For decades, the land known as the La Unión del Pueblo Entero headquarters in the heart of San Juan, Texas, has stood as a symbol of hope, justice, and the collective power of our people.
For the last weeks, we have grappled with painful truths we learned about labor rights leader Cesar Chavez. When we heard the stories of survivors, we moved quickly to provide resources and space for conversations with our staff and membership. As an organization led by women, many of whom have been in this work for decades or a lifetime, we knew the impact this would have on our community. It was a moment that called on us to move intentionally, listen and learn from each other, and ground ourselves in our values of justice and hope.
To address this, LUPE is following movement best practices to keep our community safe, reduce harm, and ensure survivors of abuse have access to the resources they need. We took the first steps toward learning and healing through Healing La Causa.
First, we have established a confidential and independent process through which people harmed by Cesar Chavez can share their stories and, if they choose, participate in an accountability and reparations process. If you are a survivor and would like to confidentially share your experiences of sexual abuse and/or other harm by Cesar Chavez, you can do so at lupenet.org/healinglacausa. Survivors can seek assistance and dedicated resources, and learn about ways LUPE wants to offer support and healing reconciliation.
The safety of our staff and community is our highest priority. LUPE has safeguarding policies in place. We have conducted a comprehensive review of these policies to ensure they continue to reflect best practices. We are strengthening these measures by implementing additional staff trainings on safeguarding and safety. We will also provide ongoing educational resources for our membership to learn and explore important cultural topics such as machismo, patriarchy, gender justice, and safety within our movement spaces.
We are conducting a community-driven review of movement art and iconography. This will be done thoughtfully and in consultation with our members and the elders of the movement, including artists. We will preserve our history with the help of those who forged this movement and historians. We want to honor the farmworker movement's
history while ensuring our spaces reflect our values.
We are now at a dangerous crossroads where there is a real risk of erasing farmworker history. We are witnessing attempts at the federal and state levels to abolish monuments rather than reimagine them, which threatens to scrub the struggle of our people from the American narrative.
We must be clear: the movement has never been about any one individual. To erase the farm worker history from history and our public spaces is to erase the lives, struggles, and stories of millions of people. And the history of farm workers in the Rio Grande Valley is too precious to forget.
It is the story of the 1966 march from Rio Grande City to Austin, where farmworkers walked 500 miles to demand a state minimum wage and the right to organize. It is the story of thousands of ordinary families who joined together to shout "¡Si se puede!" and won a historic 1984 victory for workers’ compensation in Texas. This legacy belongs to leaders like Genoveva Puga, who fought to change the law after her son was tragically killed in an orange grove accident. It belongs to leaders like Rebecca Flores, whose leadership helped secure state-wide victories for families. It belongs to people like Juanita Valdez-Cox and Martha Sanchez, who dedicated decades to organizing the Valley's colonias and won legislative victories to improve infrastructure in rural neighborhoods in the Rio Grande Valley.
This is the history that must be preserved. Not by erasing our markers, but by reimagining them. We believe that streets, murals, statues, and schools currently bearing the name of one man should be re-envisioned to center the collective lives, struggles, and victories of the millions of farmworkers who fueled this movement. Our public spaces should reflect the faces of the thousands of families who sacrificed for the basic rights and dignity farmworkers gained.
We are calling on Rio Grande Valley leaders at every level to join us and block attempts to erase this history. We ask our elected and public officials to work with us to ensure that our public spaces faithfully honor the broader movement.
LUPE and our members are ready to engage in conversations and planning with all officials to ensure the contributions of millions of farmworkers are recognized and preserved for generations to come.
The work we do today at LUPE is only possible because of the foundation these South Texas farmworker leaders laid for us. Our ongoing efforts to create pathways to legal immigration status, provide English and computer literacy, and organize for critical infrastructure, like streetlights and drainage in our colonias, are direct continuations of their struggle. When we fight for voting rights or take legal action against systemic barriers, we are standing on the shoulders of those who first shouted "¡Ya basta!". Their work cannot be erased or forgotten, and it is the reason our movement remains alive today.
We call on all elected officials, the community, and our members to continue engaging in our work. Building a movement is not easy. It takes determination, the voice of the people, and a lot of uncomfortable moments to find a path forward for the community that will allow us to achieve the wins we need for our people. Community organizing is the foundation of our work, and we need you to win for the Rio Grande Valley.
Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by Tania Chavez Camacho, executive director of La Unión del Pueblo Entero. The column appears in The Rio Grande Guardian International News Service with the permission of the author.
