When Jennifer Andrea Porras, an indigenous artist and member of the Bay Area LGBTQ+ (Indigiqueer) and Coahuilteca community, first learned of The Contemporary York Times’ investigation detailing allegations by several women accusing historic civil rights defender César Chávez of sexual abuse, she was not surprised. On the contrary, the news corroborated his own experience with the co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW).
“I knew this was going to come to light, but I didn’t know how or in what sense or who was going to speak,” says Andrea. “But I knew it because a comadre told me about the cancellation of the César Chávez Day events and told me: “Sister, I think the time has come.”
Days after the news broke, as cities across California scrambled to remove murals, rename streets and remove statues of the late Chavez, Andrea was faced with the resurgence of past traumas related to the labor movement.
Although the news has left many in a state of shock and a feeling of disappointment, some call it a “hard blow” for the Latino community. The brave testimonies of Ana Murguía and Debra Rojas to the long-established media have created a space and a sense of security that now allows other victims of abuse to speak out.
Creating a starting point for dialogue, action, care, accountability, recovery and responsibility. A search for justice that goes beyond the late Chicano activist.
“In reality, it is about survivors talking with other survivors and with those around them,” explains Andrea, who shared for the first time with La Opinión what she suffered when she was incorporated into Chávez’s inner circle in the 90s. “And it’s really about caregivers, parents, everyone being attentive and believing people and children the first time they say something.”
The reason why Andrea has decided to speak out now is because she hopes that this will generate positive change, healing and dialogue within the Latino community, and that it will be a way to end the culture of silence that exists in it. She hopes the wave of support and truth-telling that comes from the investigation will change the “shut up, you look prettier” mentality.
“Believe boys and girls of all genders, believe survivors. This is also for children and others who may be going through this right now,” adds Andrea, noting that abusers are still present in community movements, homes, and places of worship and power today. “Those things haunt you over the years; my body still remembers it, my cells remember it, my bones remember it.”
Andrea, now fifty-three years old, was born in Texas and was part of a family very involved in the Chicano and labor rights movement, since before her birth. When she was 18, she was sent to live in La Paz, Keene, California, the home and headquarters of the union leader and the UFW, under the pretext that she would be an intern working as a field organizer for the union.
“Looking back, I realize how my family, as a whole, was convinced that this was a Chicano dream, a safe and honorable space. Working for the cause, alongside the one who was then the hero of our family,” Andrea remembers of that summer. “But all that time, he (César) was thinking about how to get into my shirt, into my pants, about forcing his mouth on me, and he had me convinced that it was a place from which he could not escape.”
Like Murguía and Rojas, Andrea also grew up within the Chicano movement and the UFW; His parents, Josie and Andy Porras, were long-time community organizers and teachers who worked in school districts in Texas and California. Summer vacations often allowed the family to travel and work frequently, providing service and support to farming communities in the educational field.
In the 70’s, Andrea’s mother worked for Head Originate in the Stockton and San Jose fields. The program offered low-income preschool children a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional, and educational needs.
His father, a syndicated columnist, also helped organize the first conferences for the Chicano and Central and South American communities to help them explore and learn about high school and college education opportunities.
“I don’t know any other life other than the union movement,” says Andrea. “I learned to march before I learned to walk, sitting on my father’s shoulders or my mother’s hip, raising my fist high as I saw everyone around me doing it.”
In a newspaper op-ed that Andrea’s father wrote about the first time she met Chavez, he described his daughter as a girl who “painted her own version of the UFW eagle on daycare walls” while other children drew stick figures.
‘The nightmare begins’
According to Andrea, although her interactions with Chavez primarily occurred when she was 18, the harassment began when she was 16, after meeting him in Stockton, at St. Mary’s Hall, for the first time. That moment was documented by his father in a column he wrote about the experience and which was later published on multiple platforms, including Hispanic Hyperlink and the then LA Times Syndicate. La Opinión had access to the printed text.
“My father and I were impressed, totally astonished at the proposal that I join the La Paz union,” Andrea recalls.
In the column, Andrea’s father recounts how tears of joy ran down his daughter’s dark cheeks when she saw Chávez.
“She remembered the many conversations we had had about respect for others, the suffering of migrant children and the reasons for the marches,” Andrea’s father wrote then, while Chávez approached her and asked her name.
For Andrea that memory now has another meaning.
“Over time I would discover that the trust I had and expected to receive from strangers and from “uncles” or “relatives,” who were actually not blood relatives but “community relatives,” was not always reciprocated.”
