Those that quote Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” typically mistake “Et tu, Brute?” because the dictator’s closing line, as Caesar realizes his good friend, Marcus Junius Brutus, has stabbed him. With vulgar Caesars dominating the information, from Donald Trump to Cesar Chavez, maybe Caesar’s precise closing line, “Then fall, Caesar,” presents a extra applicable lesson for our time.
The allegations reported in the New York Times that Cesar Chavez, labor chief and maybe probably the most well-known Latino in U.S. historical past, molested and raped ladies and younger girls, will come as a shock to many Individuals. For others, particularly the victims, this disclosure initiates a journey towards justice lengthy overdue. It additionally illustrates what the victims, and a few students of Chavez and the United Farm Employees motion, together with myself, have discovered to be true in recent times: Regardless of his failures, Chavez, like Financial institution of America through the Nice Recession, had turn into “too large to fail.” Each people and all the motion suffered in consequence.
What reckoning ought to these revelations produce now? Many will make excuses, particularly when highly effective males, together with the president of america, are accused of among the similar crimes. Some might fear that President Trump will use this information to additional distract the general public’s consideration from the Epstein information. Others might even ask, what do Chavez’s private life, or his non-public phrases and deeds, should do with the enterprise of the union? For a few years, this was the perspective of some UFW veterans.
Debra Rojas realized this the laborious approach. Greater than a decade in the past, she discovered the braveness to reveal Chavez’s assault of her, when she was simply 12, on a non-public Fb account for UFW veterans: “Get up, folks. This man u march for yearly molested me and lots of, many different younger ladies.” Reasonably than help her, fellow Chavistas accused her of tarnishing the motion she and her household belonged to. She took down her put up.
In 2012, after I printed a history of the UFW that additionally revealed a lot of Chavez’s difficult fact, I confronted backlash inside this similar neighborhood. My guide chronicled how, in 1977, when UFW signed a historic settlement to finish years of battle with the Teamsters, Chavez confirmed better curiosity in constructing an intentional neighborhood on the union headquarters in La Paz than in advancing the features made by farmworker advocates over the earlier decade. My guide additionally described the humiliating group remedy workouts Chavez made residents take part in, and among the infidelity that we now know solely scratched the floor of his felony conduct.
Chavez had many enablers whose blind devotion in the end harmed the union. As a result of UFW founders didn’t construct a democratic construction that allowed for members to problem him, Chavez’s phrases — irrespective of how profane or misguided — have been taken as gospel.
I additionally chronicled even earlier penalties of this unchecked energy. In 1973, Chavez scuttled contract extension talks with grape grower John Giumarra Jr., citing considerations about Giumarra’s failure to cease Filipino employees from having intercourse with “whores within the camps.” Jerry Cohen, head of the UFW authorized group, couldn’t persuade Chavez to let the prostitution concern go; Chavez’s obsession, which weakened the union, now feels surprisingly telling as effectively.
One other turning level got here in 1976, when Chavez went in opposition to the recommendation of Gov. Jerry Brown and lots of inside the union by supporting a dangerous poll measure moderately than working inside the system to increase funding for the landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act. When the measure misplaced, Chavez blamed it on UFW volunteers, saying they betrayed his orders or didn’t work laborious sufficient to win. The union descended into chaos marked by purges of harmless volunteers — alongside, as is now alleged, the grooming and violation of ladies.
The abuse is alleged to have occurred at a time when many ladies devoted themselves to the motion solely to be ignored or pushed out by this corrosive conduct. It has turn into frequent to acknowledge Dolores Huerta, now recognized as a survivor of Chavez’s abuse, because the co-founder of the union. However the significant contributions of different girls, together with Jessica Govea and Elaine Elinson, stay largely hidden to the general public.
Govea and Elinson’s administration of the boycott in overseas international locations helped ship the primary contracts for farm employees in 1970, although you’ll by no means comprehend it from well-liked depictions of this historical past. The 2014 biopic “Cesar Chavez,” for instance, exhibits British transport employees dumping grapes into the River Thames alongside Chavez — when it had in reality been Elinson. Govea fought sexism within the union whereas engaged on the frontlines of the boycott in Montreal, solely to come across it at headquarters when she returned to California within the Seventies and Eighties. Labeled a troublemaker by Chavez, she ended up outdoors the union, working as a labor educator on the East Coast.
Chavez’s victims by no means achieved a fraction of the affect Govea fought for or Elinson briefly loved. It’s unattainable to measure how a lot the people and the union misplaced. It’s time to start a means of therapeutic for the victims of Chavez’s violence, and for the complete story of the UFW to turn into public data.
We have to acknowledge that regardless of the UFW achieved, it typically did in order a collective. There’s a cause the UFW’s slogan, “Sí se puede,” is translated as “Sure, we can.” Historical past exhibits us that organizers, employees and advocates solved issues by coming collectively, not by blindly following orders from Chavez. That is the second for Cesar to fall.
Matt Garcia is a professor of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean research, historical past and human relations at Dartmouth Faculty. He’s the writer of “From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement.” This text was produced in collaboration with Zócalo Public Square.
