Tributes to the late civil rights leader Cesar Chavez have been taken down all over the country in the wake of allegations that he sexually abused underage girls for years. And one of those was a statue that sat in Cesar Chavez Park — which the city is also renaming — in Phoenix for 30 years.
It was made by longtime Phoenix Chicano artist, mask maker and sculptor Zarco Guerrero, who was there when city officials took it down.
It was a tough moment for the activist and artist, who has mixed feelings about the whole scandal. He came into The Show's studios recently and explained how much Chavez has impacted his life since he was a high school student in Mesa decades ago.
Full conversation
ZARCO GUERRERO: When I was in high school, I really wasn’t politically conscientious, you know what I mean? I was involved in sports and school activities, you know how teenagers are.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah.
GUERRERO: But when Cesar Chavez came on the scene and we saw him on television, it was the the first example of what we’d call a positive role model. Every single Mexican American, Chicano, or Native American was portrayed as a drug dealer, a pimp, a gardener, an illegal, you know, everything negative.
GILGER: Yeah.
GUERRERO: And we lived with that. We grew up with that. We just thought that’s, that’s how the world was. And when we saw Cesar Chavez, we saw this short, dark-complexioned, very Indigenous-looking man from Arizona, of Yaqui heritage, who was eloquent in both English and Spanish, and it seemed like everything that came out of his mouth made sense.
And myself and my friends immediately started, you know, talking about this guy, Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers. And we started educating ourselves and following the farmworkers’ movement.
And then I think it was in 1968 when he was on his fast, and they brought him to Phoenix, and I saw him, the first time we saw him was on a stretcher as they brought him out from, I think, the the Santa Rita Center.
GILGER: Wow. And you went down there?
GUERRERO: And we went down there, that greatly influenced us and inspired us that, man, this guy’s making a tremendous sacrifice to bring attention to this issue.
GILGER: So it sounds like he, in particular, really influenced you, really changed the way you saw the world and and your role in it as a very young person.
GUERRERO: Exactly. And then later on, you know, we became involved with the movement at that time, painting signs, boycotting grocery stores, you know, promoting the grape strike and things like that. We became as involved as we could.
Later on, a few years later, he came to Phoenix to give a talk, and myself and a couple of artists, we managed to get his attention and say, "Hey, we’re, you know, we’re aspiring artists and and we want to serve the movement. What what can we do to serve the movement?"
GILGER: "What can we do?"
GUERRERO: And he came out right away. He said, he said, "we have a great legacy in painting murals. Go out in the community and paint murals with positive images about the community, about staying in school, practicing nonviolence, saying no to drugs. We have a great legacy of poetry. Write poems, share your poetry with the community. Write music, write songs, do theater, create our own media to promote the cause."
And that’s exactly what we did. And that became the voice, the essence, the narrative of what later came to be known as the Chicano art movement.
GILGER: Right, which you have been a part of your entire career?
GUERRERO: My entire life.
GILGER: Wow, so this was like directed to you by Cesar Chavez himself. Wow. I mean, so it sounds like he meant a lot in your life and has for a very long time.
Thirty years ago, which was, you know, some time after your career had begun and and you’d been doing this work, you were commissioned by the city to make this sculpture of Cesar Chavez at the park, right? What did you think at the time? What did you want it to say?
GUERRERO: Well, when that happened and I was asked to do that, of course, we competed for the for the commission. And we got it because we had been involved with Cesar for, you know, for many years. We were committed to the cause, everybody knew that.
And so I was extremely excited. It was the best thing that could have possibly happened to me to honor the movement with Cesar Chavez as the iconic symbol of the movement.
GILGER: Yeah.
GUERRERO: So yeah, I put everything I had into it and thought, man, this is the greatest thing that could happen to me.
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GILGER: So, your work is often very abstract or like brightly colored, it’s inspired often by, you know, these indigenous themes, the Chicano roots, like that’s what I think of when I think of of of Zarco Guerrero and his work, right?
