By David Courtland and Carlos Garcia
Oxnard’s city councilmembers will talk about changing the name of Cesar Chavez Drive at their Sept. 15 meeting.
The council will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. to give people a chance to comment on the name change, which Councilmember Gabe Teran asked for at the council’s April 7 meeting.
The street, which runs about a mile east and west from North Juanita Avenue to Gibraltar Street near St. John’s Hospital, was named for the labor rights activist.
Chavez was born in Yuma, Arizona but once lived in Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood for a time as a child in the 1930s and began his labor rights movement in Oxnard.
But Chavez’ legacy came under scrutiny after the New York Times published an article in March in which three women claimed Chavez raped or molested them.
Two of the women making allegations against Chavez were aged 13 and 15 at the time in the 1970s, and the third was fellow labor activist Delores Huerta, who cofounded the United Farm Workers with Chavez in 1966.
Huerta claimed Chavez not only forced himself on her twice in the 1960s, but that both encounters led to pregnancies that she hid at the time and didn’t discuss until the New York Times article was published.
“Cesar Chavez was a great man that did for farm workers what no one else have done. He fought for farm workers. We did not have any rights, no one care about us farm workers, everybody abused us. Simple said: We did not exist, we were ghosts in this country before Chavez,” said Miguel Fernandez to VIDA Newspaper.
“Now people say so many things about Chavez, he passed away many years ago, he is not here in this world to defend himself of these accusations, because that is what it is, accusations,” said Maria Jimenez to VIDA Newspaper.
The allegations sent shockwaves through the labor movement and reactions came swiftly, with many cities and organizations cancelling events planned around California’s March 31 state holiday, Cesar Chavez Day.
In Sacramento lawmakers renamed the day Farmworkers Day, and the UFW distanced itself from Chavez by dropping out of planned celebrations.
Oxnard’s city council withdrew a planned proclamation recognizing Cesar Chavez Day at its March 17 meeting, and Port Hueneme cancelled its annual Cesar Chavez March.
On Aug. 19 Cesar Chavez Elementary in Oxnard changed its name to Juanita Academy of Literacy, Communications Arts and Technology.
About three dozen homes and some small businesses would be affected by a name change. They were surveyed by city staff about the proposed name change.