When American-born actor Michael Pena was a year old, his parents were deported. They had illegally walked across the U.S. border from Mexico and when they were caught by immigration authorities, they sent Pena and his brother to stay with relatives in the U.S. “It was quite a bit of a gamble for my parents,” says Pena, “but they came back a year later.” Pena?s father, who had been a farmer in Mexico, got a job at a button factory in Chicago and, eventually, a green card. Pena stayed in Chicago until, at 19, he fled to Los Angeles to pursue his acting dreams. This family history makes Pena?s latest role especially personal. In Cesar Chavez, Pena plays the labor leader as he struggles to organize immigrant California farm workers in the 1960s. To pressure growers to improve working conditions and wages, Chavez led a national boycott of table grapes that lasted from 1965 to 1970 and is recorded in the film. Chavez, like Pena, was the American-born son of Mexican farmers who immigrated to the U.S. “
He understands this duality, the feeling of being born in a place but having a very big idea of where your heritage comes from,” says the film director, Diego Luna. “This thing of having to go to school and learn in English and then go home to speak Spanish with your parents.”
As immigration policy is hotly debated on Capitol Hill this year, Luna and others who were involved with Cesar Chavez are hoping the movie will spark new support for reform and inspire American Latinos to get involved. “The message Chavez left was that change couldn?t happen without the masses being a part of their own change,” says Ferrera, a first generation Honduran American who plays the union leader?s wife Helen. Rosario Dawson, who co-founded the advocacy group Voto Latino, plays Chavez ally and labor leader Dolores Huerta.
Immigrant-rights issues in the U.S. have evolved substantially in the years since Chavez founded the United Farm Workers (UFW). Undocumented worker
A.To report on immigration policy debates
B.To stir immigration debates with a biopic
C.To make known the achievements of Michael Pena
D.To highlight the seeds of change within the masses involved