Labor activist César Chávez (center) on ésarCháa march from the Mexican border to Sacramento with United Farm Workers members in Redondo Beach, California on July 5, 1975. Photo by John Malmin, from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection at the UCLA Library (CC BY 4.0). This article is part of a series by J. Nathan Matias for a 500+ mile bicycle ride in June 2023 that is raising funds for Rising Voices, Global Voices’ endangered/Indigenous language program, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network. Donate to the initiative here. When the photojournalist Hector Amezcua took a photo of Ivan Sigal and me at the steps of the California State Capitol in Sacramento, I felt a sense of accomplishment. Ivan and I had just bicycled hundreds of miles from Bakersfield along the route of the 1966 Farmworkers March, seeking to understand the past, and meet emerging leaders of California's Central Valley. To reach the Capitol, we'd braved extreme heat, climbed six thousand feet into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, fixed many flat tires, and challenged my respiratory disability with some of the worst air quality in the US. But Hector's next sentence quickly deflated my illusions of grandeur: “People who retrace the march typically take photos here,” he said, “after mass at La Virgen de Guadelupe Church.” Just last year, a group of farm workers spent weeks walking 335 miles along the historic route to advocate for a California law that would lower barriers to union recruitment. After President Joe Biden expressed support for the law, California governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill which could restore the power of farmworker unions after decades of suppression. Ivan Sigal and J. Nathan Matias on the Capitol Steps in Sacramento. Photo by Hector Amezcua. A few days earlier, we had met Gloria Gonzalez, a farmworker from Parlier who joined the 2022 union march. Gloria drove every morning to the start, walked all day, then drove back home each night to take care of her family, at a time when gas prices were at an all-time high. Meeting Gloria definitely expanded my definition of the ultra-endurance athlete. Over the six days we’d been following the route and meeting leaders in the Central Valley, I found myself thinking about the legendary labor activist César Chavéz, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union and a key organizer of the farmworkers march, and asking the question: what role should legendary figures like Chávez play in civic life? This year, when the US Senate considers a National Park along the route, they will vote on the “César E. Chávez and the Farmworker Movement National Historical Park.” Just around the corner, Sacramento's César Chávez Plaza serves as the city’s local farmer's market, and dozens of communities along our route have named roads, schools, and community centers after Chávez and his fellow march organizers Dolores Huerta and Larry Itliong. My White friends sometimes ask if we should continue to idolize figures like Chávez at a time when Americans are questioning the meaning of so many of our statues, monuments, and symbols. When I spoke this year with people who had been close to Chávez, our conversations often reached a moment of unease around his legacy. After internationally visible political victories in the 1960s, Chávez became trapped by his own celebrity, growing into a controlling figure who demanded cult-like loyalty from a shrinking group of followers. Writing about his former allies, biographer Miriam Pawel mentions a similar unease: “They had worshipped Chavez and become disillusioned, basked in his tutelage and endured his wrath.” Is that the kind of person we should memorialize with a National Park? César Chávez on the steps of the California State Capitol in Sacramento. By Ernest Lowe collection at UC Merced (CC-BY-NC 4.0). Then I thought of all the people outside of the camera frame of history's legends, people like Hector Amezcua, one of the very first people in the United States to major in Chicano Studies at university. Two years after the Farmworkers March, 15,000 Latin American students were walking out of schools in Los Angeles to demand that our history and culture be included in American education. Many of the artists, musicians, writers, and activists who had marched went on to fill these gaps in cultural and societal recognition. Their work on the history and legend of the Farmworkers March created countless institutions and opportunities for people like Hector and me. Visual journalist Hector Amezcua. Photo by Ivan Sigal (CC BY 4.0) The social recognition for Mexican-Americans created by this work has gone on to benefit Latin-Americans of all backgrounds.