Cesar Chavez

In 1939, when Cesar Chavez was 12 years old, he and his family moved to a well known barrio (neighborhood) of East San Jose, CA known as “Sal Si Puede” (“Get Out If You Can”). Chavez described it as “dirtier and uglier than the rest.” The barrio consisted of Mexican and Mexican-American migrant field workers who had very limited education and money but a strong sense of pride and family.

The actual origin of the name Sal Si Puede is still debated by some of the old timers. Some say it was what neighbors yelled at two local youngsters getting chased by the police for a suspected robbery. Others recall some tough guys yelling it as a taunt to one of their enemies hiding in a house. While there are many old stories like this the fact remains that the reason the name stuck for so many years was because everyone generally believed there was no opportunity for success for those in Sal Si Puede. Chavez himself said that the only way for a young man to get out of the ‘hood was in handcuffs, a coffin or the military.

At this time San Jose did not have the large Mexican population it does now. Chavez hated school as a child, probably because he and the other kids were beat and punished by teachers in school for speaking Spanish. Out of the 37 schools that Chavez attended, many were segregated and he never saw how education had anything to do with the farm worker/migrant lifestyle of his people-this was why the Sal Si Puede mentality was so easy to trap people in his community. Once, in elementary school, he had to wear a dunce cap and a sign that said, “I am a clown. I speak Spanish”. It was not just the schools that were hard for Mexicans and other minorities. All around the surrounding communities, signs such as “No Mexicans or Dogs...

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... we live in do not entitle us to behave any crazy way we want, in fact our circumstances mandate we be responsible in our fight for equality, otherwise the next generation will live through the same hell. There is no right way to do wrong! The cry of a frail, 5’6, 130lb man starving himself to challenge the lie of justice through violence; the courage of a man wrongfully beaten and incarcerated, terrified of public speaking his whole life and uneducated, is the same rallying cry made famous around the world as the greatest nation on Earth elected its first non White leader. Barack Obama got his start in community organizing as well and was very well educated thus I believe it was no accident he chose “Yes we can” as his campaign slogan in the 2004 Illinois Senate race and kept it afterwards even though he lost. Change can happen-but it starts with the individual.