Milwaukee Alderwoman JoCasta Zamarripa announced Wednesday that the city’s annual celebration would be canceled.
Following the bombshell New York Times reporting that César Chávez, the revered United Farm Workers founder and Latino civil rights icon, allegedly groomed and sexually abused young girls and women in the union during the 1970s, Milwaukee has joined the growing list of cities that are skipping or cancelling Cesar Chavez day events.
Two women, now 66—Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas—claim Chávezrepeatedly assaulted them, starting as young as age 8, while they lived at the UFW’s La Paz headquarters, including grooming and instructions not to tell anyone “because they’d get jealous.” The investigation also includes a rape allegation from UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta and is backed by interviews, documents, and corroboration from others close to the movement.
8th District Alderwoman JoCasta Zamarripa, who as a legislator tried to make César Chávez’s birthday an official state holiday, announced the cancellation and stated: “These women carried enormous pain for decades because they feared that speaking the truth would cost the movement everything they had sacrificed to build. That is an impossible burden, and they should never have had to carry it.” She also plans to discuss the future of Cesar Chavez Drive (a half-mile stretch of 16th Street renamed in his honor in 1996) with community leaders. The UFW released a statement saying it will not participate in any César Chávez Day activities this year. The Marcus Performing Arts Center removed its webpage for a related April 9 event.
The Marcus Performing Arts Center quietly deleted any reference to or canceled the 8th Annual César Chávez Celebration, which originally celebrated Chávez and called him “an unselfish advocate of social justice and respect for human dignity.”
