Four months after The New York Times published its investigation into sexual abuse allegations against labor leader Cesar Chavez, college instructors across California are still working through what those revelations mean for how the farmworker movement gets taught in classrooms.
The Times report, published in March, included an account from Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, who said Chavez raped her on two occasions. The investigation also documented a broader pattern of sexual abuse by Chavez toward women and girls involved with the UFW.
Oliver Rosales, a history professor at Bakersfield College, happened to be teaching a lecture on the farmworker movement the same day the story broke. He scrapped his planned material on the Delano grape strike and instead walked students through the Times report in real time.
“Some students used words like shock, devastating, heartbreaking, moving,” Rosales said. “I was glad it happened at that moment, with those students, in that moment. I wouldn’t want to have been anywhere else in the world when the news came out.”
Rosales, who has researched and taught the farmworker movement for years, said he was as stunned as anyone in his field. “I was texting with several professors around the country, and we were all in shock, because no historian knew anything about this,” he said. “This really feels like a second social death.”
Chavez died in 1993 at age 66, leaving behind a legacy woven deeply into California’s civil rights history. More than 130 public spaces and monuments nationwide bear his name, including more than 65 streets, schools and parks in California alone. The state has recognized his birthday as an official holiday since 2000.
Colleges and universities moved quickly after the allegations surfaced, renaming buildings and removing statues honoring Chavez. Now faculty across the state are grappling with a harder question: what does it mean to teach and research a figure like Chavez, and how can instruction expand beyond a single leader to capture the fuller story of the farmworker movement.
Swift changes on campus
State lawmakers wasted little time renaming Cesar Chavez Day to Farmworkers Day in March. California’s public universities followed with their own changes.
At Fresno State and Cal State San Marcos, statues of Chavez were covered and removed within two days of the Times report. At San Joaquin Delta College, a ceramic relief and plaque honoring Chavez were replaced with a mural celebrating farmworkers, painted by Delta College students. UC Berkeley removed Chavez’s name from a student center, and UCLA’s Chicano Studies department dropped his name as well.
Some suggested simply substituting Huerta’s name in place of Chavez’s, but faculty members argue for a more thoughtful approach — one that honors the collective effort of the movement rather than elevating a single figure.
“If Dolores Huerta’s name comes up, I want it to be because of her own achievements and merits, not as a reaction to the allegations against Cesar Chavez,” said Lorena Oropeza, a professor of Chicano and Latino studies at UC Berkeley.
Campuses are also reconsidering curriculum tied to Chavez’s name. At Bakersfield College, some faculty pushed to immediately scrap the Cesar Chavez Leadership Certificate, a program that teaches students about community organizing through the lens of Chavez’s role in the San Joaquin Valley farmworker movement.
Rosales, who created the certificate program, said any curriculum changes deserve careful study rather than a quick elimination. No formal motion has been brought before the Academic Senate yet, but Rosales said he and his colleagues would support a name change that goes through the proper process.
“When we look at the curriculum, it actually gives us what we need, because it broadens the history well beyond the UFW,” Rosales said.
A long history of scholarly reckoning
History books often center the 1965 Delano grape strike, when farmworkers walked off the job for five years demanding fair wages and better conditions. Frequently left out of that narrative is the fact that Filipino American labor leaders Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz launched the strike. Itliong’s Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee later merged with Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association to form the United Farm Workers, whose organizing eventually led to a national grape boycott and victory for the workers.
Ethnic studies scholars have long examined the complicated, sometimes contradictory nature of labor movement leaders. Researchers have scrutinized Chavez’s anti-immigrant positions and studied the farmworker movement through oral histories gathered from workers and their families.
At UC Berkeley, Oropeza studies the peace and racial justice movements of the 1960s, a decade when the farmworker movement became intertwined with the broader Chicano movement, which also included campus protests demanding ethnic studies, land rights and civil rights. Leaders like Chavez became central figures of that era.
One leader Oropeza has researched extensively is Reies Lopez Tijerina, a Texas-born Chicano leader who spearheaded a major land grant movement in the 1960s American Southwest, seeking the return of ancestral lands ceded after the Mexican-American War. Her research also uncovered a pattern of abuse Tijerina inflicted on his own family.
