Inside the race to rebrand Cesar Chavez Day
Cesar Chavez Day is getting a new name.
Following a New York Times investigation detailing the late civil rights leader’s alleged abuse against women and girls, California has decided to rename Cesar Chavez Day, traditionally celebrated on March 31, Farmworkers Day.
Now the new name is gaining traction elsewhere.
In 2000, California was the first state to commemorate Cesar Chavez Day as a paid holiday, which honored the legacy of Chavez, who fought for the rights of farmworkers. Since then, a day of commemoration for Chavez was established in other places, and in 2014, then-President Barack Obama proclaimed Chavez’s birthday, March 31, as Cesar Chavez Day federally.
Chavez founded the union United Farm Workers (UFW) with labor leader Dolores Huerta in 1962, which led nationwide boycotts and pushed for pay raises for workers. Huerta was among the women in the New York Times report who accused Chavez of abuse, stating that Chavez raped and impregnated her twice.
Following the story in The Times, California lawmakers responded swiftly by renaming March 31 with a focus on farmworkers to commemorate the movement over a single person. Other states and cities are following suit.
Minnesota decided to rename the holiday Farmworkers Day. In Los Angeles, the day will be known as Farm Workers Day, styled with a space between farm and workers. To acknowledge the women and the alleged abuse they endured from Chavez, Tempe, Arizona, temporarily renamed the day Women Farmworkers’ Day and will decide on a permanent name at a later date.
Elected officials in San Luis, Arizona, where Chavez died in 1993, had a proposal to rename the day Día de los Campesinos, Spanish for “Farmworkers Day,” but not enough council members were present to vote on it when they met, so it will remain Cesar Chavez day for now. It will likely be the last holiday under Chavez’s name, according to the mayor. Meanwhile, El Mirage, Arizona, renamed the day El Mirage Day of Service.
The speed to rename everything named after Chavez is a sign that people listen to and believe women, says Dartmouth professor Matthew Garcia, who authored a 2014 book on the UFW under Chavez, and it’s spurred by outrage over sexual abuse against girls detailed in government files about Jeffrey Epstein.
“I think it’s all very appropriate,” he tells Fast Company. “What you replace these monuments and street names and building names with is another question.”
While the timeline to rename Cesar Chavez Day this year was set by the calendar, organizers, historians, and public officials looking to commemorate farmworkers and their labor movement by a different name down the line have another year to consider what to call it.
Garcia says he’s fine with the name Farmworkers Day in California, but he believes that specific communities should have the patience to consider other local leaders in the farmworkers movement to commemorate.
“It could be a very democratic process,” he says. “One of the things the farmworkers movement was known for was engaging with people in the community.”