With a political and labor movement forged in part by Cesar Chavez stunned by the sexual abuse allegations against him, labor leaders and Democratic politicians scrambled Wednesday to reconcile their horror with their reverence for the movement he led.
The bombshell revelations — in which two women said that Chavez sexually abused them as children and labor icon Dolores Huerta alleges he raped her during the height of the farmworker labor union movement in the 1960s and 1970s — reverberated across California and the western United States.
As the allegations instantly rewrote the civil rights icon’s legacy, officials condemned Chavez’s purported actions, reported by The New York Times, while insisting that his push to empower workers extended well beyond a single figure.
“These revelations are a punch in the gut for me and for so many who believed deeply in the cause of social justice,” former Los Angeles mayor and gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement. He added, “The farmworkers’ struggle, and the sacrifices of countless organizers, families, and laborers, remains a righteous cause. Nothing can erase the courage of those who marched, organized, and fought for basic human rights.”
Within hours, elected leaders were confronting practical considerations like the profusion of streets, plazas, and other landmarks named for Chavez, along with the looming March holiday honoring the late leader on his birthday. Chavez died in 1993.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday that he was in early conversations with California’s Legislature about changing the March 31 state holiday commemorating Cesar Chavez. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona and GOP Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said their states would no longer recognize the day, while New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Lujan called on social media for Chavez’s name to be stripped from “landmarks, institutions, and honors” in light of his “betrayal of the values that Latino leaders have championed for generations.”
Some officials called for renaming sites in honor of Huerta, Chavez’s longtime partner in the movement who told the Times his sexual assaults — which she had never revealed publicly — resulted in two children she sent to be raised by other families. Huerta, who coined the motto “Sí, se puede,” remains active in California politícs even as she nears her 96th birthday.
“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years 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 said in a lengthy statement released Wednesday.
Chavez was a towering figure both in the national civil rights movement and in California, where he led campaigns to organize workers who toiled under brutal conditions in the sprawling fields of the Central Valley.
That legacy is inescapable in the halls of power of this deeply Democratic and heavily Latino state where organized labor wields significant clout. California has its own farm labor regulator thanks in large part to the relationship Chavez forged with then-Gov. Jerry Brown. After the two marched together, Chavez placed Brown’s name into nomination for president.
Decades after Chavez’s death, the movement he built propelleda landmark law offering overtime pay to farmworkers andforced Newsom’s hand on an organizing bill. Union leaders were grappling on Wednesday with revelations that the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor called “deeply troubling and painful, particularly for those who have long looked to the labor movement’s history for inspiration and strength.”
Speaking to reporters in a high school library during an unrelated event on Wednesday, Newsom noted that his family is close to Huerta and that the walls of his home bear a framed photograph of Chavez and his close ally Robert F. Kennedy, an idol of Newsom’s. Just feet from where the governor spoke, shelves displayed a book highlighting Chavez and farmworker organizing.
“How many days I've marched, how many times I've been with students talking about the movement, how many photographs I have in my house,” Newsom said. “It’s been hard to absorb this.”
California Sen. Alex Padilla, who’s led efforts to create a national historical park in Chavez’s honor, will rework the legislation to honor farmworkers instead, according to his office. Padilla is the first Latino senator in modern California history and rose through a resurgence of Latino activism in the 1990s.
“Confronting painful truths and ensuring accountability is essential to honoring the very values the greater farm worker movement stands for — values rooted in dignity and justice for all,” Padilla said in a statement.
The fallout could extend beyond labels. California Rep. Norma Torres called for a law enforcement investigation, saying in a statement that the “the pain (Chavez) caused remains urgent for these survivors.”
The Times reported that some of Chavez’s relatives, along with former UFW leaders, had known for years about allegations of sexual misconduct against him, but that they didn’t appear to fully investigate or acknowledge the victims — and that many of the women said they were discouraged from speaking out to protect his image.
In a statement Wednesday, a spokesperson for the union said, “No one in today’s UFW leadership had any prior knowledge of these shocking and devastating allegations" and that the group only recently learned about them. On Tuesday, the union announced it would not be taking part in annual Cesar Chavez Day celebrations amid troubling allegations about Chavez's behavior, adding that it had received no direct reports about the abuse.
In downtown Los Angeles, where Sunset Boulevard turns into Cesar Chavez Avenue, a small group of activists stood in the 95-degree heat to demand the name of the street be changed. Some want it to go back to its old name, Brooklyn Avenue, others to Dolores Huerta Avenue.
"I have a 10-year-old little girl who lives in that building on Cesar Chavez,” said Raul Claros, founder of the mutual aid organization California Rising. “Today, after school, I'm going to have to sit down around the dinner table and explain to her why we're out here doing this."
Rachel Bluth and Lindsey Holden contributed to this report.
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