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The United Farm Workers union co-founded by late civil rights icon Cesar Chavez has canceled marches across the country following allegations that the organization’s founder had a history of sexual abuse against women and minors.
The New York Times covered the scandal Wednesday, noting several women have come forward accusing the civil rights icon, who fought for farm workers’ rights with boycotts, marches and strikes in the 1960s and ’70s, of grooming and raping them, reporting one girl was only 12 when the abuse began.
On Tuesday, United Farm Workers released a statement acknowledging the allegations and saying they “will not be taking part in any Cesar Chavez Day activities.”
The UFW has learned of deeply troubling allegations that one of the union’s co-founders, Cesar Chavez, behaved in ways that are incompatible with our organization’s values. Some of the reports are family issues, and not our story to tell or our place to comment on. Far more troubling are allegations involving abuse of young women or minors. Allegations that very young women or girls may have been victimized are crushing.
As if things couldn’t get any worse for Chavez’s legacy, the woman who co-founded United Farm Workers with Chavez, activist Dolores Huerta – now 96 – on Wednesday published a scathing takedown of her former partner, saying she was also a Chavez sexual assault victim and had for years kept it hidden, even becoming pregnant with two of his children who were placed with two different families.
Via Huerta’s Instagram:
As a young mother in the 1960s, I experienced two separate sexual encounters with Cesar. The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to. The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.
I had experienced abuse and sexual violence before, and I convinced myself these were incidents that I had to endure alone and in secret. Both sexual encounters with Cesar led to pregnancies. I chose to keep my pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, I arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives.”
The scandal has dealt a major blow to leftists who revered Chavez, with events and marches honoring him canceled across the nation, including in Arizona, Texas, California and Michigan.
A Hispanic advocacy group in Austin, Texas, has also called on the city to rename a street dedicated to Chavez in the wake of the disturbing allegations.
NY Post reports numerous other cities will have to grapple with similar Chavez challenges:
Of the roughly 125 places named after Chavez nationwide — including schools, roads, parks, and community centers — approximately half are in California. In 2012, a naval ship was renamed after Chavez, who served in the US Navy from 1946-1948.
Leftist political rock group Rage Against The Machine also venerated Chavez in a music video for their song “Renegades of Funk,” with guitarist Tom Morello also honoring him in his solo project with a song called “Union Song,” the Post notes.
Following his death in 1993, his wife Helen Chavez accepted a posthumous presidential medal of freedom in his honor, presented by President Bill Clinton.
President Barack Obama spoke at a Cesar Chavez National Monument dedication ceremony in Keene, California, in 2012.
And President Joe Biden featured a bust of Chavez in the Oval Office.
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