Historian Mario Sifuentez urged students to see the importance in work as a historian at a Latino Resource Center presentation Tuesday night.

Sifuentez, University of California assistant history professor, is writing a book about immigrant workers, documented and undocumented, and their unionization, which included the United Farm Workers of America.

Sifuentez spoke about Cesar Chavez and the effect he had on the unionization of undocumented workers by co-founding the National Farm Workers Association. Sifuentez spoke of jobs in deforestation and reforestation, and how they aren’t as prevalent in Illinois as they are in Oregon.

“It brought a different perspective and something that you don’t really hear a lot about around here,” said history graduate student Adam Lopez.

In his presentation, Sifuentez said it is necessary for him to write the book because no one else has and, in college, he was told by a professor that if he didn’t write the book no one else would.

Sifuentez tied the importance of students pursuing careers in history into his speech, and said he wants to help students see a history career in a different light. His speech emphasized the vital role history can play in students’ futures.

“A lot of times we think of being an academic or being a historian as boring, and I want [students] to understand the importance of the kind of work we do, the kind of work that they might be able to do, the things that interest them, and to think about this as a career and something they want to do with their lives,” Sifuentez said.

Sifuentez grew up in Oregon; his parents were migrant farm workers.

Sifuentez’s parents’ status necessitated constant traveling in search of work and, aside from Oregon, they went to Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Texas and Washington.

“When I was a child [the traveling] always sort of troubled me, so I read all the books that I could get my hands on about Mexicans in the U.S., and they never had any mention of Oregon,” Sifuentez said.

Sifuentez’s firsthand knowledge of laborers’ lives was not lost on the audience.

“I enjoyed the drive behind the speech and all of the emotion. You could tell he had a lot of background experience on it,” said Rockford University graduate Victor Reyes.