What Cesar Chavez’s tainted legacy reveals about men in power

In a 2022 interview with Atlanta Civic Circle, a reporter asked the grandson of Cesar Chavez, the revered labor rights leader, to reflect on Chavez’s legacy.

“My grandfather’s legacy will always be about the workers. He wanted farmworkers’ children to have the same opportunity as growers’ children,” his grandson said.

But last week, when The New York Times published allegations against Chavez that included rape and sexual abuse of minors, that inspirational legacy expressed by his grandson rang hollow. Chavez was accused of harming some of the very people he sought to uplift.

At least a dozen women described being pursued, sexually harassed and abused or raped by Chavez, who died in 1993. Among those who went public in the Times investigation were two women, the children of migrant workers in the movement, who stated that the abuse began when they were as young as 12 and 13 years old.

A worker covers a mural by Emigdio Vasquez depicting Cesar Chavez, at Santa Ana College in Santa Ana, Calif., Thursday, March 19, 2026. (Jae C. Hong/AP)

Delores Huerta, who in 1966 co-founded the United Farm Workers union with Chavez, told the Times that two forced encounters with the activist in the 1960s resulted in two pregnancies. Huerta said she placed the children with families who could raise them. She kept quiet about Chavez’s transgressions because she did not want to derail the progress of the movement.

This is a common theme in political and social movements in this country, and if there is one key takeaway from this latest spectacle, it should be the understanding that any movement that requires the subjugation and silencing of the people it claims to support is not revolutionary. It is yet another reveal of the deep roots of inequality in a country built on patriarchal violence, where unchecked power guarantees impunity.

Fallout from the revelations about Chavez was immediate. In California, a statue was covered while its permanent removal is being planned. Across at least 19 states, there are calls to rename streets, schools, parks and events named in Chavez’s honor, including a push to rebrand the federally commemorative holiday on March 31, Chavez’s birthday, known as Cesar Chavez Day.

One thing I have learned in the past week since these allegations have come to light is that there are a lot of people in Atlanta who do not know the name or legacy of Cesar Chavez.

You won’t find Chavez’s name inscribed on buildings, streets, parks or monuments across the state as it is in other parts of the country. One local organization announced that it would cancel an annual essay contest this year and remove references to Chavez in the future.

Chavez’s connection to Atlanta was more subtle, found in correspondence from Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966, in which King commented on the similarity between the struggles of Black people and migrant workers in America.

The connection was there again when Chavez and John Lewis worked together on Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968 and when he marched with Coretta Scott King in New York City in 1973.

For those who don’t know the principles on which Chavez stood while fighting for fair treatment and bringing a sense of pride to farmworkers through the 1960s and 1970s, his personal failings will shroud those accomplishments in a veil of shame. But there is a lesson in watching his legacy collapse.

This is yet another warning of what happens when we ignore abuses of power to preserve a movement, whether that movement is rallying farmworkers in California or making America great. This is what happens when we don’t demand accountability.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the allegations against Chavez coincided with Women’s History Month. Women worldwide possess 64% of the legal rights afforded to men, according to UN Women. The most egregious areas of deficiency: More than 50% of countries lack a definition of rape based on consent, and nearly 3 in 4 countries allow child marriage.

In the U.S., over the past five years, we’ve watched the rollback of women’s rights, the rise of anti-feminism and misogyny (particularly among young men) and the continued protection of the many wealthy and powerful men who willingly dove into the orbit of a convicted child sex offender.

We must stop convincing women that they should endure whatever is placed at their feet in service of a greater cause led by a charismatic and powerful man.