Those that quote Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” typically mistake “Et tu, Brute?” because the dictator’s closing line, as Caesar realizes his pal, 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,” gives a extra applicable lesson for our time.
The allegations reported within the New York Instances that Cesar Chavez, labor chief and maybe probably the most well-known Latino in U.S. historical past, molested and raped women and younger ladies, will come as a shock to many People. 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 Staff motion, together with myself, have discovered to be true in recent times: Regardless of his failures, Chavez, like Financial institution of America in the course of the Nice Recession, had turn out to be “too massive to fail.” Each people and all the motion suffered consequently.
What reckoning ought to these revelations produce now? Many will make excuses, particularly when highly effective males, together with the president of the USA, are accused of a number of the similar crimes. Some could fear that President Trump will use this information to additional distract the general public’s consideration from the Epstein recordsdata. Others could even ask, what do Chavez’s private life, or his personal phrases and deeds, must do with the enterprise of the union? For a few years, this was the perspective of some UFW veterans.
Debra Rojas realized this the onerous manner. 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 personal Fb account for UFW veterans: “Get up, individuals. This man u march for yearly molested me and plenty of, many different younger women.” Relatively 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 revealed a historical past of the UFW that additionally revealed a lot of Chavez’s difficult reality, I confronted backlash inside this similar neighborhood. My e-book 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 positive aspects made by farmworker advocates over the earlier decade. My e-book additionally described the humiliating group remedy workouts Chavez made residents take part in, and a number of the infidelity that we now know solely scratched the floor of his legal conduct.
Chavez had many enablers whose blind devotion finally 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 — regardless of how profane or misguided — had 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 issues 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 subject go; Chavez’s obsession, which weakened the union, now feels unusually telling as nicely.
One other turning level got here in 1976, when Chavez went in opposition to the recommendation of Gov. Jerry Brown and plenty of inside the union by supporting a dangerous poll measure slightly 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 onerous sufficient to win. The union descended into chaos marked by purges of harmless volunteers — alongside, as is now alleged, the grooming and violation of women.
The abuse is claimed to have occurred at a time when many ladies devoted themselves to the motion solely to be ignored or pushed out by this corrosive habits. It has turn out to be widespread 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 ladies, together with Jessica Govea and Elaine Elinson, stay largely hidden to the general public.
Govea and Elinson’s administration of the boycott in international nations helped ship the primary contracts for farm employees in 1970, although you’ll by no means realize it from standard depictions of this historical past. The 2014 biopic “Cesar Chavez,” for instance, reveals British transport employees dumping grapes into the River Thames alongside Chavez — when it had actually 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 exterior 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 inconceivable 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 total story of the UFW to turn out to be public information.
We have to acknowledge that regardless of the UFW completed, it typically did in order a collective. There’s a motive the UFW’s slogan, “Sí se puede,” is translated as “Sure, we can.” Historical past reveals 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 creator of “From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Employee Motion.” This text was produced in collaboration with Zócalo Public Sq..
