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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Moira Donegan

The legend of Cesar Chavez will never be the same after multiple rape allegations

Two men with hands at the base of a bust on top of a pillar outdoors, with the neck attached by a strap to a ladder
Workers remove a bust of Cesar Chavez at César E Chávez Park in Denver, Colorado, on 19 March. Photograph: Thomas Peipert/AP

Cesar Chavez, one of the founders of the United Farm Workers, who died in 1993, led a movement for the rights and dignity of a long-abused, neglected and exploited agricultural workforce. Through a series of marches, hunger strikes, boycotts and union drives, Chavez and his movement succeeded in winning crucial labor and civil rights protections and advancing the cause and status of the Latino civil rights movement nationwide.

He also, according to a new report from the New York Times, sexually harassed and assaulted women in his movement, and sexually abused and raped the daughters of some UFW organizers when they were girls.

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