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Dolores Huerta, US labor leader and civil rights icon, dies at 96

Summarised from 7 outlets · Updated 28 Oct, 17:02 · Archive

Dolores Huerta, the pioneering labour activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers union, has died at the age of 96.

Dolores Huerta, the labour activist and civil rights leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers union, has died at the age of 96. Her family announced her death on Wednesday at her home in Bakersfield, California, surrounded by close family. Independent World reports she died of cancer.

Born in New Mexico in 1930 and raised by a single mother in California's San Joaquin Valley, Huerta began her career as a schoolteacher before moving into labour organising. In 1962, she and Cesar Chavez co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which merged with another organisation four years later to form the United Farm Workers union. Through strikes, boycotts and protests in the 1960s and 1970s, the union won improvements in pay and working conditions for agricultural workers in the nation's fruit and vegetable fields.

Huerta is credited with coining the phrase 'Sí, se puede!' — Spanish for 'Yes, we can' — which became the widespread rallying cry of the labour movement and later the slogan of the United Farm Workers. President Barack Obama adapted this phrase for his 2008 presidential campaign, and joked when presenting her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 that he had stolen her slogan.

Over her decades of activism, Huerta received numerous accolades. She was the first Latina inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and received nine honorary doctorates from universities. Schools, streets and murals across California, Texas and Colorado bear her name. She remained active well into her 90s, marching in protests and speaking on race, poverty, LGBTQ+ rights and women's rights through her Bakersfield-based foundation.

Earlier this year, Huerta revealed allegations that shocked the labour movement. Following a New York Times investigation in March, she said that Chavez had sexually abused her on multiple occasions in the 1960s. She described two specific encounters: one in 1966 when he raped her inside a vehicle on a winter night in Delano, California, and another six years earlier when he pressured her to have sex with him in a hotel room during a work trip in San Juan Capistrano. She stated that both encounters resulted in pregnancies that she chose to keep secret, arranging for the children to be raised by other families.

Huerta said she did not report the 1966 assault to police because of hostility towards the farmworker union movement and because she believed no one within the union would believe her. She kept these allegations secret for 60 years. The Times investigation also detailed allegations from two other women who said Chavez had groomed and sexually abused girls involved in the labour movement. Chavez's family responded by saying they were 'devastated' by the reports and praised the women's courage in coming forward. Following the revelations, many organisations and individuals across California moved to remove Chavez's name from monuments.

The United Farm Workers union paid tribute to Huerta, stating that her life's work was to empower her community to face and overcome injustices and that she had 'left farm workers and the entire Latino community stronger and more organised than she found it'.

Dolores Huerta, US labor leader and civil rights icon, dies at 96
Image: Guardian World

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In this story: Dolores Huerta · Cesar Chavez · United Farm Workers · Barack Obama · California · New Mexico · National Farm Workers Association

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