Ready to Move on From the Chavez Scandal? Not So Fast

Ruben Navarrette
Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:19:28 -0700
Opinion

SAN DIEGO — Here in California, there is a weird vibe surrounding the state holiday formerly known as Cesar Chavez Day.

The world's fourth-largest economy wasn't built by tech bros or Hollywood studios. It was built by farm workers. The sweat of these essential workers helps the state's agricultural industrial complex generate more than $60 billion in annual revenue.

The Golden State is also the birthplace of the farm labor movement, and the rich farmland of Central California has been — for more than 60 years — the battleground for the strikes, marches and protests that the worthwhile crusade produced.
Updated: Tue Mar 31, 2026

SAN DIEGO — Here in California, there is a weird vibe surrounding the state holiday formerly known as Cesar Chavez Day.

The world's fourth-largest economy wasn't built by tech bros or Hollywood studios. It was built by farm workers. The sweat of these essential workers helps the state's agricultural industrial complex generate more than $60 billion in annual revenue.

The Golden State is also the birthplace of the farm labor movement, and the rich farmland of Central California has been — for more than 60 years — the battleground for the strikes, marches and protests that the worthwhile crusade produced.

So it makes sense that California is one of about 10 states in the country that until recently recognized March 31 — the birthday of a once celebrated labor leader — as Cesar Chavez Day.

Never mind that. Last week, the California legislature voted hastily and unanimously to rebrand the state holiday as "Farmworkers Day" following allegations that the late labor leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union sexually abused women and girls.

All of this after The New York Times published a detailed account of two women, Debra Rojas and Ana Murguia, who said that Chavez forced them to have sex with him many years ago when they were adolescents and thus below the age of consent. That is called rape.

In that same article, Chavez is also accused of rape by Dolores Huerta, his second-in-command and another co-founder of the UFW.

Now 95, Huerta claims that Chavez forced himself on her nearly 60 years ago, and that he also pressured her to have sex on another occasion. She claims those two encounters resulted in pregnancies.

Frankly, that part of the story seems like a stretch. Ask any couple who has tried to have children, and they'll tell you that it's extremely unlikely that exactly two sexual encounters would result in exactly two pregnancies. I suspect that what began as a rape became, over the decades, a sustained and loving relationship.

As a longtime critic of Chavez and the UFW, I was surprised by the disturbing allegations but not totally shocked. Honestly, I just don't have a high opinion of anyone connected to the union.

There is history. I had a hostile confrontation with Chavez during an event at Harvard in the fall of 1989. I told him that he had grown bigger than the UFW and lost touch with everyday farm workers. I was also concerned that union organizers shifted their emphasis away from growing membership to promoting a grape boycott. Chavez responded by angrily accusing me of being a "grower plant" sent to Cambridge to embarrass him. That was something he did well enough on his own.

For her part, Huerta has always defended both Chavez and the union she co-founded with him in 1962. But she hasn't always been truthful. In heated face-to-face confrontations with me, she was not forthright.

For instance, I didn't buy her claims that she knew nothing about the abuse of undocumented immigrants by UFW thugs in the 1970's.

Now it's possible that she is lying to herself about the depth of her relationship with her old friend. That's a more complicated story to tell, and so it's likely she found it easier to play the victim.

The Latinos who spent decades putting Chavez on a pedestal are eating it up. They dropped him and quickly transferred their hero worship to Huerta. Some people never learn.

Meanwhile, Chavez has fallen from grace with the speed of a meteor descending from the sky. It didn't take long for the most famous Mexican American in the United States to become the most infamous.

Just as it didn't take long for the white liberals and Latino lefties who spent decades intimidating detractors of Chavez to cancel their hero once the abuse allegations surfaced.

Nor did it take long for conservative Republicans in farm country to wake up to the realization that they really do care about allegations that powerful men sexually abused women and children.

Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom hurriedly signed the proclamation by the legislature declaring March 31 "Farmworker Day." It read: "Farmworkers are the backbone of California. This state is home to over one-third of all farmworkers in the United States — and they feed the nation ... We are the fourth largest economy in the world because farmworkers make it possible."

All true. In California and throughout the United States, farm workers deserve our gratitude and respect. And, from Chavez and the UFW, they deserved much better.