Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared in AMAC’s “Newsline” and is reposted here with kind permission
Though the power of the #MeToo movement peaked long ago, the Left’s cancellation machine kicked into gear this past week after a hiatus.
After a New York Times article claimed that Cesar Chavez, who died in 1993 at the age of 66, raped and sexually abused women and girls as young as 12 in the 1960s and 1970s, including his longtime collaborator Dolores Huerta, the Left lost no time in immediately covering up or taking down statues, erasing the Hispanic labor leader’s name from monuments and holidays, and calling for schools and streets honoring him to be renamed.
This display of power to erase a figure from the liberal-left pantheon of civil rights might initially seem like cause for gloating among conservatives, but it shouldn’t be. Whether Chavez was innocent or guilty, this instantaneous cancellation should raise our distrust for those on the Left who claim to represent “social justice.”
Until last week, Chavez was still a civil rights icon in good standing. Upon entering the Oval Office in 2021, Joe Biden immediately took down a bust of Winston Churchill and replaced it with one of Chavez.
Though the removal of Churchill was an offensive and stupid action that was a repeat of Barack Obama’s move, recognizing Chavez was not, since the U.S. had already honored Chavez in a variety of ways. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1994, his birthday is celebrated as a state holiday in several states, and even the federal calendar commemorates Cesar Chavez Day (though you likely have to work). Chavez’s burial place in Keene, California, is a national monument.
Born in Arizona in 1927, Chavez was himself a laborer and U.S. Navy veteran before beginning his career as a labor advocate in California, first with the Mexican-American civil rights group called Community Service Organization (CSO). After a few years, Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). The NFWA published a paper, ran a credit union, and provided insurance. Chavez’s organization later merged with another labor organization and became the United Farm Workers (UFW).
The peak of Chavez’s labor influence was in the 1960s and early 1970s, when he organized boycotts of grapes and strikes among migrant farm workers. He later organized a commune and became more involved with real estate investments, but he remained a living symbol of organized labor, Mexican-Americans, and Spanish-speaking Americans more broadly long after his death.
Now, no more.
There is no doubt that, if the accusations made against Chavez are true, he was yet another left-wing monster who advocated publicly for (his understanding of) social justice while privately practicing vicious injustice. But this sudden and immediate dumping of a long-dead figure raises many questions.
If Chavez’s accusers are making up these accusations, it seems odd that a single newspaper article should be able to take him down so easily. Why would the entire Left simply agree to take claims about five-decade-old criminal sexual behavior at face value?
The New York Times article includes a great deal of posthumous testimony against him and some for him, but no real contemporaneous hard evidence of Chavez’s misdeeds. Concerning the 96-year-old Ms. Huerta’s claims, the article concedes, “Nothing has emerged publicly to back up the claims made by Ms. Huerta,” adding that even she “said she had told no one, not even her children or closest friends, until just a few weeks ago.”
The one piece of solid evidence is from a woman who claims to have been fondled by Chavez at age 12 and wrote a letter to him the next year. “I’m really glad I got to see you & spend time with you, well not like that, but just to know I was near you was enough,” she wrote in January 1974, adding, “I think of you all of the time. Do you think of me?” What the Times calls here the young woman’s “swooning devotion” in this ambiguous couple of lines isn’t exactly a smoking gun.
Chavez was known for his marital infidelities, but nothing had been heard about his misbehavior with children until about ten years ago, when the woman who wrote the letter in question accused him in a private Facebook group.
Is this enough to know that the accusations are true? How are these accusations enough to act so certainly? Is Chavez being sacrificed for some other reason than truth?
The possibility of accepting false accusations is bad enough, but what if Chavez’s accusers are telling the truth? If so, this implies that the UFW and the Left likely knowingly tolerated a rapist and child molester as their leader and symbol, not merely during his life but for more than three decades after, protecting his reputation even during the height of the #MeToo movement nearly a decade ago. And why?
The skeptical observer might suspect that, whatever the truth, the shock campaign against his reputation is really about something else. Why now?
