The country’s oldest and most influential farmworkers union, already embroiled in a legal dispute with the Trump administration, is now grappling with how to respond to the uproar over sex abuse allegations against famed labor leader Cesar Chavez.
Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, said the union wants to be supportive of the victims who came forward to reveal they were sexually abused by Chavez decades ago.
“I want to make sure that we respect the courage of these women who came forward to share these difficult stories,” Romero said in an interview. “I want to make sure that we respect them and give them the space for them to talk about it.”
An investigation by the New York Times found that Chavez, a co-founder of the union, had sexually abused two girls, and fellow union leader Dolores Huerta said he had raped her in the 1960s.
The allegations stunned farmworkers across the nation, many who revered him as a hero.
At a rally in support of the UFW in Fresno on Wednesday, Carolina Sánchez, a farmworker from Delano, said she did not want to believe the allegations.
“We’re in shock,” Sánchez said.
Romero, who started working with the union several years after Chavez died in 1993, said she first learned details of the accusations in the New York Times article. She said she has never met the victims who said they were abused as girls in the 1970s.
“Any abuse of a woman or a child, anything like that, is unforgivable,” Romero said. “We don’t justify it. We don’t accept it. That’s not who we are.”
The UFW said in a written statement that the “troubling allegations” against Chavez “are incompatible with our organization’s values.” The union said it had not “received any direct reports, and we do not have any firsthand knowledge of these allegations.”
Romero said the organization is reaching out to groups with expertise in helping victims of sexual abuse.
“We want to be of support of the victims,” she said. “I want them to have somebody who understands the trauma that victims go through,” and who will be available to offer counseling and emotional support.
“They were very courageous to speak out,” she said.
A predecessor of the UFW, the National Farm Workers Assn., was founded in 1962 in the town of Delano by Chavez, Huerta and other activists. In the following years, they built a flourishing movement fighting for farmworkers’ rights, employing marches, fasts and other nonviolent protest actions.
The organization has changed over the years but continues to campaign for better working conditions and pay for the nation’s farmworkers.
Romero spoke by phone after attending a Fresno court hearing Wednesday on a wages case in which the United Farm Workers and the UFW Foundation are fighting a new Trump administration rule that makes it cheaper for farmers to hire foreign workers by lowering their wages.
At the rally outside the courthouse, farmworkers waved red UFW flags and held signs saying “Protect my wages.”
Some said they doubted the accusations or didn’t know what to believe. Others said they worried the scandal might hinder their efforts to secure fair wages and better working conditions.
Romero said she, like many Americans, learned about Chavez from books and historical accounts.
The revelations about the Chicano civil rights icon are sparking calls for removing Chavez’s name from streets, schools, parks and Cesar Chavez Day on March 31.
“Everybody in every city and every school, they’re going to make the decisions,” Romero said.
“Cesar Chavez the man did something horrible, something despicable, something that we’re not going to justify,” she said. “But on the other hand, Cesar Chavez the organizer brought thousands of people together that dedicated years of their lives to protect and improve the lives of farmworkers. And we’re not going to be able to erase history.”
“So we will not erase history, and at the same time, now these abuses are coming forward, it’s going to be part of history, and people are going to have to decide, individually, how they view Cesar,” Romero added. “That’s going to be their own conclusion.”
In an interview with Latino USA, Huerta talked about accomplishments for farmworkers and their basic human needs, including bathrooms, drinking water and rest areas.
“When people say why didn’t you leave, why didn’t you tell people, well, this is why. Because I felt that my coming out and saying what occurred would have hurt the movement. That’s the only reason I can say,” Huerta said.
“I can see all of the accomplishments, the leadership that came out of the movement, the millions of farmworkers that have been helped,” Huerta said. “And it was my personal pain, it was my personal problem, and I think it was worth it. Because it was my cross to bear.”
Since the revelations emerged, Romero said, many organizations and people have been contacting the union to support the work it’s continuing to do.
In 2023, the union successfully pushed California Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a “card-check” law that makes it easier to unionize farmworkers.
In November, the United Farm Workers, the UFW Foundation and 18 farmworkers filed their lawsuit seeking to reverse the new Labor Department rule, which they argue would illegally “undercut” and drive down wages.
The union says in the lawsuit that the rule — which cuts the wages of H-2A workers between $5 to $7 per hour — is “unlawful” and will “put downward pressure on the wages of U.S. workers” who are in similar jobs, often on the same contracts as those with visas.
The Labor Department has estimated that the rule, which went into effect Oct. 2, would save employers $2.46 billion yearly. The union argued in the lawsuit that it constitutes “a transfer of wealth from the workers to their employers.”
In 2020, the Trump administration attempted to implement a similar rule, but the UFW and UFW Foundation successfully sued to block it.
“This is a $2.4-billion cut to farmworker wages,” UFW Secretary Treasurer Armando Elenes said at the Fresno courthouse rally. “And that’s what we’re going to continue to focus on, because there’s still a lot of work to do.”
Plaintiffs in the current federal lawsuit include farmworkers from Michigan, Georgia, California, Washington, Texas and Missouri.
Among them is Isabel Panfilo, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen who harvests strawberries in Ventura County. According to the UFW, last year she worked for a strawberry grower alongside H-2A workers and made approximately $19.35 an hour. When she came back last month, with the new H-2A rates in effect, she was offered only the state minimum wage of $16.90 an hour.
Romero said after the court hearing that she is “very hopeful” the union will prevail.
The way forward for the United Farm Workers, she said, is to continue “talking about the challenges that farmworkers have right now.”
“Under the administration, they’re being targeted as criminals, they are being deported because of the color of their skin or the work that they do,” Romero said. “The people that have reached out to me, that is their focus. … The work that is happening right now is still very needed to protect the people that put food on the table.”
Times staff writer Melissa Gomez contributed to this report.
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