Cesar Chavez abused and raped girls and women, NYT investigation says : NPR

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George Brich/ AP/AP Cesar Chavez, the famed union chief and champion of farmworker rights, has been accused of sexually abusing two women within the Seventies in addition to Dolores Huerta, with whom he co-founded the United Farm Staff, within the Nineteen Sixties, in line with an investigation printed by the New York Occasions.

The newspaper spoke with two girls who stated they have been kids when Chavez started to groom and sexually abuse them throughout his time as UFW president. One of many girls stated Chavez raped her in a motel room in 1975 when she was 15 years outdated and he was 47. The opposite lady stated Chavez started groping her in his workplace on the union's headquarters when she was 13. Each girls, now of their 60s, have been the daughters of organizers inside the farmworker motion.

NPR has not independently investigated the allegations in opposition to Chavez, who died in 1993. The New York Occasions spoke with greater than 60 folks and reviewed paperwork and different supplies bolstering his accuser's tales.

Huerta, a labor chief lengthy revered for her work on behalf of farmworkers alongside Chavez, advised the newspaper that he raped her in a automotive in 1966.

She advised the Occasions that "Mr. Chavez drove her out to a secluded grape area in Delano, Calif., parked and compelled her to have intercourse contained in the car." Huerta advised the newspaper that she selected to not inform anybody concerning the rape as a result of "she feared that nobody inside the union would imagine her."

In an announcement posted to Medium on Wednesday, Huerta wrote: "I'm practically 96 years outdated, and for the final 60 years have saved a secret as a result of I believed that exposing the reality would harm the farmworker motion I've spent my total life combating for."

She wrote that she had two separate encounters with Chavez within the Nineteen Sixties.

"The primary time, I used to be manipulated and pressured into having intercourse with him, and I did not really feel I may say no as a result of he was somebody that I admired, my boss and the chief of the motion I had already devoted years of my life to," she wrote. "The second time I used to be pressured, in opposition to my will, and in an surroundings the place I felt trapped."

Each encounters led to pregnancies that she saved secret, she wrote. After the kids have been born, she stated, she organized for them to be raised by different households. Through the years, she has turn into near these kids, she stated, "however even then, nobody knew the complete fact about how they have been conceived till only a few weeks in the past."

Some folks near Chavez throughout his lifetime, together with longtime bodyguards, rejected the allegations in opposition to him, in line with the Occasions.

The newspaper's report got here a day after the United Farm Staff issued an announcement saying it had turn into conscious of the allegations in opposition to Chavez.

"Allegations that very younger girls or women could have been victimized are crushing," the union stated. It stated it was in search of to be taught extra and to assist girls who could have been victims. It additionally introduced that it might not be collaborating in occasions for Cesar Chavez Day, a state vacation celebrated in California every March 31, Chavez's birthday.

The Cesar Chavez Basis, which partially works to advertise Chavez's legacy and with which members of his household are nonetheless concerned, wrote in its personal assertion on Tuesday that it might additionally search to help victims of the alleged abuse.

"We're deeply shocked and saddened by what we're listening to," the muse wrote. "The Basis is working with leaders within the Farmworker Motion to be responsive to those allegations, help the individuals who could have been harmed by his actions, and guarantee we're united and guided by our dedication to justice and neighborhood empowerment."

Chavez turned a nationwide determine throughout the Nineteen Sixties for his work organizing farmworkers struggling for higher wages and dealing circumstances, using starvation strikes and a famed nationwide boycott of California grapes.

Within the a long time since his demise, he has turn into one of the crucial iconic heroes of the labor motion and of the Mexican American neighborhood. Faculties, neighborhood facilities and streets throughout the western United States have been renamed after him.

Fallout from the abuse allegations has been swift. In California, Texas and Arizona, celebrations deliberate in his honor later this month have been canceled or renamed. On social media, some Latinos have been calling for the numerous murals of Chavez to be painted over, and for colleges and boulevards bearing his identify to be renamed after Huerta.