A bill repealing César Chávez Day was awaiting Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ signature on the morning of the state holiday, which was Tuesday.
Hobbs, who previously canceled her plans to recognize Chávez, is expected to sign the bill.
The Arizona House on Monday afternoon voted to repeal, but not rename, the holiday that honors Chávez, the late Latino and farmworker rights leader. That followed the Senate’s vote to repeal the holiday. César Chávez Day takes place annually on March 31, but is not one of Arizona’s 10 paid holidays.
The move came after swift and bipartisan reaction throughout the Southwest to multiple allegations of sexual abuse and rape by Chavez, including from his longtime labor protest partner Dolores Huerta. Chávez and Huerta cofounded the United Farm Workers union.
In California, the Legislature on Thursday renamed the holiday as Farmworkers Day. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who immediately signed the bill, issued a proclamation Tuesday morning in recognition of the renamed holiday. “Farmworkers are the backbone of California,” Newsom said. The Democratic governor went on to note more than one-third of the nation’s farmworkers live in California, which produces one-third of America’s vegetables and almost two-thirds of its fruits and nuts. He credited farmworkers for helping California become the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Earlier this month, the Arizona Governor’s Office commented on Chávez.
“The Governor’s Office is deeply concerned by the troubling allegations against César Chávez,” Hobbs’ Press Secretary Liliana Soto said. “As a social worker who worked with homeless youth and victims of domestic violence, Governor Hobbs takes allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior against women and minors very seriously. The Governor’s Office has decided to not recognize César Chávez Day this year.”
On Monday, the Arizona state House approved the emergency holiday repeal measure HB 2072 by a vote of 48-8.
“The deeply troubling and reprehensible reports of sexual abuse brought forward by Dolores Huerta and others have made today’s vote necessary,” said Rep. Mariana Sandoval, D-23rd District, on the House floor. “I want to begin by recognizing the extraordinary courage by the survivors who have come forward with decades of silence … I want to reiterate that no one person makes a movement, the values that make us cannot be weakened nor divided by one person.”
The statewide move in Arizona comes amid widespread repeals in the U.S. of holidays and infrastructure in Chávez’s honor, most notably in the Southwest. Elsewhere, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said Cesar Chávez Park would be renamed, and Minnesota legislators repealed the holiday. Gov. Tim Walz, who signed the bill, declared Tuesday to be Farmworkers Day.
Unlike other name changes in reaction to the allegations against Chávez, the Arizona Legislature has fully repealed the holiday. The Phoenix City Council last week voted to rename César Chávez Day as Farmworkers Day.
Chávez, who was born in Yuma, Ariz., was widely considered a champion of Latino and farmworker rights during the 1960s and ’70s. Chávez led the farmworkers’ rights movement in California at the time, which famously included the 1,000-Mile March by the UFW.
The UFW movement Chávez led came in reaction to what labor leaders called low living standards and second-class citizen treatment for immigrants and farmworkers in California. The movement helped to win support for the Golden State’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, giving farmworkers the right to collective bargaining.
But even before the rape allegations, Chávez’s legacy ran into complications. Some objected to Chávez for not promoting the same labor protections for illegal immigrants or fully acknowledging the prevalence of Filipino farmworkers who protested alongside him. The revelations this month came from a years-long New York Times investigation that detailed allegations that Chávez raped two minors and Huerta.
“I am disappointed that this measure does not include the proposal put forward by our Senate Democratic colleagues to replace the holiday with Farmworkers Day,” Rep. Sandoval said on the Arizona House floor. “Failing to recognize, honor and uplift the voices of workers who feed this nation and to confront the exploitation they often endure misses an important opportunity to unite us around our shared values as a state … As Dolored Huerta coined, sí se puede.”
The term “sí se puede” or “yes, it can be done,” was closely associated with the farmworkers movement led by Chávez, but was originally coined by Huerta.
Latino rights groups have widely denounced Chávez, who died in 1993. Pedro Hernandez, California state program director for GreenLatinos, a Latino-led nonprofit for environmental issues with chapters in California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Illinois told The Center Square earlier this month that the revelations about Chávez could cause positive changes.
“As long as the process is community-informed and continues to uphold that it was a farmworker movement and there was more than an individual contributing to this, then I think we have a really interesting opportunity to change the narrative from a cult of personality to more of a people’s history and a people’s narrative,” said Hernandez.
