“Opinion: Sexual assault allegations redefine César Chávez’s legacy Subheading: New accusations highlight how the Chicano Movement is much more than just recognizable figures”

By Staff Writers Hamnah Akhtar, Erika Liu, Veer Mahajan and Eleanor Chen

Content warning: discussion of sexual abuse

This year, César Chávez Day unraveled in confusion and disbelief as credible sexual assault allegations against Chávez himself, co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and icon of Latino labor rights, came to light. Nonprofits and parade organizers across the nation found themselves reeling in the wake of the year-long investigation conducted by the New York Times. Four different women had come forward with accounts of rape, sexual assault, and child sexual abuse from the renowned Latino union leader, with some of his victims reportedly being as young as 12 at the time of the assault. 

Chávez’s sudden fall from grace has been disorienting. For decades, historians and classrooms alike have celebrated him as a moral authority on peaceful protest and Latino civil rights.

However, what’s crucial to realize is that Chávez cultivated this “hero” image himself. While Latino communities and labor organizers placed him on a pedestal, he also closely controlled his own public perception. Past members of UFW, which Chávez co-founded in 1962 to advocate for farmworkers’ rights and fair wages, described the union as an “unwavering cult of personality” centered on Chávez’s authority, according to the Los Angeles Times. In his later years, Chávez even adopted control techniques from the notorious rehabilitation-center-turned-cult Synanon, using humiliation and vituperation to purge dissenters and ensure complete loyalty. 

Frank Bardacke, once a UFW field worker, attested to the absolute power Chávez monopolized. “He was the organizer, the architect, and the main energy behind that boycott, a hero and a celebrity,” Bardacke said in an interview with Labor Notes. “Everybody within the organization owed their job to César … You didn’t disagree with César except at the peril of losing your job.”  

For years, Chávez was perceived as essentially “untouchable” — not a human being, but a hyperbolic fiction. It’s this simplistic perspective that has silenced his victims for decades. By attaching him to the morality of an entire movement, Chávez, for better and for worse, has become dangerously intertwined with a movement that should encompass millions of women in the Latino community.

 

The “Greater Good”

Chávez’s legacy was, in part, protected by latent sexism. There is a set of traditional gender roles in Latin America called Marianismo: drawing from Catholic influences, it emphasizes submissiveness and morality from women, especially in the form of self-sacrifice. Sandra Alvarez, Director of Latinx and Latin American Studies at Chapman University, lamented this culture, specifically as it pertained to Chávez and transparency with sexual abuse. “[U]nfortunately, society teaches us that women kind of have to be quiet about a lot of stuff to help out the larger group,” Alvarez said to Chapman University’s The Panther Newspaper.

These same repressive expectations persistently crop up in statements from Chávez’s own victims. Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the UFW and survivor of Chávez’s sexual abuse, cited a sense of duty in keeping silent. “For the last 60 years, [I] have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for,” she said to the New York Times. To Huerta, her rape was something that had to be ignored and endured for the sake of her community — a tragic manifestation of the gender roles that tell women their greatest duty is to serve those around them before themselves. 

That self-censorship is still the status quo for millions of women globally — it’s why Huerta waited until she was 95 years old to speak honestly about her abuser, and why nearly 80% of sexual assault cases continue to go unreported across the world, according to a 2016 study by the US Department of Justice

These disturbing allegations do more than reveal the dark side to Chávez’s legacy. They underscore a deeper problem in how society overidealizes political figures in general. Chávez is not the only example of a man whose power and inflated public image undermined accountability. “Heroes” have always been unfairly airbrushed by society, whether it be Martin Luther King Jr., a known womanizer with a history of extramarital affairs; Gandhi, who, despite his lifetime of campaigning for racial equity, saw Black people as subhuman; or  President Donald Trump, who, despite his majority voter base, has been accused by at least 28 different women of statutory rape. Our cozy myths are doing more than killing nuance; they’re failing real victims.

 

Community Response

Across the country, Chávez’s legacy has been rapidly erased; his image, dethroned. “It’s really bad,” Spanish Teacher Ferney Varela Sánchez said. “His whole philosophy is going to get ruined because of his decisions … Right now, [teachers] can no longer refer to him as a leader.”

Communities must now figure out how to dismantle Chávez’s myths without discrediting the efforts of an entire community. Chávez’s allegations come at a time when US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests are ripping immigrant families apart, roving patrols targeting Latino workers are on the rise, and the Trump administration is making efforts to consciously distort and deny Latino history — with federal websites scrubbing explicitly Hispanic-centered content from their archives and cutting funding for Latin American cultural museums. “[The Latino community] is already under attack,” Unity Council Director of Fund Development and Communications Caheri Gutierrez said to The Guardian, speaking on the possible fallout from Chávez’s allegations. “I can already see Trump having a field day with this.” 

The movement that Chávez represented fought for the powerless and dispossessed. It was a movement that secured rights and liberties for communities who were neither wealthy nor white. While leaders are rapidly distancing themselves from Chávez and his Chicano legacy, similarly controversial white historical figures are enjoying overwhelming leniency. More than 2,000 Confederate statues and monuments are still up across the nation. More than 6,000 locations in the US bear Columbus’s name — one tied to the brutal extermination and enslavement of millions of Taíno people. Even today, we continue to extend greater faith and lenience to people who enjoy social power and influence. It is disheartening how many institutions move quickly to scrutinize some legacies while continuing to preserve others.

There is no easy balance to strike. However, with the Latino community more vulnerable than ever under the current administration, it’s crucial that we find a way to erase Chávez without tearing down the Chicano community as well. That begins with understanding that Chávez was never a monolith; the Chicano community, more than a single man. The progress made during that profound era was thanks to the blood, sweat, and tears of millions working toward freedom, and preserving that collective legacy means refusing to let one man’s downfall define it.