One possibility is because, as the Los Angeles Times reports, “United Farm Workers could potentially be liable for significant payouts due to landmark laws recently passed in California that give victims of older sex abuse cases a new window to come forward.” From this admittedly cynical perspective, the Left has an opportunity to claim moral high ground and pillage an older institution for personal gain.
Add to that Chavez’s politically incorrect legacy by today’s standards. Whatever the reputation on the Left Chavez had in his time, the contemporary Left wants to get rid of a labor hero who was hostile to illegal aliens who were used as strikebreakers during UFW-led strikes. Today’s Left doesn’t tolerate any anti-illegal-alien thought or sentiment. Chavez was known for his “Illegals Campaign” (run with Dolores Huerta) in the 1970s. His UFW members turned in illegal aliens to authorities and, according to some accounts, attacked them physically.
A 2014 review of a movie about the man complained that the film didn’t really reveal the truth about him, a truth displayed in Miriam Pawel’s biography that depicted him “sounding at times like a typical nativist bigot and acting like a right-wing militia member.”
If Chavez wasn’t guilty of the crimes alleged against him, the likelihood that his cancellation is because of money and/or politics appears high. It signals that the Left remains willing to slander the dead who stand in the way of their personal lust for power and wealth.
If Chavez was the monster his accusers claim him to be, the fact that Americans are just now finding out about it confirms again that the Left was willing to ignore or even protect grave injustices for one of their soldiers as long as he was politically useful–again for the end goal of acquiring more power and money.
Either way, this episode reminds Americans that the Left, which constantly claims the moral high ground, is not to be trusted as judges.
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Chavez is featured in one of the chapters of the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults released twenty years ago by the USCCB. As I wrote in a book review for Cincinnati’s archdiocesan newspaper, including him – as well as Cardinal Bernardin – was unwise as both had “mixed, unsettled legacies.“ I’d rather have been proven wrong.
Bernardin was falsely accused of abuse. His accuser “remembered” the abuse while under hypnosis, which has been totally discredited in the therapy community based on decades of research. Repressed memories recalled during hypnosis simply cannot be verified as actual fact. His accuser also recanted the accusation before his untimely passing. So what part of his legacy is “mixed and unsettled?”
Bernadin was a priest ordained for the Diocese of Charleston SC. He lived with the bishop. When the bishop was named Archbishop of Atlanta, Bernadin went with him and proceeded on his hierarchical path. I always thought it peculiar that a priest conveniently changes dioceses when his bishop is moved.
The fact that he turned his seminary into little more than a g@y bathhouse, for starters. He also wrecked the liturgy, invented and promoted the now thoroughly discredited “seamless garment“ argument, and embraced just about every foolish postconciliar trend to hit the Church in America.
It’s a sad thing to read about either way.
It’s possible to convict a predator decades after their crimes -if they’re still living. But the dead can’t defend themselves.
It is probably too late to prove or disprove the truth of the accusations, although the lack of serious refutation is interesting. Even more interesting is the lack of serious talk about Chavez’s communist ties. Whatever the case, Chavez called attention to the plight of American seasonal farm workers and the use of illegal alien workers to keep their wages low. I am old enough to remember that very well. Let’s not allow the good that he did be “interred with his bones.” Nobody is all one thing.
I am surprised that CWR wanted to re-publish this one. The NYT report, which I read in its entirety, was well-sourced, and the idea that two women would want to let everyone know they were molested at the ages of 12 and 13 by someone long ago for any reason other than it being the truth sounds like one of the wild conspiracy theories of our day.
But, as Dr. Deavel no doubt knows, this sword is going to cut deep not only into liberal secular circles, but into Catholic ones as well. It is not only secular and leftist organizations that will be making sudden changes, but I suspect that there are Catholic parishes right now quietly removing plaques and such dedicated to Chavez from their buildings. And I guess it is no surprise that just as there were those who insisted on the holiness of Father Maciel to the bitter end, and still say “look at the all the good things he did”, there will be the same for Chavez.
