Three decades ago, I co-authored “The Fight In The Fields: Cesar Chavez And The Farmworkers Movement” with my wife, the journalist Susan Ferriss. The book accompanied a 1997 documentary by filmmakers Ray Telles and Rick Tejada-Flores that aired nationally on PBS.
For me, the project was an appreciation of what Chavez and his earliest partners, Dolores Huerta and Gilbert Padilla, had done for Mexican Americans and farm laborers in the United States. In 1975, their United Farm Workers union scored a landmark victory – the unprecedented right to organize field hands in California. For decades, farm workers had toiled in abusive conditions, but the new law ushered in workplace reforms and fueled civil rights activism by Latinos nationwide.
Because of the UFW, laborers like my own grandfather finally won protections – things many employees at the time took for granted, like health insurance, potable water and rest breaks during long days of arduous work. The documentary and our book chronicled the union’s hard-fought political and legal victories, and the difficult years when Chavez began to manifest a monumental case of founder’s syndrome that almost destroyed the movement. Most importantly, our project focused on the heroic work of a generation of farmworkers and activists who rose from anonymity to become community and political leaders.
Given this history, I, like so many others, felt great sadness reading a New York Times expose in March that detailed Chavez’s alleged abuse of underage girls and his alleged rape of Huerta, who devoted herself to the UFW’s quest to win the right to unionize and obtain contracts with growers in the nation’s largest farm state. One of the survivors, who described abuse as a girl, is the daughter of an activist featured in our book and who continued to devote his life to farmworkers until his death five years ago.
I’ve been asked by numerous journalists, friends, and PBS viewers about the scandal. I’ve not opined publicly, but my recollection is clear: In all my years of writing about agriculture and interviewing Chavez and the people closest to him, I heard no accounts of sexual abuse. Nor did I, my co-author, or our documentary partners see such allegations in almost 3,000 pages of released FBI surveillance notes about Chavez and the union. After what had been revealed in disclosures of FBI spying on Martin Luther King, I expected agents would have seized on potential sex scandals in the farmworker movement.
Eventually, I did hear unconfirmed, vague hints about Chavez or other union members that seemed like infidelity among consenting adults. But no one among the union activists, including some who harbored anger at Chavez’s leadership flaws, told us about alleged abuse of minors, even after we developed lasting relationships and friendships.
Phantom commentary
So why am I bringing this up now?
A friend reached out after she used Google’s artificial intelligence tool to see if I’d spoken publicly about the scandal. She reported what Gemini, the AI machine, gleaned from news outlets and social media.
Here’s part of that conversation:
Question: Where can I read recent statements by Ricardo Sandoval-Palos on the revelations about Cesar Chavez?
Answer: The most recent and direct place to read Ricardo Sandoval-Palos’s commentary on revelations regarding César Chávez is through his work as the PBS Public Editor. While he is a co-author of the definitive Chávez biography, The Fight in the Fields, his recent public-facing statements often address how modern media and public institutions handle Chávez’s complicated legacy.
Question: Yes, but I don’t see Ricardo speaking about Cesar Chavez on the PBS public editor site. Where else has Ricardo spoken about Cesar Chavez recently?
Answer: … Sandoval-Palos published a significant piece in palabra, the digital magazine of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. In it, he discusses the difficulty of reconciling the “saint-like” image of Chávez with the harrowing testimony of survivors. He argues that the movement’s successes—such as winning better wages and conditions—do not excuse the reported abuses … Following the NPR and investigative reports released on March 18, 2026, Sandoval-Palos has provided expert commentary to various news outlets. He has stated that while the allegations are “devastating,” they provide a necessary opportunity for the Latino community to confront internal issues of machismo and power dynamics that were previously ignored.
Interesting. But the trouble is that until this column, I’ve made no public statement about the sexual abuse allegations and Chavez’s rapid fall from the hero’s pedestal where he stood for decades.
The AI hallucinations about me mirror a similar problem of false attribution in a piece that appeared recently in the New York Times. This deepens my doubts about AI being a reliable source for journalists. I’m convinced AI will always need a human editor.
Meanwhile, it’s no scoop to report that trust in the media has eroded in this time of divided politics and culture. In all aspects of life, we seem to talk past and around people with whom we disagree. Current iterations of AI don’t help when they disseminate fiction as fact.
