“Sí Se Puede” and The Cost of Silence.
Holding Complexity: The Micro, Mezzo, and Macro of Silence and Survival
I remember moving to the West Coast from the East Coast, knowing very little about César Chávez. I remember being so excited when I moved to Arizona to learn that there was a state holiday that actually honored Latinos for their labor. It felt so foreign to me. I put Cesar on a pedestal but he quickly fell off of it when I moved to California and learned about his anti-immigrant rhetoric, racist practices, and how his prominence erased the work of Larry Itliong and the struggle of Filipino farm workers - a people with a shared history of colonization and U.S exploitation.
I found hope in Dolores Huerta.
For those who may not know: César Chávez, Larry Itliong, and Dolores Huerta are well known for the farmworkers’ rights movement. The movement began in the 1960s with the goal of securing better wages, improving working conditions, and obtaining legal protections for agricultural laborers in the US. It served primarily Mexican and Filipino Americans who were exploited by US farms, and it successfully unionized workers across the industry. Ironically, César was particularly well known for nonviolent tactics and spiritual practices. I was drawn to this movement — to the organizing strategy, the life stories, and the deep commitment to La Causa.
As a trauma therapist and trafficking specialist, as someone who has heard similar accounts from many women, I was not surprised by Doña Huerta’s disclosure of César Chávez’s sexual assault. It still hit a tender part of my heart. I was devastated by the weight of her secret, and I know all too well how often women stay silent to protect their abuser or preserve shared relationships. She did what so many survivors do: she sacrificed herself out of loyalty to a cause she believed was bigger than herself. Movements are often destabilized when the truth of humanity comes out. When harm is revealed inside liberation spaces, it destabilizes its identity and its history. Just look at the Catholic Church. How many people have left because of the sex abuse scandals? I know I did.
And at the same time, it felt like a punch in the gut for Latinos. Another strike against us. We have an embarrassingly high percentage of Latinos for Trump, and an absurd amount who work for ICE. And now, the face of a powerful movement, one that honors our people, has been struck down. I found myself asking: Why now?
For people with trauma, there is nothing harder than holding complexity. Most see the world as black and white. Good vs Evil. Wrong vs Right. We want to put everything in a nice little box and wrap it with a bow. Our attention gets so fixed on the stark and dramatic that shades of grey fade into the background. Our nervous system wants the story to make sense. One of the most important parts of my work is teaching my clients to live in the grey. To hold two truths. To always remember the “yes, and.”
What does it mean when the space that offers dignity also holds harm? They say “The movement has always been bigger than any one individual.” This plays out in organizing work and the non-profit industrial complex to a fault.
Coercion doesn’t always look like force. It also looks like fraud, intimidation, pressure, manipulation, undue influence, or power dynamics. Dolores was a woman fighting for justice in the 1960s, when women were barely listened to. As a man, César was positioned and willing to be the face of this movement; so much so that he even received credit for her “Sí Se Puede” slogan.
Coercion operates best where there is trust, admiration, or dependency. This is the nature of grooming. It often includes special attention, mentorship and normalization of boundary crossings. We see it with our leaders and we see it with our children; which is why we’ve shifted from teaching kids about “stranger danger” to teaching them to recognize strange behavior. Most often, exploitation and abuse are carried out by those we trust most: community members, leaders, family members, friends. The people we believe in. The people we love. It starts with friendship and care, and over time, survivors sometimes wonder if it was ever truly against their will - because consent isn’t always clearly absent. And when they are certain, as certain as Dolores, the world still doubts them and their truth gets gaslighted.
Grooming sets the stage for coercion. Coercion is how the line gets crossed. It comes in moments of pressure, manipulation or force. It can include emotional leverage, implied consequences, and exploits vulnerability. Women of color are uniquely impacted. They often carry movements, sustain communities and are just expected to endure, and endure, and endure. To keep it together and carry the world on their shoulders. There’s loyalty to our culture, our families, collective survival in the face of adversity over individual harm. On top of it, we carry an immense fear of reinforcing stereotypes or harming our communities. It’s a double bind. If we speak, we risk destabilizing everything we’ve carried. If we stay silent, we continue to absorb the harm. It stops being about what happened and becomes about what it might cost everyone else.
Coercion doesn’t always look like explicit pressure. Dolores stayed silent to protect A MOVEMENT. But when the mission becomes more important than the individual, the silent pressure is about harming the cause and how much is at stake. Silence becomes about survival that is shaped by structural pressure. Not consent.
The same coercive dynamics that operate in relationships scale into organizations, movements, and systems. From the Micro to the Macro, the same pattern is at every level:
From the micro (individual)
A person harmed by someone they trusted
Confusion, loyalty, silence
The Mezzo (community/movement)
Protection of leadership
Minimization or compartmentalization
Survival strategies passed down:
Silence
Endurance
Loyalty at all costs
“The work is bigger than this”
Communities that have had to fight to exist
Making protection of the collective feel essential
The Macro (systems)
Patriarchy
Normalization of:
Male leadership dominance
Access to women’s labor, bodies, and emotional support
Capitalism and institutions that:
reward productivity over wellbeing
rely on sacrifice
absorb harm to maintain legitimacy
When patriarchy meets survival-based communities, harm can be minimized in the name of continuity.
The only way around this frame is to learn to hold complexity. It’s important for us to remember that good can coexist with harm, and that profound impact does not grant immunity from accountability. Cesar Chavez was the face of a movemen. He was a powerful advocate, strategic organizer, and had personal failings that caused real suffering. He benefited from the labor, loyalty and presence of people like Dolores and Lary Itlong. Exploitation doesn’t erase impact. But impact can’t erase exploitation. True fidelity to La Causa demands that we hold both truths simultaneously. We do not honor history by sanitizing it. We honor the movement by acknowledging the full humanity, and thus the full spectrum of behaviors, of all involved, especially the survivors who carry its hidden costs. The power of “Sí Se Puede” was never lodged in one leader; it lives in the enduring collective will of the people, the laborers, and the silenced who make the work possible. Si se puede.
What This Series Is About
This is part of Why We Stay, Why We Leave - and How We Heal; a blog series about coercion, trauma, and liberation.
Each post explores a different way control hides in plain sight and how healing requires us to name what was taken in the name of care.
If you have ever sacrificed your truth for a cause, you are not alone.
If you have ever felt pressure to stay silent to protect something bigger than yourself, your exhaustion is an act of self-preservation.
And if you are tired of carrying the weight of a movement on your shoulders, that burden is trying to protect you.
Gentle Questions for This Month
Instead of asking, “Why did I stay silent?”
Try asking:
“Who was the loyalty to?”
“What cost was I asked to absorb for the sake of the collective?”
Instead of asking, “How can I trust the movement now?”
Try asking:
"How can we honor the impact of the movement without sanitizing the harm caused by its leader?"
“If the power was always in the people (Sí Se Puede), how do we redirect our fidelity away from charismatic individuals and toward the collective goal?”
“How do we create movements where integrity and the safety of individuals are prioritized over institutional preservation?”
