Gigi Munoz, a member of the ceremonial dance group Danza Xitlalli, performs Saturday at the Farmworkers Day Festivities in San Francisco’s Mission District. Attendance was lower than usual at the celebration due to the rain and recent sexual assault allegations against Cesar Chavez, the event’s previous namesake.
Camille Cohen/For the S.F. Chronicle
A street vendor sets up a colorful umbrella to protect from rain during Saturday’s Farmworkers Day Festivities.
Camille Cohen/For the S.F. Chronicle
Ceremonial dance group Danza Xitlalli performs during the Farmworkers Day Festivities in the Mission District.
Camille Cohen/For the S.F. Chronicle
A downpour kept the crowds and bands away from San Francisco’s first Cesar Chavez-free Farmworkers Day celebration Saturday, but neither rain nor sexual assault allegations against the late labor leader could dampen the joy of the Aztec dancers who twirled through the streets of the Mission District as amazed onlookers held up their phones.
“It’s wonderful to see the dancing, even in the rain!” said Pia Bacascu, 23, raising her voice to be heard over the steady beat of the huehuetl, the drums that are the heartbeat of Aztec dancing.
Labor unions and farmworker supporters have been celebrating in San Francisco with a parade and festival each spring since 2001, the year after California declared March 31 as Cesar Chavez Day, a paid state holiday. But last month, a New York Times investigation revealed shattering allegations that the late hero of the migrant labor movement molested and raped young women, including longtime colleague Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, who turned 96 on Friday.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed April 10, 2026, Dolores Huerta Day. Last month, the governor also renamed March 31 Farmworkers Day, while similar efforts to scrub Chavez’s name from buildings and parks have advanced across California and the rest of the country.
A tattered mural depicts labor leader Cesar Chavez at Mission and 22nd streets, along the parade route of Saturday’s Farmworkers Day Festivities. Chavez’s name was removed from the annual San Francisco labor celebration after sexual assault allegations against him were revealed.
Camille Cohen/For the S.F. Chronicle
This year’s parade from Dolores Park to 24th and Bryant streets was to be the 25th annual Cesar Chavez & Dolores Huerta Day Festival. The name has been changed to Farmworkers Day Festivities, said its director, Eva Royale, who was stunned when the four bands scheduled for the main stage pulled out just days before the event due to the threat of rain.
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“It saved me $15,000, so I’m kind of glad,” she laughed. “But I was happy for the people that came out rain or shine. We know farmworkers have to work — rain or shine, even if it’s 110 degrees.”
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Still, up and down the parade route, people ventured out onto soggy sidewalks, huddled beneath awnings and peered out of rain-spattered windows to watch the Danza Xitlalli dancers, with other Bay Area troupes, twirl and shimmy their way east on 19th Street, south on Mission Street, then east on 24th as drummers kept up the beat.
They danced wearing massive headdresses of 2-foot-tall feathers of blue, red, orange and yellow. Their vibrant costumes featured ancient symbols, fringes and shells. Most danced in sandals, while others went barefoot, all shaking gourds of dried seeds to the beat.
Residents watch from the window as local labor unions and ceremonial dance group Danza Xitlalli lead the Farmworkers Day Festivities through San Francisco’s Mission District on Saturday.
Camille Cohen/For the S.F. Chronicle
Their costumes, evocative of ancient Mexico, left bare most arms and legs and the occasional chest. Yet no one stopped dancing when the skies opened up around 11:45 a.m. with a cold rain that continued for nearly an hour.
“It’s refreshing!” dancers Gigi Munoz and Sofia Aviles said in unison when asked what it was like to have to perform in the squall.
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Aviles, a recent graduate of San Francisco’s High School of the Arts, called it “a gift.”
Although the dancers and drummers were the stars of Saturday’s show, the parade also featured trucks representing labor unions from throughout the Bay Area, some decorated with colorful paper flags called papeles picados.
Only about 50 or 60 people showed up to march, but the dedicated few included unions for electrical, glass, iron and farmworkers, many with their families.
One group of United Farm Workers carried a yellow banner from the earliest days of the movement: “No compre uvas!” it read. “Boycott grapes!”
Raymond Martinez, center, with the United Farm Workers, marches Saturday during the Farmworkers Day Festivities, rebranded from the Cesar Chavez celebration in light of the sexual abuse allegations against the late labor leader.
Camille Cohen/For the S.F. Chronicle
This was the 1970s admonition that kept grapes off tables across the country for many years among supporters of better labor conditions for migrant farmworkers.
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Armando Barbosa, 52, with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 260, came up from San Jose with his family to ride a truck in the parade. Wearing blue shorts and a clear plastic poncho, he said he didn’t know what the truth was concerning the Chavez allegations.
“But it’s more important to continue moving forward to protect the labor movement and frontline workers” than to focus on any individuals, he said.
Larry Nelson, 74, an LGBTQ and senior rights activist in San Francisco, stood on the corner of 19th and Guerrero streets watching the dancers before the skies let loose. He carried a sign reading, “Thank you, Dolores!”
Gigi Munoz of the ceremonial dance group Danza Xitlalli performs during the Farmworkers Day Festivities.
Camille Cohen/For the S.F. Chronicle
“I’m thanking her for speaking up,” he said of Huerta, who accused Chavez of raping her twice and spoke out for the first time about it to the Times. “Sometimes it takes a lifetime and it still doesn’t happen. I think this will ease her soul.”
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Raymond Martinez, 63, was a 16-year-old mechanic for the United Farm Workers in 1976 when he marched beside Cesar Chavez from Richmond down to Salinas to support the labor movement.
On Saturday, he reached into his brown 1965 Chevy and pulled out an old United Farm Workers flag that Chavez had signed for him.
“He was a good organizer,” Martinez said, staring at the tattered cloth. “He was an ordinary man.”