How much longer will I be driving on Cesar Chavez Boulevard in Dallas? When will they return to Central Expressway South or the southern tip of Texas Hwy 75 that ends up on the Oklahoma border?
As you know by now, the New York Times dropped a big bomb a few days ago. Here it goes:
Ana Murguia remembers the day the man she had regarded as a hero called her house and summoned her to see him. She walked along a dirt trail, entered the rundown building, passed his secretary and stepped into his office.
He locked the door, as he always did when he called her, and told her how lonely he had been. He brought her onto the yoga mat that he often used in his office for meditation, kissed her and pulled her pants down. “Don’t tell anyone,” he told her afterward. “They’d get jealous.”
The man, Cesar Chavez, one of the most revered figures in the Latino civil rights movement, was 45. She was 13. Ms. Murguia said she was summoned for sexual encounters with him dozens of times over the next four years.
Recently, more than 50 years later, Ms. Murguia learned that a street near her home in the Central California city of Bakersfield was in the process of being renamed. City officials want to name it in honor of her abuser.
Cesar Chavez Boulevard.
Ms. Murguia and another woman, Debra Rojas, say that Mr. Chavez sexually abused them for years when they were girls, from around 1972 to 1977. He was in his 40s and had become a powerful, charismatic figure who captured global attention as a champion of farmworker rights.
The two women have not shared their stories publicly before, and an investigation by The New York Times has uncovered extensive evidence to support their accusations and those raised by several other women against Mr. Chavez, the United Farm Workers co-founder who died in 1993 at the age of 66.
Well, that's a big bomb, to say the least. It leaves many of us wondering, why now? Why did these ladies keep it to themselves all of these years? I don't know but someone needs to ask that question.
As we've learned over the years, men who engage in this kind of behavior create conversation, i.e. Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. No matter how much they want to keep it a secret, somehow the word gets out. That did not happen here, even though Cesar was active with lots of women who were volunteers in the cause. According to the article, the women did not want to tarnish the image of the leader. Wonder what some of these women got for providing, as the article again points out, "sexual gratification" to the leader?
My other reaction here is how quickly they are tearing down his legacy. Who is standing up for Cesar, a man who died 33 years ago? I thought that he had a lot of friends. Apparently not.
The article did reveal Cesar's romantic side. He told one of the young girls that he thought about her every time that the Flamingos song, “I Only Have Eyes for You,” was played on the radio. Romance always wins the girl, or keeps her silent in this case.
Honestly, the song that Cesar reminds me of is Bob Dylan's "Love is Just a Four Letter Word."
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