10:30 am – Marcha
12 pm – Fiesta
Join the 23rd annual César Chávez Day celebration, with a march beginning at 10:30 am and ending at noon at the National Hispanic Cultural Center’s Plaza Mayor. Following the march, the family fiesta at the Center includes poetry, dancing, community awards and exhibits, children’s activities, food, a keynote speech by Carlos Marentes, and live music by Las Cafeteras.
Carlos Marentes has dedicated his life to improving the lives of farmworkers in New Mexico and Texas, creating the organization Sin Fronteras in 1989 and subsequently opening the Border Farm Workers Center in El Paso. Las Cafeteras, immigrant children from the streets of Los Angeles, came together in 2008 to document the histories of their neighborhoods through music. The group fuses the Afro-Caribbean roots and vibrant energy of son jarocho with an edgy East Los Angeles alternative sound and a community-based political message, creating a new urban folk sound and telling the stories of everyday people who are looking for love and fighting for justice.