latinos

Rhetoric dehumanizing immigrant and Latino communities may appear more open and in-your-face in the current political climate. But that has not been a barrier for Latinos seeking elective office or high-level roles in government.

Voters are choosing an increasing number of nonwhite Hispanic leaders to local elective office — and many of the leaders are the first Latinos to hold their seats. Some political science experts attribute the rise of Latino leadership to years of grassroots organizing, coupled with ongoing demonization of their communities by Trump administration officials and conservative activists.

“That’s the difference now, is that there’s this extra incentive of an unrelenting attack on Latinos across the country,” said Anna Sampaio, an ethnic studies professor at Santa Clara University who specializes in race and gender politics.

There are currently an estimated 7,700 Latino elected officials nationwide, according to data from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. That’s up from 6,883 officials in 2020.

Estimated to number as many as 55 million people — 16% of the U.S. population — Latinos are the largest ethnic minority in the country, with politics, interests and priorities as diverse as the national origins represented within their population. But Latinos also are underrepresented as a demographic across elective offices.

Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, Latino communities have been a target of his hard-line immigration tactics. The feeling of attack doesn’t stop there. From memes shared from the official White House page perpetuating Hispanic stereotypes, a federally led English-only initiative and an anti-diversity, equity and inclusion push have painted a target on Latinos across the country.

It’s all led to more Latinos seeking office to defend their communities and give voice to those who may be afraid to speak out in the current political climate. As a result, legislators have proposed measures that include providing community members with protections against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, halting the approval of ICE detention centers in their cities, and calling for a stop to ICE funding, among other actions.

Pennsylvania Latino mayor makes history

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with a roughly 40% Hispanic population, recently elected Jaime Arroyo their first Latino mayor. Arroyo took office in January, after being elected with 85% of the vote.

“I think being the first Latino to be in this role and the first person of color to be mayor of Lancaster City has been exciting,” Arroyo told The Associated Press, adding that he finds it “extremely exciting to lead and represent our community in this role.”

With rhetoric and national policies — such as heightened immigration enforcement — hurting the Latino communities, Arroyo said, diverse representation in government is more important than ever. He also believes that the rise of elected Latino officials over the last couple of years is the result of generations of Latinos being politically active fighting for civil rights.

“We’re starting to see a lot of the fruits of that labor come to fruition,” Arroyo said. “There’s never a perfect time to serve your community, there’s the right time. And I think right now is the right time for a lot of Latinos to step up into these roles, especially with everything that is going on.”

Latino representation expanding in city councils

Many more Latinos made history when they took office in earlier this year.

In Iowa, Rob Barron was sworn in Jan. 12 as the first Latino representative on the Des Moines City Council. Antonio Pacheco was sworn on Jan. 7 to be the first Latino member of the city council in Conyers, Georgia. In Ohio, Eileen Torres became the first Mexican American women to win a city council seat in Lorain. Sabrina Gonzalez also took office there as the first Puerto Rican women to serve.

And in Michigan, Clara Martinez and Deyanira Nevarez Martinez were sworn in Jan. 1 to the Lansing City Council, making the city the first in the U.S. to have a council with majority Latino representation.

Martinez said her election, and that of Nevarez Martinez, makes a bit statement about “what people are truly open to despite the national rhetoric.”

“I think because of the rhetoric that we are having to face and some of the backlash on the national stage, I think that’s just fueled the fire for so many people,” she said.

The Salt Lake City Council also has a Latino majority, with four of seven seats, after Erika Carlsen, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, was sworn in on Jan. 5. Carlsen said her success is possible because of current and previous generations that put in the work to create spaces where Latinas were encouraged to take leadership positions.

“I feel like I’m building on early generations of leadership,” Carlsen said. “That’s both an honor and responsibility to improve Salt Lake City for the people who live here.”

Carlsen said even if representation at the federal level is not high or visible she said having representation at the local level can have a huge impact.

“I think that it’s critically important that we continue to build on this momentum,” Carlsen said. “The majority of change that can happen starts locally, it doesn’t start in Washington but in City Hall, school boards and neighborhoods conversations. That’s the kind of momentum I’d love to see all across the United States.”

