Parents pick up children at Cesar Chavez Elementary School in San Francisco on Wednesday. The school is named in honor of the civil rights icon. A New York Times investigation published Wednesday revealed allegations of sexual abuse of women and girls by Chavez.

For decades, Cesar Chavez has been treated as the moral icon of the Latino civil rights struggle. In San Francisco and other cities and towns across the country, his face appears on murals, his name is stamped on streets and schools, and his legacy is honored with a federal holiday. For many Americans, Chavez represents the fight for justice for farmworkers, and his name is often the first mentioned when people speak about Latino leadership in America.

I remember sitting with my Latino debate group in high school in Texas, where we dedicated a day to watching a 2014 film about Chavez. We were encouraged to admire him, to march in his name and to see him as someone to look up to. He was presented to us as an icon, a good man who fought for dignity and justice for Latino workers.

That was the version of Chavez many of us were taught. But hero worship is dangerous.

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A New York Times investigation published Wednesday has brought renewed attention to allegations that had circulated for decades that he sexually abused, raped and groomed women and girls connected to the farmworker movement. Survivors described abuse at the movement’s headquarters in California, including allegations involving girls as young as 13. According to those accounts, these were not isolated incidents but part of a pattern enabled by a culture that prioritized protecting Chavez’s image over protecting the women and children........

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