Women who say they were sexually abused by the late Latino civil rights icon Cesar Chavez are speaking out, describing how the labor leader used his power and leadership to traumatize them.
“Unfortunately, he used some of his great leadership to abuse women and children — it’s really awful,” fellow United Farm Workers union co-founder Dolores Huerta said in an interview with The New York Times published Wednesday.
Huerta said Chavez, who championed farmers rights through hunger strikes and a grape boycott, took her to a secluded grape field in Delano, California, in 1966 when she was 36 and raped her inside a vehicle.
Huerta was one of several women who spoke to the Times and described abuse by Chavez, who died in 1993. The newspaper reviewed hundreds of pages of union records, confidential emails and photographs in investigating the allegations.
Ana Murguia told the newspaper Chavez had known her since she was 8 years old and she considered him her hero. She said she was assaulted by him at age 13, when he was in his 40s, and recalled him telling her, “Don’t tell anyone” because “they’d get jealous.”