Carolina Welles, executive director of The First Ask, an organization that supports first-time female candidates at the state level, said the reason why Latino representation is more visible at the local level is because those leaders are able to built trust with their community much easier given their proximity.

“They actually know what people care about,” Welles said. “They have a stake because they are facing similar things.”

Local level Latino leadership builds on state and federal representation

It’s not just at the local level. Latinos are making inroads at the federal level too.

The 119th Congress has 56 Hispanic or Latino members. That shakes out to 10.35% of total membership, according to the Congressional Research Service.

For comparison, there were only 14 Hispanic or Latino members and all were male in the 99th Congress, 40 years ago.

At the start of 2025, there were seven Hispanic U.S. senators. That number decreased to six when then Sen. Marco Rubio resigned to become the Secretary of State, the first Latino to hold the position.

Last year also marked a record for Latinas at the state level. Latinas held 214, or 2.9%, of seats in state legislatures, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. That was up from 192 seats in 2024.

Currently, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is the only active Latina governor in the U.S. Only two Latinas have been elected governor in U.S. history, and both were in New Mexico.

In March, Gina Hinojosa won the Democratic nomination for governor, making her the second Latina to win a major party gubernatorial nomination in Texas.

Latinos saw the biggest rise in elected officials during the Trump administration in response to attacks on their fundamental rights, said Sampaio, the Santa Clara University professor. She said that trend is likely to continue as the administration continues its attacks on immigrant communities.

“We’re likely to see more Latinos run for office at the local level, at the state level and even at the national level in response to the attack on simply their existence,” Sampaio said. “It is unwittingly both terrorizing the Latino community as well as mobilizing communities.”

Figueroa writes for the Associated Press.

A few years ago, some were predicting the demise of Spanish-language television.

Most of the Latino population growth over two decades has come from U.S. births, outpacing the arrival of immigrants. The thinking was that because most U.S.-born Latinos speak English and can consume a wide array of media, Spanish-language TV would recede in relevance.

But Telemundo has defied such forecasts to become one of the nation’s hottest news outlets.

The NBCUniversal-owned, Spanish-language network, a longtime underdog, has been notching viewership gains in advance of its highly anticipated coverage of this summer’s FIFA World Cup championships.

Last year, Telemundo increased its audience for its evening news, anchored by Julio Vaqueiro, by 11% over the previous year, according to Nielsen data. Its Los Angeles station, KVEA Channel 52, has surpassed entrenched giants Walt Disney Co.’s KABC and Univision’s KMEX, attracting more viewers for its local evening and late-night newscasts.

The Miami-based division has a strong social media presence. Its Telemundo Noticias (News) account boasts 16 million followers on TikTok, topping ABC News, CNN and Fox News.

Cultural and demographic shifts have helped fuel Telemundo’s rise. After more than a decade of immigration declines, border crossings surged during President Biden’s tenure — a tide that turned with President Trump’s return to the White House. Instead, Trump brought a torrent of significant news events, including immigration raids that reverberated through Latino communities.

“We are growing because we are telling the stories that are important to our audience,” Gemma Garcia, Telemundo’s executive vice president for news, said. “We are very audience-driven.”

When U.S. military forces seized Venezuela’s then-president Nicolás Maduro in January, Telemundo quickly flew its main news anchor, Vaqueiro, to report from Colombia, which borders Venezuela. The network interrupted its usual Sunday night fare for a news special that scored solid ratings.

Vaqueiro, 38, has become the fresh face of Spanish-language news after Jorge Ramos, who achieved prominence as a forceful advocate for Latino immigrants during his 40 years on the air, signed off from rival Univision in late 2024.

The younger journalist brings a softer tone to his reports. He was promoted to Telemundo’s main news anchor in 2021 after several assignments, including working at KVEA in L.A. He loves stepping out from behind the anchor desk in Miami to cover big stories.

Telemundo news anchor Julio Vaquiero

(Telemundo)

Vaqueiro traveled to frigid Minneapolis earlier this year after the deadly Immigration and Customs Enforcement shootings. He broadcast from anti-ICE protests and stopped by a church to interview a pastor and volunteers organizing a food drive for immigrants too afraid to go outside.

