By late morning it was already hot, but not nearly as scorching as it would be in just a few hours. Lourdes Cardenas, 59, had already walked nearly eight dusty, sun-blasted miles from Turlock, with about that many more to go to the day’s destination in downtown Modesto.

At break time, a mariachi in full regalia began to play, and Cardenas sank into a chair set up under a shade structure, gathered up creams and bandages, and bent over her blistered, swollen feet.

She did not, however, consider stopping.

Cardenas, an immigrant from Mexico who has worked in California’s fields for decades, is among a small group of farmworkers who, for the first time in nearly 30 years, are marching 335 miles from the UFW’s headquarters near Delano to the state Capitol.

Officially, the three-week pilgrimage is aimed at pressuring Gov. Gavin Newsom into signing a bill that would allow farmworkers a choice, including vote-by-mail, in how elections are held in unionization drives. But the purpose is broader: to signify the union is emboldened despite decades of diminishing membership.

“Enough is enough,” said Teresa Romero, president of the UFW. People need to understand, she said, “that without this immigrant workforce, the agricultural industry in this country would disappear, and then we would have to pay a heck of a lot more for our food.”

Currently, farmworkers can vote to join the UFW only if they do so at a polling place designated by the Agricultural Relations Board, making them subject to retaliation, the union argues. New ways of voting sanctioned by Assembly Bill 2183 would change that. Newsom vetoed a similar bill last year, prompting the UFW to march to the French Laundry, the restaurant in Napa Valley where the governor got into political trouble after being caught dining during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But this year, the bill’s author, Mark Stone, D-Scott’s Valley, said he is working with Newsom and expects to send the governor a bill that addresses his earlier concerns. As for Newsom, his spokesperson, Anthony York, said that “the administration has been engaged on this issue for a long time,” adding: “We remain optimistic that we will be able to reach a compromise.”

Agricultural interests have opposed the law, but AB 2183 has another powerful voice in Sacramento: Lorena Gonzalez, the former assemblywoman and daughter of a farmworker who is the new head of the mighty California Labor Federation.

Gonzalez brought the UFW back into the fold of the federation, which it left in 2006, and has thrown her clout behind the bill.

The marchers have been joined along the way by Cesar Chavez’s grandson, Andres Chavez, and by politicians, members of other unions like the Teamsters, history buffs, car-club aficionados, a motorcycle club, and the adult children of farmworkers walking in memory of their parents, along with people bringing their children to understand an important piece of California history.

Gonazlez said the new law is crucial for protecting farmworkers, who are often undocumented and at risk of not just being fired but also deported if they displease their bosses by trying to join a union. But beyond that, she said the law will show that California has the will to protect all its workers, even its most vulnerable.

“Every poll I’ve seen shows that people are pro-union and yet we still have all these barriers. California can lead the way, if we can utilize our laws in the most proactive way possible.”

The march is a step toward boosting the union as a political force, the way it was in the 1960s and ’70s, when young people streamed into the San Joaquin Valley to join the struggle and union contracts were won despite brutal repression from farmers and the police.

The first time the UFW marched from Delano to Sacramento was in the spring of 1966. Led by Chavez, who founded the UFW along with Dolores Huerta, farmworkers were trying to draw attention to the exploitive conditions in the fields and the campaign to organize workers.

By the time the marchers reached Sacramento on Easter Sunday, the UFW had signed its first labor agreement, Chavez had made the front page of the New York Times, and the union had emerged as one of the 1960s’ most potent voices for justice.

Despite Chavez’s subsequent status as a national icon, whose name now graces schools, parks and streets in towns across the state, the union he led has been struggling. Estimates put membership at just 7,000, and some critics complain that the union has not spent enough time lately actually organizing workers and winning contracts.

“After the 1980s, with isolated exceptions, the UFW stopped organizing un-organized farmworkers,” said William B. Gould, a professor emeritus of law at Stanford University and the former chairman of the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board. “My three years , they did nothing.”

Union leaders say such criticism is unfair. Farmworkers are among the most vulnerable and difficult to organize members of the labor force. Still, said Romero, the UFW president union backed-regulations such as new protections for working in heat have benefited not just represented laborers but all farmworkers.

As they marched up the Central Valley, holding flags and chanting “si se puede,” many said they were doing it to pressure the governor to sign the Agricultural Labor Relations Voting Choice Act.

“We are fighting for our rights,” said Veronica Mota, 47, a Madera farmworker who said she was there representing “thousands of farmworkers who can’t leave their work” during the harvest season to join the fight.

In Ceres, the caravan picked up a police escort — summoned, organizers said, because of rumors that the march might be targeted by white supremacists. No harassment materialized, but the Rebirth Car Club of the Central Valley dispatched several brightly painted lowriders to keep a watchful eye, and members of a local motorcycle club turned up too, blasting banda music from large speakers.

Abel Martinez took the day off work to drive his cherry red 1974 Lincoln Continental beside the marchers, bringing along his wife, Sabrina, his daughter and his niece. “We couldn’t be any more grateful for these people who are walking,” Sabrina said.