The San Diego City Council will Tuesday consider amending the city charter to rename César Chávez Day as Farm Workers Day and change the 0.8-mile-long César E. Chávez Parkway to Chicano Park Boulevard.
The renaming efforts come after last month's shocking sexual abuse allegations against the deceased labor leader.
Both the San Diego Community College District and San Diego Unified School District have already undertaken efforts to rename facilities named after Chávez.
The holiday and street are the latest of several institutions, parks and public spaces in San Diego County being considered for renaming following a New York Times report that Chávez allegedly sexually assaulted female followers as young as 12 in the 1970s and raped United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, now 96, in 1966.
The Times story was published one day after the UFW and the César Chávez Foundation announced that they were abstaining from honoring the late labor leader on this year's state holiday on March 31, citing "disturbing allegations." Many governments around the state celebrated the day as Farm Workers Day instead.
If approved, the San Diego City Council's vote would officially amend the municipal charter to change the holiday's name.
The Times said its story was based on interviews with more than 60 people, including top Chávez aides at the time, his relatives and former members of the UFW.
The story quotes a woman who says Chávez took her into his office when he was 45 and she was 13, kissed her and pulled her pants down. She said dozens of sexual encounters followed over the next four years, though she says none involved intercourse.
Another woman says she was 12 when Chávez groped her breast, and 15 when he arranged to have her stay at a motel during a march through California and had sexual intercourse with her.
Both women were the daughters of organizers who had marched in rallies alongside Chávez, according to the Times. The story claims that Chávez used other women in the farm labor movement for "sexual gratification."
Huerta, who turned 96 on April 10, told the newspaper that Chávez drove her to a secluded grape field in Delano, California, in 1966 and raped her in the vehicle. She said she never reported the attack out of concerns for police hostility toward Chávez and the labor movement, and because she feared she wouldn't be believed.
"Unfortunately, he used some of his great leadership to abuse women and children — it's really awful," Huerta told The Times.
Chávez died in 1993 at age 66.
