Cesar Chavez, the president of the United Farm Workers of America, thinks about an interviewer’s question during a visit to Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., on April 14, 1993. 

More than 30 years after his death, new allegations of sexual abuse against labor leader Cesar Chavez are triggering fallout across California, including the cancellation of planned celebrations in his honor. Chavez, who co-founded the United Farm Workers and led national boycotts and labor campaigns, remains a central figure in Latino civil rights history. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, and his birthday was declared a U.S. federal commemorative holiday in 2014.

Dolores Huerta, Chavez’s longtime ally and a co-founder of the United Farm Workers, disclosed in a new report from the New York Times that Chavez sexually assaulted her in 1966, an allegation she said she had never previously disclosed publicly. “Unfortunately, he used some of his great leadership to abuse women and children — it’s really awful,” Huerta told the outlet. 

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Erik Olvera, a spokesperson for Dolores Huerta, confirmed the........

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