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CORVALLIS - A talk analyzing "Who is a Latino, Chicano, Hispanic" will open Oregon State University's Cesar Chavez Tribute Week, which starts on May 10. All events honoring the late farm labor leader are free and open to the public.

At 5 p.m. on Monday, May 10, Willan Cervantes, of the Polk County Job and Career Center, will analyze the terms Hispanic, Latino and Chicano. His talk will be in OSU's Centro Cultural Cesar Chavez (Cesar Chavez Cultural Center), on 26th Street, directly east from Reser Stadium.

Cervantes has written extensively about immigrant migrant laborers in Oregon. He has also served on the Polk County Cultural Coalition Planning Committee and the board of the Monmouth-Independence YMCA.

A Cesar Chavez Tribute Dinner detailing the farm labor leader's life is set at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 11, in the OSU Memorial Union Ballroom. At 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 12, a candlelight vigil is set on the MU north steps.

"The Fight in the Fields," a documentary film about farm labor issues is set at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 13, in Centro Cultural Cesar Chavez. A discussion on issues raised in the film follows the screening.

Chavez, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, was one of the initiators of the grape, lettuce and Gallo wine boycotts in the early 1970s.

When Chavez died in 1993 at the age of 66, the labor union he had helped create was in decline. Most growers had refused to renew their UFW contracts and successive administrations in California weakened farm labor laws passed in the 1970s.

Membership in the UFW fell from a high of 80,000 in 1970 to 20,000 at the time of Chavez's death. But in recent years, the union has returned and has won a number of straight representation elections on previously non-union ranches.

Chavez traced his interest in workers' rights back to 1938, when his family lost their Arizona farm and were forced to move to California and become migrant workers.

His UFW resulted in the first collective bargaining agreements and union hiring halls for migrant workers. Chavez's efforts were recognized as he became the second Hispanic ever to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a posthumous ceremony in 1994.