A shocking report from The New York Times revealed Wednesday that labor union “hero” Cesar Chavez allegedly sexually abused multiple young girls and women prior to his death in 1993.
Multiple women accused Chavez, who co-founded and led the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union, of assault, harassment, and rape dating back to 1960.
The previously unpublished allegations were corroborated by the Times investigation, which was based on more than 60 interviews with Chavez’s top aides, relatives, and former UFW members. Reporters also reviewed hundreds of pages of union records, confidential emails, photographs, and audio recordings of UFW board meetings.
Two women in the Times report, Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, both now 66, say Chavez began sexually abusing them when they were 13 and 12 years old, respectively. Both women were children of farm workers represented by Chavez’s prominent union.
Rojas was groped by Chavez in his office when she was 12, and the abuse continued for years, culminating in what Rojas described as rape at a motel during a union march in 1975, when she was 15. According to the New York Times, Rojas’s account is corroborated by a handwritten letter she sent to Chavez at age 13 that exists in the Wayne State University archives.
In 1972, Murguia recalled Chavez calling her to his room at the age of 13, which she did enthusiastically, describing the union leader as her “hero” at the time. Chavez locked the door, forced Murguia onto a yoga mat, and molested her.
Chavez told the girl, “Don’t tell anyone. They’d get jealous,” after kissing her. Murguia said she was raped “dozens” of times until 1977, and she had attempted suicide multiple times by the age of 15. “I wanted to die,” she said.
Several other women accused Chavez of sexual abuse, including his longtime confidant and fellow UFW co-founder, Dolores Huerta, who is now 95 years old. Huerta accused Chavez of raping her in 1966 in a vehicle and of an earlier coerced sexual encounter during a work trip in 1960. She says two children resulted from these encounters.
The Times investigation concluded that Chavez fathered at least four children with three women outside his marriage based on 23andMe test results.
Chavez has been an icon of the Left for decades, and in California, Cesar Chavez Day is a paid state holiday. Following the Times’ report, prominent Democrats scrambled to condemn Chavez, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, who previously said a photo of the union leader is “the first photo” he “wake[s] up to.”
“It’s been hard to absorb this, Jenn and I are very close with Dolores [Huerta], so many of us are and have been for decades and decades, and none of us knew,” Newsom said Wednesday. “All of us, I think, are processing it, and these kids have to process this now. There are almost three dozen schools in the state that are named after Cesar Chavez.”
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