{"id":282983,"date":"2026-04-24T01:17:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T01:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/282983\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T01:17:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T01:17:24","slug":"why-this-citys-reckoning-with-cesar-chavez-is-so-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/282983\/","title":{"rendered":"Why This City\u2019s Reckoning With Cesar Chavez Is So Complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"

In San Jose, Calif., Cesar Chavez is everywhere. <\/p>\n

The labor leader held his first community organizing meetings at a church in East San Jose. A non-profit had plans to convert his former home into a community center. The city\u2019s central plaza, the site of a summer jazz festival and a winter fair, bears his name. His face adorns a mural at the community college. At least one nursery school is named after him.<\/p>\n

There is even a walking tour<\/a> that takes visitors to key locations associated with Mr. Chavez and the farmworker movement he co-founded and led.<\/p>\n

Now, in the wake of allegations that Mr. Chavez, who died in 1993, had sexually abused young girls<\/a>, San Jose residents are trying to work through their feelings about the man who is so intertwined with their community.<\/p>\n

On Saturday afternoon, Zeke Solorio sat in the shade outside Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, where a parish hall bears a plaque informing visitors about the early organizing work Mr. Chavez did there.<\/p>\n

Mr. Solorio, who was a strawberry picker in those days, attended one of Mr. Chavez\u2019s farmworker rallies in Oxnard, Calif., in the 1970s. He recalled Mr. Chavez as charismatic, and quick with a joke.<\/p>\n

Mr. Solorio said he was stunned by the abuse allegations. \u201cI didn\u2019t think he was like that,\u201d he said softly.<\/p>\n

Mr. Solorio, who, at 80, still works as a gardener, said he hoped there would be a thorough investigation. The truth is important, he said, and he supported the efforts underway to possibly remove Mr. Chavez\u2019s name from memorials, streets and buildings.<\/p>\n

City officials are taking it slowly. There are so many monuments, place names and public artworks associated with Mr. Chavez in San Jose that the city, as a first step in a reckoning, is establishing a commission to catalog all of them. Once that work is complete, the city will hold public hearings to \u201cconsider potential renaming actions in a trauma-informed, inclusive and culturally respectful manner,\u201d according to a memorandum<\/a> released by city leaders.<\/p>\n

Mr. Chavez was born in Yuma, Ariz., in 1927. In the late 1930s, Mr. Chavez\u2019s family joined a wave of other immigrants from the Southwest who were moving to California to find work in the fields, said Gregorio Mora-Torres, a professor emeritus of Mexican American studies at San Jose State University.<\/p>\n

The family moved from one migrant camp to another, and Mr. Chavez quit school early and joined the Navy. By the early 1950s, he had settled in San Jose with his young family, and his years there were formative in his growth as a labor leader<\/a>.<\/p>\n

San Jose, meanwhile, had a postwar boom in its Latino population, and it became a hub of Latino culture in the Bay Area and a central place for labor organizing and the activism of the Chicano civil rights movement. Our Lady of Guadalupe Church was an early locus of that activism. Mr. Chavez, a Roman Catholic, becameclose to Father Donald McDonnell, who established the church and introduced a young Mr. Chavez to \u201ca universe of writings about spirituality, labor rights, human rights, and social justice,\u201d according to the plaque on the church grounds.<\/p>\n

A few blocks away is the Cesar Chavez Early Learning Center. There, one wall is painted with a large mural of Mr. Chavez\u2019s face, with farmworkers on either side. There are also two blue benches. One has a quote from Mr. Chavez. Another reads, \u201cEvery minute, a chance to change the world.\u201d That is a quote from Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Mr. Chavez and said last week that she had been raped by Mr. Chavez in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

