Dolores Huerta Says She Secretly Welcomed Two Daughters With Cesar Chavez

For as long as most of us can remember, Cesar Chavez has been associated with positive work — fighting for labor and workers’ rights, leading the Latino civil rights movement, and transforming the lives of countless agricultural workers. But 2026 brought new information that cast him in a completely different light.

In mid-March 2026, The New York Times published details from an investigation it conducted that labels Chavez as a child groomer who allegedly abused young girls.

The outlet noted it had found “extensive evidence” suggesting the abuse began when the girls were just 12 and 13 and reportedly continued for years.

But these aren't the only allegations coming to light. Dolores Huerta, now 95 and once a close ally of Chavez in the labor movement, has come forward saying she was raped by Chavez, resulting in two pregnancies. Here’s a closer look at the allegations and the children Huerta claims she had with Chavez.

From the outside, Chavez and Huerta appeared to be the perfect civil and labor rights activist duo. But behind the scenes, things were allegedly very different. On March 18, 2026, Huerta published a statement on Medium detailing her encounters with Chavez, which she says led to not one, but two pregnancies, both of which she decided to go through with. Her statement came just after The New York Times released its findings from its multi-year investigation.

The abuse reportedly occurred in two separate instances during the 1960s. “The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss, and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to,” Huerta wrote.

The second instance, she says, was “forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.” She told The New York Times that Chavez had driven her to “a secluded grape field in Delano, Calif., parked the car, and forced her to have sex inside the vehicle.”

Both incidents led to pregnancies, and Huerta wrote, “I chose to keep my pregnancies secret,” adding, “I had experienced abuse and sexual violence before, and I convinced myself these were incidents that I had to endure alone and in secret.” So it appears Chavez may have been unaware, before his death in 1993, that he had fathered two children in addition to the eight he welcomed with his wife, Helen Chavez.

After Huerta gave birth to each of her daughters, she arranged for them to be “raised by other families that could give them stable lives.” She says that over the years she has managed to “develop a deep relationship with these children, who are now close to my other children, their siblings.”

However, according to NBCLA, the girls didn’t learn Chavez was their father until 2019, when they took a genetic genealogy test, and it wasn’t until 2026 that they learned how they had been conceived.

Huerta says she kept the abuse and her children a secret out of fear of how it might impact the movement she and Chavez had worked so hard to build, and that the union might not believe her.

But she decided to come forward after seeing others share their stories with The New York Times.