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United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said the rape allegations against the late labor leader César Chávez were “very difficult to hear,” and not something the organization expected.
Chávez is widely-recognized as one of the most influential labor leaders in U.S. history, known for founding the United Farm Workers and for leading national boycotts to improve working conditions for farmworkers.
On Wednesday, The New York Times published an investigation naming three women who accused Chávez of using his position of power to sexually assault them. Two were the daughters of union leaders. They told the Times they were abused as girls.
The allegations, some of which had circulated as rumors for years, immediately sparked major fallout and widespread outcry. Dozens of California leaders, from local school board members to state lawmakers, called to erase his name from parks, schools, streets, libraries and community events UFW announced it is not going to participate in any events named after the organization’s former leader.
In an interview with CalMatters, Romero urged the public to respect the women who came forward and give them “the space they deserve to process this.”
“We do not condone the actions of César Chávez,” said Romero. “It’s wrong.”
Even as the allegations came to light, the union stayed locked in a high-stakes legal battle over wages for farmworkers.
Romero made the comments outside a Fresno courtroom, after a judge heard arguments in the case that highlights the ag industry’s dependence on immigrant labor. The Trump administration is proposing addressing a farm labor shortage by making it cheaper to hire temporary foreign workers.
UFW is suing the Trump administration over its plan to lower the minimum wage for the H-2A agriculture visa program, a change that would cut take-home pay for many California farm workers. That program allows U.S. employers to hire temporary workers from abroad, mostly from Mexico, for agricultural jobs that domestic workers do not fill.
In addition to two women who said they were raped when they were children, the other woman who broke her decades-long silence about the abuse was Chávez’s partner in the labor movement, Dolores Huerta, according to the New York Times.
Huerta, 96, co-founded the farmworker labor union with Chávez. She told the Times that Chávez had raped her and that she had given birth to two children after encounters with him.
Romero said the union is looking into ways to ensure survivors can come forward safely and independently.
“We’re learning from this,” Romero said. “We’re going to try to get a system where any victim or anybody who wants to talk about it would be able to do it in a safe space, not necessarily talking to us directly, but to an independent organization that has dealt with victims of sexual abuse for years.”
Romero, the first Latina to lead the United Farm Workers, has headed the union since 2018.
“We’re here to respect them and to understand that this is very difficult for them,” she said.
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