Dolores Huerta, arguably the nation's best-known Latina civil rights leader, has died, her family said in a statement.
She was 96.
The labor leader was the co-founder, with Cesar Chavez, of the United Farm Workers (UFW), the first nationally recognized union for farmworkers.
An inspiration to generations of Americans, Huerta spent decades fighting labor injustices and political, racial and gender inequalities.
Huerta was “the most famous Latina that has ever been in the labor movement, and the renown was well-earned,” said Matthew J. Garcia, professor at Dartmouth College and author of the 2014 book “From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement.”
“She was extraordinary,” he said.
In her UFW heyday, Huerta cut a striking figure, a fierce young Latina shouting through a bullhorn, rallying workers and leading marches. This was a rare sight at a time when Hispanic people had yet to become a political force. She was the embodiment of a “Chicana,” a politically active Mexican American woman claiming her own power.
Though she was most famous for her leadership in the United Farm Workers, Huerta was committed to social and political activism throughout her life, supporting voting rights, immigrant rights, environmental justice, LGBTQ equality and other issues. She was arrested more than 25 times for participating in nonviolent civil disobedience activities. In 2019, at 89, she was arrested while participating in a union protest for better pay for home healthcare workers. She also prominently campaigned for many Democratic candidates.
In 1993, Huerta was the first Latina inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Upon receiving this prestigious award, Huerta noted, “The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today.”
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In a shocking coda to her life story, Huerta revealed earlier this year that Chavez had sexually abused her during their time as union leaders. This revelation came as part of a bombshell investigation by The New York Times, alleging that Chavez had groomed and abused girls and women. Huerta had not known about the young girls’ and young women’s allegations, she said. In a statement about her revelations, she said, “I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work.”
Of Mexican American descent, Huerta was born in 1930 in New Mexico to Juan Fernández and Alicia Saint John Chavez and grew up in Stockton, California. Civic engagement was part of her family tradition. “My father was an assemblyman; I had a cousin who was a judge. When we were kids, we used to listen to FDR’s fireside chats,” she said, referring to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “When I turned 21, part of my birthday ritual was to go and register to vote.”
After college, Huerta worked as a teacher. But she was shocked to see the children of farmworkers coming to school barefoot and hungry, and living in homes with dirt floors. Determined to make more of a difference in people’s lives, she decided to become a community organizer.
In her mid-20s, Huerta joined a California Latino civil rights group as a lobbyist, working in Sacramento in support of pensions for noncitizens and disability insurance for farmworkers.
Then came a turning point in her life, when she met Chavez, a fellow organizer, at a 1955 fundraising dinner. They shared an interest in the welfare of farmworkers, and seven years later they launched the National Farm Workers Association, a forerunner to the UFW.
Although Chavez was the face of the movement, Huerta’s organizing was essential to its success in winning farmworkers the right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions. It was she who coined the slogan “Sí se puede” (Yes we can!), which became the rallying cry of the farmworker movement.
Through protests, strikes and grassroots campaigns, the UFW helped improve the lives of some of the country’s poorest and most marginalized workers. From the mid-’60s to the mid-’70s, millions of Americans participated in boycotts of grapes and lettuce. It was a heady time, Huerta recalled in the 2017 documentary about her life, “Dolores.”
“We had this ambience all around you, that you could really change the world," she said in the documentary.
It was during this time, Huerta said this year, that she experienced two separate unwanted sexual encounters with Chavez. The first time, Huerta told the Times, was in 1960, when Chavez pressured her into sex. The second time was in 1966, a situation that Huerta described as rape. These traumatic experiences became a dark secret that she would keep for nearly 60 years, even as she became a much-admired feminist and labor icon.
“Dolores was by Cesar Chavez’s side the whole way through,” Garcia said. “They took what had been a largely rural movement and turned it into a cause that captured the national imagination.” Huerta, he pointed out, brought the UFW’s message into places such as Los Angeles and New York City. “She was also a tenacious and strong negotiator of contracts on behalf of farmworkers.”
Despite Huerta’s significant efforts with the UFW, her role was often overlooked.
“She was as strong a figure as Cesar was ... I think she is an unsung hero in many parts of the U.S., and in our history,” said Domingo Garcia, former national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC. “Dolores stood for courage. She stood for righteousness and justice when it was unpopular to do so — and when there could be consequences for doing so.”
Huerta helped mobilize working-class and poor people, he said, “but she never backed down. She is a profile in courage that every American should know about, especially Latinos and women.”
After she spoke about the abuse she suffered, Huerta was hailed by Latino civic and advocacy organizations for her courage.
Yet, Huerta’s legacy will always be intertwined with that of Chavez. “I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor — of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control,” Huerta said in her statement this year. “My heart aches for everyone who suffered alone and in silence for years.”
Huerta noted that the farmworkers movement had always been bigger than one individual. “Cesar’s actions do not diminish the permanent improvements achieved for farmworkers with the help of thousands of people,” she said. “We must continue to engage and support our community, which needs advocacy and activism now more than ever.”
Huerta’s involvement with the UFW came at great personal cost. The mother of 11 children, she left several of her children behind with relatives when she went to organize farmworkers in the fields. She was often not available for her other children due to the demands of her work.
Within the UFW, Huerta saw gender-based inequality, which led to an awakening of her feminist identity. “When I went to Delano (California) to work with the farmworkers, I had to tamp down my feelings about women in power because there was a different ambience with the male dominance in the movement. There were a lot of women in the movement, but we saw we needed to be on the executive board,” she reflected in 2017. “The feminists helped me understand why it was important for women to be able to have control of their bodies and control of their lives.”
She founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation in 2003 to “create networks of healthy, organized communities pursuing social justice through systemic and structural transformation,” according to its website.
She married her first husband, Ralph Head, in 1948. They had two daughters together. Her second husband was Venturo Huerta, with whom she had five children. She had four children with her longtime partner, Richard Chavez (brother of Cesar), who died in 2011.
By 2024, Huerta was pleased by the progress that Latinos had made, in areas such as political representation and education, but remained concerned about threats to democracy. “Fascism, and voter suppression, is real,” she said. “But my optimism comes from knowing that we, the people, have the power to change things; if we organize, if we vote, and when we elect representatives who will enact policies that benefit all people.”
As the country’s political and social landscape changed during her lifetime, Huerta never wavered in her belief that people united in common cause can alter their circumstances. “When people come together and take collective action,” she said in 2020, “whether it’s in a march, whether it’s in a union election or, most important, come together to vote, this is how we make change.”
