Another Cesar Chavez Survivor Comes Forward

In March, the New York Times published a story detailing two women’s accounts of the years-long sexual abuse they endured as teens by Cesar Chavez during his time leading the United Farm Workers, the nation’s first successful farmworkers’ union. After hearing Debra Rojas and Ana Murguia’s stories, and the sweeping efforts across governments to rename Cesar Chavez Day, another member of the UFW, Jennifer Andreas Porras, is coming forward with their story of being groomed and sexually abused by Chavez in their youth.

In their detailed account published in the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión and then translated and published in The Guardian, the 53-year-old Porras, who’s non-binary, shared their story, beginning when they were 16 after Chavez recruited them. Chavez began sending Porras letters coaxing them to visit him, and when Porras turned 18, they moved to La Paz to begin an internship with the UFW.

“Looking back, I can see how my family as a unit was convinced that this was a Chicano dream, a safe and honorable space. Working for la causa, along with our then family’s hero,” said Porras. “The whole time [Chavez] was figuring out how to get in my shirt, in my pants, how to force his mouth on me, and had me locked in my head that it was a place I could not escape.”

During this summer, Chavez would consistently get Porras alone behind locked doors, in his office, or in his car, where he would try prying intimate information from them, and insist that in some cultures, “young girls being with older men was acceptable.” Chavez’s obsessions grew into unwanted advances—petting, groping, and forcing himself on them to the point where Porras would have to physically push him off. Friends, relatives, and fellow comrades corroborated Porras’s story, according to The Guardian.

Porras’ account was also similar to Rojas and Murgia’s stories, both of whom said they were groped by Chavez in his office in their teens. Rojas also said Chavez had her stay in his motel room when she was 15, where he repeatedly raped her.

“I feel like he’s been a shadow over my life,” Rojas, now 66, told the NYT. “I want him to stop following me around. It’s time.”

“That’s why I want to talk about this now,” said Porras, “Because we have to listen to people the first time, and we can’t question their sanity, why they are telling us, or questioning what we were wearing. We just need to listen to people when it happens.”

Porras’s activism didn’t end because of Chavez, who said the movement wasn’t about him. They have since found a calling as an Indigiqueer artist, advocating for the Chicano movement and the Indigenous and Indigiqueer communities.

“Believe children of all genders, believe survivors. This is also for the kids and other people who may be going through this right now,” Porras said. “Those things stick with you over the years. My body still remembers, my cells remember, my bones remember.”