“We’re very focused on being out there and reporting on the ground,” Vaqueiro said in an interview. “Being close to our audience, that’s a big part of what we are doing at Noticias Telemundo.”

Another key to Telemundo’s momentum has been its commitment to the Spanish language.

Media companies a decade ago raced to engage young, bilingual Latinos by launching start-ups, including a joint venture between ABC News and Univision called Fusion that flopped.

Now Telemundo is the one with cool cred.

Call it the Bad Bunny effect: While the Puerto Rican artist’s Super Bowl halftime show in Spanish befuddled scores of viewers, millions of other fans, deeply proud of their Latino roots, were thrilled by his performance celebrating everyday workers.

“With Bad Bunny’s rise and the Super Bowl, it felt like a shift in values towards the Spanish language,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, Pew Research Center’s director of race and ethnicity research. “It has become a source of cultural pride … and it seems to be impacting the ways in which English-speaking Latinos also think about their identity.”

Bad Bunny performed the Super Bowl halftime show in Spanish in February.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

That increased affinity suggests that Spanish isn’t going away anytime soon.

“Our data has shown that Latinos say it’s important that Latinos in the future speak Spanish here in the United States,” Lopez said.

A slow build to a news leader

Telemundo’s rise was a slow build, coming nearly a quarter-century after NBC bought the network for nearly $2 billion.

Years of effort took root after NBCUniversal agreed in 2011 to spend big for the U.S. Spanish-language media rights to the FIFA World Cup, dethroning Univision, which had long televised the prestigious soccer event. This year, Telemundo is poised “to deliver the largest coverage in Spanish-language media history,” the network said in a statement.

It will provide live coverage for all 104 matches, including on the Telemundo and Peacock streaming apps.

Being part of NBCUniversal has brought other benefits, too, particularly as Telemundo’s main competitor, Univision, has struggled under a succession of ownership groups.

NBCUniversal integrated its English and Spanish-language news units at its television stations. In Los Angeles, KVEA’s newsroom is in the same building on the Universal lot as KNBC-TV Channel 4. The same managers run both divisions.

“All of these things have evolved,” said Millie Carrasquillo, a Hispanic media consultant and former Telemundo research senior vice president. “It’s an alignment of the audiences, an alignment of how technology is evolving — and also the way that news is being delivered.”

Telemundo’s national newscast, anchored by Vaqueiro, averages 1.2 million viewers, its largest audience in years.

But audiences, particularly younger ones, are less likely to watch TV news, so network executives have tapped the potential of TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to boost their reach.

On TikTok, Telemundo reporters broadcast live from outside the U.S. Supreme Court last week as justices heard oral arguments on Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship for babies born to parents who are in the country unlawfully. Telemundo featured live coverage of the traditional Easter egg roll at “La Casa Blanca” (the White House) and frequent reports about NASA’s Artemis II mission, which scored millions of views.

“Radio and television hasn’t gone away,” said Mari Castañeda, University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Commonwealth Honors College dean. “But Telemundo has recognized that [cellphones] are where most of their audience is located and they leaned into that.”

Social media posts are easy to share, serving as a viral expansion of the network’s audience.

“Telemundo has emerged as a leader because it has modernized,” added Castañeda, a native of La Puente in Los Angeles County.

The U.S. Latino population nearly doubled between 2000 and 2024, rising from 35 million to 68 million, according to the Pew Research Center. Since the Great Recession, the growth has largely come from U.S. births, and the median age of U.S.-born Latinos is about 21.

The trend line bent during the Biden years as U.S. births roughly equaled the arrival of immigrants, Lopez said.

“Immigrants are still a very large part of the Latino story,” he said.

Noticias Telemundo anchor Julio Vaqueiro talks to a child living in a makeshift migrant camp along the Rio Grande near the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso border on Feb. 28, 2024.

(Telemundo)

‘This is a country we really love’

Telemundo’s brightest star — Vaqueiro — was born in San Juan del Río, north of Mexico City and came to the U.S. when he was 26 with his wife, who was also born in Mexico.

