ABSTRACT
Cesar Chavez presents the farm worker’s movement within a melodrama of family dynamics in which father and son tensions present a point of coincidence between the growers and those struggling against them. The overarching story aspires to universality through this plot point, while it delivers another story about the enactment of social change. The film is attentive to the history and tendency of Latino cinema to address issues relevant to its target audience, in this case, the work of organizing and building coalitions to create social change. The labor of migrants is rendered visible for a wide audience, drawing on the tradition of Latino Cinema and the Chicano movement that sought the social, cultural, and political empowerment for those of Mexican descent in the United Statesmost notably Raíces de Sangre and Alambrista (1977)—which began to emerge during the post-civil rights era of the 1970s. The film is more in line with the funding and production lineage of “Hispanic Hollywood” of the 1990s-La Bamba (1987), American Me (1992), Mi Familia (1995)—which were the result of the civil rights era and demands for more nuanced representations of Latinos and Latinas in their families and communities of origin. Cesar Chavez draws on these traditions while glossing them too.
