César Chávez in the field and in bronze

Allegations that César Chávez, the iconic farmworker organizer, sexually abused women and girls have brought to the fore profound and challenging questions about how to evaluate his legacy.

Last week, Miguel Zavala, associate professor at the UC Riverside School of Education, reflected on how K-12 teachers should approach the topic in their classroom. This week, UCR News turns to two other scholars at the university for their thoughts on how we should assess and recognize the contributions Chávez made to the farmworkers' movement.

Jennifer Nájera is a professor of ethnic studies, and Catherine Gudis directs the Public History Program and is a professor of history and of society, environment, and health equity.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

César Chávez is deeply embedded in the history of California's farm labor movement and Latino political establishment. How should we understand his enduring political influence in the state?

Nájera: I think that Chávez's influence will continue to wane. The community has responded quickly to the news of Chávez's abuses. We see monuments being covered, names being changed, and events canceled. Previously, politicians would invoke Chávez as a quick way to connect to the Mexican American community; now they will have to find more intentional ways to forge those connections.

Is there a threat the remembrance of an entire movement will be lost in eradicating the memory of one man?

Gudis: The takedowns of César Chávez in public space have been fast, and the news cycle equally so. However, the pivot has been to acknowledge the farmworkers' movement. That's what is going up on signs, etc. It really is up to all of us - students, teachers, parents, organizers, and activists - to ensure those words aren't emptied of meaning. Social movements are group activities. We don't want to lose the sense of possibility and joy that comes from being in community, as a collective, even in struggle. The stories of working people of color and immigrants, their organizing, and the many ways that collective care is central to movement building are more important now than ever and need to be embraced and amplified in creative and collaborative ways.

We also need to mobilize so that why Chávez is being removed from view is leveraged to change our culture, which allows and enables sexual abuse, rape, and other forms of violence against women, especially poor women of color. It is a systemic problem, and a hashtag is not enough.

Sexual abuse and harassment of female farmworkers is widely recognized as a severe and entrenched problem. Could the allegations against Chávez serve as a catalyst to address the problem with more action?

Nájera: Unfortunately, much of this abuse is because many female farmworkers are legally vulnerable (either contingent legal status or undocumented). Women do not feel safe reporting abuse for fear of retaliation. Retaliation in this case is not just about fear of losing their jobs; it is fear of deportation.

How important was Chávez in terms of creating blueprints and strategies for farmworker organization?

Nájera: César Chávez and Dolores Huerta were both trained by Fred Ross through the Community Service Organization. Fred Ross is the person who taught them how to organize using the "house meeting" strategy. This entailed organizing small meetings in people's homes to discuss their concerns, build political knowledge, and identify potential leaders from within the community. This was a particularly effective strategy in terms of farmworker organizing because farmworkers often labored as family units, and such meetings in people's homes involved both men and women.

Were there other significant Latino labor organizers before him, either in California or other states?

Nájera: Yes. There is a long history of Mexican American and Latino organizing across industries all over the country. While there are noteworthy organizers in different regions and industries, it is more important to recognize that no single person makes a movement. The cotton strikes in California, the pecan-sheller strikes in Texas, and many others were only successful because of the commitment of a large portion of marginalized and oppressed workforces.

Do we need to rethink the role served by monuments to influential people?

Gudis: We absolutely need to rethink both the role and the processes of enacting civic memory. Every statue, street name, and monument does some form of cultural work, and we can't assume they are neutral and without meaning.

With new information coming to light, we still need to figure out why and with what political implications César Chávez became the singular and mass-circulated icon for Latino and farmworkers civil rights. What cultural work has this been doing? This is not an investigation for one news cycle, though many good ideas are being circulated in the media to keep talking about. Still, I think learning how to look critically and interpret what my public humanities colleague Kristin Hass calls the "blunt instruments" of memorials and monuments is a first step - not just to research and identify problematic figures and take their names immediately off parks and street signs, but to understand how they came to be, why they mattered then, and what work we should have them do for us today.

How should Chávez be remembered?

Gudis: It is not for me to say.

Maybe the César Chávez Memorial Garden [at the César E. Chávez National Monument] ought to be handed over to survivors' groups, to give literal space for healing, or for a community garden with spaces for other groups who have been left out of the story? I do think that the survivors, affected community members, other participants in farmworker movements and women's rights should be at the center in figuring this out.

Lideres Campesinas should be part of these conversations. They began as Mujeres Mexicanas in 1988 in the Coachella Valley as the first grassroots organization of Latina farmworkers. They support and educate one another around issues of domestic violence and other harms that went unspoken, including the too-common raping of women in the fields, and brutal labor conditions. They practice cooperative leadership models to empower women.

Many more collaborative, community-based practices, characterized especially by ethics of care and relational accountability, have reshaped activist and memory work in recent decades. They aim to shift structures of authority from the institutional and hierarchical to the grassroots and cooperative. Maybe this can reframe memorial culture away from heroes or influential individuals. Models of transformative justice, to address harms and the systemic conditions that allowed them to happen, can help us explore how Chávez should be remembered, and to figure out if there can be such a thing as restorative history.

(Header image: Getty Images/Michael Ciaglo)