Unión del Barrio statement regarding the crimes & corruption of Cesar Chavez.
Unión del Barrio condemns the unpardonable crimes and corruption of Cesar Chavez. Furthermore, we recognize the profound bravery of the survivors who came forward to tell their accounts of violence and abuse. By speaking the truth, these mujeres have not only confronted injustice, but also opened a dignified path of individual agency and healing for every woman and girl who still suffers in silence. From a place of respect and because we believe them, for the time being, we will not make public comments regarding Chavez’s behavior. Our intention is to provide space for living survivors to work through these traumatic experiences. We will redirect all public commentary requests to Chavez’s foundation and the UFW.
Unión del Barrio also denounces those people who knew these truths but decided to hide and thereby enable these unpardonable crimes, especially those committed against children. It’s likely that there are a good number of people still alive today who were aware of what was happening and willfully conceal/ed evidence of these behaviors for decades. Even if their identities remain hidden indefinitely, we know that history will judge them as well. We must learn from these moments and do everything possible to rectify the historic contradictions that have and continue to impact our movimiento. No movement is protected by covering up for abusers and pedophiles. These issues also reflect deeper problems rooted in colonial-patriachical conditioning, which fosters individualistic, harmful, and exploitative behaviors that have historically been used to maintain power over others, particularly women and children.
We should not follow the tendency to make rushed public statements that seek to establish degrees of moral or political purity. Instead, we will listen to our members, the majority of whom are mujeres, and we will listen to our people. Based on recent revelations directly from his victims, Unión del Barrio agrees with the removal of Chavez’s name and image from holidays, murals, monuments, streets, schools, and all related forms of public art and commemorations. Furthermore, we do not support elevating other individuals in past or current UFW leadership to name public spaces. We do support highlighting the tens of thousands of farmworkers, organizers, and volunteers who built a global movement in defense of working-class Raza. Unión del Barrio will also remove Chavez’s image from the few instances where it appears in our organizational materials.
Unión del Barrio’s Political Program states the following:
“Raza women’s absolute economic, political, and social self-determination are fundamental to any revolutionary organization and conscious social movement. Revolutionary examples from people’s struggles in Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, México, Nicaragua, and Vietnam educate us that women’s liberation is essential to national and class liberation. Unión del Barrio insists that without the full participation and leadership of revolutionary women, there will be no victory in the revolutionary struggle.
“In its current form, the capitalist and colonial imperialist global order survives on a pedestal of unrestrained patriarchy and misogyny. As a result, women across the globe experience the most terrible repression imaginable. Rape and other forms of gendered violence are deployed as weapons and commodities to impose psychological control over communities through fear, trauma, and terror. On an unprecedented global scale, women workers in hospitality, janitorial, agricultural, and manufacturing industries experience some of the highest levels of sexual harassment, assault, and labor exploitation. Within the United States, gendered repression of Raza women is most clearly seen when employers terrorize undocumented women with threats of deportation when these mujeres resist their exploitation.
“We must work to crush all forms of oppression and reactionary tendencies. We must defend ourselves and our communities from white supremacist attacks. We will not allow anyone to inflict more trauma upon our community. We will challenge pervasive patriarchal tendencies in our communities that are rooted in backward cultural and religious traditions. Sexism and male chauvinism are bourgeois traits that must be completely rejected and overturned for any of us to win freedom. We must actively combat sexism in all its forms and manifestations, both within our movement and throughout our communities.
“Our struggle is part of a global struggle of bold and resilient mujeres who are leading the charge to dismantle and destroy the source of our collective subjugation – capitalist imperialist white supremacy, and its exploitation of our bodies and our land. As members of Unión del Barrio, we are working to build a revolutionary party that advances our interests of justice, self-determination, and freedom. We affirm that all people deserve the right to make dignified decisions over one’s body, sexuality, and the health of their families and communities. We demand absolute economic, political, cultural, and social equality because true liberation cannot take place until all sectors of la Raza are free. At the center of our struggle for self-determination is the ability of women to self-determine their own futures, and we measure our success towards achieving liberation by how much women can make autonomous decisions over their bodies.”
As a people and as a movement, we should not feel as though we are collectively responsible for Chavez’s unpardonable behaviors. One individual’s actions do not define a movement, and they never will. Chavez played a central role in organizing a transformative mass-based farmworkers movement, but he was neither a saint nor a superhero who built it on his own. Anyone who attempts to individualize the qualities of the movement while, at the same time, collectivizes the sins of its leadership is dead wrong. That type of attack is how the colonial state operates when it seeks to undermine and demoralize a movement. That is how colonizers rationalize colonization. Only collective accountability can identify and quash the reactionary behaviors of any abusers among us. Also, social media will not help people heal from these unacceptable actions; only daily barrio self-defense work on our streets actively defending against the ongoing attacks can be medicine for this type of poison. Instead, social media algorithms amplify rage-baiting to normalize the values and worst individualistic tendencies of celebrity and “influencer” culture.
