The effort has other hurdles to clear before a potential City Council vote this summer. A city survey found most respondents supporting renaming to Durango.
SAN ANTONIO — The City of San Antonio’s four-member Governance Committee unanimously advanced a proposal to rename Cesar Chavez Boulevard back to Durango after wide-reverberating allegations of sexual abuse on the part of the late civil rights leader earlier this year.
A city survey found 64% of more than 18,000 respondents supported renaming the corridor back to Durango, the street’s prior official designation until San Antonio leaders voted in 2011 to rename it in honor of Chavez, who cofounded United Farm Workers in 1962.
District 5 Councilwoman Teri Castillo proposed the renaming following claims that Chavez, who died in 1993, abused multiple young girls as well as fellow UFW leader Dolores Huerta, who said she secretly carried two of his children.
Council members Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, Phyllis Viagran, Edward Mungia and Misty Spears voted in support of the proposal, which must next go through a technical review. It will also need the green light from the Historic Design and Review Commission and Planning Commission before a potential full City Council vote later this summer.
“Durango is a great name, has a lot of history behind it, so I’m very happy about that,” Spears said at Wednesday’s Governance Committee meeting.
Communities across the U.S. swiftly acted in the wake of the sexual misconduct claims against Chavez, whose name has adorned parks, schools and streets across the country. Within hours of the original New York Times report being published in March, leaders at the San Antonio organization that sought to preserve his legacy of activism decided to dissolve the group.
According to city documents, staff expect it would cost about $205,000 to rename Cesar Chavez Boulevard between Southwest 36th Street and South Hackbery—a roughly five-and-a-half-mile corridor that slices from the east side through downtown and into the west side. In her Council Consideration Request, Castillo proposed using $200,000 originally allocated to the city’s annual Cesar Chavez March through the 2026 budget for the effort.
Nearly 300 San Antonio addresses would be impacted by the renaming, city staff estimated. It’s expected they would have to pay anywhere from $26 to $51 to update their records.
In the survey conducted earlier this year, 36% of respondents suggested different names. Officials didn’t specify what those suggested names were, but residents on social media have offered up everything from Selena and Gregg Popovich to President Donald Trump and Dolores Huerta.