In the pages of history, they were a team that changed the world.<\/p>\n
Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta founded the United Farm Workers and brought new life to the American labor movement, drawing national attention to the brutal working conditions and unlivable wages that agricultural workers experienced. <\/p>\n
Chavez was the iconic leader. But Huerta was also a legend, a fiercely independent mother who had a passion for addressing the social issues of the time \u2014 women\u2019s rights, poverty and racism. When Chavez died in 1993, she took on the mantle that, at age 95, she still wears.<\/p>\n
But for six decades, Huerta said on Wednesday, she was keeping a secret. <\/p>\n
In an emotional statement, Huerta said that Chavez had raped her in the 1960s, something she had kept under wraps until allegations surfaced in the New York Times that the labor leader had sexually abused two underage girls in the 1970s. <\/p>\n
Huerta said she felt \u201cmanipulated and pressured\u201d to have sex with Chavez the first time. The second time, he forced her to have sex against her will \u201cin an environment where I felt trapped,\u201d she said. Both encounters led to pregnancies, which she hid at the time. She arranged for the children to be raised by other families \u201cthat could give them stable lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huerta addressed her long silence on the matter,<\/a> suggesting she tried to put the movement and those who could benefit from it first.<\/p>\n \u201cI carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life\u2019s work,\u201d she said. \u201cThe formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn\u2019t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York Times quoted two women who said Chavez sexually assaulted them as girls in the 1970s and that some of his behavior had been whispered about within the UFW.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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\u2019s actions do not reflect the values of our community and our movement,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Huerta\u2019s upbringing in California\u2019s Central Valley greatly influenced the kind labor advocate she would become. <\/p>\n After her parents\u2019 divorce, Huerta\u2019s grandfather helped raise her and her two brothers while her mother, Alicia Fernandez, waited tables during the day and pulled nighttime shifts at a cannery. Eventually, Fernandez purchased a small hotel and restaurant and frequently gave free lodging to migrant farmers and their families, according to a feature on Huerta in the American Postal Work Magazine. <\/p>\n Huerta earned a teaching degree from Delta Community College and taught English in the Central Valley. But she was frustrated by the poverty she saw in her classroom and vowed to help in some way. <\/p>\n In 1955, she helped found the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization, which aimed to empower Latino communities by registering them to vote, organizing citizenship classes and lobbying for equal rights and improvements in Latino neighborhoods. <\/p>\n She met Chavez in the late 1950s and by the early \u201960s they co-founded a union called the National Farmworkers Assn. Huerta recounted Chavez <\/a>coming to her home in East Los Angeles in 1961 and telling her \u201cwe have got to start the union. If we don\u2019t do it, nobody else will.\u201d<\/p>\n Chavez became president and Huerta vice president of the organization, which eventually transformed into the United Farm Workers. <\/p>\n Although Chavez received more public attention in the era for his work, Huerta was a tireless advocate and a unique voice for women in the agricultural industry at a time when their needs were ignored by male leadership. <\/p>\n A consumer boycott of grapes under Huerta\u2019s leadership led to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which paved the way for farmworkers to form unions and push for better working conditions and pay. <\/p>\n The New York Historical, a museum in Manhattan, described her in a biography<\/a> as \u201csoft spoken and calm\u201d but said that \u201cbehind her quiet demeanor was a powerful negotiator.\u201d <\/p>\n In 1988, 58-year-old Huerta was hospitalized with a ruptured spleen and fractured ribs after she was beaten by police during a demonstration in San Francisco. <\/p>\n The incident and others prompted Chavez to say <\/a>of Huerta: \u201ctotally fearless, both mentally and physically.\u201d<\/p>\n She was open that she and Chavez sometimes clashed while leading the UFW.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, we had differences. They were mostly about tactics. They were never personal. Cesar respected me; I respected him. During his first fast, I told Cesar, \u2018I feel so bad because I argue with you,\u2019 and he said: \u2018Don\u2019t ever stop. You\u2019re the only one in the organization who really makes me stop and think,\u2019\u201d she told The Times in a 2012 interview.<\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cWe were always together in terms of what we wanted to do,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n In an interview with the Smithsonian oral history project, she talked about the challenge of being a woman in a union dominated by Chavez and other men. She said that, when the union started, Chavez asked to be the main spokesperson, and she agreed.<\/p>\n