The allegations of sexual abuse have been particularly painful for the small Imperial Valley city where the civil rights leader went to middle school.
Max Reyes, the son of Mexican American migrant farmworkers and the organizer of Brawley’s annual march to honor the fight for farmworkers’ rights, sits with a United Farm Workers flag in his living room in Brawley, California on March 25, 2026.
As damning rape and sexual abuse allegations against American civil rights icon César Chávez emerged two weeks ago, Max Reyes didn’t hesitate. The next day Reyes removed the labor leader’s name from the César Chávez Day march in the city of Brawley, an event he had organized for two decades. On Facebook, he renamed it the “Brawley El Movimiento March.” “For those of us who respected and admired César Chávez for his work in the UFW, these are sad times,” Reyes, the son of Mexican American migrant farmworkers, wrote on Facebook. “As accusations rise, we will respect the truth.”in mid-March that Chávez allegedly sexually abused the daughters of two prominent organizers and raped fellow civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the legendary United Farm Workers union. The allegations have been particularly painful for residents of Brawley, the small Imperial Valley farming city where Chávez lived as a teenager and where his wife, Helen Fabela Chávez, was born. Here, César Chávez’s name is memorialized along a central street. A painting of the labor icon is emblazoned on the east wall of the school he attended, Miguel Hidalgo Elementary School. “His history is intertwined with people who still call Brawley home,” Brawley City Council Member Gil Rebollar told KPBS in an email. “He is a part of our city's history.”A painting of César Chávez hangs on the east wall of Miguel Hidalgo Elementary School, where the civil rights leader attended seventh and eighth grade, in Brawley, California on March 25, 2026. Although Chávez is best known for his leadership during farmworkers strikes at Central Valley grape vineyards and the 300 mile-long march to Sacramento in the 1960s, he. Farms in the region produced tens of thousands of carloads of alfalfa, sugar beets and lettuce, along with dozens of other crops. Reyes, the march organizer, saw the farmworkers movement grow firsthand. His mother worked on carrot farms in neighboring Holtville. His father planted cantaloupe seeds and traveled north to work in the Central Valley’s grape and chili packing sheds. During the summers, Reyes and his siblings would join his father at work up north for a few months before coming back to Brawley for school. Mexican American farmworkers and other communities of color faced racism, harsh working conditions and violence. Reyes had just graduated from high school when strikebreakersChávez and other organizers sought to expose those conditions and uplift the Mexican American community. Many Brawley families rose to join their cause, Reyes said, organizing alongside Chávez or serving as bodyguards and chauffeurs. “There’s quite a few families here that were touched,” Reyes told KPBS last week. “So all these allegations came out — it was a shock.”Civil rights legend Dolores Huerta, 95, speaks at a rally in Los Angeles, Monday, June 9, 2025, calling for the release of labor union leader David Huerta, who was arrested during a protest on June 6. Chávez’s alleged abuse came to light earlier this month after Ana Murgia and Debra Rojas, the daughters of longtime United Farm Workers organizers, told the Times that Chávez abused them both when they were children in the 1970s.“The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual,” Huerta wrote. “I have kept this secret long enough.”. Many have excoriated the alleged abuses and removed Chávez’s name from schools, streets and buildings. Late last week, California lawmakers In Brawley, city officials are currently reviewing options for renaming César Chávez Street. Rebollar, the city councilmember, said they hope to have an open and transparent discussion with residents about the decision. “I think the bigger debate will be what comes next,” he wrote in an email. “Do we honor somebody else from Brawley’s history? What is the process of vetting an individual to ensure we do not go through this again?”A photograph of Cesar Chavez, the legendary civil rights leader now facing allegations of rape and sexual abuse, hangs in the library at San Diego State University’s Imperial Valley campus in Calexico, California on March 25, 2026. For Brawley, the allegations raise searching questions about how to acknowledge both the deep harm Chávez caused to the women he allegedly abused and the attention he simultaneously brought to farmworker communities like theirs who were exploited and ignored for generations, Rebollar said “At a deeper level, I also think this says something about men in power,” Rebollar wrote. “Sometimes people do real good in public and real harm in private, and communities are left to wrestle with both.” Reyes said part of that will be teaching a new history of Chávez. Telling the truth about the Imperial Valley’s past, he said, has always been his goal for the march. “We are not a cult,” Reyes said. “We won’t hang onto our leaders and their flaws, and try to protect them at all costs.”Kori Suzuki covers South San Diego County and the Imperial Valley for KPBS. He reports on the decisions of local government officials with a particular focus on environmental issues, housing affordability, and race and identity. He is especially drawn to stories that show how we are all complicated and multidimensional.San Diego Fire-Rescue Department to more closely track response times following auditKPBS keeps you informed with local stories you need to know about — with no paywall. Our news is free for everyone because people like you help fund it.Racial Justice and Social Equity
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