Covered marquees. Downed statues. Painted-over murals. A canceled holiday.
California has effectively exorcised César Chávez from the public sphere just weeks after a New York Times investigation found two women who said the legendary labor leader sexually assaulted them when they were teenage girls in the 1970s. Just as explosive was the revelation by his longtime lieutenant, Dolores Huerta, that he raped her in the 1960s.
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My prediction for the next place we’ll see a Chávez purge: books about him, which number into the dozens and span from academic treatises to children’s tales. But before critics relegate those texts to the banned section, folks should read some of them to see how writers helped establish the Chávez myth and propagated it for decades.
The books that created the Chávez legend
The tendency to elevate him above other activists was there from the start. In 1967, John Gregory Dunne published “Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike,” which saw the author (and husband to Joan Didion) capture the essence of el movimiento in its earliest days through on-the-ground reporting and interviews with Chávez, whom Dunne described in the introduction as “the right man at the right place at what was, sadly, both the right and the wrong time.”
Famed writer Peter Matthiessen cemented Chávez’s image as a humble hero fighting a lone, brave battle against philistine farmers with a two-part New Yorker profile that became the basis for 1969s “Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution.” That narrative continued with Jacques Levy’s 1975 release “Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa.” Talk about getting too close to the subject: The author’s archived papers disclosed he served as Chávez’s literal notetaker during the 1970 negotiations that ended the grape strike and led to the UFW’s first union contracts.
Chávez came under strong scrutiny
Rose-tinted biographies tellingly stopped around the time Chávez created a commune in what’s now currently the César E. Chávez National Monument in Keene and began to target perceived enemies within the UFW. Critics instead appeared in the media — one of the first was a 1979 Reason article that alleged he was misusing federal funds and contained the prescient line, “Many people will be reluctant to believe anything that could cast a shadow over this man.”
Other critical dispatches included pieces in the L.A. Times, Village Voice and one in the Sacramento Bee so damning in its indictment of how Chávez had, on his own, sabotaged the movement so many associated with him that its author, Marcos Breton, recently wrote how Chávez was left “hostile and angry” by his simple questions.
In the wake of Chávez’s decline and eventual death in 1993, authors created a new genre: Saint César. Titles like “Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence,” “Conquering Goliath: Cesar Chavez at the Beginning” (by his mentor, Fred Ross Sr., the most important California organizer you’ve never heard of) and “The Rhetorical Career of César Chávez” pushed forth the gospel of their subject as a plainspoken prophet out of the Good Book.
Chávez inspired millions — but those books will now forever read as hollow and sadly myopic.
Rethinking the Chávez myth
True reappraisals of Chávez and his work wouldn’t start until after former Times editor and reporter Miriam Pawel published a 2006 series for this paper that showed the ugly, domineering side of Chávez and the UFW’s decline. Six years later, longtime activist Frank Bardacke simultaneously praised and damned Chávez in his “Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers.” Though a good read, it pales in importance and poignant lyricism to two double whammies that dropped in 2014: “From the Jaws of Victory The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement” by Dartmouth College professor (and my distant cousin!) Matthew Garcia and Pawel’s own “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography.”
Garcia and Pawel are now making media appearances and writing essays to opine on where they think Chávez went wrong. Expect updates to all of these books and so many others in the months and years to come — if they’re ever published again.
Today’s top stories
Red diamond rattlesnakes are among species in the Golden State. One reptile expert who relocates snakes says her phone has been “ringing off the hook.”
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Weird rattlesnake season
Unseasonably warm March weather triggered an unusually active rattlesnake season in California, with experts fielding record calls about sightings statewide.
Two fatal bites in Southern California in March and 77 Poison Control calls in three months far exceed typical annual patterns.
Those former Californians said the move saved them almost $700 in monthly housing costs, and they became 48% more likely to own a home in their new state.
Minimal snow in California mountains
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(Stella Kalinina / For The Times; Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times; Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times; Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
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A question for you: How are you celebrating Easter this year?
Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani delivers during the second inning of a 4-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday night.
(Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times)
Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Ronaldo Bolaños at Tuesday night’s Dodgers’ game. Shohei Ohtani battled through the rain to throw a one-hit gem in the Dodgers’ 4-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians.
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As a prominent labour organiser, Chavez helped lead a major strike against Delano grape growers in the 1960s, which sparked boycotts across the country, in order to gain better wages and conditions for workers. His mantra, “si, se puede” – which means “yes, we can” in Spanish – has been adopted by activists and politicians who came after him, and was even used by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign during his first run for office.
The framed photo of César Chávez and Dolores Huerta sits in my personal office on a bookshelf crammed with volumes about California and the American West.
The two are at a 1973 United Farm Workers convention, presiding over the union they co-founded. After years of victories in the name of campesinos, the group and its charismatic leaders seem ready for what’s next.
A UFW banner emblazoned with the group’s famous black Aztec eagle logo hangs in the center of the picture, making Chávez and Huerta look like equals.
But they’re not.
He’s speaking from a podium, looking down and appearing cast in darkness due to Chávez blue vest melding into his black hair and brown skin. She’s by his side clasping her hands, wearing a colorful blouse that pales in radiance to Huerta’s hopeful face as she looks at the crowd before them.
It’s the only picture of historical figures that I display at home, and it’s in a place where I’m guaranteed to look at it. It has long served as my secular version of a prayer card, a daily reminder to fight for the good in the world and a reminder that giants before me faced challenges far more daunting than mine. It was also a testament to teamwork — when I acquired the photo a few years ago, it called to me in a way a solo Chávez never would have because I always knew el movimento was more than just one man.
Their portrait can never mean just those things ever again after the New York Times reported last week Chávez sexually assaulted two teenage girls in the 1970s and Huerta in the 1960s.
Places left and right — colleges, cities, classrooms, even states that mark Chávez’s birthday as a holiday — are now deleting his name and image from the public sphere. It’s not going to be a quick, easy task even if the cancellation is starting to take place with startling speed: Chávez’s presence is as ubiquitous in Mexican American life as the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Just this weekend, a friend acknowledged that he and his wife had just started reading a book about him to their 5-year-old daughter, a book they now plan to trash.