“We have three American kids,” Vaqueiro said. “All we know as a family is the U.S. This is a country that we really love and we’re grateful to it.”

In many ways, Vaqueiro’s journey is the story of U.S. Latinos.

“He’s Mexican but he’s also a U.S. Latino and he understands the context and issues that communities are feeling,” said Castañeda. “There’s a sense of authenticity and care that comes through.”

Vaqueiro wrote a book, “Río Bravo. México, Estados Unidos y el regreso de Trump, (Rio Grande: Mexico, the United States, and the Return of Trump),” to explore the political mood during a period of tumult and often tense relations between the countries.

Telemundo strives to stay out of the political fray, Garcia said.

“We don’t think about politics,” Garcia said. “We cover what is happening within our community, and now more than ever, we are on top of our community’s stories.”

Vaqueiro added: “We have to be very careful reporting the facts and verifying every information that comes to us.”

Political divisions course through Latino communities, including in South Florida where Telemundo is headquartered.

“We’ve always known that Latinos are not a monolith,” Vaqueiro said. “This is a complex community that is constantly growing. It’s diverse: geographically, culturally and generationally.”

Interest in news has swelled since Trump began his second term. Ratings are also up for ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir,” which is drawing 8.4 million viewers per telecast this season, outpacing NBC, Fox News and CBS.

In national news, Univision still tops Telemundo. In local news, Telemundo’s KVEA has continued to build on its lead this year, although KMEX remains competitive and Disney’s KABC remains dominant among English-language stations.

“I just hope that we meet the moment,” Vaquerio said. “This is a critical moment for Latinos who are navigating very difficult times under a lot of pressure.”

He has another goal, too.

“I want to lift Latino voices who are moving forward — opening new businesses and graduating from college,” Vaqueiro said. “I want to talk about the positive side of this community that brings huge contributions to the United States.”

You know the political silly season is upon us when campaigns start to make fools of themselves trying to court Latino voters.

In the Los Angeles mayoral race, that moment kicked off last week.

On Friday, a social media account called Latinos Por Pratt released an AI-animated music video praising the mayoral candidate and former reality television star Spencer Pratt. It starts with a fit, sunglasses-wearing Pratt rolling a trash bin brimming with detritus and Mayor Karen Bass past a crowd of cheering Angelenos. The Hollywood sign looms in the background as the title “Spencer, Saca La Bassura” flashes on the screen — Spencer, Take Out Trashy Karen, with “Bassura” a play on the mayor’s last name and the Spanish word for “trash.”

Cut to scenes of Bass playing tourist on her infamous trip to Ghana while the Palisades burn. Splice in Pratt dancing with his wife, Heidi Montag, onstage at a street party where onlookers wave a Mexican and a U.S. flag. And because L.A.’s Latino majority is overwhelmingly of Mexican descent, the thing was anchored by a peppy accordion, dramatic guitar plucks and a bold tuba, right? Right?

Uh, no.

Lyrics such as “Latinos for Pratt we’re singing / Because we’re tired of this dirty beat” play over brassy salsa rhythms that are more Miami and Cuban than L.A., where Latinos are mostly of Mexican and Central American heritage and the soundtrack of the city — corridos tumbados, cumbias, Latin rock and pop — reflect that.

That didn’t stop clueless, mostly non-Latino Pratt fanboys and fangirls from going gaga over it online. Nor did it stop Bass from joining in the we-need-Latino-voters fiesta.

Soon after the video was released, a group called Latinos Con Bass brought out big-name speakers to Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Heights — state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles), Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights head Angélica Salas, Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta — so they could pledge support for the incumbent with all the dutifulness of doctors reminding people to take their flu shot. Bass greeted the crowd with a peppy “¡Sí se puede!” — the standard Latino politico rallying cry for decades but one that’s not so kosher right now given its association with César Chávez, the legendary labor leader whom a New York Times investigation recently revealed to have sexually assaulted teenage girls.

