BUZZ
ANALYSIS: ‘Chavez regarded illegal immigration as an impediment to improving conditions for American workers, blaming them for the failure of United Farm Workers strikes and, at one point, launching a campaign to have illegals identified and deported’
Farmworker rights hero Cesar Chavez had one of the fastest falls from grace in recent history.
A New York Times report in mid-March detailed how the United Farm Workers co-founder is accused sexually abusing 13-year-old girls and sexually assaulting his union co-founder, Dolores Huerta.
Within mere days of the explosive report, universities across the nation took down statues on campus erected in his honor, covered up murals of the man on building walls, and renamed events that celebrated his achievements.
While cancel culture is nothing new in higher education, the incredible speed of Chavez’s erasure is somewhat unique. One scholarly group weighed in on why that might be.
Heterodox at USC penned a piece after administrators quickly stripped Chavez’s name from their campus that weighed the implications:
Many have remarked on the sudden speed at which Chavez’s erasure is occurring, especially since these accusations have purportedly circulated for decades. Certainly, given the seriousness of the allegations, it’s understandable people would wish to remove his name from their elementary school and city street.
At the risk of appearing insensitive, it’s also hard not to wonder whether the haste is also motivated by the wish to remove an ideologically problematic hero.
Chavez regarded illegal immigration as an impediment to improving conditions for American workers, blaming them for the failure of United Farm Workers strikes and, at one point, launching a campaign to have illegals identified and deported.
Such ideas are regarded as far right by many in today’s Democratic Party or other left-wing groups … Liberals have increasingly embraced a “Workers of the World Unite” ethos in the years since Chavez’s death. “No Human is Illegal!” is an omnipresent bumper sticker and protest sign.
Chavez’s place in the Civil Rights pantheon of heroes was rather awkward, for some, given that celebrating his legacy often gave airtime to his position on illegal immigrants. Now his demotion is allowing leftists to remove him from prominence. Democrats across California can rename annual Chavez marches and holidays to “Farmworkers Day” — making it much easier for illegal immigrants to be included.
We are reminded of George Orwell’s 1984:
Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘
It’s a good time to remind ourselves that all sorts of heroes and icons are flawed, including those of the Civil Rights Era.
Martin Luther King Jr. had numerous extramarital affairs, and probably watched a woman getting raped. Harvey Milk was in a sexual relationship (some may call it a case of grooming) with a runaway underage teen boy when Milk was 34. Gay rights activist Harry Hay, who is honored with stairs in Los Angeles, was an unrepentant supporter of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
Some universities have allowed controversial figures to remain enshrined despite similar protests.
At Fresno State University, for example, a petition in 2020 to remove a Gandhi statue from campus that stated the civil rights leader was “deeply prejudiced against all minorities,” took advantage of young girls, and used “nonviolence merely as a tool of political expediency,” garnered nearly 5,000 signatures.
But the FSU president refused. In contrast, however, Fresno State University removed a Chavez statue from its Peace Garden within days of the Times article.
Not all campuses have immediately renamed buildings or other ties linked to Jeffrey Epstein, either.
MORE: Harvard faces formal demand to strip billionaire Wexner’s name over Epstein links
