Questions of the Spirit

One of the most powerful things Cesar Chavez is credited with saying wasn’t authored by him alone but alongside playwright Luis Valdez. It comes from “El Plan de Delano,” the manifesto written and read on the occasion of the United Farm Workers peregrinación from Delano some 300 miles up to Sacramento. The goal was to get California grape growers to recognize their union. “Our sweat and our blood have fallen on this land to make other men rich,” Chavez and Valdez wrote. “This Pilgrimage is a witness to the suffering we have seen for generations.”