I thought of doing the same to my photo of Chávez and Huerta. But I’ve decided not to.
I don’t fault folks for wanting to scrub any hint of Chávez from their daily lives and neither does the Cesar Chavez Foundation, the nonprofit headed by his descendants that recently announced in a statement, “We support and respect whatever decision[s]” may come in the weeks and months to come. Communities are entitled to decide whom they should and shouldn’t publicly honor.
But to eradicate Chávez’s civic presence so fast — to tear down his statues, relabel streets and parks named in his honor, paint over his image on old and new murals, to throw away artwork that has adorned homes and offices for decades — doesn’t remove the fact that millions largely saw him as a champion of the downtrodden until last week. It can’t rescind the positive influence Chávez had on generations of Latinos and non-Latinos who saw in him the hopes of a people and now must reconcile their memories with his horrible deeds.
Historians, educators, activists and politicians for far too long elevated Chávez above Huerta in the name of a simplistic narrative that should’ve never been constructed. The public at large bought into those efforts with little skepticism in the understandable desire to have Latinos star in the American story. It’s a culpability we should all interrogate, not immediately purge.
That’s why not only am I keeping up my photo of Chávez and Huerta, I’m going to put it in a more prominent place from where I can’t look away.
Workers for the city of San Fernando cover the statue at Cesar E. Chavez Memorial Park on Thursday.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
It will serve as a memory of a tragic, tremendous moment in the history of Latinos in the United States, where we should be focusing our attention on a presidential administration that wants most of us gone but instead must deal with the fallout from the downfall of one of our own. It will challenge me anew to look past the big names of the past and highlight those whose stories aren’t nearly as known by the mainstream.
Seeing Huerta next to her abuser will forever remind me about how the now-95-year-old sacrificed her own mental health and safety in the name of something bigger than the two of them — a choice no one should ever have to make but one that she nevertheless did.
The photo will stand as the manifestation of the old newspaper adage that if your mom tells you she loves you, go check it out. No one should ever be above skepticism no matter how sanctified and righteous they may seem — that’s why the New York Times investigation crashed into the Chicano collective sense of self like a meteor. No one could’ve imagined that Chávez could’ve possibly done things so monstrous, but maybe we shouldn’t have built him up so much while he was alive and after his death in the first place.
My framed Chávez-Huerta memento will make me think of how the stories of sexual abuse survivors are still not heard enough or even believed. Even now, some Chávez defenders are casting doubt on the claims of Huerta and the three other women named in the New York Times story, questioning their motivations to come forward after decades of silence and decrying how their decision to do so has permanently tarnished the reputation of one the few nationally known Chicano heroes. In Huerta’s case, critics just don’t buy how someone who carried Chávez’s torch decades after his death could all of a sudden supposedly turn on him.
But as a Catholic who has long covered the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, I know that every sexual assault survivor has their own journey of recovery. I also know that we must always seek the truth instead of living a lie.
And turning Chávez into a historical footnote is a lie. He long served as a moral exemplar; he should now serve as a cautionary tale known to all.
Erasing historic figures from the public sphere is an exercise in power going back to the pharaohs, a way rulers ensured future generations couldn’t learn about their enemies. The push to nix Chávez comes from the trend in recent years by progressive activists to remove monuments that hail problematic figures under the pretense that someone’s sins trump any good they might have done no matter how influential they were.
Again, all communities have that right to reexamine the past. But we can’t and shouldn’t disappear the full story of Chávez, as painful as it is. It’s the easy way out — and remedying wrongs is never easy.
If the photo in my book shelf was only of Chávez, I’d still keep it up. The good he did was really good — the bad he committed was as terrible as it gets.
Public murals are among the best ways to honor our heroes, which is why dozens of murals of civil rights icon Cesar Chavez dot California’s landscape. Those images are now deeply upsetting after shocking revelations published in a recent New York Times investigation that allege Chavez sexually abused girls as young as 12 and raped his fellow labor organizer Dolores Huerta.
According to the nonprofit Travel Santa Ana, the Chavez mural, created in 2008 to commemorate the launch day of the city’s KaBoom playground and Jerome Community Learning Garden, is “one of 30 murals around California that was commissioned by a project commemorating Cesar Chavez, initiated by Maria Shriver and former LA Mayor [Antonio] Villaraigosa.”
That’s 30 from a single project — the total number would be impossible to count. It’s hard to overstate the prominence of Chavez’s legacy in California, where his name and likeness are ubiquitous on the sides of bodegas, in parks, on street signs, on schools and memorialized in statues. He was considered a man of the people, which is why murals, created in unassuming local spaces, seemed especially fitting.
It’s now up to the public that revered him and is now grappling with the pain of his misdeeds to decide what should become of his painted image. California lawmakers announced their intention to rename the upcoming Cesar Chavez holiday “Farmworkers Day,” and that idea could be extended to murals of Chavez. These artworks could be remade to instead celebrate the achievements of the many people — especially the women and girls — who marched and fought for the labor movement.
I expect changes to these murals will come swiftly. A statue of Chavez at Fresno State has already been covered and will soon be removed. Maybe it can be melted down to create something new and uplifting. We can paint over the past, but we should never forget.
I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt, looking forward to gazing at a mural of Huerta in the very near future.
