Cesar Chavez abused and raped women and girls, NYT investigation says : NPR

Cesar Chavez, farm worker, union organizer and leader of the California grape strike, is seen in a California company office in 1965.

George Brich/AP

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George Brich/AP

Cesar Chavez, a famous union leader and agricultural workers’ rights advocate, was accused of sexually abusing two girls in the 1970s as well as Dolores Huerta, with whom he co-founded the United Farm Workers union, in the 1960s, according to a published investigation speak New York Times.

The newspaper spoke with two women who said they were children when Chavez began grooming and sexually abusing them while he was president of the UFW. One of the women said Chavez raped her in a motel room in 1975, when she was 15 and he was 47. The other woman said Chavez began groping her in his office at union headquarters when she was 13. Both women, now in their 60s, were the daughters of farm workers movement organizers.

NPR has not independently investigated the allegations against Chavez, who died in 1993. New York Times spoke with more than 60 people and reviewed documents and other evidence supporting his accusers’ stories.

Huerta, a union leader long revered for her work on behalf of farm workers alongside Chavez, told the newspaper that he raped her in a car in 1966.

She told the Times that “Mr. Chavez drove her to a remote grape field in Delano, California, parked her and forced her to have sex inside the vehicle.” Huerta told the newspaper that she chose not to tell anyone about the rape because she “feared that no one in the union would believe her.”

In a statement published on Medium On Wednesday, Huerta wrote, “I’m almost 96 years old, and for 60 years I’ve kept a secret because I thought exposing the truth would harm the farmworker movement I spent my entire life fighting for.”

She wrote that she had two separate encounters with Chavez in the 1960s.

“The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t think I could say no because he was someone I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to,” she wrote. “The second time, I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.”

Both encounters led to pregnancies that she kept secret, she wrote. After the children were born, she said, she arranged for them to be raised by other families. Over the years, she became close to these children, she said, “but even then, no one knew the whole truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago.”

Some people close to Chávez during his lifetime, including longtime bodyguards, have rejected the allegations against him, according to the Times.

The newspaper’s article appeared a day after the United Farm Workers union issued a statement saying it was aware of the allegations against Chavez.

“The allegations that very young women or girls may have been victims are damning,” the union said. He said he was looking to find out more and help women who may have been victims. He also announced that he would not participate in events for Caesar Chavez Day, a national holiday celebrated in California every March 31, Chavez’s birthday.

The Cesar Chavez Foundation, which works in part to promote Chavez’s legacy and in which members of his family are still involved, wrote in its own statement Tuesday that it would also seek to support victims of the alleged abuse.

“We are deeply shocked and saddened by what we are hearing,” the foundation wrote. “The Foundation is working with leaders of the farmworker movement to respond to these allegations, support people who may have been harmed by its actions, and ensure we are united and guided by our commitment to justice and community empowerment.”

Chavez became a national figure in the 1960s for his work organizing farmworkers fighting for better wages and working conditions, waging hunger strikes and leading a famous national boycott of California grapes.

In the decades since his death, he has become one of the most iconic heroes of the labor movement and the Mexican-American community. Schools, community centers, and streets across the western United States have been renamed in his honor.

The consequences of the abuse allegations were swift. In California, Texas and Arizona, celebrations are planned in his honor later this month. were canceled Or renowned. On social media, some Latinos have called for Chávez’s many murals to be repainted and for schools and boulevards bearing his name to be renamed in homage to Huerta.