Heroes of various sorts come to mean too much to some people, and to reveal the truth is to cause deep disquiet. But what it ought to lead to is a better understanding of the complexities of the human soul and of the larger complexities of social life, and not frantic attempts to keep the statues well polished and the full truth hidden.
The authror write, “Whether Chavez was innocent or guilty, this instantaneous cancellation should raise our distrust for those on the Left who claim to represent ‘social justice.'”
And, “he was yet another left-wing monster who advocated publicly for (his understanding of) social justice while privately practicing vicious injustice.”
And, “what if Chavez’s accusers are telling the truth? If so, this implies that the … the Left likely knowingly tolerated a rapist and child molester as their leader and symbol, not merely during his life but for more than three decades after, protecting his reputation.”
If this doesn’t remind you of the actions of some of the clergy in our Catholic Church and the homosexual molestation of Catholic youth nothing does.
Good men can do bad things, and bad man can do good things. We are all sinners in need of grace.
“Good men can do bad things, and bad man can do good things. We are all sinners in need of grace.”
So what?
Well, at what point are cardinal sins trumped by deeds of greatness?
Football:Penn state coach; U of m great coach of the 70s- both statues pulled down. Confederate leaders considered great. Statues removed.
Do we hire just perfect people? Look at many of the people running for local and state office. Many are just looking for a paycheck and some benefits and better people don’t want to run for the certain scrutiny which has no bearing on their performance.
Buzzwords make me turn the other way. I’m rarely confident that when someone talks about “social justice,” they truly understand the meaning or aren’t using a completely different moral framework. I don’t agree with judging a person’s entire life by a single kind of mistake. I believe humans are flawed beings – no matter their position, they can be both virtuous and deeply flawed. Judging based on just one set of actions feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I neither criticize nor praise Chavez. He was a simple man capable of doing great good for others, yet also capable of causing harm. That sounds very human to me.
Twiddledee Twiddledum?
What are we talking about here? Welcome, little girls, to “Alice in [not-so]Wonderland”?
“… the contemporary Left wants to get rid of a labor hero who was hostile to illegal aliens who were used as strikebreakers during UFW-led strikes. … His UFW members turned in illegal aliens to authorities and, according to some accounts, attacked them physically.” Even Chavez knew illegals drove down incomes for US citizens, most of whom were already having trouble making a living wage.
I saw a brief interview with Dolores Huerta the other day. In the course of it she said that she bore two children as a result of being assaulted by Cesar Chavez, because “I, as a good Catholic, thought that birth control was a sin. I thought that abortion was a sin. I have since changed my mind on those issues.” That made me very sad.
As for the rush to judgment as soon as an accusation is made, not just in this case but in many others, I wonder if anybody has actually heard of the presumption of innocence.
Victor David Hansen had a good article on Chavez, he was directly involved in small grape farming during the early seventies and has a good take on chavez,s tactics towards these farmers…he was definitely a mixed bag….l believe these revelations…remember we are talking about the 60,s and 70,s… a lot was covered up and /or accepted….beware of the deceitful wickedness of the heart…we are all susceptible…
Prof Deavel does not mention a key detail in the timing of the Chavez “revelation.”
This X post is what triggered the NYtimes hit peace: https://x.com/miguelifornia/status/2020694791647109284
Those of us who worked on the Calf farms in the 1970s knew that Chavez was extremely critical of illegal immigration messing up his UFW union movement. But this memory of Chavez was forgotten UNTIL the X post emerged in early Feb.
Chavez was now an embarrassment to the Democrats/Socialists/Communists who are committed to the open borders policy…. something that Chavez hated. The X reminder of Chavez’s hatred of “wetbacks” (his term) made him a political liability. He had to be taken out, he had to be cancelled… no better way to do so than to declare he was a predator. (BTW, the October 4 date on the video is instructive of the urgency that Chavez shows when he speaks about the “last two weeks” … , it is in the peak grape harvest time.)
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Thanks, I need to read that book.