According to this account, Andrea caught Chávez’s attention while she was standing in the driveway as he was leaving in his car. At that time, Chávez was already around 60 years old.
“César ordered the car to stop and called her by name: ‘Give me your address and come visit us someday,’” Chávez told her, according to the column.
According to Andrea, her father and Chavez had spoken that day and he revealed Andrea’s plans to continue her studies in Sacramento after graduating from high school. She remembers that Chávez asked her father to send her to work with him during her first summer vacation from college.
Andrea described the situation by saying that Chávez is like a sports scout and that she is the athlete waiting to be signed.
“My father was delighted,” recalls Andrea, who pauses frequently in her story to reflect as memories resurface in her mind. “So in retrospect, it was a good opportunity for me and for our family, which is part of this movement, right?”
From there, new attempts at communication began.
“The next thing I know is that César was sending letters from La Paz, to me, not to my parents,” Andrea explains. “’Hello, how are you? It was nice meeting you.’ But none of us thought anything of it at the time.”
Andrea admits that, over the years, as a form of purification, she has burned some photos, t-shirts, posters and letters from those years she was part of the agricultural movement.
Furthermore, she confesses that she cannot tell in detail what she wrote in her letters to Chávez. But she says that seeing the article in The Contemporary York Times that mentioned and showed evidence of letters from other girls who suffered the same thing many years before her was a heartbreaking confirmation.
“It was unsettling, like a knife was ripping through all the old scars from bullying and that secret,” Andrea explains. “The letters (he sent me) were not frequent, but he always said that he really wanted me to go to California.”
It wasn’t until he arrived at Sacramento State University in 1990 that things began to go from friendly gestures to unwanted, unsolicited attention.
At that time, Andrea Skills was a first-year student and was part of MECh.A. (Chicanx Student Movement of Aztlán). A political, educational and cultural organization and club present in universities, focused on raising awareness of social justice issues affecting underrepresented communities. Things had not yet escalated with Chávez, so he invited him to speak to the group about his work with farmers.
He visited her, introduced himself to everyone and asked Andrea to call him Tata in front of his classmates. His visit was another attempt to get her to La Paz and the first time she had seen him since she was 16 years old.
“He really wanted to talk to me about what he would do with the union once he left university in the summer,” recalls Andrea, who can’t help but be moved by the painful memories.
That same day, Chávez invited Andrea, who was 18 at the time, to dinner, along with two other girls, with whom he had traveled to Sacramento. According to Andrea, he insisted that she drive him to the restaurant alone, while the other two girls traveled in another car. Once at the restaurant, he says he ordered vegetarian dishes for the four of them.
“He said that once I moved into the compound, I would have to become a vegetarian because our body has to be prepared to fast; he said our body has to be clean because it has to be a pure machine for the union,” Andrea recalls. “I was sold the idea that I would have the opportunity to become an organizer; instead, they told me I would be their internal assistant and private chauffeur.”
“When I got there, César told me: ‘You’re going to spend all your time with me,’” Andrea added.
She remembers perfectly when her parents took her to La Paz, where she would live in a caravan with a woman who became something like an aunt to her.
According to Andrea, Chavez introduced her and her parents to the entire complex, stopping in each apartment and office.
“She said, ‘I want you to know that you are leaving her with me and that she is now part of our family,’” Andrea recalls. “It made my whole family feel so much love, right? And we were all clueless. If you look at the photos, we’re all smiling.”
Andrea says that she does not blame her parents or hold a grudge against them, since According to her, they were also deceived. It is quite common: in the United States, 68.5% of sexual assaults occur in or near the victim’s home, or in the home of a family member or “trusted” friend.
“The hard thing is that our parents didn’t really realize how dangerous the places they sometimes left us were, with people they thought they could trust,” he laments.
The rest of the summer consisted of Andrea working side by side with Chávez, who asked her to drive him to meetings with farmers and to talks that involved long trips along deserted roads.
According to Andrea, things didn’t escalate until he asked her to meet him after hours at his office to teach him breathing techniques and pressure points.
“I insisted that the door be locked most days and, taking advantage of those breathing techniques and pressure points, I would start touching inappropriate parts of my body,” he recalls.
On most occasions when he asked her to drive from one place to another, she was alone with him in the car, where, according to Andrea, he would ask her inappropriate questions about her virginity and sexuality and try to touch her. She also says he was talking to her about how, in other cultures, it was considered acceptable for young girls to be with older men.
