A high school activist is banding together local youth on the Central Coast to inform fieldworkers and their children about their rights. As the son of farmworkers himself, he says it's personal.
Central Coast New Tech High School sophomore Cesar Vasquez was born and raised in Santa Maria. He said his parents leave the house every day at 4 a.m. to pick strawberries.
“When they got home they weren't really there. Because, if you're bending over all day, and you're picking strawberries all day, you're not going to be mentally and physically there after work,” Vasquez said.
He said he started to get involved in local advocacy when his older sister invited him to join the organization, Future Leaders of America. But he stumbled upon his true calling when he went to buy a Halloween costume for one of his younger sisters.
“We were in the line and I got her a costume and it was like $60, $70 — way too expensive — but in the corner of my eye I could see this mom and this kid arguing with the cashier,” Vasquez said.
Vasquez said the mother had gotten her child a costume, but it did not fit and she was not able to return it.
“She had been saving up all year to finally give him a good Halloween and you could tell she had obviously just come home from the fields. She still had the outfit, you could see the stains on her shirt from the strawberries and it broke me inside,” he said.
He said watching the back and forth between the mother and cashier was a familiar memory to him. He remembered watching his mother bargain for lower prices and how uncomfortable it made him feel.
“I was trying really hard to let it go…”
Then he saw the little boy shed a couple tears.
“My body completely shut down and I went to her and I told her I was like, it's okay, like I'll get him the costume. Like don't worry,” Vasquez said.
The mother began to cry and offered him a free meal. He declined, and her son Kevin went to go find a different costume and asked for Vasquez's phone number.
“He called me the next day during sixth period, and I couldn't answer it because I was in class. But then I called them and he told me how it was his first real Halloween and how he had a good night trick-or-treating and everything.”
Vasquez said he will never forget that phone call.
That experience encouraged him to watch every documentary he could find online about labor activism.
He began brainstorming ideas and then approached one of his teachers.
“And I asked him 'what dream of a dream is too big?' and he was all like, 'Cesar I'm scared.' And then I told him 'I want to fight for field worker pay and rights and here's The Kevin Project,'” Vasquez said.
Vasquez said the goal of the project is to increase pay and to share the stories of youth impacted by parents working long hours in the fields.
He later brought the idea to the student-led organization he founded last year called La Cultura de Mundo, meaning the culture of the world.
They started the campaign, the Kevin Project, by hosting a workshop where they asked farmworkers and their children what their biggest concerns were.
“They all said they're not paid enough. They're not fought for, they don't have the same rights as every other worker. I think like every single student there either worked in the fields, their parents work in the fields, or they know someone who does,” he said.
Since that workshop, Vasquez has continued to reach out to others in the community.
“I recently went to an elementary school to speak and I was talking to them and this kid was nine. He was like, ‘guess what I'm gonna be doing this weekend.’ I was like ‘what?’ He said, ‘I'm gonna work with my dad,’ and I knew when he said that what he meant, and my body broke down again,” Vasquez said.
He said suddenly three other kids, around the ages of nine and 10, began to announce their plans to work in the strawberry fields with their parents.
“Seeing that, knowing that those kids have to like, bend over and pick up the strawberries and carry the boxes, too, has been keeping me going.”
Vasquez also offers workshops to teach the families other skills like carpentry, entrepreneurship, bike repair and how to manage finances.
And he dreams big. He’s picturing a youth-led march in Santa Maria with kids on every street corner waving signs fighting for their families’ rights.
