LOS ANGELES — An eerie silence had settled.
As phrase evidently reached activists in the previous few weeks that disturbing allegations of sexual abuse towards Chicano civil rights icon Cesar Chavez had been forthcoming, issues began to occur with out a lot clarification.
Teams started to cancel long-planned parades, dinners, lectures and fundraisers scheduled for Chavez’s birthday on March 31. Folks I’ve identified for years all of the sudden weren’t returning calls or texts about what was happening. Longtime defenders of Chavez — who stood by their hero whilst revelations in this paper and in biographies over the previous era confirmed there was a darkish facet to the person — all of the sudden grew to become exhausting to achieve.
When the United Farm Employees and the Cesar Chavez Basis put out statements Tuesday morning that “troubling allegations” towards their patriarch had been thought-about credible sufficient for them to supply assist to his victims, the silence reworked into dread. There was a discomfort just like ready for a tsunami — that no matter was coming would change lives, shake establishments, and make folks query values and rules that they’d lengthy held pricey.
And like a pure catastrophe, what emerged about Chavez was far worse than anybody may’ve anticipated.
Wednesday morning, The New York Occasions published a story the place two ladies whose households marched alongside Chavez within the fields of California throughout the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies disclosed that he sexually abused them for years after they had been ladies. Simply as stunning was the revelation by Dolores Huerta, Chavez’s longtime compatriot and a civil rights legend, that he had as soon as raped her at a time when their management within the battle to carry dignity to grape pickers earned nationwide acclaim and amounted to a modern-day By way of Dolorosa.
The silence has reworked into screams. Politicians and organizations that lengthy commemorated Chavez and urged others to comply with his methods are releasing statements by the minute. My social media feed is now a torrent of buddies and strangers expressing empathy for Chavez’s victims and outrage, disgust and — above all — disappointment that somebody thought-about a secular saint by many for many years turned out to be a human extra horrible than anybody may’ve imagined.
There might be questions and soul-searching about these horrifying disclosures within the weeks, months and years to come back. We are going to see a push for the renaming of the handfuls of colleges, parks and streets that bear Chavez’s identify throughout the nation and even the rebranding of Cesar Chavez Day, a California state vacation since 2000 dedicated to urging folks to present again to their communities and the least amongst us.
The reckoning is barely proper. A lot of the Latino civil rights, political and academic ecosystem must grapple with why they held up Chavez as a paragon of advantage for too lengthy above others simply as deserving and, because it seems, nowhere close to as compromised.
In any occasion, the parable has been punctured.
Chavez’s biography at all times reads like an entry within the “Lives of the Saints” style of books that Catholics used to learn in regards to the holy males of their religion. The son of farmworkers who grew to become a Mexican American Moses making an attempt to guide his folks to the promised land of fairness and political energy. An internationally well-known chief who lived a mendicant’s life. Who devoted many years to among the most exploited folks within the American economic system. Honored with awards, performs, posters. Murals, films and monuments. President Joe Biden even stored a bust of Chavez at his Oval Office desk.
It was a beatific popularity that largely continued even because the union he helped to create misplaced its affect within the fields of California and a brand new era of activists regarded down on Chavez for his long-standing opposition to immigrants who got here to this nation to work with out authorized standing. Admirers stored him on a pedestal whilst former UFW members alleged over the past 20 years that the boss they as soon as idolized purged too many good folks within the identify of absolute management. The hagiography continued whilst a brand new era of Latinos got here of age not realizing something about him aside from an occasional college lesson or tv phase.
I used to be a kind of neophytes. I first heard his identify at Anaheim Excessive Faculty within the mid-Nineteen Nineties and thought my instructor was speaking about Julio Cesar Chavez, the well-known Mexican boxer. I used to be thrilled to find that somebody had bravely fought for the rights of campesinos like my mother and her sisters, who toiled within the garlic fields of Gilroy and strawberry patches of Orange County as teenage ladies within the Nineteen Sixties, the identical time that Chavez and the UFW had been having fun with their historic wins.
“Who’s Cesar Chavez?” my Mami responded after I requested if his efforts ever made her work simpler.
My admiration for Chavez continued whilst I discovered about a few of his faults. I used to be in a position to separate Chavez the person from the motion for which he was a figurehead. Lengthy-maligned communities search heroes to emulate, to attract hope from, to hold on their partitions and share their quotes on social media. We create them whilst we ignore that they’re flesh and blood identical to us.
Chavez appeared like the correct man on the proper second as Mexican People rose up like by no means earlier than to battle discrimination and segregation. Now, Latinos and others who admired Chavez must grapple along with his ethical failings of the worst attainable magnitude on the worst attainable time: when there’s an administration doing all the things attainable to crush Latinos and we’re on the lookout for folks to look as much as like by no means earlier than.
He stays one of many few Latino civil rights leaders identified nationwide — and Chavez is nowhere close to as generally known as acolytes make him out to be. Some folks will argue that it’s unfair he’ll possible get wiped away from the general public sphere whereas different predatory males from the previous and current largely keep their riches and reputations.
However that’s trying on the abuse revelations the mistaken manner. For now, I’ll comply with what these most straight affected by Chavez’s actions are telling us to do.
The UFW and Cesar Chavez Basis had been clever to not attempt to defend the indefensible of their statements and as an alternative contemplate any victims first earlier than deciding determine what’s subsequent for them.
The Chavez household put out a information launch that states “we honor the voices of those that really feel unheard and who report sexual abuse.”
Huerta wrote in a web based essay: “Cesar’s actions don’t mirror the values of our group and our motion. The farmworker motion has at all times been greater and much more essential than anyone particular person.”
One other of his victims informed The New York Occasions of Chavez’s legacy: “It makes you rethink in historical past all these heroes. The motion — that’s the hero.”
The face of that movimiento introduced inspiration to thousands and thousands and improved the lives of tons of of hundreds. That’s why we shouldn’t cancel the nice that Chavez fought for alongside so many; we must always direct the adulation he as soon as attracted and the anger he’ll now rightfully obtain towards the work that also must be achieved.
To cite an outdated UFW slogan that Chavez reworked right into a mantra, la lucha sigue — the battle continues. It’s a press release that’s extra pertinent than ever, rattling its imperfect messenger.
©2026 Los Angeles Occasions. Go to at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
