from their own Hispanic names.)

Up in Woodburn, Oregon the Valor School renamed its library in 1999 to pay tribute to pay
tribute to Chavez.

Of course you can learn more about him at the United Farm Workers site as well as the site of the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation.  At either site you can add your name to a petition to make his birthday a national holiday.

Why aren't there  more libraries named after him - or some named after his UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta, who is still storming the barricades?  Beats me.  He understood what makes libraries beautiful.  "Preservation of one's own culture," Chavez said, "does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures." 

"We need to help students and parents cherish and preserve the ethnic and cultural diversity that nourishes and strengthens this community - and this nation." 

These ideas of Cesar Chavez are reflected in the life's work of a public servant who was singled out over the weekend for the 2007 Pura Belpré Librarian of the Year Award by REFORMA's Northeast Chapter.  Yolanda Bonitch of New York Public Library was recognized for a
long list of accomplishments including outreach to underrepresented communities, principled Spanish-language materials selection, and promotion of reading by young people. She figured prominently in a 2004 Críticas article; her words below echo those of Cesar Chavez:

Throughout her 25 years as a librarian, Bonitch has consistently encouraged parents to help their children preserve the Spanish language. "A parent might be ashamed to allow their children to borrow books in Spanish. But I tell them the gift of a second language is not to be
lost. Sometimes at school the children may see a book they want in English and then come to take it out in Spanish."

Posted by Bruce Jensen on March 31, 2008 | Comments (0)