But this statue is is very realistic, and it’s just him standing there, right? Like looking ahead. Why did you make it the way you made it?
GUERRERO: Well, you know, there was a lot of ways that we could have depicted him, but I wanted to depict him moving. I wanted to make him larger than life, so I made him 8 foot tall.
GILGER: Right, he’s big, yeah.
GUERRERO: Yeah, he’s big, and I tried to make it as realistic as possible. The family, the Cesar Chavez family, came down a few times to visit while I was doing the sculpture, so they were very involved. The farmworkers’ movement at that time, the Cesar Chavez Foundation, they all had a hand in it, and they all had something to say about it.
So this was about expressing him and the whole idea of the movement. So I incorporated all of that into the concept of what it was going to look like.
GILGER: Yeah, so a lot lots of input, it sounds like.
GUERRERO: Yeah.
GILGER: OK, so then, you know, fast forward to this year and these allegations are published in the New York Times, and everything changes. What was your response? This was a day after you had been performing a tribute to him.
GUERRERO: Exactly. And you know, all my life, every time I did a performance and introduced myself, I always mentioned Cesar Chavez as as one of my main influences. Up until that day of the the article in the New York Times came out.
But when we installed the sculpture, I had a premonition or a fear, I don’t know what to call it, that someday that sculpture was going to be taken down. And when it finally happened, I said, "Well, I knew it was going to happen eventually."
Especially when they started taking down Confederate monuments and stuff like that, I thought, well, we either leave up everybody’s monuments or we take down everybody’s monuments, right? I mean, come on, that’s fair.
But what didn’t seem fair about this, how from one day to the next, these allegations went out, and before we knew it, we were condemning Cesar Chavez, and we were erasing him from history.
All the wonderful things that that were accomplished by the movement seemed to be part of the process to dismiss all of that, to discredit the union, to humiliate us, to disempower us, and to divide us as a community.
GILGER: Do you doubt the allegations these women have brought forward, including Dolores Huerta?
GUERRERO: I’ve met and been with Dolores Huerta on many occasions, and I’ve visited the family. I went to where they live, the compound. Not that I don’t believe it, OK, I believe it. I believe the the victims, and perhaps it’s true, I have to accept that.
The timing, and the way that we turned against each other, so, you know, we’re still dealing with with all these issues. And that’s why I feel we have to talk about it.
GILGER: So, you requested that the statue be covered up, fenced off, but you don’t know what’s going to happen to it yet?
GUERRERO: Well, I’m very grateful to the city of Phoenix. They contacted me right away and asked my opinion. And that’s when I said, "Please cover it up." And they did that. They covered it up right away, and they also had me involved and wanted me to be there when the statue was taken down.
And they’re going to put it in storage. They asked me what I would like to do, and I said, "I would love to create another piece dedicated to the farmworkers."
GILGER: OK, so you do have plans for what you would like to see happen?
GUERRERO: Yes, and they’re considering that, so I’m grateful for that, yes.
GILGER: So I want to ask you about what you’re getting at there, which is maybe not, you know, a litigation of what happened, but the erasure of this history. Do you think, you know, you can at the same time recognize great wrong that this figure may have done and still respect the movement he created? Like, can you separate Cesar Chavez from the farmworker movement?
GUERRERO: Well, yes, we definitely can do that. He was the symbol, the image, the icon. But it wasn’t only him. He was a small part. He was like maybe 1% of the whole movement. Let’s move on. Let’s continue to promote and expound on all the positive aspects of the movement because they’re very, very important and they’re under a threat. So yes, I’m going to continue to promote la causa, the cause, and continue to fight for the for the working-class people of this country and to do it through nonviolence.
GILGER: OK, we’ll leave it there. Zarco Guerrero, a longtime Arizona sculptor, mask maker, and performance artist joining us to talk about the future of his Cesar Chavez statue. Zarco, thank you so much for coming in. I appreciate it.
GUERRERO: Thank you so much for having me.
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