Latinos Con Bass came off as a bunch of establishment types sticking up for one of their own instead of anything organic. But at least we know the track record of those involved. Latinos Por Pratt seems to be just one guy: Adrian E. Alvarez, a Cuban American whose online profile says he splits his time between the Miami area and L.A. If the lawyer by trade — who didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment — was really serious about winning Latino votes for his guy, he would’ve commissioned a corrido instead of a salsa tune. The Mexican ballad form has been trotted out by Angelenos for decades for everything from the tragic deaths of Robert F. Kennedy and Kobe Bryant and his daughter to the capture of sundry narco lords.

Those songwriters got it. Alvarez’s diss track doesn’t. And his use of Cuban Spanish on social media to promote it — carajo, fajame, mi gente — in place of Mexican Spanish equivalents such as güey, éntrale and raza sounds like a guy who doesn’t know South L.A. from South Beach.

But to dismiss “Spencer, Saca La Bassura” as an inauthentic joke is to miss what it says about this political moment. In a year when Latinos nationwide will make or break the Democrats’ effort to win back Congress, they’ll play an even more crucial role in L.A.’s mayoral race.

And it’s the Bass campaign that needs Latinos more than any of her opponents — because there’s no guarantee she’ll get them.

Then-L.A. mayoral candidate Karen Bass, center, is flanked by pioneering farm labor leader Dolores Huerta, left, and former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, right, during a 2022 campaign event in Mariachi Plaza.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll released last month and co-sponsored by The Times revealed that 56% of likely voters view the mayor unfavorably, the only candidate to have a majority of those surveyed look negatively on her. She’s the top choice among Latinos — 29%, compared with Pratt’s 16%. But 27% of Latinos remain undecided about whom they want as mayor, the highest percentage of any ethnic group.

Pratt has some name recognition among Latinos as a C-list celebrity, but he’s also a registered Republican who thinks L.A. should coordinate with the Trump administration’s deportation leviathan, a position that’s as popular among Angelenos as rooting for the San Diego Padres. That obviously presents an opportunity for Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who’s running for mayor to the left of Bass — if she can smartly seize it. But Raman represents a district with one of the lowest Latino populations in the city and has yet to make a name for herself across town — no wonder the Berkeley poll found just 9% of Latinos favored her, trailing even Presbyterian pastor Rae Huang.

Those shortcomings should give Bass — whose children are Mexican American and who has worked alongside Latino L.A.’s political establishment for nearly her entire political career — an advantage among Latinos. But all that star wattage didn’t win her the Latino vote four years ago against Rick Caruso. And L.A.’s biggest problems during the mayor’s first term — homelessness, beat-up streets, busted streetlights, President Trump’s immigration deluge — unduly affected the Latino areas of L.A. Even the inferno that engulfed the Palisades led to the loss of thousands of jobs for the nannies, house cleaners and gardeners that kept the neighborhood as pristine as it was.

Bass’ campaign will trumpet all of her supposed accomplishments and trot out endorsements as it did at the Plaza de la Raza event, but she lost the narrative of a healthy L.A. a long time ago.

Pratt — who doesn’t seem to know Los Angeles besides the Westside and television studios — will have to do far more than Bass and Raman to attract Latinos. But by repeatedly referring to the mayor as “Karen Bassura” — a juvenile, obvious insult that nevertheless sticks once you hear it — he’s at least making Spanish a far more constant part of his campaign than his rivals. And Alvarez’s music video, as silly and un-L.A. as it is, speaks to an enthusiasm among at least one Latino Pratt supporter that will most likely remain catchier and more inspired than anything the Bass and Raman campaigns come up with.

That reality seems to have already made Bass blink. She responded to “Spencer, Saca La Bassura” on social media a few days later with a photo of people at her Plaza de la Raza rally holding “Latinos Con Bass” signs with the caption “Latinos Con Bass > Ai Latinos.” It was meant as a political flex but came off as insecure posturing. Meanwhile, Latinos Por Pratt just released a teaser for another video, this time featuring Pratt as Batman carting out a clown-faced Bass and Raman as the villainous Two-Face.

Playing, again, to salsa. That’s weak sauce. Can someone try to really get Latino L.A.?

I promise: Sí se puede.

