About The Film

On July 17, 1988, Cesar Estrada Chavez, 61-years-old, embarked on 36-day water-only fast to call attention to the harmful effect pesticides were having on America’s farmworkers and to shine light on their deplorable working and living conditions.

This was Cesar’s Last Fast: 36 days of self-sacrifice and deep spiritual commitment to the fight for justice and dignity for America’s poorest workers.  This was the cause, La Causa, to which Cesar Chavez was willing to give up his life.

In the years preceding this “Fast for Life,” farmworkers in California showed signs of pesticide poisoning.  Women in the fields reported unexplained miscarriages. Others gave birth to severely deformed infants. And one farmworker, Juan Chamoya, dropped dead after being doused with pesticides while working in a field near San Diego.

For Cesar, it was time for dramatic action – an action that was inspired by a power greater than any ideology or political doctrine. He turned to his faith: a non-dogmatic devotion to Catholicism, a disciplined adherence to the practice of yoga and vegetarianism, and a deep dedication to non-violence that inspired his every action. While Cesar’s faith and spirituality were personal they had immense pubic repercussions.

Cesar’s Last Fast will shine a light on the spiritual landscape that sustained Chavez through decades of struggle. Like Cesar, who espoused no dogma and did not hide his personal convictions, this film too will explore and embrace the power of conviction rather than shy away from it.

Using iconic imagery and a meditative tone, the film will visually convey the profound faith that sustained Chavez’s fight for justice. Drawing heavily from intense, never-before-seen archival footage of Cesar’s 36-day “Fast for Life,” the film will travel through the life of a man from the impoverished migrant farmworker camps of Central California who then became the leader of the first farmworkers’ union–a union that galvanized our nation’s poor in a non-violent struggle for social justice.

Contemporary interviews with friends and family who surrounded Chavez during this time will bring this never-before-seen footage to life. As of June 2008, interviews have been confirmed with Dolores Huerta, Martin Sheen, Jesse Jackson, and the Chavez family to name a few.

In a time when we find ourselves searching for leadership, craving real social change, Chavez’s story is even more compelling and dramatic. Chavez, a man with an 8th grade education, beat big business, made allies of powerful politicians and celebrities, and rallied millions of America’s poor and middle class in to one unifying cry. Like few leaders in our history, Cesar Chavez did it all with profound faith and moral leadership that forces us to rethink our place in the world and discover our true potential.