During the 1980 presidential primaries, Fernando Chavez traveled for months with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while working on his uncle Senator Ted Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

In living room after living room, Chavez said

,

he noticed a combination of three framed photographs on the wall: portraits of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; of Kennedy’s father, the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.); and from his own father, Cesar Chavez,

the laboratory icon

who co-founded the United Farm Workers.

Union.

The elder Kennedy had grown close to the labor icon

Chavez

in the years before the senator’s assassination in 1968.

“These three represented hopes and aspirations for people, especially marginalized people,” Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, and

Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans,

“Even poor white people,” Fernando Chavez recalled in an interview. “It made them feel like, ‘Wow. We’ve got someone in our corner. We’ve got someone fighting for us.'”

Today, the two sons’ close ties are a distant memory. Kennedy Jr. has used Cesar Chavez’s name and image in his independent campaign for president, sparking outrage from Chavez’s family members.

Several of them spoke out this week as Kennedy plans to hold an event commemorating Cesar Chavez Day in Los Angeles on Saturday. In promoting the event, Kennedy’s campaign has emphasized his own image, almost subsuming it

alongside

a photo of his father sitting next to Chavez in 1968.

“When we saw Bobby Kennedy start using images of my father, and when we heard about this event in LA, that really pushed us to stand up and make sure people understood that the Chavez family campaign,” Paul Chavez, Fernando’s brother, told The Times.

“We’ve never seen anyone go so far as to use that image for political gain,” Andres Chavez, Paul’s son, said of the invitation to Kennedy’s campaign event.

Fernando and Paul, as well as Andres who runs the National Chavez Center in Keene, California. said they support President Biden for re-election, and that if Cesar were alive, he would do the same.

Biden holds one bust of the union leader in the Oval Office, and Chavez’s granddaughter Julie Chavez Rodriguez, who once organized strawberry pickers and later worked for President Obama, now serves as Biden’s campaign manager.

Chavez family members were also angry when they saw an Associated Press photo of Kennedy Jr. in a recent Telemundo segment. helped carry Cesar’s coffin during his funeral procession in 1993.

About 30,000 people attended the event, Fernando Chavez said, and when family members grew tired of carrying the simple pine coffin through the streets of Delano, California, others intervened. Hundreds of people helped carry the coffin over part of the mile-long distance. procession, including Kennedy Jr.

then an environmental lawyer,

and many

other

politicians.

A Kennedy spokesman said an intermediary had contacted a member of the Chavez family to invite them to the event but had not received a response.

“Mr. Kennedy has been a friend of the Chavez family since he was a boy and was asked by the family to be a pallbearer when Cesar Chavez passed away in 1993,” the spokesman, who did not give their name, said in a statement. e-mail. “This event is a celebration of an organizing hero, Cesar Chavez, a man who worked with Mr. Kennedy’s father until the day RFK was assassinated. The campaign is proud to sponsor this celebration on the weekend in honor of Cesar Chavez’s birthday in California.”

Both Paul and Andres Chavez said they had not been invited to the event or heard of the campaign.

Kennedy has organized more events in recent weeks as he strives to get on the ballot in as many states as possible, an expensive and complicated process without the support of either of the two major parties. He announced Tuesday that political newcomer Nicole Shanahan would become his running mate.

Shanahan helped produce and pay for a Super Bowl commercial that relied on footage and music from a television spot that John F. Kennedy ran as he ran for president in 1960. The late Democratic president was Robert Kennedy’s uncle Jr.

The Super Bowl angered many Kennedy family members, and some have since become more outspoken about their support for Biden and their frustration with their relative’s presidential candidate.

Relatives of Chavez said it was painful to speak out because, apart from Kennedy Jr., the Kennedy and Chavez clans remain closely linked. In 1988, Kennedy Sr.’s widow, Ethel, visited Chavez during one of his approximately month-long protest fasts.

Kerry Kennedy, one of the presidential candidate’s sisters, visited California in 2018 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the United Farm Workers health care plan, which was named after their father.

“My family and I repeatedly stood by Cesar and his cause,” she wrote in an op-ed in the New York Daily News in January.

In March 1968, Robert F. Kennedy, wearing a black UFW Aztec eagle pin on his lapel, stood at Chavez’s side as he broke a 25-day fast meant to draw attention to the farmworker movement’s focus on nonviolent protest .

It was almost three years ago that Filipino and Latino farm workers began striking over low wages and dangerous conditions.

“We came here out of respect for one of the heroic figures of our time, Cesar Chavez,” Kennedy Sr. said. at the time. “I also come here to congratulate all of you who are locked in with Cesar in the fight for farmworker justice.” Chavez, who had lost 35 pounds after living solely on water, was too weak to speak.

The moment cemented a friendship that had formed two years earlier, when Kennedy visited Delano for a Senate subcommittee field hearing and expressed shock and anger at the way farmworkers were treated.

With the 2024 presidential election just months away, Chavez family members said they fear that in a close race, any support for Kennedy could help Republican Donald Trump regain the White House.

“I’m quite shocked and saddened by that,” said Fernando Chavez, who added that he has not had any further contact with Kennedy Jr. since they worked together decades ago.

Fernando and others pointed out how hard farmworkers were hit by COVID-19, fueled in part by rampant misinformation among Latinos about the vaccine’s efficacy. The Cesar Chavez Foundation worked to vaccinate farm workers, Andres Chavez said, and Kennedy Jr.’s views. about vaccines horrified him.

In a 2021 podcast, Kennedy told parents to “resist” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on vaccinating their children. Over the years, he has repeatedly spread falsehoods about the effectiveness of vaccines, and more recently said the COVID-19 lockdowns were something a totalitarian state would do, comparing them to Nazi Germany.

“When Trump and Kennedy spread vaccine disinformation during the pandemic

,

People were dying,” Andres Chavez said. “I don’t think my grandfather would support anyone spreading this misinformation, knowing that farmworkers and Latinos were among the hardest hit.”