Fresno City Councilman Miguel Arias said Wednesday he plans to propose returning Cesar Chavez Boulevard to its original name.

The announcement follows social media posts by Dolores Huerta, former United Farm Workers vice president, stating that labor leader Cesar Chavez raped her.

Arias said Huerta’s account, which he called “heartbreaking,” was all the testimony he needed to consider the change.

He said while it comes with a “heavy heart,” he said it is the right thing to do.

“The city will not honor aggressors, it will not reward those who have harmed others,” Arias said.

Fresno County Supervisor Luis Chavez, who, with Arias, led the name change for Cesar Chavez Boulevard when he was city councilmember, said he didn’t know about the allegations when the they proposed the name change.

“His personal faults as a human were not really known to the public. There are times when public figures have a private side and a public side. We don’t know what we don’t know,” Chavez said in a statement Wednesday. “Reading the accounts of some victims and their pain and suffering was heartbreaking.”

‘When the Abuelita Sits You Down at the Dinner Table, You Listen’: Arias

On Wednesday, following publication of a New York Times investigation into Chavez, Huerta said that “for the last 60 years, (I) have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”

She accused Chavez of using his position to pressure her into having sex followed by a second encounter where she was forced into having sex. She said she had two pregnancies resulting from those encounters.

“Over the years, I have been fortunate to develop a deep relationship with these children, who are now close to my other children, their siblings. But even then, no one knew the full truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago,” Huerta said on social media.

Huerta’s story follows those of two other women who say that, when they were children, Chavez sexually assaulted them.

Arias, calling Huerta a “matriarch” of the Latino community, said once her story came out, that was enough for him. As a former farmworker, he said Chavez’s reforms led to many protections other farmworkers did not have before, including bathrooms, shade, and water.

“When the abuelita sits you down at the dinner table and tells you the truth about what happened back in the days, we have a responsibility to listen and to act,” Arias said.

Fresno Streets Renamed for Chavez

In 2023, the Fresno City Council voted to change California Avenue, and Ventura and Kings Canyon boulevards to Cesar Chavez Boulevard.  After a court battle by opponents who cited the costs to businesses and the heritage of the existing street names, the change was made.

Arias, then-councilmember Luis Chavez, and councilmember Nelson Esparza led the renaming effort in which the city allocated $1 million to change signage and help businesses adapt to the new name.

The group 1 Community Compact waged the legal fight against renaming the streets to honor Chavez.

In a statement Wednesday, the group said, “The Fresno City Council should take this off-ramp and put an end to the waste of public funds. City Councilmembers Miguel Arias, Nelson Esparza, Mike Karbassi, Annalisa Perea, Tyler Maxwell, Brandon Vang, and Nick Richardson should unite and respect the will of the people. End the problematic changes, avoid the legal risks, and restore Fresno’s historic street names.”

In Los Angeles, advocacy group California Rising called on city leaders to rename Cesar Chavez Avenue there to Dolores Huerta Avenue.