Murals honoring César Chávez remain on the Eastside avenue that bears his name, even as a New York Times investigation and subsequent revelations about sexual abuse have already led to removals of statues and busts, changes to public commemorations, and renewe
When I walked to the César Chávez murals on the Eastside avenue that bears his name. I wasn’t sure what would be waiting for me. The murals are part of a celebrated public-art stretch. Chávez. a longtime figure in Mexican American communities. has also been a favored subject in murals for decades—his death in 1994 only adding to the momentum.
But a March New York Times investigation landed like a bombshell: Chávez sexually abused minors. Since then. other revelations have further tarnished the legacy of the Chicano labor and civil rights leader long considered a secular saint. Communities removed statues and busts of him and scrubbed his name from streets, parks, and schools. California lawmakers rebranded César Chávez Day, a state holiday, as Farmworkers Day.
Now, attention has shifted to whether even the street itself should keep his name. Both the city and county of Los Angeles are exploring whether to rename Avenida Cesar E. Chavez, which starts in Chinatown and ends near East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park.
I didn’t argue with those moves—communities should decide who and what they honor. But murals are different. They record a time and place, and they carry a people’s history, aspirations, and aesthetics. In front of the paint and the praise sits the harder question: what do you do with art when the person it celebrates is accused of doing devastating harm?.
For a first stop, I headed to Boyle Heights, outside USA Donuts on Evergreen Avenue. The mural there is unmistakable. Chávez raises one hand. waving the flag of the United Farm Workers—the union he co-founded to bring economic justice to the fields of California. His other arm cradles the Virgin Mary, while a farmworker and two gang members sit beneath the scene. Above it all is the word “Rescate,” which means “Rescue.”.
Times photography fellow Ronaldo Bolaños and I found the mural the afternoon we visited. It looked brand new.
It hadn’t been left alone.
In the years before, I’ve seen this mural and others nearby repeatedly graffitied over. But this time, someone had retouched it. People who got off the bus stop in front of the mural didn’t want to talk. We went inside USA Donut and spoke to John Son, whose family owns the small business. Son told us he didn’t know who Chávez was and hadn’t heard about the disclosures until I filled him in.
When I asked what should happen to the mural, Son didn’t hesitate. “It should be painted over,” he said. “He did bad things.”
From there. Bolaños and I walked east toward East Los Angeles. passing the All Wars Memorial. which honors Mexican American service members killed in action. The Anthony Quinn Library appeared next, named after the legendary actor whose childhood home was on the site. We also passed a high school called Esteban Torres. named for the longtime member of Congress. and American Legion Post 804. dedicated to Medal of Honor recipient Eugene A. Obregon.
On the avenue named for Chávez, he was just another figure among many.
A few blocks later, we found a wide mural outside an eye clinic on McDonnell Avenue. The panorama presents a sweeping story of Mexicans. including the Aztecs and agricultural labor. alongside scenes of people driving on freeways. Small portraits dot the center: Quinn. Obregon. and other Eastside legends. including Garfield High math teacher Jaime Escalante and slain Times columnist Ruben Salazar.
At the top, arms stretched out as if gifting the heroes below to the world, Chávez looms over everyone else. Dolores Huerta—the UFW co-founder who told the New York Times that Chávez raped her and that she secretly bore two of his children—appears as small, no larger than the size of Chávez’s hand.
A plaque on the mural lists a phone number and urges visitors to dial it if they notice damage or vandalism to the mural. When I called, that number was disconnected.
Not far away, outside the Centro Maravilla Service Center on Arizona Avenue, stood a different mural. “The Short Life of John Doe” was painted in 1975 and depicts the transformation of East L.A. from untouched rolling hills to the 1950s. A Red Car line that used to service the area crawls through traffic featuring a Model T and horse-drawn carriages. It segues into a snapshot of the annual Virgin of Guadalupe procession going down César Chávez’s avenue now—and in earlier decades. when it was still called Brooklyn Avenue.
Squinting reveals a boy holding a truck emblazoned with a UFW flag at the start and finish of the panorama. The image doesn’t make sense in the mural’s timeline. But it works like a rebuke without speaking: Chávez’s place in Los Angeles is portrayed as a speck within a rich tapestry that. the mural suggests. was here before him and will be here long after.
As we moved along Arizona Avenue. I kept seeing the Virgin of Guadalupe’s image far more often than Chávez’s. Artists continued portraying him as Christ-like. but they also leaned into something freer and more complicated with the Mexican Marian apparition—beyond the traditional image of Her in prayer held up by a cherub. She hangs out with Aztec warriors. occupies the shells of old pay phones. and even breaks the chains that imprisoned immigrants.
Across the street at Maravilla Meat Market, another mural offered a different kind of crowd scene. Emiliano Zapata’s face floats next to an Aztec pyramid, and a pachuco appears beside a female Brown Beret. A flaming ear of corn transforms into a crankshaft. In the center. a giant. stern-faced Chávez flies like an avenging angel. holding a candle in one hand and grapes in the other.
Bolaños joked, “It’s the most Chicano art piece I’ve been exposed to in my life.” I told him it was cheesy.
For all of that, the street’s Chávez murals share something else: they’ve depended on adults agreeing to keep the story of him large enough to worship.
Chávez famously said that he never wanted to have memorials in his name. In the account included in this reporting, he told a friend, “Statues are for pigeons to s— on. If you want to remember me, organize.” Too many people, the mural itself seems to argue, didn’t listen.
By the time our walk ended at Robert Hill Lane Elementary School in Monterey Park, the question had followed us into classrooms. The school hosts two murals. In the sappier one, Chávez’s face sits inside a sun, like the baby in “Teletubbies,” hanging over a boy and girl in graduation gowns.
The other mural was designed by the school’s students in 1996. A boy and girl stand amid rows of crops and point at a frowning sun as an airplane sprays pesticides. A bunch of grapes wears a gas mask. Chávez’s face is at the bottom of the scene, apparently discarded. The recognizable UFW eagle is perched above him, its head chopped off and a tear in its eye.
Young people, the mural suggests, notice what adults miss. It’s an image of the Chávez cult collapsing—an ending no one wanted to admit was coming.
The scrutiny didn’t stop with the first disclosures. Last week, the New York Times published another UFW investigation, with former workers and volunteers claiming that Chávez, Huerta, and other union leaders allowed a culture of misogyny to fester and ignored incidents of sexual assault.
Later, I drove down Avenida Cesar E. Chavez again to see whether any murals had been altered since our first stop. The street buzzed with street vendors, teenagers out on summer break, and elderly men sitting on low-slung walls.
In the mural designed by the long-ago students, Chávez’s face was gone—covered up in swirls of color that gave no hint of what was once there.
César Chávez murals Avenida Cesar E. Chavez Los Angeles East Los Angeles College Farmworkers Day UFW Dolores Huerta Ronaldo Bolaños Virgin of Guadalupe procession Robert Hill Lane Elementary School Esteban Torres High School Eugene A. Obregon