(KBTX/CBS News) – Cesar Chavez Day events across Texas are being canceled after newly surfaced allegations that the late labor leader engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior with women and minors.
The United Farm Workers — the union Chavez co-founded with Dolores Huerta in the early 1960s — said in a statement it would not participate in any Cesar Chavez Day activities, citing a need to “provide space for those who may have been victimized.” Events in Houston, San Antonio and Corpus Christi have been canceled. The holiday marks Chavez’s birthday, March 31.
The Cesar Chavez Foundation said it has “become aware of disturbing allegations that Cesar Chavez engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior with women and minors during his time as President of the United Farm Workers of America,” adding it was “deeply shocked and saddened by what we are hearing.”
The UFW called the allegations “crushing,” saying, “Far more troubling are allegations involving abuse of young women or minors.” The union added it has “not received any direct reports” and does not have “any firsthand knowledge of these allegations.”
The allegations were first reported by The New York Times on Wednesday. They surfaced 32 years after Chavez’s death in 1993. Huerta, now 95, issued a lengthy statement Wednesday acknowledging she had “two separate sexual encounters with Cesar” in the 1960s that she felt manipulated or forced into. She said both encounters resulted in pregnancies, with the children placed for adoption and raised by other families.
“The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped,” Huerta wrote. “I had experienced abuse and sexual violence before, and I convinced myself these were incidents that I had to endure alone and in secret.”
Huerta said she kept the assaults secret because she “believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”
“I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor — of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control. … I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here,” Huerta wrote.
Chavez’s family, in a statement released through the National Chavez Center, said it was “devastated” by the New York Times article, calling the revelations “deeply painful.”
“We wish peace and healing to the survivors and commend their courage to come forward,” the family’s statement read.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the state will not observe Cesar Chavez Day and directed all state agency heads to comply.
“In the upcoming legislative session, I will work with Texas lawmakers to remove Cesar Chavez Day from state law altogether,” Abbott said in a statement. “Reports of the horrific and widely acknowledged sexual assault allegations against Cesar Chavez rightfully dismantle the myth of this progressive hero.”
CBS News contributed to this report.
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