This article was co-published with La Opinión, the leading Spanish-language news outlet in the U.S., and produced under the California Local News Fellowship program at the University of Berkeley.

When Jennifer Andrea Porras, a non-binary indigiqueer Coahuiltecan artist and cultural worker from the Bay Area, first found out about The New York Times investigation detailing allegations from multiple women accusing the civil rights icon Cesar Chávez of sexual abuse, they were not surprised. On the contrary, the news confirmed their own experience with the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. 

“I knew this was coming. I didn’t know how or in what direction it was coming, or who was speaking,” said Andrea, “but I knew because a comadre told me about the cancellation of the Cesar Chávez Day events, and she told me, ‘sister, I think it's going to be time.’” 

Days after the news broke, as cities across California worked to remove murals, rename streets, and remove statues of the late Chávez, Andrea was dealing with the rumbling and resurfacing of past trauma tied to the labor movement. 

While the news left many in shock and feeling disappointed, some calling it a “huge blow” to the Latino community, the brave testimonies of Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas have created space and a sense of safety that is now allowing other survivors of abuse to speak out. A point of entry for dialogue, action, care, accountability, recovery & responsibility. A reckoning that demands justice and that goes beyond the late Chicano activist. 

“This is really about survivors talking to survivors and those around them,” said Andrea, who is speaking out publicly for the first time about what they endured when they were brought into Chávez’ inner circle at his La Paz headquarters in the 90s. “And it's really about having caregivers, parents, guardians, having everyone be vigilant, and believing people, and kids the first time they say something.”

The reason Andrea is speaking out now is that they hope this creates positive change, healing, and dialogue within the Latino community, and as a way to end the hush-hush culture that exists within it. Andrea hopes that the wave of support and truth-telling rising from the investigation will change the “calladita te vez más bonita” mentality. 

“Believe children of all genders, believe survivors. This is also for the kids and other people who may be going through this right now,” Andrea added, pointing to the fact that abusers are still present in today’s movements, homes, and places of worship and power. “Those things stick with you over the years. My body still remembers, my cells remember, my bones remember.”

Andrea, now 53, was born in Texas into a family that has been heavily involved in the Chicano and labor rights movements, with much of their work with farmworkers dating back to before Andrea was born. 

When Andrea was 18, she was brought to live in La Paz, in Keene, California, the home and headquarters of the labor leader and the United Farm Workers, under the pretense that she would be an intern working as a field organizer for the union. 

“Looking back, I can see how my family as a unit was convinced that this was a Chicano dream, a safe and honorable space. Working for La Causa, along with our then family’s hero,” said Andrea about that summer. “The whole time he [Cesar] was figuring out how to get in my shirt, in my pants, how to force his mouth on me, and had me locked in my head that it was a place I could not escape.”

Like Murguia and Rojas, Andrea also grew up in the Chicano and UFW movements; her parents, Josie and Andy Porras, were longtime community organizers and public school teachers who worked in Texas and California school districts. The summer breaks would allow the family to often travel and work, serving and supporting campesino (farmworker) communities in educational settings.

In the 70s, Andrea's mother worked for Head Start in the fields in Stockton and San Jose. The program provided low-income preschool children with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional, and educational needs. Her dad, a syndicated columnist, also helped organize early conferences for Chicanos and Central and South American communities to help them explore and learn about high school and college education opportunities. 

“I didn’t know any other life than the movimiento (movement),” said Andrea. “I learned how to march before I learned how to walk, sitting on my father's shoulders or my mother's hips, raising my fist up high like I’d see everyone around me do.”

In a column Andrea’s father wrote about the first time they met Chávez, he describes his daughter as a child who was “painting her own version of the UFW eagle on the walls of child-care centers,” while other kids drew stick figures. 

According to Andrea, while her interactions with Chávez were mainly when she was 18, the grooming began when she was 16, after meeting him in Stockton at St. Mary’s Hall for the first time. 

The moment was documented by her father in a column he wrote about the experience, and later published on multiple platforms, including Hispanic Link and the then-LA Times Syndicate, according to Andrea. La Opinion reviewed a printed copy of the text. 

“My dad and I were hero-struck, completely in awe of the request to have me join the union at La Paz,” Andrea recalled. 

In the column, Andrea’s father recounts how tears of joy ran down his daughter's brown cheeks at the sight of Chávez.

“She recalled the many chats we had about respect for other human beings, the suffering of migrant children, and the reasons for the marches,” Andrea’s father said in the column, as Chávez approached her, asking for her name.

