In the mid-1970s, Ana Murgia and Debra Rojas were middle school girls carrying a dark and painful secret: Cesar Chavez, the revered union leader and civil rights hero, was molesting and raping them. Worse still, this abuse was happening in plain sight at the La Paz headquarters of the United Farm Workers (UFW). Tucked away in the isolated Tehachapi Mountains of California, La Paz was home to the main union office and intentional community Chavez hoped to build for the farmworker cause. Countless idealists and organizers congregated there to strategize and implement their grand visions for a more equitable world. But La Paz was also the place where staff, volunteers, and bodyguards caught glimpses of the abuse Chavez was willing to impose on young girls. They were there when Murgia and Rojas walked toward Chavez’s office to spend an inexplicable amount of time alone with him. Some of them were there when Chavez insisted that a young girl ride in his private car, join him on press and fundraising tours, and enter his motel room alone. But seemingly no one questioned or objected to these practices.
Murgia and Rojas carried the painful secret of their abuse for decades, revealing it only to their closest confidants. The girls stayed silent for fear that they, as “nobodies,” would be doubted, maligned, and discredited by Chavez, his cadre of followers, and the countless people who admired him. But in March 2026, the New York Times published their stories. The women’s revelations shocked the world, forcing people to reckon with the fact that a man whose name and image adorned street signs and neighborhood corners had groomed and violated middle school girls.
For decades prior, Chavez and the UFW had occupied a near-sacred place in the American political imagination. They were viewed as the moral vanguard of the farmworker struggle, the last great chapter of the civil rights era, and a powerful story of sacrifice and collective power. The UFW first made history by accomplishing what no other agricultural union had ever managed. They forced some of the country’s most powerful growers to the bargaining table and secured the first labor contracts ever signed in the agricultural industry. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 had made this endeavor nearly impossible. While the act extended collective bargaining rights to most industries, it explicitly excluded agricultural workers, meaning that employers were not legally required to meet with employees if workers unionized, called a strike, and issued demands. This legal disenfranchisement, coupled with local power structures, growers’ immense lobbying power, government-sponsored guestworker programs, vigilante violence, and systemic racism, made it immensely difficult to organize a successful union campaign. As a result, farm laborers were among the most politically and economically marginalized workers in the country. They often lived in self-constructed houses, pitching tents along ditch banks or settling in colonias, unincorporated land tracts that lacked basic infrastructure, such as water and sewage.