NY Times: Cesar Chavez Accused of Sexually Abusing Young Girls

As predicted yesterday, the story about Cesar Chavez sexually abusing young girls was published today by the NY Times. The paper spoke to multiple women including one who claims she was abused repeatedly when Chavez was 45 and she was 13-years-old.

Ana Murguia remembers the day the man she had regarded as a hero called her house and summoned her to see him. She walked along a dirt trail, entered the rundown building, passed his secretary and stepped into his office.

He locked the door, as he always did when he called her, and told her how lonely he had been. He brought her onto the yoga mat that he often used in his office for meditation, kissed her and pulled her pants down. “Don’t tell anyone,” he told her afterward. “They’d get jealous.”

The man, Cesar Chavez, one of the most revered figures in the Latino civil rights movement, was 45. She was 13. Ms. Murguia said she was summoned for sexual encounters with him dozens of times over the next four years.

Recently, more than 50 years later, Ms. Murguia learned that a street near her home in the Central California city of Bakersfield was in the process of being renamed. City officials want to name it in honor of her abuser.

A second woman described similar abuse which began when she was 12-years-old.

Ms. Rojas said she was 12 when Mr. Chavez first touched her inappropriately, groping her breasts in the same office where he’d meet with Ms. Murguia. When Ms. Rojas was 15, he arranged to have her stay at a motel during a weekslong march through California, she said, and had sexual intercourse with her — rape, under state law, because she was not old enough to consent.

It wasn’t just young teens who were targeted. The woman who many considered Chavez’ ally in the UFW movement, Delores Huerta, said she was also abused by him, something she hadn’t revealed for 60 years.

The Times spoke at length with Ms. Huerta, the renowned Latina activist who helped run the farmworkers’ union with Mr. Chavez and coined the social-justice rallying cry, “Sí, se puede,” loosely translated as “Yes, we can.”

She said she has held on to a dark secret for nearly 60 years.

One night during the winter of 1966 in Delano, Calif., she said, Mr. Chavez drove her out to a secluded grape field, parked and raped her inside the vehicle. Ms. Huerta, who was 36 at the time, said she chose not to report the assault to the police because of their hostility toward the movement, and she feared that no one within the union would believe her.

Huerta became pregnant after the encounter but hid the pregnancy and had other family members care for the child. As for the two young girls he abused, both described a pattern of grooming that started before they turned ten.

Chavez is a legendary figure, especially in California. He was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton. His home and the UFW headquarters, where the abuse of the young girls happened, was declared a national monument by Barack Obama in 2012. As president, Joe Biden had a bust of Chavez placed in the Oval Office.

When I became President, I proudly placed a bust of César Chávez in the Oval to serve as a reminder of the values he embodied, the vision of freedom he fought for, and his commitment to justice and dignity that we must uphold each and every day.

Happy César Chávez Day. pic.twitter.com/GNKtjLTsq6

— President Biden Archived (@POTUS46Archive) March 31, 2023

Rumors of the allegations have been circulating for years but Chavez’ family never did anything to apologize to his victims, nor did Chavez himself when he was confronted.

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.

Internal emails dating back over a decade show union members discussing Ms. Murguia’s claims of abuse and the impact it had on her life. One of Ms. Murguia’s relatives confronted Mr. Chavez while he was still alive, in the 1980s. According to the relative, Mr. Chavez offered no defense and responded only by clearing his throat.

Yesterday, the two groups most connected to Chavez’ legacy, UFW and the Cesar Chavez Foundation, put out statements acknowledging the allegations of abuse without explaining where they’d heard them. Both groups said they would not be celebrating Cesar Chavez day this year, a state holiday in several states including California.

The word “pedophile” only appears once in the story and that’s as part of a denial by Chavez’ former security detail. But that does seem to be what is being described in the story. He groomed little girls and then began abusing them at 12 or 13 and lost interest in them by the time they were adults. Though it’s clear Chavez also had affairs with many adult women like Delores Huerta. He had four children with women other than his wife, something the Times verified with DNA.

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