SAN DIEGO — You remember that book you started but didn't finish? Or the home project you began but never wrapped up? You moved on. But there was this nagging sense of unfinished business.

That's how I felt when I read a devastating article in The New York Times on March 18 alleging that the late Cesar Chavez — leader of the United Farm Workers union and one of the most famous Mexican Americans in history — had sexually assaulted teenage girls and engaged in other sexual misconduct over decades.

Call it journalist's intuition. I had a hunch there was more to this story. Who knew about the abuse and covered it up? Was the sexual harassment of women and girls in the UFW limited to Chavez, or were other men involved because the union had a male-dominated culture?

The Times reported that the victims included Chavez's second-in-command. When reporters asked former UFW Vice President Dolores Huerta — one of the union's co-founders — about the allegations against Chavez, she decided it was time to finally share a secret that she had kept for more than 60 years.

Huerta, who is now 96, acknowledged in a statement to the newspaper that she had "two separate sexual encounters" with Chavez when she was in her 30s. In one case, she claims to have been pressured to have sex. In the other, what she describes sounds like rape. She insists that both encounters resulted in pregnancies, and she says that she gave the babies up for adoption.

With lightning speed, there was a nationwide crusade to cancel all things Chavez. Dozens of cities, states and institutions scrambled to distance themselves. Events were scrapped. Statues were removed. Street names were changed. In California, the state holiday formally known as Cesar Chavez Day was rebranded as "Farmworkers Day."

As a longtime critic of the UFW and someone who had loud and acrimonious run-ins with both Chavez and Huerta, I wasn't surprised by the scandal. That outfit always seemed shady to me, as if it were covering up something. I just didn't know what it was.

While other Mexican Americans couldn't wait to transfer their misplaced adulation from Chavez to Huerta, I knew better. I've never found Huerta believable when she talks about the union.

And when I read the Times story in March, a lot of what she said in her statement didn't ring true. Instead of providing answers, it only raised more questions.

Huerta is entitled to her #MeToo moment, and I believe that Chavez raped her. I just don't believe exactly two sexual encounters resulted in exactly two pregnancies. Rather, I suspect that what began as a rape became, over the decades, a sustained and loving relationship between Chavez and Huerta. Just look at photos of the two of them together, where they gazed affectionately at one another.

That's important. While Huerta claims she kept her secret to protect the union, I think she was protecting Chavez. And, I suspect, many years ago, the same protective instinct led her to brush aside allegations of sexual assault by other women and girls.

Now, in a blockbuster follow-up story, the Times reported that numerous women who worked and volunteered for the UFW as organizers, picket captains or boycott leaders "suffered under a culture of misogyny." Reporters spoke to more than a dozen women who said in interviews that they were — from the 1970's to the mid-1990's — "harassed, groped, pressured into sex or assaulted by men involved with the labor union, from farmworkers to senior staff members."

When many of those women went to union officials and told them about the sexual abuse, their accusations were often ignored or dismissed as trivial compared to the union's mission. Sometimes, it was said, that's just how men are. And those who spoke up were targeted and bullied as troublemakers who wanted to hurt the union.

Several women told the Times that they reported the abuse to Huerta, and she did nothing. One of the victims, Liz Sullivan, said she was raped in 1977 by two men — who were sons of union leaders — during an organizing effort in Coachella, Calif. She told union leadership, and nothing happened. She asked why, and Huerta paid her a visit at her home. Sullivan told the Times that Huerta tried to pacify her by saying rape was "just something men do to women."

My goodness, fellow Mexican Americans. You sure can pick them. Meet your new hero. Much the same as the old hero.

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Kajetan Powolny at Unsplash