Cesar Chavez, the famed union leader and champion of farmworker rights, has been accused of sexually abusing two girls in the 1970s as well as Dolores Huerta, with whom he co-founded the United Farm Workers, in the 1960s, according to an investigation published by the New York Times.
The newspaper spoke with two women who said they were children when Chavez began to groom and sexually abuse them during his time as UFW president. One of the women said Chavez raped her in a motel room in 1975 when she was 15 years old and he was 47. The other woman said Chavez began groping her in his office at the union's headquarters when she was 13. Both women, now in their 60s, were the daughters of organizers within the farmworker movement.
NPR has not independently investigated the allegations against Chavez, who died in 1993. The New York Times spoke with more than 60 people and reviewed documents and other materials bolstering his accuser's stories.
Huerta, a labor leader long revered for her work on behalf of farmworkers alongside Chavez, told the newspaper that he raped her in a car in 1966.
She told the Times that "Mr. Chavez drove her out to a secluded grape field in Delano, Calif., parked and forced her to have sex inside the vehicle." Huerta told the newspaper that she chose not to tell anyone about the rape because "she feared that no one within the union would believe her."
In a statement posted to Medium on Wednesday, Huerta wrote: "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."
She wrote that she had two separate encounters with Chavez in the 1960s.
"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," she wrote. "The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped."
Both encounters led to pregnancies that she kept secret, she wrote. After the children were born, she said, she arranged for them to be raised by other families. Over the years, she has become close to those children, she said, "but even then, no one knew the full truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago."
Some people close to Chavez during his lifetime, including longtime bodyguards, rejected the allegations against him, according to the Times.
The newspaper's report came a day after the United Farm Workers issued a statement saying it had become aware of the allegations against Chavez.
"Allegations that very young women or girls may have been victimized are crushing," the union said. It said it was seeking to learn more and to help women who may have been victims. It also announced that it would not be participating in events for Cesar Chavez Day, a state holiday celebrated in California each March 31, Chavez's birthday.
The Cesar Chavez Foundation, which in part works to promote Chavez's legacy and with which members of his family are still involved, wrote in its own statement on Tuesday that it would also seek to support victims of the alleged abuse.
"We are deeply shocked and saddened by what we are hearing," the foundation wrote. "The Foundation is working with leaders in the Farmworker Movement to be responsive to these allegations, support the people who may have been harmed by his actions, and ensure we are united and guided by our commitment to justice and community empowerment."
Chavez became a national figure during the 1960s for his work organizing farmworkers struggling for better wages and working conditions, employing hunger strikes and a famed national boycott of California grapes.
In the decades since his death, he has become one of the most iconic heroes of the labor movement and of the Mexican American community. Schools, community centers and streets across the western United States have been renamed after him.
Fallout from the abuse allegations has been swift. In California, Texas and Arizona, celebrations planned in his honor later this month have been canceled or renamed. On social media, some Latinos have been calling for the many murals of Chavez to be painted over, and for schools and boulevards bearing his name to be renamed after Huerta.
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