Cesar Chavez allegations stirring discussion about Utah streets named for the man

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Allegations of sexual improprieties against Cesar Chavez have drawn the attention of officials in two Utah cities with streets named for the man.
It's too early to say if the news will prompt them to rescind the designations.
Portions of streets in Salt Lake City, Ogden and West Valley City are commemoratively named in honor of the late labor leader.

OGDEN — Jesse Garcia, one of the first Latino members of the Ogden City Council, was a key moving force in naming part of 30th Street in the city after Cesar Chavez, the labor leader and Latino rights activist.

"He did do a lot of things for the farm workers as far as the rights and stuff like that," said Garcia, who himself comes from a family of farm laborers. "That's why I did that with the street name."

Now, revelations that Chavez allegedly sexually abused girls and women in the worker's rights movement he led have Garcia wondering. He's not turning his back on the man, not saying the honorary Cesar Chavez Street designation along 30th Street from Wall Avenue to Harrison Boulevard should be rescinded. Rather, he wants more information as the news, originally reported on Wednesday by the New York Times, is fresh.

"I wouldn't want to go ahead and just jump out and speculate until we find out the truth," he said. "Has it been proven? I don't know. If it is proven, then yeah, there's something wrong with that."

The Salt Lake City Council issued a statement referencing the news about Chavez, who died in 1993, indicating the body is in wait-and-see mode about future possible action. A portion of 500 South in the city has the honorary Cesar Chavez Boulevard designation, though the statement didn't specifically state that the future of the name is in question.

The council "recognizes the gravity of the concerns being raised. Any type of violence contradicts the values of our city, and we stand with survivors of sexual assault while respecting their voices," the statement reads. "We will continue to monitor developments and consider next steps as more information becomes available."

While city officials aren't jumping into action, someone responded to the Salt Lake City Council message, posted to the body's Facebook account, with an idea. "I hope a next step may be to consider changing the name of the street to Dolores Huerta Boulevard," the poster wrote.

Huerta helped Chavez lead his worker's rights movement, focused on Latino farm laborers, and simultaneous to the Times story on Wednesday, she revealed her own charges against the man. In a message on Medium, Huerta said she had once been "manipulated and pressured into having sex" with Chavez and, on another occasion, "forced, against my will" to have sex with him. Both encounters led to pregnancies.

A portion of 2320 South in West Valley City is commemoratively named Cesar Chavez Drive, the segment from Redwood Road east to about 1070 West. City leaders, though, have not debated whether the commemorative designation should be rescinded. The news about Chavez is just too new, according to Sam Johnson, the communications director for the city.

"With this information just coming out, we have not had a chance to review it or even set up plans for further discussion," he said.

Garcia, an Ogden City Council member in the 1990s and 2000s, spearheaded efforts leading to the Cesar Chavez Street designation along 30th Street from Wall Avenue to Monroe Boulevard in 2003. The council later extended the honorary designation eastward to Harrison Boulevard in 2018.

Accordingly, Rich Hyer, chairman of the current Ogden City Council, thinks Garcia ought to have a say in what happens. Whatever the case, it's too early to say if any changes are afoot, though some city officials have already started informally discussing the topic.

"It's really early, and we don't know exactly how it's going to unfold," Hyer said.

At the very least, Garcia, like many, seems troubled by the new allegations against Chavez.

"If that is true, that would flip me completely because no one should ever, ever take advantage of anybody in that manner," he said.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.