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The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY Brokentalkers Through music and dance, the Dublin-based theater company presents “Bellow,” the story of Irish accordionist Danny O’Mahony as he revisits key moments when mentorship, mastery of the craft and preservation of the art form influenced his path. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Piano recital with Gilles Vonsattel, solo Camerata Pacifica presents the third program of “Beethoven 32,” a three-year Beethoven cycle in which principal pianist Vonsattel performs all 32 of the composer’s piano sonatas. 7 p.m. Friday. Academy of the West, 1070 Fairway Rd., Santa Barbara. 8 p.m. Sunday. The Colburn School, Zipper Hall, 200 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. cameratapacifica.org
Sex, Lies and Harold Pinter Two of the playwright’s darkly comic one-acts, “Party Time” and “The Lover,” are paired. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays, through April 26. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com
SATURDAY And the Beat Goes On The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles performs American classics from R&B, Motown, gospel and musical theater with Emmy Award-winning host and GMCLA alum Melvin Robert and soprano Nicole Heaston. 8 p.m. Saturday; 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills. GMCLA.org
Cirque Kalabanté’s Afrique en Cirque A celebration of African culture featuring acrobatics accompanied live Afro Jazz, percussion and kora. 8 p.m. Saturday. Carpenter Performing Arts Center, CSULB, 6200 E. Atherton St., Long Beach. carpenterarts.org; 3 p.m. Sunday. The Soraya, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge. thesoraya.org
Artist Todd Gray has a show at Perrotin.
(Kyungmi Shin)
Todd Gray A solo exhibition of the artist’s photosculptures, “Portals,” continues his interest in the effects of colonization, the built environment and the natural world. Gray will be in conversation with LACMA chief executive Michael Govan on Tuesday. Opening reception, 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday; conversation, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday; exhibition continues through May 30. Perrotin Los Angeles, 5036 W Pico Blvd. perrotin.com
Convergence: Contemporary Artists of Armenian Descent More than 20 artists, in work ranging from abstraction to conceptual installations, interrogate the complexities of their cultural identities. Through Aug. 9. Forest Lawn Museum, 1712 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale. museum.forestlawn.com
Esther Chung and Ins Choi in “Kim’s Convenience” at the Ahmanson.
(Dahlia Katz)
Kim’s Convenience Playwright Ins Choi stars in this production of his award-winning comedy drama, about a Korean family-run corner store in Toronto, that inspired the TV series. Directed by Weyni Mengesha. Through April 19. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Avenue, downtown L.A. centertheatregroup.org
‘KPop Demon Hunters’ singalong Bop to the beat of this year’s two-time Oscar-winner — animated feature and original song — at this special Academy screening. 11 a.m. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org
Miss Velma in the City of Angels In the “Religion and Ritual” section of the ongoing Art of the West exhibition, this new installation features a custom-made dress worn by the charismatic co-founder of the Universal World Church in Los Angeles. Opens Friday. The Autry, 4700 Western Heritage Way. Griffith Park. theautry.org
Ok, Olympia, Let’s Go! Apollo Dukakis wrote and performs the one-act play “You and Me” alongside Kandis Chappell in a multimedia celebration of his sister, the late Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis. Playwright and filmmaker Graham Barnard hosts with special invited guests. 8 p.m. Saturday. 3 p.m. Sunday. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com
Song Of The North Hamid Rahmanian created this multimedia production using shadow puppetry and projected animation to reimagine the Persian epic “Shahnameh” about a fierce heroine and her quest to save her beloved. 2 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and March 28 to 29; 7 p.m. Saturday and March 29. Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave. pasadenaplayhouse.org
The exhibition “Turner & Constable” at the Tate in London is featured in a new documentary on the two British painters.
Turner & Constable Laemmle’s “Culture Vulture” series presents this documentary on two of Britain’s finest artists — J.M.W. Turner and John Constable — their rivalry as very different landscape painters and the current exhibition at the Tate in London. Directed by David Bickerstaff. 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday; 7 p.m. Monday. Laemmle Glendale, 207 N. Maryland Ave.; Laemmle Town Center 5, 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino; Laemmle Monica Film Center, 1332 2nd St. laemmle.com
Vertigo in Concert Sarah Hicks conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing the Bernard Herrmann score for Alfred Hitchcock’s classical psychological thriller live to screen. 8 p.m. Saturday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
SUNDAY Network The American Cinematheque presents screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s prescient 1976 media satire for its 50th anniversary and in tribute to actor Robert Duvall. 7 p.m. Sunday. Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. americancinematheque.com
Yefim Bronfman The pianist performs selections from Schumann, Brahms, Debussy and Beethoven. Rescheduled from Feb. 11. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Geoff Elliott in “Death of a Salesman” at A Noise Within.
(Daniel Reichert)
Death of a Salesman A Noise Within co-artistic director Geoff Elliott steps into the shoes of Arthur Miller’s beleaguered working man. Through April 19. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. anoisewithin.org
Ebell + LA Festival: Powered by Women A free celebration of art, activism and community spirit featuring performances, classes and crafts. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Ebell of Los Angeles, 741 S. Lucerne Blvd. ebellofla.org
Akinsanya Kambon: The Hero Avenges A conversation between the sculptor known for his work inspired by the Black diaspora, African histories and mythologies, and Hammer curator Pablo José Ramírez, plus the premiere of a new eponymous documentary directed by Gabriel Noguez and Sean Rowry and a book signing of the monograph “Akinsanya Kambon: The Hero Avenges.” 2 p.m. Sunday. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu
MONDAY Lang Lang Plays Beethoven The piano virtuoso joins the Pacific Symphony for performances of Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 3” and Egmont Overture, plus Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, “From the New World.” 8 p.m. Monday. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. pacificsymphony.org
TUESDAY Gerald Barry’s ‘Salome’ Thomas Adès conducts the L.A. Phil in the U.S. premiere of Barry’s new opera, based on the Oscar Wilde play. 8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A.laphil.com
WEDNESDAY Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater The illustrious troupe performs two alternating programs as part of its exclusive multiyear Southern California residency under the leadership of new Artist Director Alicia Graf Mack. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday to March 28; 2 p.m. March 28 to 29. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. musiccenter.org
THURSDAY Level Up! A trans tween feels like she can only be herself in her virtual world in the Latino Theater Company’s world premiere of a resonant, family-friendly play by Gabriel Rivas Gómez. Directed by Fidel Gómez. Previews through April 3. Opens April 4 and runs through May 3. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown L.A. latinotheaterco.org
Arts Anywhere
BroadwayHD Don’t get out to the theater as much as you’d like? This decade-old streaming service could be a viable supplement to your live theater habit. It offers a nice variety of shows from Broadway and the West End, off-Broadway, plays, musicals and virtually anything in between. BroadwayHD: $20 per month or $200 per year.
