Officials react swiftly to allegations about Cesar Chavez

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(The Center Square) - Political and civil leaders across California and the wider Latino community in the U.S. are reacting to several allegations of sexual abuse and rape by the 1960s farm worker and civil rights leader Cesar Chavez.

The United Farm Workers, which Chavez cofounded, has denounced his alleged behavior and canceled celebrations of Cesar Chavez Day on March 31, a state holiday in California. 

“As a women-led organization that exists to empower communities, the allegations about abusive behavior by Cesar Chavez go against everything that we stand for,” said the UFW Foundation in a press release. “These disturbing allegations involve inappropriate behavior by Cesar Chavez with young women and minors. They are shocking, indefensible and something we are taking seriously.”

The Chavez family said the information about Cesar Chavez, who died in 1993 at 66 years old, came as news to them.

“This is deeply painful for our family,” wrote the Chavez family in a statement the Cesar Chavez Foundation sent to The Center Square. “We wish peace and healing to the survivors and commend their courage to come forward.”

Victims included two young girls and Chavez’s long-time protest co-leader Dolores Huerta, who cofounded UFW.

“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years I have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for,” Huerta wrote in a statement Wednesday. 

Huerta said she was forced into two sexual encounters by Chavez, with both resulting in pregnancies that she delivered. The story was reported by a multi-year New York Times investigation. It included details of how Chavez allegedly drove her out to a secluded field in 1966 and raped her.

Huerta added that she did not know of the two young girls Chavez allegedly raped until the New York Times contacted her. “The knowledge that he hurt young girls sickens me.”

Chavez led the farmworker movement in California, which included the famous 1,000-Mile March by the UFW. The movement was a reaction to what the UFW called low living standards and second-class citizen treatment for immigrants and farmworkers in California.

Among other political and societal wins, the movement helped pass the landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, giving farmworkers the right to collective bargaining.

But at the same time, Chavez was seen by some people in the Latino community as a complicated figure, who did not fight for the same protections for illegal immigrant workers or fully acknowledge the Filipino workers who marched beside him.

Pedro Hernandez is the California state program director for GreenLatinos, a Latino-led nonprofit for environmental issues with chapters in California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Illinois. He was raised in the same California farming valleys that Chavez organized for and said he met many people who marched with him and felt gratitude towards his work.

“At the surface level though, there is a perspective that he was a figure to be revered,” Hernandez told The Center Square during a phone interview Thursday. He added that he imagined many people would be disappointed by the news of the sexual abuse allegations.

Despite his complicated history, Chavez has been upheld as a protest, revolutionary and Latino rights hero across much of the U.S. In the wake of the allegations, widespread calls to rename schools, parks and holidays, originally named after Chavez, quickly spread. Southern California cities with large Latino populations have streets named after him, such as Cesar Chavez Avenue in Los Angeles, Cesar Chavez Drive in Oxnard and Calle Cesar Chavez in Santa Barbara.

Nine states – California, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Utah, Michigan, Wisconsin and New Mexico – celebrate Cesar Chavez Day as state holidays, according to the website timeanddate.

On Thursday morning, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed a proclamation to rename March 31 from Cesar Chavez Day to Farm Workers Day.

“Dolores and leaders like her inspired so many of us to activism,” said Bass at a press conference. “Mr. Chavez's crimes do not diminish the courage of farm workers and workers everywhere who fight for their rights, equality for Latinos, and a stronger nation for everyone.”

In Arizona, where Chavez was born, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said the city would start renaming facilities that were named after Chavez. She also said they would re-focus the holiday on his birthday to be about the wider workers rights movement.

In Northern Nevada, the Central Labor Council said it would rename the Cesar Chavez Celebration to the much longer name: Northern Nevada Member Assistance Program Solidarity Celebration Dinner.

“As long as the process is community-informed and continues to uphold that it was a farm worker movement and there was more than an individual contributing to this, then I think we have a really interesting opportunity to change the narrative from a cult of personality to more of a people's history and a people's narrative,” said Hernandez on the renaming efforts. 

Hernandez also told The Center Square that the effort to rename facilities and holidays that were originally named in honor of Chavez had been much faster than for other controversial historical figures in the U.S.  ”I think it’s something that is worth noting here.”