Dolores Huerta and I shared the stage in November at a Chicago event honoring Latino leaders and journalists from the United States. What I remember most about that day was seeing the ballroom of mostly Latina women lining up to thank the co-founder of United Farm Workers and get her thoughts on how to respond to the way our communities have been targeted.
ICE was continuing its raids in Chicago, but here was Huerta, 95 years old, buoying us all.
I remember the servers, too, some of whom stopped after the event to take photos with Huerta and share that their local union uses the same labor-organizing tactics she did with the UFW. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was continuing its raids in Chicago, but here was Huerta, 95 years old, buoying us all. Here was our elder, imploring us to never give up, to keep organizing and fighting. Sí se puede. Not as a slogan, but as something living and breathing in that room.
The New York Times on Wednesday published a multiyear investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of minors and rape against the other co-founder of the UFW: César Chávez. In part because I grew up with such a deep admiration of Chávez, reading Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, both 66 years old, describe the pain they said Chávez inflicted upon them stopped me cold.
Then Huerta revealed that she had two unwelcome encounters with Chávez, one of which she described as rape. The two encounters, she said, resulted in two babies, whom she gave away to others to raise.
“I carried this secret for as long as I did,” she wrote, “because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work.”
I sat with that for a long time.
In the 1970s, when I was a young boy who had just moved from Puerto Rico to the Bronx, Chávez was one of the first brown faces I saw on television. Few Latino men seemed to be fighting for something on television, but he was. I will forever argue that U.S. Latinos are not a monolith, but at a time when this country painted us as one, Chávez felt like our sole political leader.
“He represented the best of us — and by us, I mean Latino America,” said Manny Fernandez, the Times’ California editor and co-writer of Wednesday’s bombshell of a story. “And to discover that Chavez had this dark side is disturbing. But we do need to know who our heroes are.”
To discover that Chavez had this dark side is disturbing. But we do need to know who our heroes are.”
the new york times’ manny fernandez
Chávez eventually reached the pinnacle of being the most famous Latino in the U.S. He passed away in 1993 and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by former President Bill Clinton in 1994, and his bust graced the Biden Oval Office. His quotes about community and the fight for social justice were part of the U.S. Latino lexicon. And the Times story about him being a predator and Huerta’s confirmation of it have sent shockwaves throughout the community.
Those of us who have studied his life in detail already know he was incredibly complicated. Biographers have documented his extramarital affairs, his authoritarian leadership and purges of his staff. Chávez once thought of undocumented workers as union scabs, a fact that right-wingers love to cite. But nothing prepared me for what Murguia, Rojas and Huerta revealed. They did not describe a complicated man. They described a rapist — a rapist of minors.
As Gustavo Arellano wrote in his column for the Los Angeles Times: “Much of the Latino civil rights, political and educational ecosystem will have to grapple with why they held up Chávez as a paragon of virtue for too long above others just as deserving and, as it turns out, nowhere near as compromised. In any event, the myth has been punctured.”
Chávez’s complexity was something I explored in the past and at times, defended. Regarding his immigration views, in 2021, I finally found a 1974 letter proving that he shifted his position and was not the anti-immigrant hard-liner the right tried to make him. I spent years making sure that history was accurate. And even though I was defending his views on immigration, and not defending him against allegations of rape, reading the three women’s accounts Wednesday still left me feeling like a fool.
The Chávez family released a statement that said, in part: “Our family is shocked and saddened to learn of news that our father, Cesar Chavez, engaged in sexual impropriety with women and minors nearly 50 years ago. As a family steeped in the values of equity and justice, we honor the voices of those who feel unheard and who report sexual abuse. This is deeply painful to our family.” After an acknowledgement that his family has its own good memories of him, the statement said, “We hope these matters are approached thoughtfully and fairly.” Chávez’s name adorns an untold number of streets, schools and parks in this country. His name should be removed from all of those places: every one. “Everything should be named for the martyrs of the farm workers movement,” Huerta told Latino USA. “Every name should be named after them.” By Thursday, California had already begun the process of changing César Chávez Day, March 31, to Farmworkers Day. In that same Latino USA interview, Huerta said it was the courage of women such as Murguia and Rojas who gave her the courage to speak out now. I used to see Chávez as a hero, but now I realize that our greatest heroes are the ones who speak out even if it means revealing their own pain. What Huerta did was brave, and it is no surprise that she has received an outpouring of love and support. She did not have to say a word. She could have kept her silence, and she would still be loved and admired. Instead, at 95 years old, she chose truth over mythology. That’s the most radical act of love for a community there is.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of "The Latino Newsletter" and co-editor of "Pressing Issues from Free Press." 
