As she and Cesar Chavez made history, Dolores Huerta carried a shocking secret

In the pages of history, they were a group that changed the world.

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta founded the United Farm Workers and brought new life to the American labor movement, drawing national attention to the brutal working conditions and unaffordable wages faced by agricultural workers.

Chavez was a great leader. But Huerta was also a legend, an independent mother with a passion for tackling the social issues of the day – women's rights, poverty and racism. When Chavez died in 1993, he wore a dress that, at the age of 95, he still wears.

But for six decades, Huerta said Wednesday, he's been keeping it a secret.

In a statement, Huerta said Chavez raped her in the 1960s, something she kept secret until allegations surfaced in the New York Times that the labor leader had sexually assaulted two teenage girls in the 1970s.

In an emotional statement, Huerta said she felt “used and pressured” to sleep with Chavez the first time. Second, he forced her to have sex against her will “in a place where I felt trapped,” she said. Both encounters resulted in pregnancies, which she hid at the time. He arranged for the children to be raised by other families that “provided a stable life.”

Huerta spoke about his long silence on the issue, suggesting that he tried to put the movement and those who could benefit from it first.

“I kept this secret for a long time because building an organization and getting the rights of farm workers is my life's work,” he said. “The formation of a union is the only way to achieve and protect those rights and I would not allow Cesar or anyone else to interfere.”

The New York Times cited two women who said Chavez sexually assaulted them as girls in the 1970s and that some of his behavior was rumored within the UFW.

“The knowledge that he harmed young girls makes me sick. My heart aches for everyone who suffered alone and in silence for many years. There are no words strong enough to condemn the evil actions he committed. Cesar's actions do not reflect the values ​​of our society and our organization,” he wrote.

Huerta's upbringing in California's Central Valley greatly influenced the charismatic labor attorney he would become.

After his parents divorced, Huerta's grandfather helped raise him and his two brothers while his mother, Alicia Fernandez, waited tables during the day and pulled night shifts at the cannery. Eventually, Fernandez bought a small hotel and restaurant and often offered free lodging to migrant farmers and their families, according to a feature on Huerta in American Postal Work magazine.

Huerta earned a teaching degree from Delta Community College and taught English in the Central Valley. But he was fed up with the poverty he saw in his class and vowed to help in some way.

In 1955, he helped found the Stockton chapter of the Society for Community Service, which aimed to empower Latino communities by registering them to vote, organizing citizenship classes and advocating for equal rights and development in Latino communities.

He met Chavez in the late 1950s and in the early 60s they formed a union called the National Farmworkers Assn. Huerta recounts Chavez coming to his home in East Los Angeles in 1961 and telling him “we have to start a union. If we don't, no one else will.”

Chavez became president and Huerta vice president of this organization, which eventually became the United Farm Workers.

Although Chavez received more public attention during her career, Huerta was a tireless advocate and unique voice for women in the agricultural industry at a time when their needs were being ignored by male leadership.

A boycott of grape buyers under Huerta's leadership led to the California Farm Workers' Union Act of 1975, which paved the way for farm workers to form unions and push for better working conditions and pay.

New York Historical, a museum in Manhattan, described him in its biography as “soft-spoken and calm” but said that “behind his quietness was a powerful storyteller.”

In 1988, 58-year-old Huerta was hospitalized with a ruptured spleen and broken ribs after being beaten by police during a protest in San Francisco.

This incident and others made Chavez say this about Huerta: “I am not afraid at all, mentally and physically.”

He was open about the fact that he and Chavez sometimes clashed while leading the UFW.

Cesar respected me; I respected him. During his first fast, I told Cesar, 'I am very upset because I contradict you,' and he said: 'Don't ever stop. You're the only one in the organization that makes me stop and think,'” he told The Times in an interview.

“We were always together about what we wanted to do,” he added.

In an interview with the Smithsonian's oral history project, she spoke about the challenge of being a woman in an organization run by Chavez and other men. He said that when the union started, Chavez asked to be the main spokesman and he accepted.

“I think that since I've been in relationships with many other women, who should support men, I said: 'Oh, it's okay Cesar,'” she told the interviewer. But over time, she said, she fought to bring more women into leadership and tackle sexism.

She served on the US Agricultural Workers Commission from 1988 to 1993 and 10 years later founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a non-profit organization aimed at advancing social engagement, educational equity and health and safety in disadvantaged communities.

The nonprofit organization released a statement Wednesday applauding Huerta's decision to share her story.

“While we acknowledge the weight of this time, we remain focused, determined and motivated to serve our community with the same determination you have shown us,” the statement read. “His courage today does not change our path; we clarify it.”

Huerta said that over the years, she has developed a “deep relationship” with the children Chavez gave birth to and they are close to her siblings. However, he said, no one knew the whole story of how they got pregnant until a few weeks ago.

Huerta also has two daughters from her first marriage to Ralph Head, five children from her second marriage to Ventura Huerta and four children with her late partner, Richard Chavez. Richard Chavez is the younger brother of Cesar Chavez.

Huerta said that she had experienced torture and sexual violence before her contact with Cesar Chavez and at the time she believed that these were incidents that she had to endure alone and in private.

He never thought of himself as a victim.

“Now I understand that I am a survivor – of violence, of sexual abuse, of ruling men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to be controlled.

“I've kept this secret long enough, my peace ends here.”