Women Like Dolores Huerta Are Stronger Than We'll Ever Know
The legacy of Cesar Chavez was already complicated. It just became even more so.
Behind every confident man is a woman protecting his ego.
And as a New York Times bombshell investigation revealed on Wednesday, the latest—and most heinous—example of this disturbing reality is courtesy of civil rights icon Cesar Chavez.
I won’t pretend to have intimate knowledge of his work to establish The United Farm Workers, or the decades he poured into activism and environmental justice. But now I do know that every achievement, every accolade, he accomplished while standing up for the rights and liberties of marginalized Mexican Americans came at an unimaginable cost: the purloined innocence of the same women and underage girls he was supposed to be fighting for.
Two things can be true: the farm labor movement was instrumental in ensuring farm workers received fair wages, labor rights, and safer working conditions. It even played a crucial role in getting California’s 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act passed. But no movement is perfect, and even those that empower and uplift are entirely capable of harm.
As the incredible work of reporters Manny Fernandez and Sarah Hurtes proves, Dolores Huerta—an iconic civil rights activist and community organizer in her own right—wasn’t the only one who survived unspeakable horrors at the hands of Chavez. But what makes her unique—and her circumstances especially tragic—is that as the co-founder of The United Farm Workers, of which Chavez’s entire legacy is built upon, she was tasked with concealing her abuse in service to what she believed to be the greater good.
“I am nearly 96 years old,” she wrote in a statement on Wednesday. “And for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”
In her statement, she not only details the sexual abuse she suffered but also reveals that those encounters resulted in the birth of two children—children she was denied the opportunity to love, cherish, and raise as her own.
“I chose to keep my pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, I arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives,” she wrote. “Over the years, I have been fortunate to develop a deep relationship with these children, who are now close to my other children, their siblings. But even then, no one knew the full truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago.”
So not only did Dolores spend decades of her life standing side by side with her abuser—championing his reputation; protecting his ego—she did so because she felt she had no better way to fight for her community.
“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” she wrote. “The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights, and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.”
I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of sacrifice that takes.
To love your people—and their progress—so much that you suffer in silence, all while the monster who tried to break you is revered for his fortitude and character. Time and time again.
Streets and schools are named after him. Parks, plazas. Libraries and holidays. He even has a Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian honor our government can bestow.
And throughout all of that—the boycotts, the union negotiations, the advocacy for women’s rights, possibly even the 1965 Delano Grape Strike—she clung to his secrets.
Buried them in her womb and protected them with her life.
I don’t know what’s next for Dolores and the other survivors, but I find it fascinating that Chavez is facing more outrage and accountability from the grave (he died in 1993) than our sitting president is for similar behavior.
I also hope that Dolores and every other survivor are rewarded with the opportunity to properly heal now that they’ve been so courageous in sharing their truth.
May the rest of their days be free from protecting any more male egos.
Sí, se puede.
(If you are a survivor or if you have been impacted by any type of sexual violence, please visit the Dolores Huerta Foundation website, where you will find a list of resources for support.)