The reaction to the stunning revelations about Cesar Chávez has been swift.
Chávez, the iconic labor leader who, along with Dolores Huerta, created the United Farm Workers union in the 1960s, was accused of being a serial sexual predator in an extensive expose in Wednesday’s (March 18) New York Times.
Multiple women, including the now 95-year-old Huerta, came forward to say Chávez sexually assaulted women and girls for decades, starting in the 1960s until his death in 1993 at age 66.
It was Huerta, for example, who coined the slogan “Sí, se puede” – “Yes, we can” in Spanish – in 1972.
President Barack Obama credited Huerta for his use of the latter as a campaign slogan.
“Dolores Huerta could have been the face of this movement had it not been for the misogyny within the farm workers movement itself,” Dr. Reyna Esquivel-King, a history professor at Wayne State’s Center for Latino Studies, said. “I feel that most people forget about her.”
“They just think of her as secondary to Cesar Chávez or like an assistant, when they really don’t realize she was also a driving force,” Huerta added.
Chávez and Huerta worked in tandem from the beginning of their movement in 1955 through Chávez’s death 28 years later.
She revealed on Wednesday that Chávez pressed and manipulated her into having sex with him in a hotel room in 1960.
Huerta said that six years later, he called her out of a party, drove her to an abandoned grape field, and raped her in a car.
Both assaults led to Huerta getting pregnant with kids that she kept secret for decades.
“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” Huerta said in a statement on Wednesday. “The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights, and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way.”
Chávez’s alleged sexual assaults, along with years of womanizing, have revealed a double life of sorts.
“I do Mexican history and women and gender so much, Machismo comes up a lot in the topics that I look at, and it’s very much embedded in the culture,” Esquivel said. “People have that mindset that women are less than; it makes it easier for women to become victims.”
Cities across the country, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Phoenix, have begun canceling planned Chávez celebrations and renaming buildings, streets, and foundations named in his honor.
In Michigan, Lansing has also canceled a Chávez celebration, while Michigan State University changed a planned Chávez celebration to the “Farmworker Appreciation Commemorative Celebration.”
MSU said in a statement that “the name change reflects the university’s gratitude for farm workers and better aligns with the spirit of appreciation and recognition around which the event is organized.”
The city of Detroit does not have a street or highway named in Chávez’s honor, unlike many cities and states out west.
However, there is the Cesar Chávez Academy, a charter school in Southwest Detroit.
The academy is run by The Leona Group and chartered through Saginaw Valley State University.
In a statement, the school says it takes the allegations against Chávez seriously, going so far as to avoid mentioning his name directly.
“Our school district, Cesar Chavez Academy, is not defined by any one individual, but by the values we live out each day,” Georgia Rogers, Leona’s CEO, said. “We are monitoring the impact of this deeply disturbing situation and will respond accordingly to protect the sanctity of what we do and who we serve.”
At Wayne State University’s Walter P. Ruether Library, there are more than 100,000 files related to Chávez in their collection.
One of the letters written by Debra Rojas, one of Chávez’s teenage victims, was dated Jan. 18, 1974, and was found in the collection at the Ruether library.
“Here in Detroit [at Wayne State], we have so much of a collection of Cesar Chavez that we wanna showcase. And now, you know, it comes to this question: what do we do from here?”
Dr. Esquivel says this should lead to raw, honest conversations about his legacy.
“I can’t imagine the trauma of seeing his name and seeing him celebrated when knowing the horrible things that he did to them,” said Esquivel. “Maybe getting this truth out, even though it’s uncomfortable, it’s a way to say okay, it’s out there, let’s rethink and let’s give these victims some space.”