Knock LA85%
Farmworkers Betrayed: Chicana Activists Reflect on Cesar Chavez’s Legacy 29%
By Rosalind Jones57%
6/16/2026, 4:20:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Indoctrination, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Appeal to Emotion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 13.3% saturation with 141 hits. Analysis detected 1,366 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,061 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 39.5% and a BS Rank of 29% (15,560 of 21,886 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 71.10% of the article peer group.
Female farmworkers harvest lettuce on a Dole farm (photo: Bob Nichols, USDA)
On Sunday May 31, Chicana feminist activists from Los Angeles and beyond convened for a virtual panel discussion about the recent revelation of sexual abuse committed by deceased United Farm Workers (UFW) figurehead Cesar Chavez.
In March, an investigation published by the New York Times revealed extensive sexual violence perpetrated by Chavez against women and girls within UFW.
On the same day of publication, Chavez’s long-time organizing partner Dolores Huerta released a statement detailing her own experiences as a survivor of Chavez’s abuse.
“I experienced two separate sexual encounters with Cesar,” Huerta said in her statement.
“The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to.
The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.”
Both of Huerta’s nonconsensual encounters with Chavez led to pregnancies, which she kept secret up until the publication of the New York Times investigation.
“I am nearly 96 years old, 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,” Huerta remarked in her statement.
Panel participants reflected on the pain caused by Chavez and provided important context about conditions within the organization, which was primed for sexual violence and abuses of power to occur.
Desiree Rojas, the daughter of UFW co-founder Alberto Rojas , spoke at length about the impact of the harm done by Chavez and how it affected her family.
“We’re all in healing,” she said during the panel.
“But for me, part of my healing is also speaking.
Speaking on the issue of women and labor.”
Rojas emphasized that the narrative surrounding Chavez as the central pillar and singular leader of the United Farm Workers movement was romanticized and untrue.
According to Rojas, the United Farmer Workers movement grew from the merging of Chavez and Huerta’s nonprofit National Farmworkers Association and the AFL-CIO Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.
However, the catalyst for strikes and resistance by farmworkers during the period in question was the work of Filipino organizer Larry Itliong and Filipino agricultural workers.
Itliong devised and launched the infamous Delano Grape Strike in 1965 through building a bridge with Huerta and Chavez’s group in order to strengthen organizing power.
Itliong’s legacy was overshadowed after he left the UFW due to tensions with Chavez and ideological differences.
“My parents believed that they were building a farmworkers union controlled by rank and file farmers,” said Rojas.
“But this wasn’t the case.
This wasn’t what happened.
It’s very well known that Larry and my father were kicked out of the union.”
At present, Larry Itliong’s son Johnny is working to correct the narrative that Chavez was the only person responsible for the ignition of the farmworkers movement and the strikes that it consisted of.
“I’ve been trying to expose Chavez’s misdoings as far as with my father, trying to take the credit for my father who started the union and organized,” Itliong told ABC30 .
“It’s unfortunate that it has to happen this way, but I’m glad that it’s finally happening.”
During the panel, LA-based organizer and socialist feminist Yolanda Alaniz said that Chavez’s leadership style mirrored another figure that we know to be abusive and harmful: President Donald Trump.
“He ran out the radicals who started the union because a lot of them were communists,” Alaniz said.
“He ran out even people who weren’t radicals but just wanted to contradict or criticize him.
So that accumulates to a lack of democracy, for him to have ultimate power with no criticism.”
Alaniz stated that without the presence of true democracy, the UFW became a place for Chavez to act with complete impunity.
With this insulation from consequences and accountability, the grooming and sexual abuse of women and girls was something he could get away with.
“There was no one to stand in his way,” Alaniz said in the panel.
“So that’s the lesson here.
Democracy is vital to any movement.
It is vital to any union.
Without democracy, you don’t have a movement.”
When she was 14, Alaniz saw and experienced the difficult conditions of being a farmworker when she began working in the fields alongside her mother.
“It’s very physical work,” she said in the panel.
“That’s why I think I have so many back problems to this day, like my mom did.”
Her time as a farmworker sparked a lifelong commitment to social justice and liberation.
While in college at University of Washington, Alaniz got involved in anti–Vietnam War protests and slowly became introduced to socialism and class struggle through the chapter of Radical Women on campus.
The organization’s revolutionary mission lit a fire in her.
“Capitalism thrives on putting down women and using them,” she said.
“It feeds off the sexism and the racism and the transphobia and the homophobia.
All of that builds up capitalism because we are the cheap labor.”
In a statement released on the Radical Women website following the news of abuse by Chavez, Alaniz wrote about preventing future gender-based violence within movement spaces.
Processes and decision-making bodies must be constructed, says Alaniz, to specifically monitor and address such issues before they become endemic problems.
“Radical Women urges the formation of a commission made up of UFW rank-and-file
women to investigate, determine appropriate reparations for survivors, and establish procedures
to prevent future sexual abuse,” the statement reads.
“All unions should adopt such measures and be prepared to fight for members experiencing discrimination and abuse.”
Within the statement, Alaniz notes that the root cause of sexual abuse of women and girls in movement spaces is capitalism.
According to the statement and her remarks during the panel, as long as capitalism exists there will be violence against those the system deems expendable.
Her solution to this is straightforward.
“We’ve got fascism knocking at our door.
We don’t have any more time,” she stated in the panel.
“We need a revolution in this country.
We need everyone to step up and become a revolutionary.
It’s high time.”
Analysis
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