Cesar Chavez Day will look a little different this year.
In 2011, Barack Obama designated March 31 as a federal commemorative holiday to celebrate the birthday of the left-wing labor icon. A year later, Obama dedicated the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument. Bill Clinton posthumously awarded Chavez the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, after his death in 1993. Joe Biden “proudly placed a bust” of the Left’s Mexican American hero in the Oval Office. Streets, parks, schools, and buildings were named for Chavez, especially in California.
Yesterday, however, a New York Times investigation “found extensive evidence that the United Farm Workers co-founder groomed and sexually abused girls who worked in the movement.”
No bueno.
Cities and states are already rebranding or canceling events and discussing the renaming of streets and buildings. Even the United Farm Workers issued a statement saying it “will not be taking part in any Cesar Chavez Day activities.” Many Americans are scrambling to figure out what to think of a man they idolized who was actually a pedophile and rapist.
The Times recounts the stories of Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, who “say that Mr. Chavez sexually abused them for years when they were girls, from around 1972 to 1977. He was in his 40s and had become a powerful, charismatic figure who captured global attention as a champion of farmworker rights.” Murguia says she was 13 when Chavez molested her. Rojas was 12 when she says Chavez first groped her and 15 when he raped her.
The report adds, “The two women have not shared their stories publicly before, and an investigation by The New York Times has uncovered extensive evidence to support their accusations and those raised by several other women.”
“None of us knew,” the Times quotes California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom as saying.
It’s certainly true that his 2016 tweet slamming Donald Trump didn’t age well: “César Chávez + Dolores Huerta did not risk their lives so that a man who calls Mexicans rapists/criminals could become president.”
Turns out Chavez was a rapist. And Huerta was one of his victims.
In a post on Medium, the 95-year-old civil rights leader said that after 60 years, she “can no longer stay silent.”
As a young mother in the 1960s, I experienced two separate sexual encounters with Cesar. The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to. The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped. …
Both sexual encounters with Cesar led to pregnancies. I chose to keep my pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, I arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives.
Astoundingly, the Times reports, “Huerta later began a long-term domestic partnership with Mr. Chavez’s brother Richard, with whom she had four children.”
Meanwhile, Chavez had eight children with his wife, Helen, and at least four others with three other women. Two of those were Huerta’s.
Why did Huerta, the originator of the “Sí, se puede” (“Yes, we can”) slogan, stay silent for decades? “Because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work.” Loyalty to the movement and even the man kept other women silent, too, though both Murguia and Rojas did tell others privately, and others knew of various allegations. The Times reports:
A handful of Mr. Chavez’s relatives and former U.F.W. leaders have been aware for years about various allegations of sexual misconduct, but there is no evidence that they made efforts to fully investigate the accusations, acknowledge the victims or apologize to them. Instead, many of the women say they were discouraged from speaking out in order to preserve Mr. Chavez’s public image.
That movement isn’t always honest about other things, either.
“More than 30 years after his death,” the Times editorializes in its report, “Chavez has become only more revered in the Latino community, as President Trump’s efforts to limit immigration and scale back rights threaten to destroy many of the gains secured by decades of his work.”
Yet Chavez himself was vigorously opposed to illegal immigration, which the Leftmedia and Democrats now deliberately conflate with legal immigration when emoting their Trump Derangement Syndrome. Chavez called illegals “wetbacks” and even formed his own private border patrol to keep such “strikebreakers” from coming across the border. He believed they undercut workers’ wages, which is the historic union position.
The modern Left had already quietly renounced that portion of Chavez’s legacy. Given the new allegations of his predatory behavior, he’ll likely disappear entirely down the memory hole.