“I would eventually find out that the trust I had and expected to have from strangers and 'tios' or ‘relatives,’ who weren't, in fact, blood-related, but were ‘community relatives, was not always reciprocated,” said Andrea. 

According to this documentation, Andrea caught Chávez’ attention as she stood in the driveway with others while he was leaving in his car. At the time, Chávez was well into his 60s. 

“Cesar ordered the car to stop, and he called her name, ‘Give me your address and come visit us someday,’ he told her,” the column reads.

According to Andrea, her father and Chávez had spoken that day, during which her father disclosed Andrea's plans to pursue higher education in Sacramento after she graduated from high school. Chávez is said to have asked her father to send her to work with him during her first summer break of college. 

Andrea described the situation as Chávez mirroring a sports scout, and she as the athlete waiting to be recruited.

“My dad was ecstatic,” Andrea said, often taking a moment to pause and reflect as memories rose to the surface. “So it was a good opportunity in hindsight for me, for our family, who is in this movement, right?”

From Civil Rights Hero to Predator

From there, further attempts at communication began. 

“The next thing I know, Cesar is sending me letters from La Paz, to me, not my parents,” Andrea said. “‘Hi, how are you? It was great to meet you.’ But none of us thought anything about it at the time.”

Andrea admits that over the years, as a form of cleansing, they have burned some pictures, t-shirts, posters, and letters from those years in the movement. In return, Andrea can’t disclose in detail what the written responses to him were. But, they said that seeing the New York Times article that mentioned and showed proof of letters from other girls before them was a gut-wrenching affirmation.

“It was disturbing and like a knife cutting away all the old scars of abuse and secrets,” said Andrea. “The letters [to me] weren't constant, but they always said he really looked forward to my coming to California.”

It wasn’t until she arrived at Sacramento State University in 1990 that things began to escalate from friendly gestures to unwanted and unsolicited attention.

At the time, Andrea was a freshman and part of M.E.Ch.A (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán), a political, educational, and cultural organization and club on university campuses that focuses on fostering awareness of social justice issues affecting underrepresented communities. Things hadn’t yet escalated with Chávez, so she invited him to be a guest speaker. 

He visited, introduced himself to everyone, and asked Andrea to call him Tata in front of her peers. His visit was another attempt to get her to La Paz, and the first time she had seen him since she was 16. 

“He really wanted to talk with me about what I would be doing with the union once I got out of school for the summer,” Andrea recalled, consoling herself as she detailed what she could remember.

That same day, Chávez took then-18-year-old Andrea out to dinner with two other girls, with whom he traveled to Sacramento with. According to Andrea, he insisted on riding to the restaurant alone with her, while the two other girls took separate transportation. Once at the restaurant, he is said to have ordered vegetarian plates for all four of them.

“He said once I moved to the compound, I would have to become a vegetarian because our body has to be ready to fast, he said our body has to be clean cuz you have to be this pure machine for the union,” Andrea said. “They sold me this idea that I would have the experience of becoming an organizer; instead, I was told I would be his personal assistant and personal driver.”

“When I got there, Cesar said, ‘You are going to spend all your time with me,’” Andrea added.

Andrea said she vividly remembers when her parents dropped her off at La Paz, where she would live in a trailer with a woman who was like an aunt to her.

According to Andrea, Chávez introduced her parents and her to the entire compound, stopping at each department and office. 

“He said, ‘I want them to know you’re leaving her with me, and that she's part of our family now,’” Andrea recalled. “He made all my family feel so much love, and we were all clueless. If you look at the pictures, we are all smiling.”

Andrea said she does not blame her parents or hold any resentment towards them, saying they, too, were fooled. Something that is fairly common, in the U.S., 68.5% of sexual assaults occur at or near a victim’s home or at a “trusted” relative or friend's home. 

“The hard part was our parents not really understanding the very unsafe places that they would leave us at sometimes, with people they thought they trusted,” Andrea explained. 

The rest of the summer would consist of Andrea working side by side with Chávez, who asked that she drive him to his meetings with growers and to speaking gigs that involved long rides on deserted dirt roads. 

According to Andrea, things didn't escalate until the final month of her internship when she was asked to meet him after hours in his office, to teach her breathing techniques and pressure points.

“He would insist on the door being locked more days than not, and these breathing techniques and pressure points are where he would begin to fondle parts of my body that had no business in his hands,” she recalled. 

On most occasions when asked to drive him, she was alone with him in the car, in which, according to Andrea, he would ask inappropriate questions about her virginity, sexuality, and would try to fondle her on several occasions. She said he would also talk to her about how, in other cultures, young girls being with older men was considered acceptable. 

