Cesar Chavez bust placed in Biden's oval office

Paul Chavez had no idea where a bust of his father, Latino American civil rights and labor leader Cesar Chavez, would end up in the White House. He had agreed just this week to lend the bronze bust to President Joe Biden and hustled to get it wrapped up and shipped across the country from California after the request came in.

So imagine the younger Chavez's utter surprise Wednesday as he watched Biden at his desk in the Oval Office and saw the bust of his late father — smack behind the president. "We're still smiling cheek to cheek," Paul Chavez said in an interview Thursday.

Themes of unity and inclusivity were prominently featured during Biden's campaign, and that appears to be one of the messages the new president is sending through the decorative changes, including new draperies and a rug, that he has made to the world's most powerful office.

Chavez said the prominent placement of his father's likeness in the White House sends the message that it's a "new day, a new dawn" following President Donald Trump and the anti-immigrant policies that he and his advisers pushed, and that "the contributions of working people, of immigrants, of Latinos ... is going to be appreciated and will be taken into account."

Biden revealed the Oval Office touch-up Wednesday as he invited journalists in to watch him sign a raft of executive orders and other actions in his first hours as the nation's 46th president.

He put his stamp on the office, a place he was familiar with from his past service as vice president, and removed most vestiges of Trump, most notably by replacing a light colored rug with a deep blue one used by President Bill Clinton.

Besides Cesar Chavez, busts of civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks are also on display in the Oval Office, along with a sculpture of President Harry Truman. Biden removed a bust of Winston Churchill, the former British prime minister.

One the wall across from Biden's desk is a portrait collage of predecessors George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, along with Alexander Hamilton, a Founding Father and former treasury secretary.

No longer on the wall is a portrait of President Andrew Jackson, a Trump favorite who supported slavery and owned enslaved people. Jackson also signed the Indian Removal Act that forced tens of thousands of Native Americans out of their homeland.

Image: AP