“Future Relic: Failures, Disasters, Detours, and How I Made a Career as an Artist” by Daniel Arsham.
(Simon & Schuster)
Future Relic: Failures, Disasters, Detours, and How I Made a Career as an Artist Part memoir, part how-to, contemporary artist Daniel Arsham’s new book shares pragmatic advice on things like how to get a gallery, why you need a great lawyer, how to run a creative business and the importance of building a network of successful people. Bursting onto the scene more than 20 years ago with a bold vision across multiple mediums and accruing an eclectic list of big-name collaborators, including Merce Cunningham, Pharrell Williams, Pokémon, Tiffany & Co. and Cleveland Cavaliers, he quickly found both critical and commercial success. In a 2014 review of the artist’s work, Times contributor Sharon Mizota wrote, “Daniel Arsham’s casts of everyday or recently obsolete objects in sand, volcanic ash or various kinds of rock are like premature fossils, or perhaps eerie premonitions of ruin to come.” At a time when everything in the world is starting to feel obsolete, including us, “Future Relic” could find a place on the bookshelves of many would-be creatives. (Think of it as a companion to Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way of Being.”). Authors Equity: 320 pp. $30.
Out of Vienna The acclaimed Berlin-based chamber ensemble Leonkoro Quartet, formed in 2019, has released its stellar debut recording after winning a string of prestigious awards across Europe. An exploration of early 20th-century modernism in the Austrian capital, the album features compositions by Alban Berg, Anton Webern and Erwin Schulhoff. Alpha Classics: Available on CD ($19) or download ($9.25).
— Kevin Crust
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Spring is here, and with it many arts and culture entertainment choices.
McNulty has been extra busy lately and has delivered a series of reviews. Harry Potter fans will enjoy his take on Daniel Radcliffe in Broadway’s “Every Brilliant Thing,” which McNulty calls “an ingenious and touching solo performance piece written by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe on the subject of suicide — or more precisely, on the ordinary joys that militate against such a drastic step.”
McNulty also dropped in on the Geffen Playhouse to catch “Dragon Mama,” the second installment in a trilogy written and performed by Sara Porkalob about her Filipina American family. “To be frank, I wasn’t sure I was up for a trilogy on Porkalob’s family history. But after ‘Dragon Mama,’ I can hardly wait for ‘Dragon Baby,’ the third and final segment,” McNulty writes.
Pierre Adeli and Adam J. Jefferis in “The Adding Machine.”
(Bob Turton Photography)
Finally, McNulty checks in with the Actors’ Gang, which is running a production of Elmer Rice’s 1923 expressionist satire, “The Adding Machine.” The story, about “an accountant drone aptly named Mr. Zero who, after losing his job to an adding machine, kills his boss and is sentenced to death,” shares uncomfortable modern-day parallels with the threat to workers currently posed by AI, McNulty writes.
Classical music critic Mark Swed got the scoop on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new season — its first without revered music director Gustavo Dudamel. “For the first time in 64 years, the L.A. Phil will be without a music director, and with no one in waiting in the wings. But you may barely notice. In little more than three months, Dudamel, although newly installed as music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, will be saying hello once again to his old band at Walt Disney Concert Hall for two weeks of Beethoven,” Swed writes.
Workers install the Francis Bacon 1969 “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” oil painting in the David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
I got to watch workers hang a $142.5-million Francis Bacon triptych on the walls of LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries. The paintings were gifted to the museum by its late trustee, Elaine Wynn. LACMA’s director, Michael Govan, said that part of her interest in supporting the new building was because she wanted the paintings to eventually belong to the public.
Dance writer Steven Vargas penned an interesting profile of choreographer Jacob Jonas and how his battle with Stage 4 lymphoma deepened his connection to his craft.
The news from the Kennedy Center does not stop coming. Late last week, we learned that President Trump had replaced Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell, who presided over the unfolding chaos at the center for a little over a year, with Matt Floca, the vice president of facilities operations at the center. This week, the Trump-appointed board voted to officially close the venue for two years. Trump had already announced his intentions, so the vote amounted to little more than a rubber stamp.
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Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts — better known as the Soraya — on the campus of Cal State Northridge.
(The Soraya)
The Soraya announced its 2026-27 season, which includes six major debuts: singer and actress Audra McDonald, the Grammy Award-winning Snarky Puppy ensemble, Emmet Cohen’s jazz trio, Dance Theatre of Harlem, the National Symphony Orchestra (which will be roving in the wake of the Kennedy Center closure) and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Also arriving at the Soraya, according to a note from its publicist, “Domingo Hindoyan leads the LA Phil and soprano Sonya Yoncheva in the world premiere of a new, LA Phil-commissioned song cycle from Miguel Farias. Farias’ incandescent new work is paired with Barber’s ‘Medea’s Dance of Vengeance’ and Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony.”
The first-ever museum survey of the legendary Chicana artist Ofelia Esparza (“Ofelia Esparza: A Retropective “) at Vincent Price Art Museum has been extended through May — now you have no excuse to not get yourself out to see it.
The photos currently flooding my social media stream are like a highlight reel of the life of Chicana civil rights icon Dolores Huerta.
The famous 1960s-era black-and-white shot of her looking like a bohemian in sweatshirt and black paints while she holds up a sign proclaiming “HUELGA” in the grape fields of California’s Central Valley.
Chanting at the front of picket lines, strands of gray in her hair, in the 1980s.
Beaming as President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 for a lifetime of good work that expanded beyond the United Farm Workers union she co-founded.
What’s especially popular is admirers posting pictures of themselves with her — at protests, during art gallery openings, in classrooms, even dancing. It’s the type of public outpouring one usually sees when a celebrity dies. Sadly, there is grief involved in people sharing their encounters with her right now.
Someone didn’t die. But something did.
