Cesar Chávez accused of sexually abusing girls in NY Times investigation

A New York Times investigation published today contains allegations that the union leader Cesar Chávez abused girls as young as 12 years old. 

Civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, who cofounded the United Farm Workers Union with Chávez, also told the Times that he sexually assaulted her. 

“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for,” Huerta said in a statement. “As a young mother in the 1960s, I experienced two separate sexual encounters with Cesar. The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to. The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.” 

“I had experienced abuse and sexual violence before, and I convinced myself these were incidents that I had to endure alone and in secret,” the statement continues. “Both sexual encounters with Cesar led to pregnancies. I chose to keep my pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, I arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives.”

Read the full statement and Spanish version here.

In the New York Times article, Ana Murguia said Chávez took her into his office when he was 45 and she was 13, kissed her and pulled her pants down. She said dozens of sexual encounters followed over the next four years, though she says none involved intercourse.

Another woman says she was 12 when Chávez groped her breast, and 15 when he arranged to have her stay at a motel during a march through California and had sexual intercourse with her, which is rape under California law.

Both women were the daughters of organizers who had marched in rallies alongside Chávez, according to the Times. The story claims that Chávez used other women in the farm labor movement for "sexual gratification."

The Times said accounts of alleged abuse of the two then-minors were independently verified through interviews with those they confided in decades ago and also in more recent years. Elements of their stories were also corroborated in documents, emails, itineraries and other writings from union organizers, supporters of Chávez and historians, the story says.

The family of Cesar Chávez also issued a statement, as reported by The Latino Newsletter. 

“Our family is shocked and saddened to learn that our father, Cesar Chávez, engaged in sexual impropriety with women and minors nearly 50 years ago,” the statement said. “As a family steeped in the values of equity and justice, we honor the voices of those who feel unheard and who report sexual abuse.”  

Additional reporting from City News Service.