It’s worth a read but very dark & disturbing. Much more so than the film was.
Maybe I’ll watch my Ole friend Hal on Space Oydessy(sp) 2001 then. At least some dramatic music.
Leftists would throw their mother under a bus if they could achieve even an iota of political advantage. The NY Times is acting in its usual despicable manner.
The NY Times is indeed despicable, and the Washington Post isn’t too far behind them.
I used to line my garbage can with the New York Times, but then I realized I was offending the garbage, so I stopped.
Or an offense to canaries on the bottom of their cages.
🙂
Which is sad, if they would just report the news instead of slanting every non editorial they’d have a better chance of survival.
I just watched deadline usa with Bogart for the first time. Interesting story about what is the purpose of a newspaper and which should survive.
“He among you who is without sin – let him cast the first stone.”
Today is Wednesday the 25th.
In nine days we will commemorate his betrayal and murder.
Two days after that we will commemorate his rising from the dead, as He and the scriptures foretold.
What are your priorities?
Chavez objected to illegal migrants because they undercut his workers’ wages?
Plus ca change . . .
A long list of countries “convict”, imprison, hang, disappear people without a trial or even investigation. Nothing new here. When the Left (or whatever name you use for the people pushing this form of action or government), or any group, does this, history shows how it turns out. Nothing new there either. I won’t defend Chavez, I don’t know the truths of him, maybe he deserves to be hung in effigy, but we will never know.
So, the logic of some of the commenters seems to be that because Chavez agrees with them about illegal immigration, therefore the NYT was wrong to expose his sexual predation of a 12 and a 13 year old?
It seems to me that is just as distorted as if this were all about the left’s wish to discredit him.
That assumes the allegations to be true. We don’t know that .
Anything is possible but the dead can’t defend themselves .
“Let the dead bury the dead.”
I wish that could be explained to the folks who run Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello today. It’s really a shame.
I suspect that Chavez’s crimes were not as secret as presented. I would bet money that more than a few people in authority knew something, but kept quiet.
I once praised a national civi rights figure to my father who had high security governance clearance. All he said was that he knew things about this person–though he did not provide details–while I only saw–basically–the public persona.
Maybe some day we will learn that no man or woman should be elevated so high that it threatens to block God’s Light, and his or her statues crack our skulls on the way down.
Research will probably lead to the conclusion that both Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez were phony virtuous “civil rights” people elevated into prominence by higher powers.
MLK was the heroic black saint/prophet and Chavez was the heroic mestizo-Latino saint/prophet. Both were weaponized in order to shame heritage america (people of European descent–sometimes called “whites”) .
We have long known that MLK was corrupt man.
Now, apparently, we know that Cesar Chavez was as well.
Heritage America ?
Yes, “heritage america” a term which has come in vogue in certain circles over the last three years.
Gentile Peoples of European Descent made up the material substance of America for roughly 200 years: for example, peoples of english, irish, swedish, Polish, German, portuguese, Greek, italian, spanish, etc. descent.
Peoples of european descent: wrote the declaration, the constitution, won the war of independence, opened the west, wrote great novels, etc., etc.
I’m guessing some of Mr. Chavez’s ancestors preceded European settlers by thousands of years. A much longer American heritage.
Yes, but which group of peoples helped to form the American Republic and created a civilization?
The European peoples did this.
America is a project of European Civilization.
Its greatest men and women were European: the founding fathers, our best presidents, great writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, great architects like John Russell Pope, great Painters like John Singer Sargent, etc.
All products of European thought and culture, of Western Civilization, if you prefer that term.
Unfortunately, America has declined as a nation by forgetting her European roots.
Yes, the United States was founded on Judeo Christian principles and influenced by the Enlightenment and Western civilization.
Our best and and our worse presidents had European ancestry. Ditto for some of our authors, artists, architects, etc.
Unless one exclusively has ancestry in an American tribal community or recently emigrated here, most if us are an ethnic mix of some sort. That’s what happens after 400- 500 plus years.
