Cesar Chavez

A BBC radio interview reenactment frames Diego Luna's scrappy biopic "Cesar Chavez," produced and shot (appropriately, on a shoestring) in Mexico, and featuring an oddly flat Michael Pe�a as the migrant worker activist and labor organizer, who reminded the disenfranchised (and still reminds gridlocked immigration reformers) "�Si Se Puede!"

Ch�vez's family went from owners to workers when they lost their ranch during the Depression, then moved to California to harvest crops. The 1936 National Labor Relations Act excluded farm workers from collective bargaining, so his family and their co-workers suffered numerous indignities such as lack of water and toilets, only living an average of 49 years. Ch�vez joined the Community Service Organization, a Chicano civil rights training group, and returned to the fields in 1962 to organize workers in Delano, California, because he was "angry to live in a world where a man who picks food can't feed his family."

His group started a credit union to help families during the winter, and a newspaper with union cartoons to reach the illiterate workers, many of whom made less than $2 a day. Alongside Filipino workers, the "40 Acres" collective, including fellow activist Dolores Huerta (energetic Rosario Dawson), staged their first huelga (strike) in September 1965, when C�sar's activist wife Helen (riveting America Ferrera) was arrested.

The strikers' 300-mile walk to Sacramento captured national attention and news (the film is interspersed with period newsreel footage), as did Ch�vez's 25-day hunger strike and his commitment to nonviolence instead of "chickenshit macho ideals."

The United Farm Workers prevailed in 1970, despite vigorous opposition from Governor Ronald Reagan, who called the five-year national grape boycott "immoral," and President Nixon, who schemed with California growers to sell their unharvested crops to the Department of Defense to feed soldiers, as well as to European markets. Ch�vez traveled to London to gather solidarity from British dock workers, who refused to unload the cargo ships, and even the Pope, reminding radio listeners that "there would be no food on the table without these people."

The one "Material Especial" on the Blu-ray is the "Making" featurette with actor interviews, including co-producer John Malkovich, who also takes a vivid on-screen turn as crusty Croatian grape producer Bogdanovich. Pe�a notes that many major cities have roads named for C�sar Ch�vez, but few know the man who "knew how to listen to people's stories." Dawson is grateful to have met the still-active Huerta, whom she asked "How did you fix such overwhelming social problems?"

Huerta's response?

"You just start."

"Cesar Chavez"
Blu-ray
$17.99
http://www.cesarchavezmovie.com