A few blocks in the other direction is the modest one-story home \u2014 squat, brown and set back from the street \u2014 where Mr. Chavez once lived. A sign outside the home, whose small patch of lawn is anchored by a large carob tree, marks it as the place where Mr. Chavez \u201cbegan his work in the Civil Rights Movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Braulialina Rivera, 46, lives across the street from the house and said she was still processing the abuse allegations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe movement wasn\u2019t one single man,\u201d said Ms. Rivera, whose grandfather was a farmworker.<\/p>\n

She said she had complicated feelings about Ms. Huerta, saying that if she had come forward sooner, maybe others would not have been victimized. But, she quickly added, \u201cBack in those days, they didn\u2019t care what a woman had to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

As politicians rush to deal with the fallout from the abuse allegations, some residents worry that the achievements of an entire movement \u2014 whose members included many foot soldiers, like Mr. Solorio, who are still living \u2014 will be tainted.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a lot of people in the community, they know they were part of this movement to bring national attention to the plight of farmworkers,\u201d Mr. Mora-Torres said. \u201cThey know thousands of people had a role.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that most people believe that Mr. Chavez\u2019s actions should be condemned. But he added, \u201cThey know that erasing his memory in full is denying ourselves our own history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Already, California lawmakers have said they will change Cesar Chavez Day<\/a>, which has been a state holiday since 2000, to \u201cFarmworkers Day.\u201d<\/p>\n

In San Jose, city leaders moved quickly to cover Mr. Chavez\u2019s name from the stairs at Plaza de Cesar Chavez, the central gathering place in downtown. On Friday, workers applied concrete over the stairs, leaving just a faint trace of the labor leader\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

San Jose leaders have stressed that as they reconsider Mr. Chavez\u2019s legacy, they will continue to honor the broader movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe farmworker rights movement has never been about one person alone,\u201d city leaders wrote in their memorandum. \u201cIt has always been a people-driven movement grounded in dignity, sacrifice, and collective action. As the city considers its response, it is important to distinguish between honoring that broader legacy and continuing to bestow public honors on a single individual whose legacy is now under serious question.\u201d<\/p>\n

At San Jose City College, the area\u2019s community college, a 40-foot mural depicting Mr. Chavez adorns the library named for him. In recent days, a sandwich board sign was placed in front of the mural, reading, \u201cYou are not alone,\u201d and listing resources for students who have experienced sexual violence.<\/p>\n

San Jose State University, which has made a college degree accessible to legions of Latino students, features the Arch of Dignity, Equality and Justice, a monument created by the artist Judy Baca that includes mosaics of Mr. Chavez, along with Ms. Huerta, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Robert F. Kennedy Sr.<\/p>\n

The university is among the many institutions in the city grappling with how to respond to the news about Mr. Chavez\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs many in our community have noted, the movement itself, the workers, the marchers, and the women who stood on our front lines must continue to be celebrated,\u201d Cynthia Teniente-Matson, the president of San Jose State, wrote in a message to the university community. \u201cTheir contributions cannot be dimmed by the actions of one person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, a group of middle-school children were touring the campus. Stopping at the arch, Javier Ortega, a teacher, told them of Mr. Chavez\u2019s accomplishments, saying that he had established \u201ca civil rights movement on the West Coast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quietly, one student asked a teacher if they had heard the news. Vanessa Valdez-Cruz, a teacher, said: \u201cYeah, we\u2019ve heard. It\u2019s important to reflect on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Away from the students, Ms. Valdez-Cruz said that the revelations have been painful, and have catalyzed conversations within Mexican American families about not just Mr. Chavez, but also the broader culture of silence within their community around sexual abuse by men \u201cwho have done a lot of harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity to break these cycles and change the narrative,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In San Jose, Calif., Cesar Chavez is everywhere. The labor leader held his first community organizing meetings at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[10730,38513,102989,121481,9976,88,83346,90,89,6345,42167],"class_list":["post-282983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-cesar","tag-chavez","tag-dolores","tag-historic-buildings-and-sites","tag-huerta","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-calif","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-state-university","tag-united-farm-workers-of-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282983","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=282983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}