Another myth has crumbled, decades after death extinguished the person but not the legend.
Cesar Chavez, he of United Farmworker fame, he of the marches and the documentaries and the hagiographic histories, has been unmasked as a man with the same sort of sexual proclivities as Jeffrey Epstein.
The New York Times investigation, among other sources, documents years of sexual grooming, abuse and rape of young women.
He is the Mexican Epstein, and if we are to believe the narrative, a monster.
It’s no secret that I have always been a skeptic about the MeToo movement that destroyed many lives, some with justification and some with misplaced vengeance and a sense of entitled victimhood.
I have been excoriated by colleagues, and at least one former editor, for defending Bill Cosby, because I didn’t hate him. It is not enough to condemn the bad acts of these men, you must also destroy them socially and reputationally. That, I will not do.
And I was crucified for not believing Christine Blasey Ford, who dredged up memories of some long ago incident at a high school party to become a hair-flipping attack dog for the MeToo brigade at Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination hearings. I didn’t believe her then. I don’t believe her now.
But I have come to the conclusion that we should just accept that human beings are flawed creatures, and expecting perfection is a recipe for delusion and disappointment.
While I don’t think Cosby was a rapist, it’s fairly clear that he was a lascivious hedonist who took advantage of his fame and his wealth to attract women who should have known better but were dazzled by his status.
Saying that will never be enough for the women who bare their fangs at any suggestion that we don’t “believe them” and that going alone to someone’s hotel room isn’t wise. But I no longer care what they think.
I do find, though, a bit of hypocrisy in the way we approach these fallen idols. Cosby was fair game for people on the left, because of his lectures to young men and women about being accountable.
He wasn’t going to allow them to use poverty and racism as excuses for acting crude, low class and for not even trying to succeed.
And that enraged the people who were invested in institutional victimhood, the folks who signed onto things like the 1619 Project and believed that slavery had simply changed its form, not its force in society.
It’s no surprise that there was a great deal of willingness to turn him into a monster. We modern day Aztecs needed our human sacrifices, and Cosby was a big one.
Chavez is far, far worse than Cosby. The icon of the farmworker movement is being accused of a form of predation that dwarfs anything that JFK, MLK, FDR or our more recent targets, Hillary’s and Melania’s respective husbands, allegedly committed.
It is worse than Cosby, too.
If what they are saying is, in fact, true, I hope that Chavez will be buried under the weight of his own sort of friendly fire, that being the testimony of his comrade in arms, his partner in the long march towards justice, Dolores Huerta.
Huerta is a legend in her own right, whose mural I passed by in Boise, Idaho, last weekend.
It was a reminder, before this scandal exploded, that she was at least as consequential as the man who gave his name to the movement of Chicano dignity.
And now, her own legacy is complicated by her actions. On the one hand, she states quite clearly that she was a victim of abuse herself, and then found out that her comrade in arms was doing the same thing to countless other women over generations.
She remained silent until this week, which is far from admirable. She allowed these girls to suffer the same abuse that she did, which is not Ghislaine Maxwell territory but does show an amazing lack of awareness that what was going on was evil.
She herself admits that it was done partly out of a fear that speaking out would damage the legacy of the Farmworker Movement.
That is unacceptable, no matter how you look at it.
On the other hand, I find some grace in her struggle. What I find truly honorable, is that when she became pregnant by Chavez, giving birth twice, she did not take the easy path of aborting her children.
She gave them life. She honored them, by allowing them to exist, when so many other women would have hidden the perceived shame.
We have been told that rape is an important exception to abortion bans, and a legend in the history of civil rights activism chose life.
That, to me, must be considered as a small ray of light in this dark, dark tragedy.
If what has been stated about Chavez is true, he should be remembered in the same way that we remember any predatory creature.
Let’s see if the admirers will do to him what they have done to the people who do not share their politics, and erase him.
I’m skeptical, but let’s see what happens.
In order to cleanse our minds of the dirt that once covered the fruit and vegetables of the many farmworkers who worshiped Chavez, let us focus, during this Women’s History Month, on Dolores Huerta, who showed enough courage to, if not speak out,at least let her babies live.
This article originally appeared in the Delco Times.
