Amid the release of an extensive investigation into celebrated labor leader Cesar Chavez’s sexual abuse of girls, civil rights icon Dolores Huerta has shared she was also one of his victims.
Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Chavez and activist Gilbert Padilla, issued a personal statement Wednesday morning following her inclusion in a bombshell exposé by The New York Times.
“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 in a post on Medium.
“I have encouraged people to always use their voice,” her statement went on. “Following the New York Times’ multi-year investigation into sexual misconduct by Cesar Chavez, I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences.”
Huerta, who coined the “Sí, se puede” slogan which has galvanized Latino civil rights and labor movements for generations, referred to two sexual encounters with Chavez that happened in the 1960s, both of which resulted in pregnancies.
