What’s the Future of the Many Cesar Chavez Murals in San Francisco?

When the sexual abuse allegations against Cesar Chavez appeared in The New York Times, the call for renaming streets and holidays erupted swiftly on social media channels and news outlets. Less present — but just as necessary — is a conversation around Chavez’s deeply embedded visual presence in San Francisco.

Moving through San Francisco’s mural-drenched landscape, you can encounter the disgraced labor leader at nearly every turn: at schools and universities, grocery stores and private homes, street corners and favorite lunch spots. His eyes, on high, peer down from seemingly everywhere once you start looking.

“Help me take responsibility for my own life,” reads the banner Chavez holds at the San Francisco elementary school on Shotwell Street that bears his name, “so I can be free at last.” Today, in light of the allegations, which include the sexual abuse of young girls in the 1970s, those words appear prophetic. In the meantime, schoolchildren play ball on the yard every day. His larger-than-life image looks down upon them.

“I don’t think those murals can stay up anymore, that’s clear,” said Rick Tejada-Flores, a documentary filmmaker who got to know Chavez while working on the 1973 film Si Se Puede! and 1997’s The Fight in the Fields. “But how do you talk to the kids in that school, how do you phrase the story?”

Other images of the United Farm Workers leader also read symbolically — like the one on the corner of Mission and 22nd Streets, next to an abandoned lot. Chavez’s face is positioned next to Dr. Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa. Ironically, weather damage has peeled away the paint directly across the eyes of Cesar Chavez — but left the other two social justice leaders faces’ intact.

The intact eyes of Cesar Chavez in Shepard Fairey’s mural still look down over Patricia’s Green, which buzzed with activity on a recent Monday as San Franciscans shopped, strolled, snacked and exercised. Many of those questioned didn’t realize the mural was there, didn’t know about the recent allegations or didn’t have opinions about the art looming over them. But those who did thought it should be removed.

“As we start to dismantle the patriarchy, people are going to fall off the pedestal,” said Stephanie Cordoza, who was enjoying her sandwich in the sunshine. “We stand with the victims,” she said. Yet the mural remains — so far marred only by graffiti.

Other representations of the leader have met with a more decided fate.

Cover-ups and repaintings

Richard Segovia’s home on the corner of York and 25th Streets in the Mission stands as a visual testament to Latin rock, its exterior walls decorated with colorful murals of musical greats like Carlos Santana and Buddy Rich.

Around five years ago, Segovia added Cesar Chavez to his home, to the left of the front steps, at the request of his friend Abel Sanchez, the head of the group Abel and the Prophets. Yet when Segovia learned about the abuse allegations — and that Dolores Huerta was one of the victims coming forward — he immediately made the decision to paint over Chavez. He had Carlos “Kookie” Gonzalez, the mural’s artist, replace the UFW leader with the Puerto Rican musician Carmelito Velez on March 19, the day after the news came out.

Dolores Huerta’s testimony in particular hit hard for Segovia, and he said he has no patience for those questioning why it took her so long to come forward — because he is also a victim. “I’ve had something like this happen to me, and it took me 60 years to finally be able to talk about it,” he said.

Segovia couldn’t bear the thought of an alleged child abuser on his home.

For the artist of the mural, 67-year-old Gonzalez, the news about Chavez hit hard. “I was heartbroken,” he said. “When I went to college, we marched with Cesar.”

The muralist remembers when there was a Safeway on 21st Street and South Van Ness Avenue and they would boycott the grapes. He understands the deep emotion, but was still surprised by the pushback he received on social media regarding the repainting. He followed up with many of the comments in private messages.

Gonzalez also painted the Cesar Chavez mural at San Francisco State University, on the student center named after the labor leader. Both the artwork and the name were covered on March 23, which meant students returned from spring break to find the building draped in a tarp.

“It’s heavy,” said Alejandro Rios, executive director of the student government at SFSU. “If I had to guess, a lot of them [the students] will say they were glad we took early action.” A new name for the building — and new artwork — will not be decided upon until November, before the Board of Trustees.

“The one thing I don’t want to do is rush,” Rios said.

When asked about the covered-up mural and name, one student immediately became emotional. “He was our hero,” he said, referring to the Latino community. “Who do we have left, Ricky Martin?” he asked with tears in his eyes, skateboarding off before he could give his name. With Latinos making up 38.7% of the student body at SF State, the news about Chavez was particularly destabilizing.

‘Working our way through it’

The murals on Segovia’s house were made possible by a $35,000 grant from the local organization Precita Eyes Muralists, which supports the creation of new artworks — some of which have included images of Cesar Chavez. Guide Patricia Rose leads weekly tours of local murals, and she helped to paint the mural celebrating the union leader at the corner of Mission and the street named after him, appropriately situated next to a large fruit stand.

“We don’t have a firm policy in place yet,” Rose said, when asked about how Precita Eyes will address the question of Chavez’s image on group tours. “It’s more of a disclaimer as we’re working our way through it.”

For muralist Jean Pilas, who also works at Precita Eyes, it wasn’t a surprise when they learned about the allegations against Cesar Chavez. Their friend Jennifer Andrea Porras had talked about her traumatic memories regarding Chavez at a dinner party, an experience Porras has shared publicly since the New York Times allegations came to light.

“When you put someone on a pedestal, it makes the public lazy,” Pilas said. “It diminishes the work of other people.” They hope that this reckoning will allow the work of others in the UFW — people like Philip Vera Cruz, Larry Itliong and Gilbert Padilla — to finally be appreciated.

Immortalizing individual leaders can become problematic. So, too, can public art. Grappling with the ubiquity of Chavez’s image resonates with another vitriolic art debate — about the 1936 murals at George Washington High School, which nearly tore a community apart.

While Victor Arnautoff’s images of George Washington as an enslaver were progressive at the time they were painted, images of a dead Native person read as distasteful from a contemporary perspective, said Alan Snitow, the filmmaker behind the 2022 documentary Town Destroyer, which tackled the controversy.

“The response of rage is very hard to control,” Snitow said. “We actually had to leave town to find people who could rationally talk about it.” Yet he said the situation with Chavez is different, because it’s about criminality — and it’s someone close to us who broke our trust.

“It’s a really tragic moment,” he said. “But it can actually be productive to bring back into the public eye the oppression of the farmworkers.”

For the Washington High community, part of the solution was to commission a response mural by Dewey Crumpler in 1974, featuring diverse leaders of social justice movements. That mural, in a twist of irony, includes an image of Cesar Chavez. What looks to be an undulating serpent snaps just beneath the face of Chavez, over his heart — another representation that reads differently today.

The principals of both George Washington High School and Cesar Chavez Elementary School declined to comment for this article.

Filmmaker Tejada-Flores recounted a story that the organizer Al Rojas, the father of one of the women who came forward with allegations, told him. “Al said, ‘Caesar, you’re gonna die and there’s gonna be statues and everything named after you. What do you think about that?’” Tejada-Flores remembered. “Caesar thought for a minute. He said, ‘Statues are for pigeons to shit on. If you want to remember me, organize.’”

In this complex and fraught tale, it may be the leader’s own words that hold the way forward. We must not prioritize static totems that idolize an individual figurehead, but celebrate the farmworkers and organizers who have been forgotten in the rush to elevate only one to celebrity status.

Art can be one way for us to remember; it can also force into a reckoning.