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In 30 years, every column I’ve written has been about policy or politics. This one is personal. I’ll never forget, as a young political operative, how thrilled I was to meet the already legendary Cesar Chavez. And now I’ll never forget, as an older political junkie, how stunned and devastated I was to learn the secret history of years of sexual abuse that was buried with him.

For more than 50 years, I worshiped Cesar Chavez. My very first political activity was joining a farmworkers protest against buying California table grapes in front of the Safeway at 14th and Market streets in San Francisco. “Don’t Buy Grapes,” we chanted. And then the Farmworkers’ slogan: “Si se puede!”

In 1975, I was working for California Governor Jerry Brown when he signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which gave farmworkers the right to vote by secret ballot whether to join a union – and which led directly to formation of the United Farm Workers, led by Chavez. One year later, when Brown ran for president, busloads of farm workers, led by master organizer Marshall Ganz, showed up to campaign for him in every state primary he entered. I know, I was there.

I finally got to meet the great man himself at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, and was struck by how humble and soft-spoken he was. The next day, he electrified the convention with a speech nominating Brown for p resident. I met with Chavez several times after that. And in 1993 I attended his funeral in Delano, California, and took turns with others carrying his casket on our shoulders to the gravesite.

Cesar Chavez was my hero – until the New York Times this week released the sickening results of a five-year investigation showing that Chavez, at the peak of his popularity and power, used his position to abuse, molest and rape young girls, some as young as 12 or 13. Shades of Jeffrey Epstein! To his glorified record of historic labor leader, civil rights icon, Latino legend, family role model and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom must now be added one more title: criminal sexual pervert.

The news of Chavez’s secret life as a pedophile came as a blow to the chest. But the immediate follow-up came as a hard kick in the groin: a statement by 95-year-old Dolores Huerta, who founded the UFW with Chavez and Gilbert Padilla, and whom I got to know well, attended several political rallies with and have interviewed many times.

Huerta told the Times what, out of loyalty to the cause of justice for farmworkers, she had chosen to keep secret for six decades: that Chavez had also raped her, co-founder of the union, repeatedly forced her to have sex with him, and fathered two children with her, whom she secretly put up for adoption. “Unfortunately, he used some of his great leadership to abuse women and children – it’s really awful,” she told the Times.

It's all so unbelievably shocking. And the fallout, as it should, will be brutal. Schools, streets, parks and public buildings will be renamed, statues torn down, marches canceled, and the federal holiday created on his March 31 birthday by President Obama will soon no longer be recognized. Even the UFW, the union he founded and led, announced it would never celebrate his birthday again.

For all of us who believed in Cesar Chavez and what he stood for, it’s hard to process. We’d like to just remember all the good things he did, and forget the bad. But we can’t. Because that would not only be denying reality, but ignoring the suffering of those young girls whose lives he destroyed. We must accept the facts, condemn him for his actions and deal with the consequences.

The Cesar Chavez story is an all-too-painful reflection of the human condition. Good people can still do horrible things. Thomas Jefferson is one of our most celebrated founders, one of only two to have his own memorial on the Washington Mall. Yet Jefferson not only owned slaves, he raped Sally Hemings when she was only 14 and later fathered six children with her.

And now another once-upon-a-time hero has let us down. Which, if nothing else, should remind us that, while we do need heroes to look up to, we must also always maintain a certain level of healthy skepticism about everybody. We have never met the perfect person – and never will.

(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)

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