As Union del Barrio, we are grounded in a collective struggle that rejects “caudillismo” and the elevation of any one individual above the people. Our commitment is to the leadership, dignity, and power of the community as a whole, where accountability, integrity, and liberation are built collectively rather than centered in a single figure. Within our organizational membership documents, we include the following:
“to serve as a way of defining what Unión del Barrio is, by analyzing and understanding what Unión del Barrio is not. We must keep in mind that each of these tendencies can exist within any of us, but the point is not to let ourselves be defined by them… Caudillismo – There are individuals and organizations that become politically dependent on a single ‘revolutionary leader,’ also known as a caudillo. A caudillo is a person who takes on almost ‘superhero’ status, and whose ideas and authority within an organization can no longer be questioned nor criticized. When caudillismo takes hold of an organization, the group then becomes a simple reflection of the strengths and weaknesses of the caudillo. For example, when the caudillo is sick, the group slows down, or when the caudillo is strong the group advances. If the caudillo makes an error, the organization will usually look the other way. Finally, when the caudillo disappears, the group usually dissolves. Caudillismo is a tendency that comes from weak internal organizational structures. When the basic tenets of Democratic Centralism are in place, it is impossible for caudillismo to take hold of an organization because there are always larger collective bodies that maintain more authority than any individual.”
The first and primary requirement for Unión del Barrio membership is to accept our political program. Precisely because of our political convictions and the seriousness of the unceasing attacks against our communities, we strive to build conciencia and integrity, holding everyone within the movement to a higher standard, especially our men. At this historical moment, when our gente are subjected to daily terror and violence, women and children should be safest WITHIN the movement. To achieve this organizational goal, we first recognize that no movement organization, including Unión del Barrio, is immune to abusive behaviors against women. Consequently, we must be intentionally vigilant and maintain practices like criticism/self-criticism, collective accountability, and anti-caudillismo. We must also maintain internal structures such as our Comisión Nacional de la Mujer and community-facing statutory policies, such as what we have copied at the end of this statement, with the goal of learning how to govern ourselves and not replicate the tendencies of the exploitative colonial state and its abusive, rage-baiting culture.
The movimiento does not need caudillos, iconic heroes, or saints. We do need our people to get organized, block by block, house by house. Just look at what has been happening the last few years – not one statue of Chavez has protected us from heavily armed masked goons; – not one street named after Chavez has spared us while they smash our windows and drag us from our cars; – no school named after the man has offered our people sanctuary. It has been the people’s resistance, their organizations, their collectives, and their organized community patrollers who have defended us. Unión del Barrio was founded precisely as a rejection of the caudillismo demonstrated by Chavez within the farmworkers movement – anti-caudillismo was and remains our primary take-away during our 45-year commitment to build “an organization of organizers.” Had farmworkers been organized under the principles of collective accountability rather than caudillismo, they would have been more likely to hold him accountable decades ago when he was still alive.
Unión del Barrio never elevated Chavez to a position higher than an important leader of the farmworkers movement. For our organization, he was never a saint, and we must clearly distinguish our position in this regard to contribute politically to the current resistance movement for barrio self-defense. We issue this statement as an organization born of the Chicano Movement, and, as such, our history of struggle is partly rooted in the farmworkers’ struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. More importantly, we issue this statement as a movimiento organization that is still actively fulfilling a leadership role in defending our barrios in the present. Consequently, we prioritize what we see as the implications these recent reports may have on our struggle in 2026 and into the future. As Unión del Barrio, we believe our movement should be grounded in the revolutionary practices of Democratic Centralism, united through political clarity, discipline, and protracted liberation struggle. Chavez did not represent these principles when he was alive, and his revised legacy will now disqualify him from inspiring future generations to struggle.
Political people should know that Chavez never claimed to be a part of any movement throughout his life. He turned the UFW against gente sin papeles, publicly supported reactionary movements around the world, such as Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and was closer to the Democratic Party than the Chicano Movement of his time. Unión del Barrio never accepted Chavez’s sanctification, and in 1993, we were criticized when we published an obituary that critiqued his decision to turn away from organizing farmworkers to align the union with hispanics and colonial democrats. Today, more than ever before, we need organized, militant farmworkers to join the active self-defense of our communities from colonial state repression; instead, we have statues, plaques, and street signs. Farmworkers are worse off today than they were 30 years ago, especially female farmworkers who now make up a significant percentage of the farmworker labor force and who are constantly subjected to abuse and exploitation.
Precisely because our communities are still being victimized by abusers and pedophiles, we call upon all people, and working-class Raza in particular, to organize and resist the current attacks against our gente. We must unlearn colonial ways of being that cause harm to the very people we have a duty to defend and protect. The people are the only ones we fight for. The people are those we must defend no matter what. The people are those we must be ready to sacrifice for. Individual leaders come and go. The people remain. Unión del Barrio is for the people.
La Comisión de la Mujer on behalf of the Comité Central and the general membership of Unión del Barrio
March 23, 2026
All community members have the right to denounce any member of Unión del Barrio for poor practice. Any person – whether or not a member of Unión del Barrio – may present charges against a member. To do this, they must send the written accusation following the UdB chain of command, or to the Comité Central with the signature of the person making the claim, and any accompanying proof of wrongdoing. These accusations will be handled without delay by the corresponding organizational body. <comitecentral@uniondelbarrio.org>