On March 20, The New York Times released a bombshell news story; Cesar Chavez, the beloved co-founder of the United Farm Workers union and a revered leader in the Chicano Rights movement, was accused of being a pedophile and sexual abuser. 

This report came after several women, including his co-founder and brother’s domestic partner Dolores Huerta, accused Chavez of rape, sexual assault and grooming. Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas were the women featured in the article and they both recount the consistent sexual abuse they faced at the hands of Chavez and how it led them down paths of addiction, depression and self-harm. 

When I first read this article, I couldn’t even comprehend its contents. The fact that a man who is cherished in high school history curriculums and academic circles was a sexual abuser was beyond shocking. What’s worse, though, is that people knew about his sexual abuse of women and minors for decades and no one spoke out. The article recounts how the women confided in people close to them and were always met with people either doubting the validity of their stories or telling them to brush it under the rug so as not to hurt the greater movement. Huerta even told The Times that the two children she had as a result of Chavez’s sexual abuse had to be hidden and raised with another family to not give the government a reason to invalidate the movement and the work of all the people involved. 

As a young woman interested in community organizing myself, it’s incredibly scary and disheartening to learn about the normalized abuse behind movements. It was particularly difficult to see women like Huerta be victimized and not believed, especially considering her massive contributions to the movement. Growing up, I always thought that achieving high levels of success and being pivotal to organizations would shield women from the cruelties of a patriarchal world, but this story proves my assumption was wrong and reinforces the importance of staying vigilant and prioritizing safety as a woman in any profession.  

Huerta’s experience also reflects an uncomfortable pattern, one where male leaders of movements aren’t held accountable for their despicable actions and the women and less privileged people in their movement have to shoulder their trauma alone as a result.

This pattern shows up everywhere. From Gandhi’s alleged pedophilia to the Black Panther Party’s history of sexual coercion and intimidation of women, it’s easy to see how large movements tend to shield those at the center of them. Charismatic leaders, who are often male, become symbols of movements, and protecting the symbol becomes synonymous with protecting the movement. When this happens, victims are silenced and treated as kinks in a system that need to be ironed out, instead of being seen as worthy of the same protection as their male counterparts. 

The lack of accountability for charismatic abusers then creates the actual fracture in the movement, the fracture being how a struggle against injustice was built on injustice. Movements cannot claim moral legitimacy while protecting abusers. 

In this case, accountability failed systemically. The people closest to the movement were faced with a choice: protect the movement or protect the vulnerable. Too often, they chose the former. 

The parents of the children abused should’ve put their devotion for Chavez aside and protected their children. The bodyguards who drove Chavez to the places where he sexually assaulted children should’ve stopped it from happening, or at the very least believed the victims’ stories. Richard Chavez should’ve supported the mother of his children over his brother, and made sure she was in a safe working environment. But all of these people failed to do so. They failed to hold a leader accountable because they were scared their movement would face backlash. They were complacent with injustice behind closed doors while advocating against it in the streets. 

To be clear, movements like the United Farm Workers achieved real and lasting progress. But progress cannot come at the cost of ignoring harm within the very communities they aim to uplift. 

I don’t know how history will look upon the United Farm Workers movement in light of these allegations, but what I do know is that the harm to children and young women could have been avoided and addressed much earlier. In the future, I hope people who display moral courage against the status quo can display that same moral courage in their personal lives and hold leaders accountable. That’s the only way the cycle of injustice can be broken. 

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Mahitha Konjeti at [email protected].