Mrs. C “Our best and and our worse presidents had European ancestry. Ditto for some of our authors, artists, architects, etc.”
Sounds like you are admitting my point: America as Nation, as a civilization, is a project/product of the European peoples.
The African, Asian, and Jewish peoples did not contribute as much to America considered as a nation/state/civilization.
Many of the European ethnic groups married other ethnic Europeans because of the ease of intercommunication between Europeans. This is due to commonalities and similarities of color, race, habits of mind and action, customs, culture, religion, etc. Also a shared history (despite wars, etc).
“Judeo-Christian” is an inapt term.
If “Judeo” refers to the Christ-rejecting religion founded in 33 AD, then “Judeo-Christian” is an oxymoron.
If “Judeo” denotes the religion of Moses, valid for a time but ordained to pass away and into the Christian religion (“unless a grain of wheat, etc”), then “Judeo-Christian” is still an inapt term because it puts this Judaism on a level of equality with the more perfect new and everlasting covenant.
America, at its best, is a project of Western/European Christian civilization.
If the allegations are false, then I agree largely with the analysis. Even if true, the speed of the cancellation lends weight to the theory that there are broader reasons Chavez is being thrown to the wolves.
However, even if the allegations are true, I do think it is a stretch to say that they were known about and tolerated in the 1970s. Such things have happened, true, but no evidence is presented in this article which shows that his crimes were known. Child abuse is notorious for its private character, for the discretion which abusers show in knowing how not to get caught, and for the silence of the youths, who are confused and afraid. It is not at all fair, without citing evidence, to presume that, if these allegations are true, that Chavez’s allies knew of them. In our own Church, there is frequent debate as to how extensive the knowledge of Pope St. John Paul II was. By the standards presented in this article–which presents no evidence of knowledge and complicity–we would have no choice but to find every bishop and Pope as knowingly complacent in all the crimes commited by prominent clergy, merely from the fact that they lived at the same time. What is unfair to Catholics, is unfair even to heretics and communists. Let us only accuse our enemies with their crimes as they can be known. We will still have victory, and will not sully our conscience with rash judgement.
In conclusion, the article is good in one respect, but needs support in another.
This sort of thing makes me wonder if we should reconsider the practice of naming anything for anyone. Using generic names might be safer– regardless of whether an accusation is true or not. I also have a problem with waiting until people are dead to accuse them, when they can no longer defend themselves and any evidence that may have existed is long gone. We’re in an age where one can no longer know who or what to believe.
Interesting comment. It seems like no one cares if something is accurate. Maybe everyone is afraid their check from their employer ir Ceaser will stop if they question validity or perhaps the internet causes a tidal wave of data too burdensome to decipher.
And when are they going to come to terms with Martin Luther King’s behavior?
I don’t know, but do we celebrate his personal affairs or his accomplishments?
The same can be said of Chavez…and indeed of clerical abusers and others as well. It is distasteful to me to throw stones regarding anyone’s private behavior. Somehow it seems to magnify the filth…but our clergy — to the exclusion of protestant clergy — were deliberately targeted over the last — what is it? Thirty, even forty years [remember, it began in earnest with Fr. Bruce Ritter of Covenant House] the dragnet need be applied equally. The Rev. King appears to have been involved in some bad stuff. More than I would imagine. Rod Dreher’s Substack on this past Wednesday made for difficult reading.
Why is it offensive to remove a bust of Churchill? He was no friend of the United States. He helped trick us into the First World War, for starters.
He did save freedom though.
What’s the cutoff? I believe we know his wife ignored the hotel recordings sent to her. Is it up to the individual or society to decide? Priests used to march with them, from the pictures I saw. It is a conundrum on how to assess a person’s weaknesses if they are a leader. Trump told his team it was over when that recording came out just before his first election and Kushner told him to keep right on going. He came to MI the night before and won by 10k. Certainly, a lot of our religious leaders have significant personal and managerial defects, as did the apostles, but those of us faithful left usually don’t stop attending mass because of them.