Chavez statue defies analysis

I’M AS GENERALLY uninformed about California history as anyone else, but Cesar Chavez is a tremendous figure in our state’s history and is especially important in the Central Valley. A local resident would have to be willfully ignorant not to have heard of him or have some opinion of his work.

This is my final article on the statues in the Peace Garden, and I’ve had a lot of trouble writing it.

After several failed attempts at figuring out just what the Chavez statue is about, I’ve finally come to some reasonable understanding with the help of some friends; but no sooner had I formed opinions than the challenge of putting them into words overwhelmed me.

In my article on the Ghandi statue, I came to the conclusion that the artist had put too much of a burden on the viewer’s part. We are presented with a simple image of a head, and any meaning has to be provided by the viewer’s memory of what they have heard about Gandhi (or Ben Kingsley, if they don’t happen to read the inscription). The problem is that most people don’t know enough about Gandhi to really provide any sort of meaning of their own, and the statue becomes meaningless.

The Cesar Chavez statue has the opposite problem. Most people at our university do know about Chavez and his work throughout California’s agricultural scene. Most people have opinions about him, and often very strong opinions. Some people are unable to separate the statement “This is a statue of Cesar Chavez” from “This is a statue of my hero/my enemy.” They can’t see through the man and the life to the work of art.

This really exposes what I think is one of the profound beauties of the use of the human form as a work of art.

There is a connection made between a real human being and a statue, just as people often relate to a character in a book, movie or play. The human image conjures real love and real hatred from our otherwise stony hearts.

But what about something beyond love and hatred? What about understanding?

In the statue, Chavez holds a diploma, and he holds it out with his right hand, pointing it toward the furrows of earth that extend from the base of his statue. Why a diploma?

I’ve never heard of Chavez as an educational figure. It seems out of place as he stands on the bare earth in a work shirt. He would be more natural holding tools; but of course, this is no mistake on the artist’s part.

His face is calm, but has a quiet suffering quality. His arms are the large powerful arms of a worker. His motionless body belies a force that can grapple any obstacle and toss it aside. He could very well crush the diploma in his hands.

Together with the two inscriptions on the base, which I would recommend you go and read, it all says, “Live for others by living for yourself. The blood that runs through your veins is the same substance as that imaginary power which runs through the burnished bronze of statues. All statues are of heroes, and they are heroes because they strive endlessly to become what they already are.

“I have come from the fields and worked and strained my whole life, and I have been what I am to the fullest of my abilities; and look what I have done for myself and my people! This diploma is not mine, nor is this earth before me mine to till. It is yours, your burden to take up and bear when I am gone, when people have forgotten that there is no heart in man but the beat of his feet upon the earth and no soul in man but the strength of his hands. We are to work and learn and listen to one another, but mostly, we are to work.”

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