Earlier this week, Huerta’s disclosed to the New York Times that fellow Chicano civil rights icon Cesar Chavez raped her during the 1960s. It was part of a story that also interviewed two women who claimed the United Farm Workers co-founder sexually abused them when they were young teens in the 1970s.
One of the posts I saw soon after the story’s publication was an Instagram portrait Maricela Cueva took when the two met a few years ago during a conference in Burbank.
“Standing with Dolores Huerta,” said Cueva, president of the public relations firm VPE Communications, “means honoring her legacy in the farmworker movement as well as the victims who had the courage to come forward and acknowledging the personal sacrifices behind it.”
Former West Covina Mayor Brian Calderón Tabatabei shared on the platform formally known as Twitter a photo of him shaking hands with Huerta in Berkeley at a Working Families Party gathering for elected leaders in 2024, where she joined breakout sessions and listened to the next generation of leaders.
“I look at the folks who posted pictures and we are all children of the movement,” said Tabatabei, who’s also an El Monte High ethnic studies teacher. He kicks off each school year with a shout-out to Huerta. “She lived with that pain so we could be in these spaces. So we don’t have to be quiet.”
Together, the photos stand as a communal family album. It’s a show of love and solidarity to Huerta — but also a challenge to ourselves. Many of us immediately believed the longtime activist not just because of her stature, but because we’re sadly too familiar with the script playing out in real time.
A Latina abused by a trusted, powerful man. A terrible secret kept to not make him look bad and ruin his life. A need for the victim to consistently praise the abuser to others no matter what. A life of service in the form of sacrifice. Eternal grace masking an unimaginable pain.
Her story is the story of too many women I know and you know — and maybe the story of you.
Steely resolve in the face of suffering is not new in the Huerta story. For decades, reporters, activists, historians and others who formed the narrative of Chicano civil rights treated her as a modern-day Mary Magdalene — a woman who found purpose by following a man. Chavez was positioned as the Christlike figure who toiled for all of us at great personal cost and thus anointed the face of the farmworkers movement. Meanwhile, he and others relegated Huerta to sidekick status, both in the trenches and in the public — and the image makers followed his lead.
She found more prominence after his death in 1993, but Chavez’s shadow loomed over her for too long. Huerta became one of Chavez’s fiercest defenders even after revelations about his autocratic ways became public — but what else was she supposed to do when people tied so much of her identity to him?
Through it all, Huerta showed up not just for la causa but for those of others. People in Bakersfield, where Huerta lives, know she’s a supporter of arts and live music — she was seen dancing with family members at a Mardis Gras party just last month, gladly taking photos with well-wishers. I have run into her at my wife’s restaurant in Santa Ana, at movie theaters in Los Angeles, during online fundraisers for museums. My favorite memory is the time we both spoke to students at a high school summer conference. Afterward, the organizers told me her speaking fee was a pittance compared to that of a famous Latina author who demanded $25,000 for an hour-long chat.
That’s why Huerta’s recent revelations hit particularly hard — unlike the long-sainted Chavez, she always seemed more like one of us. Huerta has cycled through the stages of life in the public eye in a way that has seen Latinos relate to her over the decades as our daughter, our sister, our aunt. Our mother, grandmother and now great-grandmother in the winter of her years.
We all know women in one of those roles who suffered the same violations Huerta did. The same dismissals and insults. Who never spoke about their ignominies because they were afraid we wouldn’t be there for them.
Huerta was once one of them.
“I believed that exposing the truth,” Huerta wrote in a short essay, “would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”
By coming forward now, she’s speaking up for every woman who has kept their abuse private, every woman overlooked in favor of a man, every relative told to keep secrets lest they embarrass the family, every woman attacked for finally speaking up. By posting all those photos of Huerta — by herself, in a crowd, with others — people are publicly and unconsciously saying:
We can do better for the girls and women in our lives. We must do better.
“I have kept this secret long enough,” she concluded in her essay. “My silence ends here.”
May we all hear the Dolores Huertas in our lives. May we finally stand by them.
As word evidently reached activists in the last few weeks that disturbing allegations of sexual abuse against Chicano civil rights icon Cesar Chavez were forthcoming, things started to happen without much explanation.
Groups began to cancel long-planned parades, dinners, lectures and fundraisers scheduled for Chavez’s birthday on March 31. People who I’ve known for years suddenly weren’t returning calls or texts about what was going on. Longtime defenders of Chavez — who stood by their hero even as revelations in this paper and in biographies over the past generation showed there was a dark side to the man — suddenly became hard to reach.
When the United Farm Workers and the Cesar Chavez Foundation put out statements Tuesday morning that “troubling allegations” against their patriarch were considered credible enough for them to offer help to his victims, the silence transformed into dread. There was a discomfort similar to waiting for a tsunami — that whatever was coming would change lives, shake institutions and make people question values and principles that they had long held dear.
And like a natural disaster, what emerged about Chavez was far worse than anyone could’ve expected.
Wednesday morning, the New York Times published a story where two women whose families marched alongside Chavez in the fields of California during the 1960s and 1970s disclosed that he sexually abused them for years when they were girls. Just as shocking was the revelation by Dolores Huerta, Chavez’s longtime compatriot and a civil rights legend, that he had once raped her at a time when their leadership in the fight to bring dignity to grape pickers earned national acclaim and amounted to a modern-day Via Dolorosa.
The silence has transformed into screams. Politicians and organizations that long commemorated Chavez and urged others to follow his ways are releasing statements by the minute. My social media feed is now a torrent of friends and strangers expressing empathy for Chavez’s victims and outrage, disgust and — above all — disappointment that someone considered a secular saint by many for decades turned out to be a human more terrible than anyone could’ve imagined.
There will be questions and soul-searching about these horrifying disclosures in the weeks, months and years to come. We will see a push for the renaming of the dozens of schools, parks and streets that bear Chavez’s name across the country and even the rebranding of Cesar Chavez Day, a California state holiday since 2000 devoted to urging people to give back to their communities and the least among us.
The reckoning is only right. Much of the Latino civil rights, political and educational ecosystem will have to grapple with why they held up Chavez as a paragon of virtue for too long above others just as deserving and, as it turns out, nowhere near as compromised.
