The left built the late California labor leader Cesar Chavez into a hero. He’s now the latest takedown in the #metoo era.

The man whom the United Farm Workers (UFW) and progressive pantheon spent decades treating as the brown Martin Luther King Jr. faces chilling, and murky, allegations of sexual misconduct with women ––possibly involving minor girls as well.

It is a surprising development ahead of March 31, which is Cesar Chavez Day in California.

For half a century, gatekeepers on the left turned Chavez into an untouchable icon. He was the co-founder of the UFW, the leader of the Delano grape strike, and a nonviolent crusader for migrant workers.

Every progressive history curriculum, every California street sign, every March 31 was proof that here was a flawless champion of the oppressed. Schools were renamed, statues erected, documentaries produced with soft lighting and swelling violins.

Critics who noted his anti-immigration stances in the 1970s were dismissed as right-wing cranks. The narrative was simple: flawless labor saint vs. evil growers.

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Yet Chavez was no open-borders progressive. He was a staunch opponent of illegal immigration, viewing undocumented workers as strikebreakers (“scabs”) imported by growers to undercut wages and bust unions.

He used the term “wetbacks” freely (a slur for Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande). The UFW blocked border crossings, reported thousands of undocumented workers to the INS, and lobbied for stricter enforcement.

Chavez saw unchecked illegal immigration as a direct threat to the jobs, bargaining power, and living standards of the domestic farmworkers he represented.

This wasn’t subtle; it was core strategy.

But the left airbrushed it away, framing him as a pure civil-rights hero while quietly ignoring the parts that didn’t fit the multicultural, pro-amnesty script.

And now, whispers of “inappropriate sexual behavior” with young women and minors have emerged against Chavez.

Suddenly, the same UFW that canonized him is “deeply shocked and saddened.” They canceled every Chavez Day event nationwide. San Francisco, Houston, Tucson — poof, gone.

The Cesar Chavez Foundation issued the obligatory “profoundly troubling” statement and opened a confidential hotline for victims.

The very organization Chavez built now treats his legacy like a live grenade.

Overnight, the saint became the abuser: We don’t have “direct reports,” but we’re also not hosting marches.

This is peak leftist gatekeeping: The same crowd that spent decades sanitizing Chavez’s anti-illegal-immigration record now performs ritual self-flagellation the moment allegations drop.

Where was this moral clarity in the 1970s when he was siccing Border Patrol on “wetbacks” or when rumors of other issues allegedly circulated in farmworker circles?

Nowhere — because until now, he has been useful.

He delivered the right optics, the right ethnicity, the right anti-capitalist brand.

Now that he’s inconvenient, the purity spiral kicks in.

The hypocrisy is deliciously thick. These are the same gatekeepers who spent years defending other left-wing icons with far more documented baggage. But Chavez? One whiff of scandal and the statues might as well come down tomorrow.

The message to every activist is clear: Your usefulness has an expiration date. Serve the narrative perfectly and we’ll name a holiday after you. Step outside the approved script, even decades after death, and we’ll cancel your birthday.

Meanwhile, actual farmworkers get to watch their holiday morph into generic “immigration justice and acts of service” days. How progressive.

The US Naval Ship USNS Cesar Chavez, commissioned in 2012, will certainly have its name in the crosshairs. Although Trump sought to rename it last year, Democratic congressmen Sam Liccardo and Gil Cisneros held it off. Will the Chavez revelations be the impetus to reconsider?

This isn’t accountability; it’s ideological hygiene.

So spare us the shocked emojis. The real scandal isn’t just the allegations against Chavez. It’s the cynical machinery that turned a complicated, sometimes ugly man into a plaster saint, then smashed him the moment the plaster chipped.

The left didn’t discover his flaws today. They just decided it was finally safe to admit they existed — once he stopped being politically useful.

Richie Greenberg is a political commentator based in San Francisco.