For a few hours in April 1966, Stockton agricultural workers and residents showed up in thousands to rally behind Cesar Chavez and nearly a hundred of his followers marching through the city’s once-bustling, now-no-more St. Mary’s Square on their way to Sacramento.
Decades later, longtime Stockton advocate Luis Magaña found himself confronting another side of the labor leader’s legacy — and the possible loss of a labor identity that, for many, has long been synonymous with Chavez himself. In the wake of sex abuse claims leveled against Chavez, Magaña fielded calls Wednesday from confused farmworkers across the city.
“They’re asking me, ‘What’s going on? What did you hear?” said Magaña in an interview about his peers, those he calls the “face” of the fields today. “And I tell them.”…