In any event, the myth has been punctured.
A portrait of Cesar Chavez on a mural on Farmacia Ramirez, 2403 Cesar E Chavez Ave. in East Los Angeles.
(James Carbone / Los Angeles Times)
Chavez’s biography always reads like an entry in the “Lives of the Saints” genre of books that Catholics used to read about the holy men of their faith. The son of farmworkers who became a Mexican American Moses trying to lead his people to the promised land of equity and political power. An internationally famous leader who lived a mendicant’s life. Who devoted decades to some of the most exploited people in the American economy. Honored with awards, plays, posters. Murals, movies and monuments. President Biden even kept a bust of Chavez at his Oval Office desk.
It was a beatific reputation that largely persisted even as the union he helped to create lost its influence in the fields of California and a new generation of activists looked down on Chavez for his long-standing opposition to immigrants who came to this country to work without legal status. Admirers kept him on a pedestal even as former UFW members alleged over the last two decades that the boss they once idolized purged too many good people in the name of absolute control. The hagiography continued even as a new generation of Latinos came of age not knowing anything about him other than an occasional school lesson or television segment.
I was one of those neophytes. I first heard his name at Anaheim High School in the mid-1990s and thought my teacher was talking about Julio Cesar Chavez, the famous Mexican boxer. I was thrilled to discover that someone had bravely fought for the rights of campesinos like my mom and her sisters, who toiled in the garlic fields of Gilroy and strawberry patches of Orange County as teenage girls in the 1960s, the same time that Chavez and the UFW were enjoying their historic wins.
“Who’s Cesar Chavez?” my Mami responded when I asked if his efforts ever made her work easier.
My admiration for Chavez continued even as I learned about some of his faults. I was able to separate Chavez the man from the movement for which he was a figurehead. Long-maligned communities seek heroes to emulate, to draw hope from, to hang on their walls and share their quotes on social media. We create them even as we ignore that they’re flesh and blood just like us.
Chavez seemed like the right man at the right moment as Mexican Americans rose up like never before to battle discrimination and segregation. Now, Latinos and others who admired Chavez have to grapple with his moral failings of the worst possible magnitude at the worst possible time: when there’s an administration doing everything possible to crush Latinos and we’re looking for people to look up to like never before.
He remains one of the few Latino civil rights leaders known nationwide — and Chavez is nowhere near as known as acolytes make him out to be. Some people will argue that it’s unfair he will likely get wiped away from the public sphere while other predatory men from the past and present largely maintain their riches and reputations.
But that’s looking at the abuse revelations the wrong way. For now, I will follow what those most directly affected by Chavez’s actions are telling us to do.
The UFW and Cesar Chavez Foundation were wise to not try to defend the indefensible in their statements and instead consider any victims first before deciding how to decide what’s next for them.
The Chavez family put out a news release that states “we honor the voices of those who feel unheard and who report sexual abuse.”
Huerta wrote in an online essay: “Cesar’s actions do not reflect the values of our community and our movement. The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual.”
Another of his victims told the New York Times of Chavez’s legacy: “It makes you rethink in history all those heroes. The movement — that’s the hero.”
The fountain in the Memorial Garden surrounds the gravesite of Cesar Chavez and his wife Helen Chavez at Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Keene, Calif.
(Francine Orr)
The face of that movimiento brought inspiration to millions and improved the lives of hundreds of thousands. That’s why we shouldn’t cancel the good that Chavez fought for alongside so many; we should direct the adulation he once attracted and the anger he’ll now rightfully receive toward the work that still needs to be done.
To quote an old UFW slogan that Chavez transformed into a mantra, la lucha sigue — the fight continues. It’s a statement that’s more pertinent than ever, damn its imperfect messenger.
Content note: This story contains details of sexual violence.
Civil rights icon Dolores Huerta is one of several women in the United States speaking out against the sexual violence they say they endured at the hands of labour leader Cesar Chavez.
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In a statement on Wednesday, Huerta said she was motivated to speak out after being contacted for an investigation by The New York Times, which revealed that children as young as age 12 were abused by Chavez.
“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for,” Huerta wrote.
“Following the New York Times’ multi-year investigation into sexual misconduct by Cesar Chavez, I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences.”
Chavez, who died in 1993, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association alongside Huerta and other advocates. They rose to fame during the US civil rights movement of the 1960s, practising nonviolent protest techniques similar to those of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Together, Chavez, Huerta and other advocates drew attention to the abuses facing vulnerable immigrant farmworkers, particularly in the Hispanic and Filipino American communities.
Some of the slogans from the movement continue to have resonance in the US political sphere.
The Spanish phrase “si, se puede” — or, in English, “yes, we can” — was adopted as the campaign slogan for President Barack Obama, while the Tagalog phrase “isang bagsak” continues to be a rallying cry for collective organising.
The fight for equality and fair labour practices that Huerta and Chavez led would be remembered as one of the defining moments of the 1960s.
But it was out of fear of denting the burgeoning civil rights movement that Huerta and other women say they stayed silent about Chavez’s abuse.
“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” Huerta said in her statement.
“I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.”
Huerta explained that the first time she had sex with Chavez, she was “manipulated and pressured” into submitting to his advances while on a trip to San Juan Capistrano.
“I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to,” she said.
The second time, she said she was “forced, against my will”. The New York Times investigation includes a summary of what Huerta says happened: She was in a car that Chavez was driving when he parked in an isolated grape field and raped her.
Both instances resulted in pregnancies, which Huerta says she kept secret. The children were ultimately given to other families to raise.
“I had experienced abuse and sexual violence before, and I convinced myself these were incidents that I had to endure alone and in secret,” she said.
Her story was echoed by the accounts of other women featured in The New York Times investigation.
One of the interviewees, Ana Murguia, said she was 13 when a 45-year-old Chavez kissed her, took off her clothes and tried to have sex with her in his locked office.
He had known her since she was eight years old, and the abuse at his hands prompted her to attempt suicide.
