Inside the cover-up of Cesar Chavez’s alleged web of sexual abuse: ‘Too big to fail’

New revelations about Cesar Chavez have turned the public perception of the labor leader upside down, and left onlookers wondering how the dark side of iconic labor leader stayed hidden.

A prominent Chavez biographer says his web of sexual abuse remained untangled and hidden because the movement, his foundation, and his United Farm Workers brainchild benefited from his positive image.

Author and Dartmouth University professor Matthew Garcia, who wrote “From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement,” said the labor leader’s legacy grew so large in the labor and Latino community that he became “too big to fail.”

As a result, his sexual abuse, of at least three women revealed in a New York Times investigation Wednesday, was set aside.

“Chavez became too big to fail, and the consequences are that these women’s suffering and violations were covered up oftentimes at the hands of the movement, and even the families that served it,” he told The Post.

Chavez took hold of the labor movement in the west during the 1960s and 1970s, and is considered the most influential Latino figure in the United States. During the same time period, he sexually abused then-underage victims Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas.

He also raped fellow United Farmworkers leader Dolores Huerta, who was known for her famous “Si, se puede,” phrase. The 95-year-old had never revealed her story, and Garcia, who had chronicled Chavez extensively, was not aware of it.

Huerta’s team confirmed to The Post that she never told anyone of the allegations, and feared going to the police or the union.

Garcia called Huerta’s allegations “earth-shattering.”

“It underscores something that I argued in my book in 2012…the movement was always bigger than Cesar and the hero worship that everybody participated in was detrimental to remembering the people that made the farm workers union great,” he added.

He said that Chavez’s foundation, now led by his son Paul Chavez, maligned him and the victims in order to get them to “shut up.” Garcia explained that Chavez’s foundation, motivated in part by the labor leader’s legacy and in part the financial implications, led the cover-up.

The foundation had been investigated by California for the misappropriation of funds, Garcia said.

But the allegations are out, and Garcia hinted that he expects more to come. The allegations will damage Chavez’s legacy and are damaging enough to possibly lead to the removal of his name from several monuments and from a U.S. Navy ship named after him.

Garcia sees it as a “day of reckoning.”

“A day in which the victims in particular are finally being heard and that’s really the most important thing here,” he said.

“And they had to do it over the objections of some very powerful people.”

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters