Zocalo Public Square, August 2026
Why is it that only in 2026 did the New York Times expose the patriarch César Chávez, who died in 1993 as a hunger strike martyr, immortalized in statues, holidays, and textbooks, for sexual misconduct, assault, and grooming young girls?
My research as a Latinx feminist scholar has documented how sexual violence isolates women, girls, queer people, and non-binary people of color. Perpetrators, and even allies, convince survivors of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment that their experiences are one-off incidents that can be dismissed—that survivors must sacrifice themselves for “the movement” or “the community.” This is part of a longer tradition; my work has documented sexual violence, and the silence surrounding it, in Latinx communities since the 1850s.