Debra Rojas, meanwhile, was 12 years old when Chavez began groping her. She described being 15 when she was raped by him at a motel near Stockton, California.
A third woman, Esmeralda Lopez, said she was 19 when Chavez tried to pressure her to have sex with him while they were alone on a tour, offering to use his influence to get something named in her honour.
Lopez said she refused his advances, and her mother, a fellow activist, corroborated her account, based on conversations they had at the time.
The women explained that they grappled with whether to come forward and whether they would be believed, given Chavez’s rise to fame as a civil rights hero.
In response to the widening scandal on Wednesday, United Farm Workers — the group that emerged from the National Farm Workers Association — announced it would not participate in any events on Cesar Chavez Day, a federal commemoration that falls on the late leader’s birthday.
The group denied receiving any direct reports of abuse, but it pledged to create a pathway for reports to be submitted.
“Over the coming weeks, in partnership with experts in these kinds of processes, we are working to establish an external, confidential, independent channel for those who may have experienced harm caused by Cesar Chavez,” United Farm Workers wrote in a statement.
“These allegations have been profoundly shocking. We need some time to get this right, including to ensure robust, trauma-informed services are available to those who may need it.”
Lawmakers across the political spectrum, from Texas Governor Greg Abbott to New Mexico Representative Ben Ray Lujan, also called for Chavez’s name to be stripped from public buildings, roads and other places of honour.
Lujan called the revelations in Wednesday’s New York Times report “horrific” and a “betrayal of the values that Latino leaders have championed for generations”.
“His name should be removed from landmarks, institutions, and honors,” Lujan said of Chavez. “We cannot celebrate someone who carried out such disturbing harm.”
Huerta, meanwhile, said that, in the wake of the investigation, community advocacy was more important than ever.
“I have kept this secret long enough,” she wrote. “My silence ends here.”
The United Farm Workers said it would not participate in celebrations of its founder Cesar Chavez amid what the labor union described as “troubling allegations” against the iconic Chicano figure.
The union, in a statement released Tuesday, did not detail the accusations against Chavez but said they were concerning enough for the organization to take action. But several events around the country honoring Chavez including events in Tucson, Houston, Corpus Christi, San Antonio and San Bernardino have been canceled in recent weeks, with little explanation given by organizers.
The claims against Chavez “are incompatible with our organization’s values. Some of the reports are family issues, and not our story to tell or our place to comment on. Far more troubling are allegations involving abuse of young women or minors. Allegations that very young women or girls may have been victimized are crushing. We have not received any direct reports, and we do not have any firsthand knowledge of these allegations,” the union said.
Canceling events, the union said, would “provide space for people who may have been victimized to find support and to share their stories if that is what they choose.”
Chavez is a towering national figure credited with organizing and raising the lives of migrant farmworkers in California and beyond and giving voice to the struggles of Mexican Americans.
Bursting into national prominence in the mid-1960s in the San Joaquin Valley, Chavez galvanized public support on behalf of them after organizing community groups across Central and Southern California. For decades, agricultural laborers had lived in substandard housing and were paid terrible wages. Efforts to organize migrant laborers were usually crushed violently by farmers and local law enforcement.
Chavez and his associates joined a grape pickers’ strike in 1965 launched by Filipino organizers centered around Delano, the heart of California’s table grape crop. Those early years were marked by bitter and sometimes brutal incidents involving picketing farmworkers who screamed “Huelga!” — “Strike!”—and growers who vowed never to give in to Chavez and his movement.
Sen. Robert Kennedy and Cesar Chavez as Chavez ended a 25-day fast.
(Bettmann Archive)
That eventually transformed into a boycott that earned international attention. Chavez, drawing on his Catholic faith, fasted for 25 days in 1968 to draw attention to the violence swirling around the effort, ending it by sharing bread with then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. Two years later, the UFW was able to secure contracts for more than 10,000 grape pickers.
Those successes made Chavez an almost mythic figure. The UFW flag — a stylized black Aztec eagle against a red background — became synonymous with the Chicano movement that was emerging at the same time. Posters and murals featuring Chavez’s beatific face sprouted in the Southwest and beyond. He traveled across the United States espousing his philosophy of nonviolence, union and dignity for farmworkers.
But Chavez’s legacy became increasingly tarnished as the years went on. Labor victories became fewer and fewer. His fierce criticism of illegal immigration — Chavez argued that they undercut his unionization efforts — put him at odds with immigration activists. A 2006 Times investigation detailed how dozens of former associates and workers left the UFW because of what they described as Chavez’s increasingly autocratic ways.
Cesar Chavez talks to striking Salinas Valley farmworkers.
(Sakuma / Associated Press )
When the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors decided to change the name of Brooklyn Avenue in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights to Cesar Chavez Avenue after the labor leader’s death in 1993, many in the community opposed it, citing the economic burden businesses would undergo to update their addresses and the erasure of the community’s history on the street.
Yet his standing among Latinos nationwide was such that schools, streets and parks were renamed in his honor in the years after his death. In 2012, President Obama went to tiny Keene, Calif. — where Chavez had set up both his home and the operational headquarters of the United Farm Workers — to dedicate the César E. Chávez National Monument.
It’s unclear the source of the new allegations or when they might become public. But there has been rumbling for weeks among activists that something about Chavez was coming.
Huerta is not commenting on the issue at this time, said Eric Olvera, spokesperson for Huerta.
The news comes two weeks before Cesar Chavez Day, observed March 31.
Local organizers in Los Angeles haven’t announced whether they will cancel their events.
The UFW was vague about the claims but suggested they were serious enough for extreme action.
“These allegations have been profoundly shocking. We need some time to get this right, including to ensure robust, trauma-informed services are available to those who may need it.
“We understand this will be tremendously painful for many and we encourage our community to seek mental health support if they experience distress.”
Tuesday morning, the Cesar Chavez Foundation said in a statement that it had “become aware of disturbing allegations that Cesar Chavez engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior with women and minors during his time as President of the United Farm Workers of America.”
