Three months after a bombshell story revealed César Chávez’s allege history of sexual abuse, a Barrio Logan thoroughfare previously named after him has received new signs.
César E. Chávez Parkway is now Chicano Park Boulevard, in a move reflecting local history.
The allegations of a long history of sexual assaults, including abuse and grooming of minors, first appeared in a New York Times investigation in March, and were corroborated by United Farm Workers fellow co-founder Dolores Huerta, who said that she had also been raped by him.
“Both sexual encounters with Cesar led to pregnancies. I chose to keep my pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, I arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives,” she wrote on Medium following the New York Times story.
Responses to the story were swift nationally. Statues were quickly covered or removed; signs were taken down; and events and celebrations were quickly renamed, including those connected to the federal César Chavez Day on March 31.
Locally, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria signed an order on March 20 directing city departments to immediately begin removing any references to Chávez from city buildings and programs.
The name change to Chicano Park Boulevard came after consultation with the Barrio Logan community. Marisa Aguayo, a board member of Barrio Logan’s planning group and director of the organization All For Logan, said in April that there is support for the new name.
“We at All for Logan believe this reflects the original vision for that area and honors the cultural and historical significance of Chicano Park. So we support this decision and whatever the community chooses,” Aguayo said at the time.
Chicano Park has been a local symbol of resistance to racism and overreach since April 1970, when the city of San Diego broke a longstanding promise to the people of Barrio Logan to build a park for the community and instead began to construct a California Highway Patrol substation in that location.
Residents rushed out to protest, forming human chains around the bulldozers and refusing to leave. Twelve days later, the people got their park.
The signs were covered by local activists in an official ceremony earlier this month. The city began officially replacing the signs Monday.
