AT FIRST I WAS SUSPICIOUS of the breaking stories accusing Cesar Chavez of sexual crimes and violations of Women's rights. It wasn't until I read that Dolores Huerta was one of those revealing those horrible truths that I knew they were credible. Her admission that she had covered up his attack and abuse of her for decades in order to protect the Farm Workers Movemet that she had dedicated her life to was all the confirmation I needed to take those accusations as credible no matter how much I didn't want to believe someone I'd considered a hero had done things like that.
We develop ideas of those heroes from a combination of their own appearances and words but also from the narratives that are published around them. I will admit that my concept of Cesar Chavez the hero of the Farm Workers Movement was a creation of both of those and not of any kind of deep, serious knowledge of him, his colleagues such as Dolores Huerta or their movement. It was certainly part of my life to read about that, especially as presented in the liberal Catholic media and circles that my parents and other family members supported and subscribed to.
Now more of the reality of what happened then and why it happened as it did has to form our ideas of him and, entirely more importantly, the movement he came to be the figurehead of. This article by Kat Armas is the most probing and thoughtful one I've yet seen to do that. It questions how the culture that produced that first impression of those things was, itself, distorted by the diminiution of Women's struggle, work and sacrifice in that movement due to the general sexism of the time and even the liberal media milieu.
To revisit Chavez's legacy, then, is not only to reassess a man, but to recognize how narratives themselves are formed; how power, proximity and even empire — the systems of power and domination that structure social and political life — shape which voices are amplified, and which are silenced. Women's stories are not simply side notes; they are essential to understanding the full human cost of social justice work, and the deeper truths that often remain just outside the official record.
I recommen the entire article which shows that Cesar Chavez, himself, should have grown up with entirely more respect for Women than he did, especially in his moral formation because his mother and grandmother had had such a strong and decisive part in that. Toay I don't have the time to do justice to the entire article now, nor the theologies that are presented in it, the informal though all important Womens' theologies that are not recorded in writing or documented or taken seriously (until, maybe now) that, certainly, must share the forms and methods and character of those in the earliest Church, Jesus, himself, not having written anything and many, almost certainly most of the first followers of Jesus being either non-writers or illiterate, themselves. The Catholic Church has ignored and denied that reality ever since they decided that Women were not allowed to preach, them basing that on the WRITINGS of Paul, event though Paul also named Women as Apostles and carriers of the Gospel. Or at least Epistles.
I'll try to get back to this as soon as I can. I will give this as an example of why the Catholic Church should have a policy against rapid canonization. I don't know if any kind of formal or informal process to canonize Chavez has been mounted, though I would bet such has been at least discussed. You can compare these revelations about him to those which have been revealed about Josemaria Escriva, the dubious Opus Dei "saint" whose canonization cause probably had the financial and power baking that would certainly have opposed the United Farmworkers cause.
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