FRESNO – Emerging allegations that Cesar Chavez molested girls and sexually assaulted fellow activist Dolores Huerta decades ago are roiling the farmworker community, leaving many stunned by the revelations.
Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, has condemned the actions Chavez is accused of in the 1960s and 1970s when he led the union.
“It’s unforgivable,” Romero said in the interview. “Any abuse of a woman or a child, anything like that, is unforgivable … We don’t condone that. We don’t accept it. It’s not who we are.”
The UFW wants to support the victims, Romero said.
“The victims, what they went through, we couldn’t imagine,” he said. “We have to understand that they have a lot of courage to speak.”
As farm workers held a union meeting in Fresno, some said they doubted what they were being charged with or didn’t know what to believe. Others say they are worried the scandal could derail their fight for fair wages and better working conditions.
“He was our great leader,” said Marta Montiel, speaking in Spanish. “The devil’s plan. That’s a lie.”
Cristina Hernandez, left, is among those trying to stop a new Labor Department rule that would lower the wages paid to foreign workers.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
He was among about 150 farm workers gathered in the hot afternoon sun Wednesday outside the federal courthouse in Fresno. They were meeting ahead of a wage theft lawsuit filed by the United Farm Workers and the UFW Foundation, along with 18 farm workers. They are fighting a new Trump administration law that makes it cheaper for farmers to hire foreign workers by lowering their wages.
The workers waved red UFW flags and carried signs reading “Protect my wages.”
Yet they were there against the backdrop of news about Chavez. A New York Times report published on Wednesday said that Chavez, who is the founder of this fictional union, sexually abused two children, and Huerta’s founder said that he raped her in the 1960s.
Many in the crowd outside the Fresno courthouse declined to talk about the allegations against Chavez. Some farm worker advocates say they are shocked by the news about Chavez, who became a prominent figure in the struggle for farm workers’ rights.
Montiel, 62, said Chavez’s legacy continues to reverberate as the union pushes for better working conditions for people who work in extreme heat, sometimes without breaks or enough water.
“He helped improve our lives as farm workers,” said Montiel. “What we are dealing with is painful.”
He said he was surprised why the accusers came forward after so many years.
Lisa Alvarado holds a sign while wearing a shirt supporting labor activist Dolores Huerta at a rally in front of the federal courthouse in Fresno on Wednesday.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
Huerta, who remained silent for 60 years after being beaten, said in his statement that he “believed that revealing the truth would harm the farm workers’ movement that I have spent my entire life fighting for.” However, the 95-year-old said he felt he had to speak out: “My silence ends here.”
In Oxnard, Arcenio López and his team at MICOP, the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project, began receiving messages on their radio show about people expressing sadness at the news of Chavez. But he said these accusations could increase the visibility of the abuse women usually face in the fields.
“This will be an opportunity for all these kinds of discussions,” he said.
As people reacted to the news of Cesar Chavez, Fresno State covered its statue of the labor leader in a casket.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
Hazel Davalos, CEO of the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, said her organization stands behind the survivors. He said he was worried about the long-term impact of these allegations on the struggle of farm workers.
“The greatest pain and fear for the people who are in charge of the farm workers’ movement now is that this news will end a very important and difficult struggle,” he said. “Farm workers continue to face massive injustices at work and in their daily lives, and that is only getting worse under the Trump administration.”
Still, he said, his organization will work to organize and highlight the joint effort. Next month, he said, organizers plan to honor the Japan-Mexican Labor Assn., a union formed by sugar beet workers in 1903 that held a 48-day farm workers’ strike 123 years ago, long before Chavez.
“The farm worker movement didn’t start with Cesar Chavez,” Davalos said, “and it hasn’t ended with him.”
At the meeting in Fresno, Carolina Sánchez, a farm worker from Delano who came with her four-year-old son, said she did not want to believe the allegations.
“We are shocked,” said Sánchez.
In Fresnco, Lisa Alvarado holds the pin of Dolores Huerta, who said she was beaten by Cesar Chavez, resulting in two pregnancies.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
“I feel sad and sad for him,” Sánchez said, referring to Huerta. “Because he always supported us, and now, when I bring this up, I think it will affect us as farm workers.”
Some say they support Huerta. Lisa Alvarado arrived at the rally wearing a purple T-shirt with Huerta’s face and name on it.
“I didn’t want him to be forgotten,” said Alvarado, who is not a member of the UFW but said he supports the movement. “She was sexually assaulted. … I think she speaks to what women endure every day.”
“The thing that he sacrificed the most was to continue to focus on the organization, and that meant that he would be silent on himself,” said Alvarado. “There were many other champions who built this organization, and respecting the work of women is respecting every one of those people.”
Romero, who began working with the union a few years after Chavez’s death in 1993, said he first read the details of the allegations in a New York Times article.
“I want to make sure that we respect the courage of these women who came to discuss these difficult issues,” said Romero. “And I want to make sure that we respect them and give them the space to talk about it.”
He spoke after attending Wednesday’s hearing. As part of the lawsuit, the plaintiffs are seeking to overturn a Labor Department rule that lowers the wages paid to foreign workers hired through the H-2A program.
The union argues that the law – which lowers wages for these workers by $5 to $7 an hour – is “unlawful” and will “put downward pressure on the wages of American workers” doing the same jobs, often on the same contracts as those with visas.
“The work that is happening right now is still very necessary to protect the people who put food on the table,” said Romero.
Times staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.
