Book Description

"My March with César" is a coming-of-age memoir of the chosen path of one young Chicano, Marco Lopez, through the farm worker movement, focusing on turbulent times in the 1960s, '70s and early '80s. The memoir covers the author's formative years in student politics, witnessing Cesar Chavez ending his 1968 fast for nonviolence alongside Robert Kennedy, Lopez's emersion in the United Farm Workers' international table grape boycott backed by millions of Americans, the landmark August, 1970 anti-Vietnam War Chicano Moratorium in East L.A., the signing that summer of the Delano grape growers' first union contracts and the battle against cynical sweet-heart deals between growers and Teamsters in the Salinas Valley row-crop industry.Lopez answers "the call" in 1970. Determined to become a movement lawyer, he obtains his degree from a top California law school and rejoins the struggle to organize farm workers. In 1979, Cesar Chavez asks him to serve as UFW general counsel during bitter field walkouts and internal union strife. This quixotic adventure, told in a lively and sometimes humorous bilingual and bi-cultural weave is well-paced, hypnotic, informative, and intriguing. These true accounts offer insights into historical and stormy times, many of which are still relevant in today's challenging era.