Cesar Chavez celebrated at Las Vegas park — PHOTOS
A Las Vegas festival Saturday celebrated the contributions of iconic labor leader Cesar Chavez.
The sixth annual Cesar Chavez Day Las Vegas Festival, sponsored by the city, took place at Gary Reese Freedom Park.
The event kicked off with a march in remembrance of Chavez, a Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. The group later became the United Farm Workers.
Chavez, an Arizona native, was born March 31, 1927, and died April 23, 1993.
Saturday’s event also featured traditional folk dancing, singing, music, food and vendors.
Assemblywoman Selena Torres, D-Las Vegas, said Saturday that she helped start the festival six years ago, when she was 18.
Torres said she worked to start the festival because “it’s extremely important that our community honors and recognizes the life and legacy” of Chavez.
She said she wanted to educate future generations about the labor union activist and Latino culture as a whole.
“It was so obvious that the life and legacy of Latinos in the country was only a small paragraph in a really large textbook,” she said.
Torres said she admires Chavez for his community organization and his work to improve life for farm workers in the U.S.
“There were so many people with much larger pockets than he that wanted him to just continue to accept the current condition,” she said.
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.
