Cesar Chavez's family criticizes RFK Jr. for his campaign event

A campaign event Saturday intended to galvanize support among Latino voters and organized labor behind Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential bid instead drew condemnation from the family of labor organizer Cesar Chavez, who accused Kennedy of exploiting the Chavez name for political gain.

Kennedy's campaign held a “celebration” of Chavez in Los Angeles ahead of March 31, Chavez's birthday, which is also now recognized as an official holiday in California.

The Kennedy family has a decadeslong history of friendship and political partnership with the Chavez family, dating to Kennedy's father, Robert F. Kennedy.

But in a letter Friday addressed to the campaign, Chavez's eldest son, Fernando Chavez, writing on behalf of the Chavez family, asked Kennedy to stop referring to his father or using images of him, and threatened legal action.

“It causes us great pain to see your campaign repeatedly using our father's images along with related documentary film and photographs of him to suggest the alignment of your campaign with the values of Cesar Chavez,” the letter said. ”

In a statement Saturday, Kennedy said the event was intended “to honor Cesar Chavez and his close friendship with my father, my family and me, and his impact on our country.” In an interview Sunday, he said he had repeatedly reached out to members of the family in the weeks before the event but heard nothing until reporters called Friday about the letter, which he said the campaign never actually received. (The letter was emailed Friday to the campaign's press office address, a family spokesperson said.)

“Of course, if they had asked me, we would have done something else, very, very easily,” Kennedy said. “If people in the family had wanted us to cancel the event, it would have been quite easy for them to pick up the phone.”

Kennedy's father formed a bond with Chavez in the mid-1960s, when he was a senator, and became the first national political figure to embrace Chavez and the farm labor movement he was working to build. In March 1968, Robert F. Kennedy famously sat with Chavez as he ended a 25-day fast he undertook to make penance, he said, for the violent rhetoric of some strikers.

In 1980, when Kennedy's uncle, Ted Kennedy, was seeking the Democratic nomination for president, Chavez and his family — including Fernando Chavez — worked with the Kennedy family, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Latino voter mobilization, Fernando Chavez and the younger Kennedy both recalled.

At Cesar Chavez's 1993 funeral, the younger Kennedy was among the people who took turns carrying the coffin.