As California marks its first Farmworkers Day, labor advocates reflect on Chavez allegations and what comes next

The Weekly Dispatch

Community-powered immigration news from the Bay Area.

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Welcome to El Tímpano’s Weekly Dispatch. I’m Erica Hellerstein, senior immigration, labor, and economics reporter.

In previous years, when Californians celebrated the March 31 holiday formerly known as César Chavez Day, the Brentwood-based nonprofit Hijas del Campo opted out of the festivities.

The organization, which supports farmworkers in Contra Costa County, declined to commemorate Chavez, a figure with a well-documented hostility toward undocumented agricultural workers, whom he accused of depressing wages and undermining strikes. The labor leader referred to undocumented immigrants as “wetbacks” and, in the 1970s, mounted a campaign to report unauthorized immigrants to federal authorities—an effort linked to harassment, and in some cases, physical assaults on undocumented immigrants attempting to cross the border. According to the journalist Miriam Pawel, who chronicled this history in her 2014 biography, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, the labor leader’s cousin, Manuel Chavez, even hired vigilantes to beat up migrants in Arizona while he was working for the United Farm Workers.

“We knew him as somebody who was an elitist, a racist against his own community,” said Marivel Mendoza, the co-founder and executive director of Hijas del Campo. The daughter of farmworkers, Mendoza grew up among relatives who labored in the fields of Delano, the agricultural hub that once housed the headquarters of the United Farm Workers, the labor union Chavez built alongside Dolores Huerta. They had a different view of Chavez than the hagiographic accounts that later came to define his legacy. “Many people, including my own family members, did not venerate this man,” Mendoza explained.

So, on March 18, when The New York Times dropped a bombshell, multi-year investigation into Chavez’s sexual abuse of women and young girls, Mendoza thought back to the undocumented workers the labor leader had held in such disdain.

“This was a person who would actually call migra on people because they were crossing the picket line or because they didn’t have papers,” she said. “If he was like that with his own people because they didn’t have papers, I wouldn’t see why he would be any different when it came to women and girls.” She continued: “It came as no surprise that a man in power would abuse that power.”

In the wake of the allegations that have prompted a painful moral reckoning of Chavez’s legacy across California, Hijas del Campo’s long-standing decision not to commemorate him now appears less like an act of defiance than a mark of prescience. Two weeks after The Times documented how Chavez sexually abused underage girls and raped Dolores Huerta, his longtime ally in the movement, state and local leaders are racing to remove the labor leader’s name and likeness from public memory. These actions culminated with a vote by state lawmakers on March 26 to change the name of Cesar Chavez Day to Farmworkers Day. Proponents argued the rename shifts the focus of the holiday away from the disgraced labor leader and onto the movement he helped create.

The rapid push to erase public references to Chavez is likely the tip of a reckoning iceberg that will take years to fully process. It raises questions both concrete and existential: What responsibility did those closest to Chavez bear, and how were his abuses concealed for so long? What was the collateral damage of elevating “the cause” above all else? To what extent did the campaign to mythologize him silence his victims? And how does the movement move forward?

In Contra Costa County, the revelations sent a “shockwave” through the farmworker community, Mendoza said. Those who once admired Chavez’s activism and dedication to farmworkers’ rights have been asking themselves: “How is it possible that somebody who is so venerated for doing such positive work could have done something like this?”

As references to Chavez are removed from memorials across the state, Mendoza is supportive of approaches that honor the collective over individual heroes, like the city of Brentwood’s proclamation honoring the contributions of agricultural workers on March 31.

While Hijas del Campo has historically chosen not to observe the holiday formerly known as César Chavez Day, as observance shifts to the agricultural workers themselves, “we’re happy to now be able to celebrate moving forward,” Mendoza said. “Because now it’s about the farmworkers. And we can feel like we’re a part of something that matters to us.”

Abuses in the fields and beyond persist

Even as homages to Chavez come down, they underscore an issue that persists beyond the labor movement. The power dynamics that helped Chavez perpetuate his abuses are also drivers of sexual violence in sectors that employ significant numbers of female immigrant workers, such as the agricultural and janitorial industries.

The harassment and exploitation of female workers in these two industries has come to light thanks to the advocacy of campaigns led by women workers, as well as groundbreaking investigative reporting. A decade ago, in documentaries for PBS Frontline and Univision, as well as stories for KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of reporters and producers (among them, El Tímpano’s managing editor, Daffodil Altan) exposed rampant levels of sexual violence within both the agricultural and janitorial industries. These abuses were often perpetuated by people in positions of power – like managers and supervisors – over vulnerable female subordinates, including undocumented workers, who were often threatened with immigration enforcement by their abusers, and worried that coming forward could cause them to lose their jobs or expose their status.

While legislation in California following this reporting has sought to address sexual harassment and abuse in both the agricultural and janitorial sectors, the problem remains. It’s been a decade since the California legislature passed AB 1978, which requires janitorial employers to provide sexual harassment prevention training to their employees every two years. But Beatriz Guillen, a former janitorial worker who now works with the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, which investigates abuses in the janitorial industry, told me little has changed since the law went into effect.

“It hasn’t improved,” said Guillen, who went on a hunger strike in Sacramento to advocate for the bill that janitors, union leaders, and Dolores Huerta herself also campaigned for. When Guillen meets up with female janitorial workers, “as soon as you mention abuse and harassment, the girls’ eyes fill up with tears,” she said. “They say: ‘it happened to me at my workplace, or it’s happening now.’” Despite the legislation, Guillen told me many women don’t come forward because they’re afraid of losing their jobs or intimidated by higher-ups who threaten undocumented workers who report harassment with deportation.

“Their supervisor tells them: ‘if you say anything, I’ll have you deported, and then let’s see where your kids end up,’” she explained.

Regardless of precisely where, and how, abuse takes place, these are the conditions under which it metastasizes: vulnerability, fear, and uneven power dynamics.

Both Guillen and Mendoza are remaining vigilant about how the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is felt in the spaces they organize. While it was too early to gain a full picture during last year’s agricultural season, Mendoza said that the organization will be keeping a close eye on whether the national climate on immigration is affecting labor conditions or abuses in the fields as this year’s season kicks off. In the janitorial industry, “people are staying quiet” about reporting abuse on the job, Guillen said, due to the “fear they have of immigration under the president.”

I’ll continue to follow how the revelations about Chavez are rippling through these two industries, as well as others that employ immigrant women. As always, feel free to reach out to me at ehellerstein@eltimpano.org with any questions, tips, or reflections.

Thank you, see you next week.

Ear to the Ground

Hi, I’m Vanessa Flores, El Tímpano’s community reporter. El Tímpano’s text messaging (SMS) service reaches more than 6,500 Spanish-speaking immigrants across the Bay Area. This week, we asked community members how they are processing the explosive allegations against Cesar Chavez and his history of sexual assault and abuse against women and girls. Here are a few of their responses:

I feel betrayed, angry, and at the same time sad! Cesar Chavez was an idol—someone I admired for many years. I couldn’t believe it, yet I believe it is true. And I say this from personal experience.

—Hayward resident

Influential people—those with power or status, among others—hide behind that mask; those in high positions always seek to exploit the vulnerability of a woman in need.

—Hayward resident

Wow. I didn’t know that; I always thought he helped people.

—San Lorenzo resident

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