Guest Blog: Ensuring there is a seat at the table for my community

by Arizona State Representative and HCLC member, Cesar Chavez

I was originally born in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, and immigrated to this country at the age of three. Originally, my family and I lived in Pennsylvania, which is where I lived up until I was nine years old. At that point, my parents made the decision to make another migration to the Southwest here in Arizona, which has become home for my family and I. My connection to Arizona is reflected in the diversity of our state, the many different individuals and cultures represented in Arizona that make this such a great state. And when I talk about this diversity, you can see it in all aspects of our society, from education, to healthcare, to infrastructure. It is an honor for me to represent these diverse communities and interests in the Arizona State Legislature. 

When I want to reconnect with my roots, I want to lose cell phone signal, I travel to Mexico to my grandparents' ranch and I go horseback riding. I go work with the people in the fields. I go talk to them, and that's really where I come back to earth and it's when I'm most happy. Happiness for me is the ability to escape and find fresh, clean air, and I think everyone should be afforded this opportunity. That feeling when I go down to the ranch should be a feeling that anybody should be privileged to have. That brings me back to the need to advocate for our environment, the need to fight for conservation of our air, land, water, and wildlife.  Those are the moments that I most cherish because those are the moments where I most identify with the real me. 

My community is one that helps power the economy of the state of Arizona. My community is predominantly Latino, and it’s those individuals that work from sun up to sundown. They're the hardest working individuals that I've ever met, and they're part of the glue that makes Arizona successful. Growing up in Maryvale, I saw that these hardworking individuals cherished their time off and their ability to spend time outdoors as a family, as a community. We really enjoyed being able to enjoy our parks, nature, and enjoy the natural wonders of the beautiful state of Arizona. 

For those of us who live in a city or in urban areas, we may take it for granted when we open up a faucet and water comes out, when we flip the switch and the lights come on. But spend some time in rural Arizona, and you’ll notice some big differences. 

My grandfather was a stickler to ensure that we conserved the natural world that we worked so hard in because, he would always say, one thing is working the fields, another is to treat the land with reverence and care. You have to treat it with respect. He was very much a champion for conservation and ensuring that whatever we disrupted, we would always repair. 

When you start looking at our future and the amount of disruption that we're seeing on a day-to-day basis by irresponsible corporations, it reminds us of our need to act to conserve. As Latinos, we are a witness to it all. Unfortunately, Latino communities are predominantly low-income communities, which means that many times we don't have a seat at the table. That's why I fought to have a seat at the table and asked others to make us a seat at the table because I understand that representation is very important. 

The pressing issue is that we, as Latinos, have a seat at the table, that we have a voice at the table and that we ensure that we can pass good policy that's going to help our communities, that it's going to provide them the equitable opportunity to the same or better quality- of air, of environment, of whatever it might be- as anybody else.  

We're borrowing from the Earth, and so we're here on borrowed time. If we don't take care of it, if we're not good citizens, then my nephews won't have the same quality of life that we once did.  I hope that they look at climate advocacy as a need to transition into future generations in whatever they do in life.