Stu Spencer, guru of political gurus, towed three old Latino buddies to the side at his annual holiday party. “Here, listen to these guys,” he said. “You don’t need to quote me.” Minutes later he returned with another, and then another. “They’ll tell ya. . . . Hey Manuel, don’t talk his ear off.”

Manuel Hidalgo, 67, East Los Angeles attorney. Frank Veiga, 59, East Los Angeles mortician. Albert Zapanta, 55, executive vice president of the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce. . . .

All had one thing in common besides their Mexican ancestry. They’re lifelong California Republicans who are disenchanted with their party. Not just disappointed and discouraged, but downright disgusted.

“I like the [Republican] philosophy, but they don’t like me,” Hidalgo said. “I like ‘em, but I can’t go to the party.”

Zapanta: “The party has too much of a bigot streak in it. And that’s 25 years of Republican activism talking.”

They’ve been working up to this point for years. Proposition 187 pushed them to the edge. Proposition 209 was one more boot. In their view, the policies were bad enough–taking public services from illegal immigrants and dismantling race-based affirmative action. Much worse was the politics.

“187 was racist, bigoted,” said Veiga. “Who’d you see in the ads?”

Not Russians or Asians, he and his friends noted. TV viewers saw Mexicans streaming across the border and were told, in ominous tones, that “they keep coming.” Latinos–even third-generation Americans–saw Republican fingers pointed at them. This year, again, GOP ads pointed to brown skins.

And Latino fingers pointed back–particularly at Gov. Pete Wilson, the wizard of wedge.

“We’ve lost a lot of respect for him,” Veiga said. Added Zapanta: “Pete’s a big boy. He knows what he’s doing.”

*

Playing the race card?

“Pete does not play the race card,” Spencer insisted. “He just got to the point where he believes [the policy].”

Spencer has been a Wilson loyalist for 30-plus years. He won’t criticize him personally. But he does think that the governor’s 187 ads, in the heat of a reelection campaign, “scared the hell out of” Latinos. “The fallout’s going to be around for awhile.”

In fact, Spencer said the dubious duo of 187 and immigrant bashing by conservatives nationally could drive Latinos away from the GOP en masse–just as blacks aligned solidly with Democrats during FDR’s New Deal and, later, the civil rights movement.

Rather than pushing punitive 187, asserted the guru and his Latino buddies, the GOP merely should have attacked President Clinton for neither enforcing the border nor reimbursing the state for its illegal immigrant costs.

Republicans paid the price in last month’s elections. How much of that price is directly attributable to the state ballot props and the Buchanan-style immigrant bashing is only speculative. But clearly it’s substantial.

We do know, according to The Times’ exit polling, that the Latino slice of the California vote jumped 43% between 1992 and 1996, to 10% of the total. In 1992, 51% of Latinos voted for Clinton; this year, 75% did.

Latinos apparently tipped the balance in several legislative and congressional races. A record 14 Latinos were elected to the Assembly, which then elected its first Latino speaker, Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno).

Bustamante attended Spencer’s party Tuesday night.

*

Pundits and pols everywhere have been expounding on the growing muscle of Latinos. But Spencer has been doing it for decades, mostly to plugged ears.

Although he could steer Ronald Reagan to the governor’s office and the White House and help elect countless other candidates, Spencer has struck out trying to persuade Republicans to focus on Latinos.

“I keep losing every battle,” he lamented. “They don’t get it.”

Spencer, 69, cut his political teeth in East L.A. in the 1950s, organizing Mexican Americans for the party. In the early ‘60s, he opened a community “service center”–precursor to a would-be political machine–and “handed out goodies” like free polio shots. But the GOP shut it down when he left.

“We never have taken advantage of our patronage–judgeships, commissions. You’ve got to get people active and reward them. You’ve got to look at the figures and see that the future of this state is going to be determined by Mexicans. We don’t have to change our basic message–get government off our back, low taxation, family values. . . .

“But I’m past that point. There’s got to be a young Stu Spencer out there somewhere who understands it.”

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.

Somewhere in between stands the story of us.

An eerie silence had settled.

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.