Many are still reeling from the recent disturbing allegations against Cesar Chavez. Namely, that the renowned labor and civil rights activist and Latino icon lived a secretly perverse life.

An explosive and riveting New York Times expose revealed the late activist sexually harassed and assaulted women in his movement as well as sexually abused and raped some United Farmworkers organizers’ daughters when they were girls. Instances of rape, sexual abuse, and pedophilia were largely and credibly verified through documents, statements, testimony from alleged victims, and a public confessional statement by his long-time companion and fellow union organizer Dolores Huerta.

The gruesome report provides verifiable evidence by two women – Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, both in their mid-sixties – that Chavez routinely sexually violated them more than five decades ago, when they were preteens and teenagers. The report also reveals recent public assertions by Huerta, who is an esteemed trade union activist and the co-founder of UFW, that Chavez once coerced her to have sex with him during a business trip and eventually raped her in a parked car. These incidents resulted in two pregnancies, which Huerta valiantly worked to conceal before giving the young baby girls away to other individuals to raise.

Huerta told the Times that, out of loyalty to the cause of justice for farm workers, she had chosen to keep what Chavez did to her secret for six decades.

Two daughters of UFW organizers, who had been raised to view Chavez as a saintly figure, charged that Chavez asked them to come to his office early in their adolescence and sexually abused them. The abuse went on for several years of their childhood. Accusations from other women also emerged in the Times investigation. Two more women in the movement stated that Chavez sexually harassed them when they were young. These allegations are both heartbreaking and abominable. The expansive breadth and indisputable consistency of the survivors’ accounts, all of whom were acquainted with the union leader through his activist work, suggest a menacing and consistent pattern of misconduct by Chavez, and increase the likelihood that more victims will come forward with their stories.

Women from across the political spectrum have had to endure chronic sexism and misogyny from men for decades. Eldridge Cleaver, spokesman for the Black Panther Party, told women in 1968 that they could best help the movement with their “pussy power.” Prominent anti-Vietnam War activist Abbie Hoffman announced the only alliance he would make with feminists was in bed. Stokely Carmichael declared the sole position for women in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was “prone.” Black female activist Septima Clark spoke at length about the sexism permeating the Civil Rights Movement in her autobiography “Ready From Within.”

Many conservative organizations have long employed gender-inflected rhetoric as a vanguard. Crucially, elements of sexism and misogyny have been paramount serving as the inaugural template that draws them into the restrictive and heavily indoctrinated sphere of conservative movements, such as the John Birch Society, the Moral Majority, the Young Americans for Freedom, and the New Right. Such movements often depict men as harassed victims of an erratically evolving society and frequently hurl morally reductive language at women and LGBTQ+ communities.

When Chavez died in 1993, then-President Bill Clinton, who posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, called Chavez “an authentic hero to millions of people throughout the world.” Following the Times expose, the fallout has been unsurprisingly brutal. Schools, streets, parks and public buildings are being renamed, and statues dismantled. Annual events are being terminated, and the federal holiday President Barack Obama created on March 31 to celebrate Chavez’s birthday will be abolished. The UFW, the union Chavez founded and led, also announced that it would no longer celebrate his birthday.

His personal conduct was despicable and atrocious, but the reality is Cesar Chavez led a movement for the rights and dignity of a long-exploited and marginalized workforce that had endured decades and — in some cases — centuries of denigration and dehumanization.

Chavez and his movement gained vital labor and civil rights protections and advanced the cause of poor and impoverished Latino and non-Latino people. That is an admirable and permanent legacy that will unfortunately be tarnished. Let’s hope it’s not erased entirely.

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Copyright 2026 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.