SAN ANTONIO-- Downtown streets were filled Saturday with marchers coming together for San Antonio's annual Cesar E. Chavez march for justice.
Organizers marked the 50th anniversary of the farm workers march from the Rio Grand Valley to the Austin state capitol building.
"Cesar Chavez was a great Latino hero and so we are so proud of him and continuing to honor his legacy," grand marshal and District 5 City Council Representative Sherley Gonzalez said.
Generations marched in remembrance of the labor leader and civil rights activists.
"I'm really proud of that. People may call them radicals. I just call them people that believe in human rights and nonviolent protests," said Mark Esparza whose father marched with Cesar E. Chavez.
Mark and Yvonne Ontiveros' father, Antonio Gonzalez, led the historic Texas march of melon workers from the Rio Grande Valley to the state capitol in Austin when they demanded better pay and working conditions.
He and his sister now marched as their father once did, and brought along an artifact from 1966.
"This cross here was there 50 years ago when they tried to turn us back and, nonviolently, we came together and we showed him what we could do," Esparza said.
Mark and Yvonne helped lead the march with the very same cross. It stands as a symbol of how the oppressed came together nonviolently to stand with their valiant leader, Cesar E. Chavez.
"That's how Gandhi changed India, that's how Martin Luther King changed America and that's how my father and Cesar Chavez changed the view of Mexican Americans in the United States," Esparza said.
Photo of Father Antonio Gonzalez courtesy: http://farmworkers2016.org/2016/01/21/texas-ufw-history-tx-governor-connally-intercepts-marching-farm-workers-1966/