The venerable Hispanic activist Cesar Chavez is venerated no more. After the New York Times reported that he sexually abused women and girls, the union organizer was posthumously cancelled. States and cities announced they would stop celebrating Cesar Chavez Day and many streets and plazas dropped his name.
The sudden cancellation likely marks the end of attempts to turn Chavez into the Hispanic MLK. Some conservatives see something else at work here. They claim Chavez was a border hawk and imply the sexual abuse claims were a convenient way to get rid of an unreliable leftist icon. That’s the argument put forth by Mark Krikorian, executive director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, in National Review last week.
“Chavez really was a border hawk, because illegal immigration (and guest worker programs) really did undermine the efforts of U.S. citizen farmworkers to better their lot,” Krikorian writes. “And it wasn’t just some ancillary thing — fighting illegal immigration was at the center of his advocacy for American farmworkers.”
Krikorian says that the evidence for Chavez’s opposition to illegal immigration made him “ripe for cancellation.” He suggests, partly in jest, that conservatives should still try to turn the labor organizer’s birthday into National Border Control Day.
It’s a common meme for immigration restrictionists to point to Chavez as one of their own. The Hispanic activist did at times oppose illegal immigrants taking jobs from the farmworkers he represented. It makes political sense to claim a left-wing hero as an advocate for sensible immigration policies, to give the position broader appeal. That’s why immigration hawks are also eager to put forth liberal Democrats Barbara Jordan and Eugene McCarthy as prominent exemplars of immigration restriction. No one would call those two reactionary bigots.
But unlike Jordan and McCarthy, Chavez did not remain an immigration hawk. He came to embrace illegal immigration, and his one-time opposition was only concerned with the immediate interests of his labor union. When those interests changed, he came to see illegal immigrants as potential members of his union and defended them.
With his cancellation, conservatives can finally be honest about Chavez’s opinions. We gain nothing by pedestaling a child sex abuser as an immigration patriot.