“From forced kisses to caresses and touches, that’s what I did mainly on the road; I had to be alert and ready to protect myself from their hands,” Andrea recalls. “I wondered how many times I would have to hit his hands, push him or yell ‘no’ at him, because it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore.”
For Andrea, it wasn’t the first time someone she trusted hurt her. When she was younger, she suffered sexual abuse from supposed family friends.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 4 in 5 women who have survived this type of assault say they were raped or sexually harassed for the first time before the age of 25, and almost half suffered it as a minor, before or after turning 18. Among LGBTQ+ youth, the rates of sexual violence are higher. Nearly two in five LGBTQ+ youth (39%) have reported that at some point during their childhood, they were forced to perform “sexual acts” against their will or were sexually assaulted, according to a 2024 study by the Trevor Project.
Once Chávez’s physical advances came to light, it set off alarm bells.
Andrea says she remembers the day she couldn’t take it anymore. They were in the car and, from time to time, they stopped along the way to rest in what Chávez called “safe houses.”
“I went to the bathroom and when I came out, he was at the door; he bumped into me on purpose, went into the bathroom, closed the door and forcibly kissed me,” she says. “I told him, ‘What the hell are you doing?’, and I ran away. I think it was bad that he touched me while I was driving, but that he put his tongue and face in me was on another level.”
After a summer in which he had to endure inappropriate conversations, unwanted touching and caresses, he decided he would not return to La Paz.
“I mean, I wanted to get out of there. It made me sick,” says Andrea. “I’ve been telling people since this happened to me. I was just telling them: If you know anyone who goes to that place, tell them to call me, keep your loved ones away from that place.”
According to Andrea, she remembers telling Chávez that she would rat him out, to which, according to her, he responded with threats.
“He said, ‘You’ll never tell anyone because if you tell anyone, no one will believe you and you’ll make everyone’s life worthless; you’ll make this movement end, and for what?’” Andrea says, reminiscent of what he told her at the time. “And if you don’t believe me, test me. Do you want me to hurt your parents? Everyone knows to leave me alone.”
Andrea said that, that same year, on several occasions, she spoke to people linked to the union about what she had suffered, but some told her to remain silent. From then on, he would only tell people he trusted, after deciding not to return to La Paz.
“That’s why I want to talk about this, because we have to listen to people from the first moment and we can’t question their mental health, wonder why they tell us or question how we were dressed. We simply have to listen to people when it happens,” said Andrea.
Several people he spoke to The Opinion corroborated Andrea’s accusations, including family, friends and other people involved in the peasant movement to whom Andrea, at different times in her life, told about Chávez’s abuse of her.
“I am only alive right now thanks to my son, art and the black and brown, indigenous and uncommon community that listened to me and has supported me in moments when I did not want to be here,” Andrea confesses. “For years I allowed myself to believe that I was not worthy of true peace, true happiness or, simply, nothing good.”
When the accusations were made public on March 18, Andrea says it was the first time in years that her body remembered certain moments, smells and details from that time. Like the creaking of the floors in the homes of La Paz.
“It was very visceral, very unpleasant, unpleasant in the sense that I felt like I could taste and smell Caesar again,” Andrea says, physically showing her discomfort at that thought. “And I thought I had stopped smelling it or feeling it that way a long time ago.”
When asked if what she had experienced had led her to distance herself from the union, Andrea answered no. They always maintained their involvement to some extent, while staying away from anything organized by Chávez. For Andrea, it was important to remain involved in the movement even after her death, for the good of the farmers she worked with.
As for Chávez’s legacy, Andrea says the movement never had anything to do with him.
“I have decided to preserve the special and unique relationships that emerged from that time and that, for me, continue to be my mentors, my friends and my loved ones today, people I consider my chosen family,” says Andrea.
‘It’s time to get back together’
For Andrea, the last few weeks have not been easy; To survive, he has relied on friends, family, prayer and ceremonies to heal wounds that have reopened. But he says the revelations have finally allowed him to lift a weight off his shoulders and he hopes others can do the same by expressing their truth as well.
“It reminded me that life is worth living and that it wasn’t our fault,” says Andrea. “The suffering he has caused, the lives he has cut short, and everything we have lost because of what has been stolen from us ends here. Now is the time to put ourselves back together and know that we are more than okay; we are holy, we are divine, and we are sacred.”
And he concludes by saying: “Let us love ourselves more, recognize our integrity and our self-esteem to accept ourselves as human beings who deserve peace.”
