![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774212670_763_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
FILE – United Farm Workers President Cesar Chavez talks to striking Salinas Valley farmworkers during a large rally in Salinas, Calif., on March 7, 1979. (AP Photo\/Paul Sakuma, File)<\/p>\n
Blanca Alvarado is 94 and struggles to catch her breath. But she still remembers the early days alongside Cesar Chavez \u2014 when the soft-spoken activist met with her in her garage on Sunset Avenue and knocked on doors in East San Jose\u2019s Mayfair neighborhood to register voters.<\/p>\n
Her devotion to the legacy of the civil rights leader \u2014 she was once a farmworker herself \u2014 led her to campaign for decades to name local plazas, streets and holidays after him. When she became the first Latina elected to the San Jose City Council, she hung his photo above her desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a reverence toward him that now feels like nothing but shame,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cFrom honor and respect and dignity and love to horror, monstrosity and shame. That happened within a matter of hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
A New York Times investigation published Wednesday detailed allegations that Chavez molested girls as young as 12 and raped fellow United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta.<\/p>\n
Alvarado and the East Side neighborhood, whose identity is so closely tied to Chavez, are now struggling to understand who they are without him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was like a relative, he was like a son, he was like a brother, he was like us,\u201d said Alvarado, her voice breaking. \u201cAnd now \u2014 what is he?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayfair was Chavez\u2019s home on and off over the years. Born in Arizona, he moved often with his farmworker parents who followed the California crops, settling briefly in San Jose. After serving in the Navy, he married and returned to Mayfair, where many relatives lived, and joined the Community Service Organization, the activist group co-founded by Alvarado\u2019s husband, Jose. By the 1960s, he had moved to the Central Valley\u2019s Kern County.<\/p>\n
Chavez\u2019s legacy here, Alvarado said, \u201cwas part of our living. It was a testimony to who we were as people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across California, civic leaders have begun removing his name from streets, schools and public spaces and canceling marches and celebrations planned for his March 31 birthday. But the rupture may be felt most deeply in Mayfair, a neighborhood long defined by both neglect and resilience.<\/p>\n
In the 1950s and \u201960s, mud filled its streets during the rainy season. Residents called it \u201cSal si puede\u201d \u2014 \u201cGet out if you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Chavez\u2019s organization and the rallying cry \u201cS\u00ed se puede,\u201d or \u201cyes we can,\u201d the community reshaped its identity.<\/p>\n
For decades, his presence has been woven into daily life here. Children from his namesake school marched along Alum Rock Avenue each year carrying \u201cViva Cesar Chavez\u201d signs. The Mexican Heritage Plaza stands on the site of a former Safeway where he organized early boycotts. At Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, a mosaic shows Chavez beside Robert F. Kennedy, who visited in 1968 to support the farmworker movement.<\/p>\n
That legacy is already beginning to shift.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, a sign marking the \u201cCesar Chavez Memorial Walkway\u201d \u2014 linking his former home on Scharff Street to seven sites across San Jose \u2014 was removed from a pole outside the house.<\/p>\n
\u201cA sacred covenant has been broken,\u201d said Maritza Maldonado, founder of Amigos de Guadalupe, the nonprofit that now owns the home and uses it for community events.<\/p>\n
In her office Wednesday, hours after the Times report was published, photos and posters of Chavez still covered the walls.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was our national hero,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s so wrong, so fresh still, that we are all still processing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The community has long honored Chavez through annual breakfasts, school lessons and acts of protest modeled after his own. His story is written into the San Jose Unified School District curriculum, where students write poems about his life and work.<\/p>\n
Chavez\u2019s civil rights record was not without controversy. In interviews, including with KQED , he disparaged farmworkers who entered the U.S. illegally, using racial slurs against them, believing growers were using them as strikebreakers to inhibit their efforts for higher wages and better conditions.<\/p>\n
Santa Clara County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas said that history had complicated her view of him. Her father migrated from Mexico, working farms across California with the seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew that he didn\u2019t have a level of respect for Mexican nationals,\u201d she said of the labor leader. \u201cAnd so there was already, for me, a level of caution, if you will, about him as a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n
But those earlier controversies never fractured his base of support the way the new allegations have.<\/p>\n
John Martinez, who spent his childhood summers working on his knees picking prunes that would shake from the trees along Capitol Avenue, remembers Chavez attending a community dance to thank everyone for raising money to help the poor.<\/p>\n
The allegations, he said, \u201care a shell-shocker,\u201d and he hopes the legacy of his work will transcend the scandal.<\/p>\n
They come at a particularly fraught time, however, with mass deportations under President Donald Trump, who has disparaged immigrants who enter or live in the country without permission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel powerless,\u201d said Alvarado. \u201cWill society turn its back on the rest of us?\u201d<\/p>\n
Community leaders say the focus now must shift away from a single figure and back to the broader fight for justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe movement was about justice and equity that needed to happen, and that movement started here in East San Jose,\u201d said Maldonado, of Amigos de Guadalupe. \u201cThat will be uplifted constantly, because we will continue to work to lift up justice and combat inequities that continue to plague our East San Jose community.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Jose Councilman Peter Ortiz, who said Chavez\u2019s legacy inspired him to leave a gang life behind and run for office in the Mayfair district, said that what\u2019s important now is \u201chow we can show up to reclaim both our identity and the greater Chicano and farmworker movement as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Chavez died in 1993, some 50,000 people formed a funeral procession behind his pine coffin in his adopted home of Delano in the Central Valley. Robert Kennedy\u2019s widow, Ethel, and her son Joe attended. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson spoke. Former Gov. Jerry Brown and former U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums of Oakland were part of the crowd. President Bill Clinton awarded Chavez the Presidential Medal of Freedom the year after he died.<\/p>\n
Blanca Alvarado\u2019s daughter, Teresa, remembers the outsized influence of Chavez on her mother. She remembers attending the funeral march with her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot hold up one individual as a singular hero,\u201d Teresa said. \u201cThis is a story of many heroes.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Mayfair, that idea already has a name.<\/p>\n
Somos Mayfair.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are Mayfair.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774212670_949_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
A statute of C\u00e9sar Chavez stands in the middle of a plaza at Cesar Chavez Park, honoring the United Farm Workers union founder, Wednesday, March 18, 2026, in Laveen, Ariz. (AP Photo\/Ross D. Franklin)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILE – United Farm Workers President Cesar Chavez talks to striking Salinas Valley farmworkers during a large rally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[29620,23991,50448,50463,50468,50469,1986,50452,38884,723,50451,50456,33098,50467,50462,50450,19826,50455,50449,50457,23,7922,50460,100,10238,14167,50461,6136,50453,88,90,89,50465,50464,50454,3306,50459,50458,50466],"class_list":["post-231629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bruin","tag-butler","tag-butler-eagle","tag-cabot","tag-callery","tag-cherry-valley","tag-community-news","tag-connoquenessing","tag-cranberry","tag-crime","tag-east-butler","tag-eau-claire","tag-education-news","tag-evans-city","tag-fairview","tag-government-news","tag-harmony","tag-harrisville","tag-high-school-sports-news","tag-karns-city","tag-local-news","tag-mars","tag-mount-chesnut","tag-news","tag-obituaries","tag-pennsylvania","tag-petrolia","tag-political-news","tag-portersville","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-sarver","tag-saxonburg","tag-slippery-rock","tag-valencia","tag-west-liberty","tag-west-sunbury","tag-zelienople"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}