Yet another “civil rights” hero has been exposed as a rapist.
After an investigation that began in 2021, The New York Times revealed yesterday that farmworker-rights leader Cesar Chavez abused and raped girls and women. One of them, longtime aide Dolores Huerta, now 95, became the mother of two girls fathered by Chavez, head of the United Farm Workers union.
California will now rename “Cesar Chavez Day” to “Farmworkers Day.” Other states that revered Chavez like a saint are following suit.
Chavez is the second top “civil rights icon” revealed as a sex fiend. Six years ago, David Garrow, biographer of Martin Luther King Jr., admitted that FBI documents showed that King was a binge-drinking sex pervert and accomplice to rape.
Multiple Rapes
The Times interviewed more than five dozen people, including victims, former United Farm Workers officials, and Chavez’s relatives. The result is a report that has forever wrecked his carefully constructed image.
“Ana Murguia and another woman, Debra Rojas, say that Mr. Chavez sexually abused them for years when they were girls, from around 1972 to 1977,” the Times divulged:
He was in his 40s and had become a powerful, charismatic figure who captured global attention as a champion of farmworker rights.
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 against Mr. Chavez, the United Farm Workers co-founder who died in 1993 at the age of 66.
Worse still, the two women, now 66, “were the daughters of longtime organizers who had marched in rallies alongside Mr. Chavez.”
Chavez molested Murguia in his office. She had attempted suicide “multiple times by the age of 15.”
“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,” the exposé continued:
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. (Ms. Murguia said Mr. Chavez molested her but never had intercourse with her.)
The abuse allegations appear to be part of a larger pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Chavez, much of which has never been publicly revealed. The Times investigation found that Mr. Chavez also used many of the women who worked and volunteered in his movement for his own sexual gratification.
Another victim was Huerta, who disclosed Chavez’s crimes for the first time to the Times. Chavez raped her in a car in a “secluded grape field,” the newspaper reported. She was 36. She clammed up about the rape and didn’t tell cops “because of their hostility toward the movement, and she feared that no one within the union would believe her.”
Chavez also pressed her for sex in a hotel room in 1960.
Not surprisingly, “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,” the Times reported.
For leftists, the “movement” is more important than anything, including rape victims. Thus, “many of the women say they were discouraged from speaking out in order to preserve Mr. Chavez’s public image,” the Times disclosed:
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.
More than 10 years ago, members of a private Facebook group for longtime Chavez organizers and supporters were stunned to read a post from Ms. Rojas that she wrote in a fit of anger as they prepared to celebrate the holiday in his name.
Her post read, in part: “Wake up people. This man u march for every year molested me.”
Ms. Rojas deleted the message days after posting it and was accused by some who saw it or heard about it of jeopardizing all that had been accomplished by not only Mr. Chavez but her parents and those they marched alongside.
Lotsa Kids
The Times observed that Chavez and his wife, Helen, had eight children. But the paper also learned that three other women had four of his children. “Two of these children and other family members were interviewed and confirmed the relationship,” the Times reported:
Additionally, 23andMe match results were reviewed for the four children, and they confirmed Mr. Chavez’s biological ties in each case.
Two of the children were the result of his two sexual encounters with Ms. Huerta, she told The Times, including the assault she described in 1966. Ms. Huerta said she concealed the pregnancies by wearing baggy clothes and ponchos, had the baby girls and then arranged for them to be raised by others.
The accusations involving Ms. Murguia and Ms. Rojas date back to a period when they themselves were children, with behavior they now describe as grooming beginning when they were as young as 8 or 9.
Ms. Rojas said she started seeing a therapist at the age of 16, four years after the abuse began, and continues to see one today. “I picked up a drinking habit,” she said. “A panic attack habit. A bad relationship habit.”
Ms. Murguia said she suffers from panic attacks and depression, and has trouble being in public spaces or being part of crowds.
“I feel like he’s been a shadow over my life,” Ms. Rojas said. “I want him to stop following me around. It’s time.”
Murguia’s story is beyond shocking. She also divulged that Chavez was a stereotypical groomer.
She liked and admired the “civil rights hero” because he listened to her and became “a confidant who sympathized with her as she coped with schoolyard bullies and her father’s temper. He told her he was lonely, burdened by his bodyguards and unable even to use the bathroom alone. They spent hours talking.”
“Ms. Murguia said she was 13 when Mr. Chavez began inviting her into his office,” the paper continued:
He had an obsession with alternative healing therapies, and would sometimes put her on his desk and demonstrate the “pressure points” that could relieve stress and pain, she said. That eventually led to kissing, and then fondling. And then more.
“When I was on the yoga mat is when he would try to have sex,” Ms. Murguia said.
Ms. Murguia said she wasn’t attracted to Mr. Chavez, and was initially surprised by his touches, but said she felt chosen. “Part of it was, why would someone like that like someone like me?”
She said Mr. Chavez told her not to tell anyone because other girls and women would be jealous of their special bond. …
Several people corroborated her story. One family member said she learned of the abuse in the early 1980s, after Ms. Murguia told her about it. Another person said Ms. Murguia disclosed the abuse to him in 1989.
A woman who escaped the lubricious Latino’s clutches was Esmeralda Lopez, the Times revealed:
She had grown up in the union, the daughter of a longtime union staff member, Cynthia Bell. In April 1988, Mr. Chavez selected Ms. Lopez to travel with him on an out-of-state speaking tour. After an event in Michigan, he invited Ms. Lopez into his camper attached to a pickup truck. She said it was just the two of them in the small camper, and they sat next to the bed. At one point, she said, Mr. Chavez pointed to a street sign outside bearing his name and suggested that he could use his influence to get something named for her if she slept with him. She was 19, and he was 61.
Shaken, Ms. Lopez rebuffed him, and he did not pursue it further. She later called her mother to say she was returning home early from the trip. When Ms. Bell asked what happened, Ms. Lopez replied: “Cesar Chavez is just a man.”
In fact, he was just a rapist.
No More Chavez Parties
The Times report has done some good. The U.F.W. has canceled its Chavez celebration, while marches in Austin, Texas, and other formerly pro-Chavez cities are off the calendar.
The paper reported today that elected officials are running from Chavez faster than Speedy Gonzales ran from Sylvester the Cat.
“The governors of Texas and Arizona almost immediately moved to cancel state observances of Cesar Chavez Day on March 31,” the Times explained:
In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass, along with women serving on the City Council, said they were planning to sign a proclamation on Thursday to erase Mr. Chavez’s name and rename the holiday “Farm Workers Day” in the city, the mayor’s office said. They also planned to move the annual holiday to the last Monday each March, untethering it from Mr. Chavez’s birthday.
More fallout could come on Thursday, when California state lawmakers will convene in floor sessions. Democrats who control the state Legislature committed Wednesday to renaming the holiday, though they have not yet announced a timeline or proposed a new name.
Former President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to the rapist on August 8, 1994.
On taking office in 2021, former President Joe Biden immediately set up a bronze bust of the rapist.
Unlike those regarding Chavez, the disclosures about Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t bother leftists. After biographer Garrow’s revelations, including King being an inveterate orgy participant and an accomplice to rape, they didn’t rush to abolish his national holiday or take his name off streets.
