A proposed city ordinance to rename César E Chávez Boulevard is set to have its first reading at Portland City Council Sept. 2. Sponsored by Councilor Loretta Smith, it would direct the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) to replace street signs along the seven-mile-long road.
The late Chavez is famed as the founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, but in March, The New York Times reported that he had groomed and sexually abused several underage girls in the 1970s. The Times also described how he and other top UFW leaders fostered a cult of personality and an authoritarian leadership style and instituted cultish practices at the union’s remote compound in California’s Tehachapi Mountains. The sex abuse allegations in particular have led a number of local governments to strip his name from public places.
The Portland ordinance would rename the street “Campesinos Boulevard.” Campesinos is Spanish for peasant or farmworker. According to the ordinance, Portland City Council finds that there’s a “widespread consensus across the community” that the street needs to renamed “in a manner that befits and honors la causa, Latinx labor leaders, and farmworker organizations.” There’s no sign of that consensus outside of City Hall. Written public comments on the ordinance are running 17 to 1 opposed, with most in favor of restoring its previous name, 39th Avenue.
The ordinance directs PBOT to “absorb” the roughly $200,000 cost of replacing the signs within existing bureau resources, but it doesn’t spell out what work PBOT will put on the shelf in order to replace signs within the mandated six-month time frame.
