"Cesar Chavez was never a squeaky-clean movement leader. I was once undocumented and I grew up knowing he hated the likes of us ('wetbacks' and 'illegals,' he called us). I looked past this because I felt U.S. Latinos needed a Mexican American leader to look up to. But the rape of women and children is not something any of us can look past.
"I often speak to high school and college classes, and when I ask young people what they know about Cesar Chavez, some identify him as a labor leader while others think he was a boxer, and a few even think he was a revolutionary akin to Che Guevara. Ironic, if you consider that Che Guevara, much like Chavez, was better at revolutions than he was at governing."
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