It took three decades of fighting and lobbying for Cesar Chávez’s name and likeness to grace hundreds of buildings, streets, parks, and schools.
It’s just taking a few days for them to come down.
Two days after allegations surfaced that the famed farmworker rights leader and Chicano figure sexually assaulted minors and fellow labor icon Dolores Huerta, Chávez is being erased at an unprecedented rate. This is especially true in California, where his fight for farm workers’ rights was cemented in the state’s history.
In San Fernando, the fully covered Chávez statue was removed from its base and placed in storage. Murals depicting Chávez were painted in a crude manner in Los Angeles. In Fresno, the City Council voted to remove his name from a major street – just three years after the controversial decision to rename it in his honor. Soon, the streets’ old names – Kings Canyon Road, Ventura Street and California Avenue – will return to the nearly 10-mile-long corridor.
California officials and activists said they were shocked by the allegations revealed in the New York Times investigation and felt it was necessary to take immediate action. But the pace of change is unprecedented.
As the darker side of history becomes more apparent, re-evaluating place names is nothing new. Authorities have initiated changes to the names of other controversial figures in recent years – including those associated with the Confederacy and Father Junípero Serra. But they have been slower and in some ways more deliberate.
In the hours and days immediately following the allegations against Chávez, many officials said it was important that the community respond immediately, and focus on a movement larger than Chávez. He says their efforts also send a message that such behavior is unacceptable.
An emotional Mayor Karen Bass is joined by, from left, Los Angeles City Council members Ysabel Jurado, from right, Imelda Padilla, Monica Rodriguez and Eunice Hernandez, off camera, as she signs a proclamation renaming the last Monday of March as “Farm Workers Day” at City Hall in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday.
(Gennaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
On Thursday, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and City Council members announced they would drop the holiday honoring Chávez’s birthday and instead rename it “Farm Workers Day” in honor of the farmworkers who toil in the fields.
“I appreciate that my community has the honesty and strength to accept these new revelations in a very expedient manner, and as we do in Los Angeles,” said Los Angeles City Council member Monica Rodriguez, adding that the effort to rename the holiday was immediate.
Araceli Moller de Barrios worked in the fields for nearly 30 years after arriving in the US in 1995, two years after Chávez’s death. While toiling in the fields for many years, he harvested and packed lettuce, picked cherries and planted watermelon seeds in the Central Valley.
The news that Chávez and Huerta had sexually abused young teenagers sent shock waves through the community she works with daily as they fight for better working conditions and safety. Moller de Barrios said this was her first time being sexually harassed by supervisors and that she had seen other women experience harassment.
Although she doesn’t work in the fields today, she said she agrees that cities and elected officials should recognize the hard work of farm workers who toil in the heat to supply food for people across the country.
“People don’t know the sacrifice, what it’s like to eat in the hot sun, when they didn’t provide shade, when there weren’t bathrooms nearby,” he said. “They’re the ones who deserve everything.”
There is talk within some communities of removing the Chávez name and replacing it with a more general honorific for farm workers and activists, thereby placing the movement above any individual.
in one Interview with Latino USAHuerta said that streets should be renamed after Chávez instead of the movement.
“Everything should be named after the martyrs of the farm labor movement. Every road should be named after them,” Huerta said.
But Moller de Barrios said she would like to see Huerta honored “for what it took on him,” through renaming streets and parks, for the sacrifices he made to fight for farmers’ rights and to hide his secret. The allegations are a reminder that they have the power to speak, he said.
“We have to use our voices,” she said. “We are no one’s sexual object.”
Irene de Barraicua, policy and communications director of Lidares Campesinas, a farmworker and women-led organization, told The Times that farmworkers “do not want to be politicized or romanticized, but simply humanized” and provided the dignity of working in safe and fair conditions.
After Chávez’s death in 1993, drums were played continuously in his honor. One of the first was to rename Old Brooklyn Avenue on LA’s Eastside for Chávez. This faced some controversy from the community, who argued that the city was erasing their history and burdening them with the cost of replacing the stationery. But over time, naming things after the labor leader became shorthand to honor Latino civil rights and activism.
As the controversial legacies of many historical figures have become mainstream, their presence has faded from the public eye.
San Fernando City Public Works workers cover the statue at Cesar E. Chavez Memorial Park in San Fernando on Thursday. The statue of Cesar Chávez and graffiti have been covered over by the National Farm Workers Association. It has been described as “disturbing allegations” against an iconic Chicano figure.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
In 2020, the murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide racism, prompting communities and institutions across the country, including California, to remove public monuments of former slaveholders or prominent Confederate figures.
Only then was it finally considered taking down the statues of Father Junipero Serra, the architect of California’s Roman Catholic missions, whose work during Spanish colonization had marked the beginning of exploitation and destruction for native Californians since their arrival in the state in 1769.
It sparked debate up and down the Golden State because many people at the time still held high regard for the Franciscan priest, who was declared a saint in 2015. But the statues, including the one located south of Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles, were eventually removed.
The removal of Father Junipero Serra took months and sparked some debate within the Latino community about Serra’s place in history.
The race to erase Chávez from public view is the easy part, said Katherine Goodis, a history professor and director of the public history program at UC Riverside.
“Moving too fast and not having the complex and challenging process needed to actually work toward more than a superficial appearance of revisionist history is a terrible idea,” Goodis said.
He argued that the real issue is who declares the hero.
Historians and teachers of history, including Goodis, said that rather than focusing on a single individual to summarize a historical movement or event, a greater effort should be made to elevate lesser-known figures in the community who have contributed to the broader cause. These are the people the community can really connect with and connect with.
Cesar Chavez Foundation and family said on friday This is in keeping with the City of Los Angeles’ intention to change the name of the holiday that once bore its name to one that honors and supports agricultural workers.
“The decision about how to celebrate the movement and its participants rests with the local communities who organize those recognitions, events and commemorations. This has always been the case,” the foundation’s statement said. “Whatever decision they ultimately make we support and respect.”
