\u201cWhen I heard (Huerta\u2019s) comments, it was really kind of the proverbial straw,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cI had put a lot of faith in both of them, and to know what happened to her, it broke my spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a member of the East Chicago Common Council, Gomez introduced a resolution to rename the Columbus Drive bridge after Chavez. Now, he \u201c100%\u201d believes East Chicago officials should rename the bridge and the stretch of Columbus Drive known as Cesar Chavez Memorial Drive.<\/p>\n
![\"FILE](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/BZFCLWWNRU42W7SXSGSXENCG7E.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Russell Contreras\/AP<\/p>\n
Dolores Huerta, the Mexican-American social activist who formed a farmworkers union with Cesar Chavez, stands for the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish while visiting the New Mexico Statehouse in Santa Fe, N.M. In a recent New York Times article, Huerta and other women allege they were sexually assulted by Chavez, some when they were children. (AP Photo\/Russell Contreras, File)<\/p>\n
East Chicago officials \u2014 including city council members and Mayor Anthony Copeland \u2014 were unable to immediately comment on whether they\u2019ve considered the renaming of the bridge or road, or if the city will cancel the \u201cC\u00e9sar Chavez Day\u201d celebrations on March 31.<\/p>\n
Other communities across the country<\/a> are making the same considerations, as are the Chicago schools and parks<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the number of people who have come out, \u2026 I just think that these women are to be believed,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cIt would be in our best interest as a majority Latino community to rename that bridge and any other things that are associated with him.\u201d<\/p>\n According to previous U.S. census data, 56.5% of East Chicago\u2019s population is Hispanic or Latino.<\/p>\n Emiliano Aguilar, an East Chicago native and assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, said Chavez first visited East Chicago and Northwest Indiana in 1966. Although area unions were primarily for steelworkers, Aguilar said Chavez was a symbol for the Latino community in East Chicago.<\/p>\n Before recent allegations, it was easy for East Chicago leadership to celebrate Chavez\u2019s legacy, Aguilar said.<\/p>\n \u201cChavez has become synonymous with this movement that is in fact larger than him,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope this is going to be shocking for people, but I think it\u2019s a really good opportunity for some change.\u201d<\/p>\n Aguilar would like people to still celebrate the United Farm Workers movement and see that it was larger than Chavez, he said, and the movement was made possible by thousands of other people, including Huerta.<\/p>\n \u201cThis work is not made possible without all these people throughout the country on the ground acting both in solidarity and organizing, protesting and picketing themselves, too,\u201d Aguilar said.<\/p>\n Communities have a habit of dedicating things to people who are not from their community, Aguilar said, and he hopes allegations against Chavez offer East Chicago leadership an opportunity to look inward at its own history and leaders. The Calumet region has its own rich civil rights history, he said.<\/p>\n One local leader that Aguilar thinks could be recognized is Irene Gonzalez, who helped pioneer bilingual education programs in East Chicago and helped push for affirmative action. Other United Farm Workers movement leaders like Huerta or Eliseo Medina are also possible options if the city looks to rename the bridge or stretch of Columbus Drive.<\/p>\n \u201cMy pitch is for Irene,\u201d Aguilar said. \u201cI think it should be a Latina, and I think there\u2019s no better one regionally than an unsung civil rights hero in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n Gomez isn\u2019t sure what the bridge should be renamed to, but he brought up the idea of dedicating it to the United Farm Workers movement as a whole or for some of the female leaders. As for \u201cC\u00e9sar Chavez Day,\u201d Gomez believes East Chicago should still celebrate the day, but without Chavez\u2019s name.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was some good with the farm workers movement and the union,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cI want to acknowledge that but not with his name.\u201d<\/p>\n Aguilar also believes that \u201cC\u00e9sar Chavez Day\u201d celebrations should shift to celebrate the farm workers movement and Latino community, he said, adding that he believes those workers are invisible and still deserve recognition.<\/p>\n \u201cI think this is an opportunity to move away from the glorification of \u2018one great man\u2019 because history should never be done that way,\u201d Aguilar said. \u201cWe should recognize the struggle that\u2019s always been there because it\u2019s more illustrative of a larger cause and a larger community.\u201d<\/p>\n mwilkins@chicagotribune.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a child growing up in East Chicago, Jesse Gomez had a lot of faith in C\u00e9sar Chavez.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":672302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,56951,33131,30214,56952,38106,56953,5386,1818,2862,4010,1370,728,56954,56955,50,80,56956,56957,56950,56958],"class_list":["post-672301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-crown-point","tag-east-chicago","tag-gary","tag-griffith","tag-hammond","tag-highland","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-indiana","tag-lake-county","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-merrillville","tag-munster","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-portage","tag-porter-county","tag-post-tribune","tag-valparaiso"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116269272736621559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}