“From forced kisses, petting, to groping, that was the majority of what he would do on the roads. I had to be vigilant and ready to protect myself from his hands,” Andrea recalled. “Like how many times am I going to have to hit hands or push him away or yell at him ‘no,’ because it got to a point that I couldn't take it anymore.” 

For Andrea, this was not the first time she had been hurt by someone she trusted. When she was younger, she was sexually assaulted by supposed family friends. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 4 in 5 female survivors reported that they were first raped or sexually assaulted before age 25, and almost half were first raped as a minor, before or by age 18. 

For LGBTQ+ youth, the rates of sexual violence are higher. Nearly two in five LGBTQ+ youth (39%) have reported that at some point in their early life, they had been forced to do “sexual things” against their will or had been sexually assaulted, according to a 2024 study by the Trevor Project. 

Once Chávez’ physical advances surfaced, it triggered and set off her alarms.

Andrea remembers the day she had had enough. Often, they would be driving long distances to different locations before eventually stopping along the way to rest at what Chávez called “safe houses.”

“I went to the restroom, and when I got out, he was at the door, and he bumped into me on purpose, went into the bathroom, closed the door, and forced his mouth on me,” Andrea said.

“I said, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ and I ran out. I think it was already bad to be touched by him while driving, and a whole other level to have him stick his tongue and face on me.”

After a summer of enduring inappropriate conversations, fondling, and unwanted advances, Andrea decided not to return to La Paz. 

“I mean, I wanted to get the hell out of there. I was repelled,” said Andrea. 

“I have been telling people since this happened to me. I would just tell people, if you know of someone going to that place, you tell them to give me a call, keep your loved ones away from that place.”

According to Andrea, she recalls telling Chávez that she would out him, to which, according to her, he responded with threats. 

“He says, ‘you will never tell people because if you tell anybody anything, no one will believe you, and you will cause everybody's life to mean nothing, you will cause this movement to end, and for what?’” said Andrea, reciting what she remembers him saying at the time. “‘And if you don’t believe me, try me. Do you want me to hurt your parents? Everybody knows to leave me alone.’”

Andrea said that in the same year, on several occasions, she told people with close ties to the movement about what she endured, but some told her to keep quiet. From then on, she would only tell those she trusted after leaving La Paz.

“That’s why I want to talk about this now, because we have to listen to people the first time, and we can't question their sanity, why they are telling us, or questioning what we were wearing. We just need to listen to people when it happens,” said Andrea.

Several people La Opinion spoke with corroborated the accusations made by Andrea, including relatives, friends, and others involved in the labor movement who were told at different points in Andrea’s life about Chávez’s abuse towards her.

“I am only alive right now because of my son, art, and because of the black, brown, indigenous, and indigiqueer community who listened to me, who have held me, in times where I did not want to be here,” Andrea said. “For years I allowed myself to believe that I wasn't worthy of real peace, real happiness, or just anything good.” 

When the news about the accusations came out, Andrea said it was the first time in years that their body was remembering certain memories, smells, and details from that time, like the way the floors creaked in the housing at La Paz, and more. 

“It was very visceral, very gross,” Andrea said, physically showing discomfort at the thought. “Gross in that I felt I could taste and smell Cesar again, which I thought I was over ever smelling or sensing him in that way for a long time.”

When asked if what they experienced led them to stray away from the movement, Andrea said no. They always maintained their involvement to an extent while staying away from anything organized by Chávez. For Andrea, it was important to remain involved in the movement even after his passing, for the sake of the campesinos they worked with. 

As for Chávez' legacy, Andrea said the movement was never about him.

“I have chosen to hold on to the few special and unique relationships that came out of that time, who to me even today are my mentors, my friends, and loved ones, people that I consider my chosen family,” Andrea said. 

Throughout the years, Andrea has become a beloved member of their community, not just for their advocacy work in the Chicano movement but also for their artistry as an indigiqueer artist, which they have used to tell stories of murdered and indigenous women, raising awareness among other things.  

For Andrea, the last few weeks have not been easy; to survive, they have leaned on friends, family, prayer, and ceremony to heal wounds that have reopened. But they said the revelations have finally allowed them to lift the weight off their shoulders, and hopes others are able to do the same as they, too, speak their truth.

“It reminded me that life is worth living and that it wasn't our fault,” Andrea said. “The suffering that he has caused and the lives that he has curbed and everything we have lost because of what's been stolen from us, it ends here. It's now time to pull ourselves back together and know that we are better than okay; we are holy, we are divine, and we are sacred.”

“Let us love ourselves more, let us recognize our wholeness and self-worth to acknowledge ourselves as human beings that deserve peace.”