Why Cesar Chavez Is a Hero Among Hispanics

¶ … Hispanics I have chosen are the late Cesar Chavez and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. I greatly admire Cesar Chavez for his leadership of the farm workers toiling in the fields with back-breaking tools and no representation. The late U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy called him "One of the heroic figures of our time." Meantime, Ted Cruz is a far right wing legislator whose Tea Party positions on almost everything in the way of society and government are wrong-headed and polarizing.

Cesar Chavez Chavez was born into a world of segregation in Yuma, Arizona, and when he attended elementary school in the 1930's, Spanish, his native language, was banned. There were signs in Yuma that said "White Only" and when he tried to speak Spanish in school the teachers would rap his knuckles with a ruler (Skallerup, 2010).

Because his parents moved around to different locations to work in the fields, Chavez attended "thirty-seven different schools," and before he could start in high school, he helped his family by working in the fields. He grew up at a time when segregation was a way of life in California, but he used the challenges to become stronger. While working in the fields in California, Chavez slept in their car at night and worked the apricots, cherries, grapes, carrots, broccoli and peas during the day (Skallerup, p. 2).

In time, Chavez joined the National Agricultural Workers Union, and later, he became national director for the Community Services Organization, which was a good training grounds for learning to organize workers. He became the leader of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and led a strike against grapes for five years; his twenty-five day fast drew national attention, and he got support from many well-known celebrities on his way to leading a very successful UFW organization.

He was able to get more humane working conditions for farm workers, and led the fight to reduce the exposure to pesticides for farm workers. He died in 1993 and over 50,000 people attended his funeral (Skallerup, p. 3). Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada, and became a U.S. citizen, eventually getting a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1995. He served as a clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist and also served in the George W. Bush Administration as a domestic policy advisor (Gale Biography in Context).

He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012 by aligning himself with the ultra-conservative Tea Party. Cruz has voted against legislation to protect the National Endowment for Oceans, a bill that had no funding connected to it (Water Resources Development Act) but was opposed by the Tea Party. Cruz has voted against gun safety legislation, including the bill that would require buyer checks at gun shows (95% of the American public supported it).

Cruz, a Latino, opposes the legislation that would give undocumented immigrants a chance (over five years) to earn their way to U.S. citizenship. Cruz wants to raise the retirement age so senior citizens can't receive social security benefits at age 65. In short, Cruz has positioned himself on the far right, in line with the Tea Party, and basically votes against -- and speaks out against -- any progressive legislation that would help people that are struggling.

He has voted to abandon the Affordable Care Act, which is insuring 8+ million people that did not have insurance before the act became law. In conclusion, Cesar Chavez has had a far more positive influence on society, and in.