What also separates good, human journalists from the autobots is a willingness to make amends. We publish corrections and face consequences. We face the wrath of sources and story subjects who can sue for libel or defamation. But what’s the redress for mistakes made by Gemini or Grok?
A history rewritten
All this matters because, in the case of Cesar Chavez, we are witnessing the rewrite of what had been an inspiring history. As reported in our book, Chavez told us that the farmworker movement’s triumph was defeating fear: workers who’d been powerless were no longer afraid to speak up and demand basic rights. My hope now is that the Latino rights movement is mature and resilient enough to keep its eyes on the prize and not let the actions of one man, as horrific as they appear to have been, negate the gains of the last 60 years.
Toward that end, what’s arguably needed today is more clear-eyed, trustworthy reporting about what Chavez is alleged to have done, and what – and when – the union’s leadership knew about his behavior.
What’s not needed – but what’s dominated rapid-fire media accounts – are opinions of many based on their personal views of Chavez. This has led to a repeat of myths, like the idea that Chavez, Huerta and the UFW steadfastly viewed undocumented immigrants as the enemy.
Yes, Chavez tolerated some violent reprisals against undocumented field hands during farm labor strikes in Arizona and California. But the real targets of his ire were farmers who’d deliberately lured undocumented workers over the border to be strike breakers. In the decades since, the UFW has been one of the nation’s strongest defenders of undocumented farmworkers’ rights. The union lobbied for the 1986 law that granted amnesty to many undocumented migrants, and advocated for legal status for undocumented youths.
Chavez’s rapid fall from grace could also overshadow the legacies of many who were moved by the UFW to become leaders and change society’s view of Latinos.
One example: In the book, we profiled Eliseo Medina. An immigrant from Mexico, Medina joined the UFW in the 1960s as a teen farmworker in California’s San Joaquin Valley. He rose through the ranks to become Chavez’s heir apparent until a notable falling-out over Chavez’s increasingly autocratic behavior. Medina then joined the nation’s largest service workers union. In the 1990s, he used what he learned at the UFW to spearhead the landmark Justice for Janitors campaign and became an important voice in the drive for immigration reform to strengthen workers’ rights in the U.S.
It is that impact, that vital part of the Chavez legacy, that filmmakers RayTelles and Rick Tejada-Flores recalled in the wake of the sexual abuse disclosures.
“As you know, I worked for the UFW in the 70s,” Tejada-Flores wrote in an email to me. “I did that to help farmworkers and not because of Cesar. The people who I really respected and admired were the ones who organized and those who did all the hard work for many years. Without them, what the movement achieved would never have happened.”
In another email, Telles added: “Our film and the book are important historical documents which serve as essential resources chronicling an important part of American history. They are evergreen and provide a perspective on labor and the treatment of agricultural workers that hold an ever more important role than ever … If we look at the legacy of the UFW, we see that the union and the movement trained and inspired generations of activists and organizers that are still active today and doing great work across the country, especially in community and labor organizing.”
Statues are for the birds
Back in his heyday, Chavez once told a reporter that he didn’t want to be remembered with public monuments. “Statues are for birds to shit on,” he said. Amid the abuse allegations, Chavez’s flippant prophecy has come true.
There’s no reconciling the damage Chavez’s alleged abuses caused to victims, his own family, and now, to the trust we once thought we could invest in leaders who made history.
Al Rojas, a firebrand activist and father of one survivor identified in the Times’ accounts, told me before he passed away that there was more to the story of Chavez and the movement he led. I thought he was alluding to affairs and infidelity. Now I understand why he said he could not explain further. It’s hard to imagine the pain he must have felt knowing his daughter’s story, while holding on to the pride in the movement’s legacy that he often professed.
After all these years, I remain proud of the journalism I practiced in writing the book with my wife. I know Ray Telles and Rick Tejada-Flores remain proud of their documentary. (An updated film is in the works.)
The unfolding Chavez postscript is a reminder of what has driven me through 45 years of journalism: We must question authority. I mean all authority, official and professed. We must also hold all institutions to truthful account, no matter the consequences. But please, let’s do it through human-to-human conversation and authentic journalism.