The intersection of Southeast Cesar E Chavez Boulevard and Belmont Street in Portland, Ore. on March 18, 2026.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
It’s been nearly two decades since a group of Latino Portlanders successfully campaigned to rename the city’s 39th Avenue after farmworker labor advocate Cesar Chavez.
Now, following revelations uncovered by The New York Times that Chavez had allegedly sexually abused women and girls, city councilors are considering a new name for the Portland street: Campesinos Blvd. The name, meaning “farmers” or “farmworkers,” is meant to honor the Latino farmworkers who played an integral role in labor rights.
“This movement is and always has been bigger than one man,” said Reyna Lopez, the Executive Director of Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, Oregon’s largest farmworker union.
Lopez is part of the committee that proposed the name change, which came to the council’s Public Works Committee Tuesday.
“The name Campesinos Boulevard centers on the farm workers themselves, the people whose labor feeds our communities, who organized, shaped this movement, and whose contributions deserve to be honored collectively, not through one individual alone,” said Councilor Loretta Smith, who introduced the proposal.
The five-person Public Works Committee voted unanimously to advance the proposal to a full city council hearing. The majority of people who testified supported the move.
“I believe that this renaming effort is especially crucial now at a time when our immigrant communities feel the most threatened,” said Sonny Montes Jr., one of the founders of Woodburn’s Colegio César Chávez and a former farmworker. “For a city like Portland that is presently advocating for its immigrant communities through marches and protests, the renaming effort proudly reflects a conviction to these values.”
There is no precedent for removing a person’s name from a street in Portland — only renaming a street after a person of “historic significance.” Under city code, changing a street name requires the support of at least 2,500 Portlanders or at least 75% of people living on the street in question.
The proposal would waive that requirement completely, and speed up the process. It directs the Portland Bureau of Transportation to replace the street signs with the new name within six months of the ordinance’s passage.
This is the main issue that has drawn opposition to the latest name change.
“You’re waiving your own ordinances to fast-track this process,” said Kyle Warner, who lives on Chavez Blvd. “This is unfair, inappropriate, and not consistent with best practices for street naming. For talking so much about inclusion and equity, you are not including us. We live on the street.”
Warner’s comments echoed the majority of written public comments filed online. Many advocate changing the street name back to 39th Ave., or slowing the process down to involve neighbors’ input.
It’s a familiar request for those who fought for the initial Chavez renaming a decade ago. In 2007, a group of Latino Portlanders began a movement to change the name of a city street to memorialize Chavez.
The ensuing three-year-campaign brought bitter fights to neighborhood meetings and City Hall — marked with racism and threats of violence to campaign organizers.
“We were mocked, publicly insulted, and faced intimidation in our own neighborhoods simply for asking visibility and dignity in this city,” said Marta Guembes, one of the original organizers, at the Tuesday hearing.
After attempts to bring Chavez’s name to four other city streets failed, the group finally brought the 39th Avenue renaming proposal to the City Council in 2009, where it passed unanimously. Guembes is now a co-chair of Por la Causa, a new committee formed to propose changes to Chavez Blvd.
“The ordinance before you today is about telling a fuller truth and choosing values larger than any one symbolic individual,” Guembes said. “There has been too much indirect talk about who belongs, who is right, or who deserves recognition first. The truth is that we need everyone, and we cannot ignore the deeper harms that can exist between organizing the spaces.”
Renaming 39th Avenue in 2009 cost the city about $200,000 in staff time and material costs in the five years following the council vote. The city has not yet shared how much the latest name change could cost.
The proposal will head to a more in-depth discussion and vote before the full city council in the coming weeks.
