Although Andrés Chávez never got to meet his grandfather César Chávez, who died just nine months before he was born, he spends his waking hours ensuring that the legacy of the legendary labor organizer continues.

At age 29, Andrés is executive director at the Cesar Chavez Foundation in Keene, California, which seeks to continue the labor leader’s work on behalf of Latinos and working families. The foundation runs the National Chavez Center, which manages the César E. Chávez National Monument in collaboration with the National Park Service, and also creates affordable housing and manages educational programs for students from pre-K to eighth grade. (Andrés started volunteering for the foundation at age 10, marching in picket lines, attending union conventions and going to commemorations honoring his grandfather.)

Now, Andrés is endorsing a bill introduced by U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Raul Ruiz, both California Democrats, proposing creation of the César E. Chávez and the Farmworker Movement National Historical Park. It would exist in three noncontiguous sites — the Santa Rita Center in Phoenix; Forty Acres in Delano, California; and the already-existing 187-acre César E. Chávez National Monument in Keene, an unincorporated area in the Tehachapi Mountains that includes Chávez’s historic homestead, La Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, which is the former headquarters for the United Farm Workers of America.

“He named it La Paz after Our Lady of Peace, because it had that picturesque mountain setting,” Andrés says. “It was that one place he could go and recharge his spiritual batteries after being constantly engaged in conflict and in picket line strikes and negotiation.”

Andrés hopes the proposed park will provide recreational opportunities that honor his grandfather’s love for hiking and meditation, which he did every morning. Chávez was a devout Catholic who also practiced Zen Buddhism and yoga, and followed a vegetarian and macrobiotic diet.

If the legislation is successful, it would not only create the national park but also set in motion a study for the creation of the Farmworker Peregrinación National Historic Trail, in honor of the 300-mile protest march by farmworkers and supporters from Delano, California, to Sacramento in 1966.

The name of the proposed park makes clear that it is not just about one legendary organizer but also about the force of a group.

“The farmworker movement was probably the broadest coalition in the history of the American civil rights movement,” Andrés says. “Filipinos and Latinos joined forces in the 1965 to 1970 Delano grape strike, and later, 17 million Americans boycotted grapes in the 1970s. UFW actions would often bring together a cross-section of America. It was not uncommon to find antiwar college students and prowar construction workers on the same picket line.”

Visitors to the sites would bear witness to important historic events in Chávez’s life, as well as in the lives of farmworkers. In Phoenix, they would stroll through Santa Rita Hall, the Arizona center for union activities where Chávez fasted for 24 days in 1972, protesting a new state law that prohibited the formation of units for collective bargaining. An hour from Keene, at 40 Acres in Delano, visitors would learn about Agbayani Village, an affordable retirement community for Filipino farmworkers. There, they’d also find the story of Chávez’s last fast in 1988, which lasted for 36 days, to protest pesticide poisoning of farmworkers and their children. (Although the latter is part of the national monument, not all buildings are regularly available for tours. Creation of the national historical park would provide funding to increase tours and exhibits.)

Andrés believes the national historical park would help visitors of color, particularly young ones, see the power they hold in their hands. “César’s life as an individual wasn’t different from a lot of kids, especially young kids of color today,” Andrés says. “He wasn’t born into a rich or powerful family, and he never made more than $7,000 a year, yet he showed that with hard work and fierce determination that change was possible.”

To Andrés, a national historical park named after his tata, or grandpa, would send a particularly vital message to Latino visitors. “There are not a lot of sites that speak particularly to Latino history within the National Park Service,” Andrés says. “(César Chávez National Monument) is currently the only site named for a contemporary Latino figure within all 428 units of the National Park Service. It’s important for Latinos to see people who look like themselves recognized in American history. A lot of Latino students don’t get access to the outdoors, and it’s an opportunity for kids to escape their communities and come to the site to breathe in fresh air and run around.”

A 2012 study titled “Why Do So Few Minority People Visit National Parks?” quoted two other studies, one showing that Asian Americans, Hispanics and especially African Americans reported uncomfortable encounters in parks, and another documenting that some white park visitors experience discomfort around nonwhite visitors. And, per the Merrell “Inclusivity in the Outdoors” report, some Latin American visitors said they felt watched while at parks. They also felt that ranger uniforms could feel threatening, especially when paired with firearms and protective gear.

This is why it’s crucial to “diversify the ranks,” Andrés says. “By one count, when it came to Latino superintendents — the chiefs at individual sites — there were only four of them in the entire National Park Service. At the César Chávez National Monument, we have a young Latina named Miranda Hernandez as our educational and interpretation ranger, which is incredible because the students see themselves in her.”

Other statistics from the Merrell report: 28% of Latin American respondents have experienced discrimination while outdoors. And although 46% of Hispanic/Latin American people said they felt alive when experiencing the outdoors, 13% said they felt cautious at these times — the highest of all groups that responded.

“I’m disappointed to hear that discrimination stat of 28% — but the fact is, Latinos love the outdoors,” he said. “When we go places, we bring not only our immediate family, but Grandma and Grandpa come too, and it becomes a family affair. But we need to think about intentionality.” To do that, Andrés says the Park Service should increase exhibits and programming that speak to people of color and Latinos.

There’s a larger purpose here too: “About 30% of Americans will come from Latino background by 2050 and yet the national parks are woefully behind when it comes to telling our story,” he added.

That could begin to change if the bill is approved by Congress (so far, it’s been introduced only in the Senate) and then signed by President Joe Biden.

César wasn’t perfect — as many of us know, he certainly had his faults, which have damaged his almost saintly image — but his work and determination, in collaboration with other farmworkers and organizers such as Dolores Huerta, brought about vital and revolutionary civil rights.

Andrés says that if the national park opens, visitors will find powerful inspiration in his grandfather’s story of dogged determination and against-all-odds success. “The fact of the matter is he faced more defeat than victory, but it was about how he responded to defeat. When people told him, ‘No, you can’t,’ he said, ‘Si, se puede.’ There’s a universal truth to that.”

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