City leaders are weighing a possible name change for Cesar Chavez Street as controversy grows over sexual abuse allegations involving the late labor and civil rights leader.

Austin is the latest city to cancel its Cesar Chavez Day celebrations after those allegations were published on Wednesday in a New York Times article. The accusations include sexual assault and abuse against women and girls. Chavez died in 1993.

Residents with the organization El Concilio Mexican-American Land Owners de East Austin called on the city of Austin to rename Cesar Chavez Street in light of the allegations.

"It's not something we are solving really easily," said Gavino Fernandez, the spokesperson for El Concilio. "It's hurtful, but again on the other hand, it's more paramount to ensure that our women are protected."

Council Members Jose Velasquez, Vanessa Fuentes and Chito Vela, along with County Attorney Delia Garza, issued a joint statement on Wednesday, saying they'd support that change.

“The center of our city and the heart of East Austin should reflect our commitment to justice,” city leaders wrote. “We support the renaming of Cesar Chavez Street and will begin the discussion with the community at the forefront. The farmworkers movement and fight for civil rights will always be bigger than any one person. ¡La lucha sigue!”

The street name was changed from First Street to Cesar Chavez Street a few months after Chavez’s death in 1993. Chavez had close ties to Austin, where he led rallies at the Texas Capitol and supported labor strikes such as the Chicano Huelga.

One of Chavez’s accusers is fellow United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta. In a post on Facebook, the 96-year-old said she had two sexual encounters with Chavez in the 1960s. Huerta said she felt manipulated and pressured in one and forced against her will in the other.

Both, she said, resulted in secret pregnancies of children later raised by other families.

Huerta wrote in part, “I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”

Fernandez said El Concilio petitioned the city to honor the late activist by renaming First Street, but now that support has changed more than 32 years later.

"We have to be accountable and we have to be respectful to the women victims that were part of his experience during his lifetime and cannot be associated with a person like that," he said.

Fernandez added that El Concilio is urging the city of Austin to renaming the street after Huerta.

But not all Austinites are on board with the push to change the street name. Bertha Ortiz, president of the East Town Lake Citizens Neighborhood Association, said the accusations don't outweigh the movement Chavez carried.

"I would not be in support of changing this name," Ortiz said. "If you're going to take Cesar Chavez away, you put it back to First Street. But for Dolores to get gain off of this is unacceptable. As a woman, unacceptable."

Ortiz said she was involved in getting a Chavez mural up at the intersection of Cesar Chaves Street and Waller Street.

"This mural has not just Cesar Chavez's face on it but it stands as a union, a protector of the movement, of the farm workers," she said. "My grandfather and many families of Austin traveled to Michigan, Ohio in the 1970s, '60s and '80s as migrant farm workers out there to bring money for our kids and for our families. Don't take away what we know."

--

Read the full story at our news partner KVUE.com.