As leader of the Alianza Federal de Mercedes, or Federal Alliance of Land Grants, Tijerina led peaceful protests in Albuquerque and Santa Fe and occupied Echo Amphitheater, renaming it the “Republic of San Joaquin del Rio Chama” — an act that led to arrests among Alianza members. Most notably, Tijerina and his followers staged an armed raid on a courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico, attempting a citizen’s arrest of the local district attorney over alleged civil rights violations. Tijerina’s arrest following the raid drew national attention to the civil rights and Chicano movements.
Oropeza’s 2019 book, “The King of Adobe: Reies Lopez Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement,” examines both his role in revitalizing the land grant movement and the patriarchal control he exercised at home. Her research draws on archival records and oral histories, including interviews with Tijerina’s first wife and eldest daughter, who described patterns of physical and sexual abuse. Tijerina died in 2015 at age 88.
“How do you reconcile this person who was absolutely brilliant in critiquing American expansion and its consequences for Spanish speakers in the new American Southwest, but who was absolutely reprehensible in how he treated his family?” Oropeza asked. Her book, she said, sits with “both realities” and uses gender as a lens for understanding his leadership style.
Oropeza has also studied Chavez’s leadership closely, recalling striking images of him fasting to draw attention to farmworkers’ struggles and his use of cultural and religious symbolism as political tools, including his Lenten pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento alongside workers. Many referred to Chavez as “El Santo,” or the movement’s saint, she said.
To process the allegations against Chavez, Oropeza points to both her own research and existing critical scholarship. Miriam Pawel’s 2014 biography, “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez,” offers a critical account of the man, including his anti-immigrant stance, his autocratic control over the union, and the ways he undermined other labor movements.
“I’ve spent the last 12 years thinking about how you write about complicated people — people who can act in reprehensible ways but who can also do great things,” Oropeza said.
Looking ahead, Oropeza believes any serious study of the Chicano and farmworker movements must hold multiple, sometimes conflicting truths at once.
“For me, this is just a reminder that this endeavor we’re engaged in as scholars … is imperfect,” Oropeza said. “We’re always approaching, ‘What is the truth?’ Is there one single truth? We get closer and closer, but we never fully arrive.”
New approaches take shape in the classroom
Alina Mendez, a professor of Chicano and Latin American studies at Fresno State, has experienced the connection between the personal and the political firsthand — her own parents worked as farmworkers. While teaching a class on the farmworker movement, she asked her students directly whether they should keep discussing Chavez, and if so, how.
“There’s a collective grief, a collective disappointment, kind of a questioning of, if Cesar Chavez is no longer our hero, who do we look up to?” Mendez said.
“As a scholar, obviously, I learned and I teach this history,” Mendez said. “But as a daughter of farmworkers, I grew up honoring the memory, the legacy of Cesar Chavez.”
Her class ultimately reached a shared understanding: that they should continue learning about Chavez while also holding him accountable, “with the hope that this (abuse of power) doesn’t happen again,” she recalled.
“I can clearly sense this collective grief, this collective disappointment, this kind of questioning — if Cesar Chavez is no longer our hero, who do we look up to?” Mendez said. “That’s why I’ve pushed us to look at our local communities. Let’s look around and see other people who sacrificed a lot of time, a lot of resources and a lot of effort to make those achievements possible.”
Mendez is reshaping her teaching approach to spotlight local leaders and local stories within the broader farmworker movement. She’s been in talks with Arte Americas, a Fresno-based Latino arts and cultural center, about continuing to gather archival material and interviews with workers throughout the Central Valley.
“In many ways, obviously, my teaching is changing,” Mendez said. “As historians, I think we’re increasingly understanding the importance of focusing on the collective rather than on the individual leader.”
Faculty members say ethnic studies and history departments will play a central role in shaping how the farmworker movement’s history gets taught going forward. They argue researchers should prioritize gathering oral histories directly from workers themselves, rather than letting dominant voices continue to define the movement’s narrative.
“If there’s anyone who can help us understand the complexities surrounding race in America, it’s ethnic studies scholars,” Oropeza said. “This is an area where ethnic studies experts will be able to shine.”
Rosales said he hopes this moment opens the door to research highlighting the contributions of additional communities within the farmworker movement, including Arab American and Southeast Asian American workers.
“I think the legacy of the farmworker movement remains intact, but it’s going to take careful work from teachers, scholars and historians to make sure the curriculum expands beyond Chavez,” Rosales said.
Original source: CalMatters