The foundation said it was working with leaders in the farmworker movement to be responsive to these allegations and support the people who might have been harmed.
“In partnership with the UFW, we are establishing a safe and confidential process for those who wish to share their experiences of historic harm, and, if they choose to, participate in efforts toward repair and reconciliation,” the statement said. “In addition, we are investing time and resources to ensure the Foundation promotes and strengthens a workplace culture that is safe and welcoming for all.”
In the 48 hours before the UFW and Cesar Chavez Foundation made their statements, La Unión del Pueblo Entero, a community-based union and nonprofit in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, which was founded by Huerta and Chavez, erased the names and affiliation with the leaders from its website.
The new allegations could have implications beyond Chavez’s place in history. If he has been accused of sexual abuse, a legal expert said it could spark legal claims against the union he ran for so long.
In California, Assembly Bill 250 opened a two-year window to file sex assault claims beyond a previous statute of limitations. The Catholic Church, Scouting and public school districts, as a result, have been hit hard with lawsuits.
“It is [a] matter [of] who knew what and when,” said John Manly, a sexual abuse attorney, adding that Chavez’s leadership role could create liability for the UFW.
Chávez never shied away from self-criticism and taking responsibility for his actions. (Archive)
In these times when it is once again fashionable to accuse Commander Chávez of mistakes, whether real or imagined. As we mark 13 years since his untimely death on March 5, 2013, I would like to highlight the value of truth in his political actions. Truth was manifest in the responsibility he assumed for his actions; the consistency between his words and deeds; the acknowledgment of his own mistakes, when it is easier for most people to point out the mistakes of others; and his sincere efforts to correct them. To the above, I would add that when he had to make tactical and strategic shifts in the course initially set, Chávez always had the political honesty to explain in detail why he was doing so, and he courageously took responsibility for them before the people.
There are countless examples which can be found in many of his speeches. I will mention just a few. Beginning with the day of his introduction to the Venezuelan people, February 4, 1992: “Unfortunately, for now, the objectives we set for ourselves were not achieved in the capital city, that is, we here in Caracas did not manage to control power… And I, before the country and before you, take responsibility…” Then in the streets and in the 1998 election campaign: “Let’s go to the Constituent Assembly,” and on February 2, 1999, in what would be his first act of government, he signed the decree calling for the constituent process, and we went to the Constituent Assembly.
In April 2002, he surrendered to the coup leaders, without thinking about saving his own “skin”: “I am an imprisoned president; you decide what to do with me.” After his release, with a cross in his hand, he stated that “it was necessary for all sectors of the country to make a greater effort, with all the goodwill we can muster, to be able to live together in peace, accepting the rules of the game.”
In 2005, he called for the Bolivarian Revolution to take on a socialist character. In the 2006 election campaign, he said, “Let’s go for socialism!” and explained in detail why this strategic shift was necessary. He outlined the characteristics of our socialism, 21st-century Bolivarian socialism, which, as he insisted until his last public words, had to be “essentially democratic” or it would not be socialism at all.
In the elections of December 6, 2006, Commander Chávez obtained the highest number of votes and was re-elected. In December 2007, while awaiting the results of the referendum on constitutional reform and hearing reports of a close count, he called a meeting of the party leadership in Miraflores. I said to him at that meeting: “President, let’s wait for the final count, and if we lost, we lost, but if we won, we won.” He replied with a sharp look: “I don’t want a victory like that, let’s go out and acknowledge defeat now.” And that’s what he did.
In September 2010, we won a majority in the National Assembly. Without a doubt, it was a resounding political victory. But Chávez identified a warning sign: in quantitative terms, the difference in votes between Chavismo and the opposition was minimal. Once again, he assumed political responsibility. In January 2011, he published the “Strategic Lines of Political Action,” a deeply self-critical document.
Late May 2011, he told me: “Elías, I feel like something is wrong with me.” June 2011, after undergoing the necessary tests, on national television: “Cancer cells have been detected in my body.” Easter Week 2012, during a mass in Barinas, broadcast live: “We must be aware that I have an illness that limits my life… Christ, give me your cross.”
On the night of December 8, 2012, in a public address, he raised the possibility of not continuing among us and explained in detail the constitutional procedures that would have to be followed if he were to be permanently incapacitated. That day, once again, he decided to tell us the truth, no matter how hard it was:
Some colleagues told me it wasn’t necessary, or have said in recent hours that it wasn’t necessary to say this. In truth, I could have said almost everything I said tonight from Havana… But I believe that the most important thing, what my soul, my heart, and my conscience tell me, the most important thing… has been this, Nicolás. The most important thing.
“The most important thing”: telling the truth, explaining the reality to the people, the decision he had made, and the steps that needed to be taken.
But that political honesty was not just an individual value. It was the political conviction that the people formed a collective wisdom, a conscious body that knew how to understand and draw its own conclusions about situations. That is why he was so careful to keep them informed at all times.
I once heard him say: “There are those who say that you shouldn’t speak plainly to the people, because then the adversary will seize on that truth and manipulate it against you.” That, Chávez said, is to think that the people are mentally eunuchs. The people understand, more often than not, more than some leaders. For Chávez, speaking the truth was always a decisive show of trust and respect for the people.
And “most importantly,” it was also to make clear for posterity his conviction about the democratic path of the revolution he had led:
In all circumstances, we must guarantee the progress of the Bolivarian Revolution, the victorious progress of this revolution, building the new democracy that is here mandated by the people in the Constituent Assembly; building the Venezuelan path to socialism, with broad participation and ample freedom, which are being demonstrated once again in this gubernatorial election campaign, with candidates here and candidates there. Freedom, complete freedom.
With the power of truth, the truth of his project and his life, Chávez managed to accumulate immense political strength based on the moral autoritas he gained by never peddling falsehoods or shirking his responsibilities, much less in defeat or when he made mistakes. That same moral authority comes not only from consistency between words and deeds, but also from trying to act despite difficult circumstances as well as from recognizing and explaining when and why it is not possible to achieve a certain goal. I stand by that way of doing politics. With Chávez forever!
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.
