Contra Costa County also said it was “reviewing the details” of its annual celebration planned for next month.
“Following the lead of the United Farm Workers, Contra Costa County remains focused on supporting farmworkers and advancing equity, safety, and opportunity in agriculture,” spokesperson Kristi Jourdan said via email. “Our goal is to ensure this event honors farmworkers, highlights urgent issues like fair wages and safe working conditions, and reflects our shared values of dignity and inclusion.”
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus said it would honor farmworkers and their “arduous, essential work” on March 31, nationally recognized as Cesar Chavez Day, this year.
“We cannot celebrate a man, regardless of his accomplishments, if he harmed women and children in such vile ways,” the caucus said in a statement. “While it’s heartbreaking when leaders are exposed as flawed beyond absolution, a just society has a duty to hold abusers accountable without exception.
“A movement stands on its values, not the misconduct of an individual,” it continued.
Organizers of San Francisco’s annual Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta Day Parade and Festival said the event would be renamed solely in honor of Huerta, whose birthday is April 10.
“Viva La Causa! Support the [farmworker] Movement,” said Eva Royale in an email.
The investigation published Wednesday morning includes accusations from at least a dozen women who say they were either pursued, harassed or assaulted by Chavez while he was at the height of his career, including Ana Murguia, who told The Times that she was first summoned to Chavez’s office when she was 13 years old, living with her family at La Paz. She said over the next four years, she had dozens of sexual encounters with him.
A farmworker picks grapes at a field in Fresno on Sept. 3, 2025. (Gina Castro for KQED)
Debra Rojas told The Times she was 12 when Chavez first touched her inappropriately, and that when she was 15, he raped her at a motel during the United Farm Workers’ 1,000 Mile March in California.
Huerta, Chavez’s UFW co-founder and close ally in leading the Farmworkers’ Movement, said in a statement Wednesday that she had two nonconsensual sexual encounters with Chavez in the 1960s, both resulting in pregnancies that she hid from public view.
Huerta said that she had not spoken out about her experiences for the last 60 years, because she “believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”
“I am telling my story because The New York Times has indicated that I was not the only one — there were others,” she wrote in a statement Wednesday. “The knowledge that he hurt young girls sickens me. My heart aches for everyone who suffered alone and in silence for years. There are no words strong enough to condemn those deplorable actions that he did. Cesar’s actions do not reflect the values of our community and our movement.”
Portrait of labor activist Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers group, with a union flag that reads “Viva La Causa,” ca.1970s. (Cathy Murphy/Getty Images)
Joshua Arce, the president of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, expressed support for Huerta Wednesday.
“For 60 years, she carried a painful burden in silence, known only to her, so that the movement she helped build and loves deeply could continue — never knowing until now that others, too, had suffered harm,” he wrote in a post on Facebook. “By breaking that silence, Dolores is speaking not only for herself, but for every woman and girl who was hurt and made to suffer alone.”
In a statement, California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said his first priority was to listen to survivors, adding that “the farmworker movement has never been about one man.
“It is bigger than any one person, and its values of dignity and justice are more important now than ever,” he wrote. “To those who have found the courage to come forward, my heart is with you.”
Sen. Alex Padilla speaks at a press briefing in San Francisco on June 1, 2021. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Sen. Alex Padilla, who last year proposed legislation to create a national park honoring Chavez across California and Arizona, called the revelations “heartbreaking, horrific accounts of abuse.”
“There must be zero tolerance for abuse, exploitation, and the silencing of victims, no matter who is involved,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “Confronting painful truths and ensuring accountability is essential to honoring the very values the greater farm worker movement stands for — values rooted in dignity and justice for all.”
Padilla’s office said he plans to move to rename and rework the legislation for the national park to honor farm workers.
Chavez’s children also expressed support for survivors.
“Our family is shocked and saddened to learn of news that our father, Cesar Chavez, engaged in sexual impropriety with women and minors nearly 50 years ago,” they wrote in a statement. “As a family steeped in the values of equity and justice, we honor the voices of those who feel unheard and who report sexual abuse.
“This is deeply painful to our family. We hope these matters are approached thoughtfully and fairly,” the statement reads.