Remembering Dolores Huerta
Tewa Women United remembers and celebrates the life of Dolores Huerta, an inspiring civil rights leader and lifelong advocate for justice and human dignity, who died at her home in Bakersfield, California, on October 28. Dolores was 96 years old.
Born in Dawson, New Mexico, in 1930 to immigrant parents, Dolores kept close ties with New Mexico throughout her life. She would often return for visits to support local organizers here, and once said, “Everybody should be required by law to come to New Mexico to get a taste of humanity. I was born in New Mexico, and this is where I developed my philosophy of social justice.”
The National Women’s History Museum offers this account of Dolores’s youth:
“As a young woman, Huerta experienced discrimination that sharpened her political awareness and sense of injustice. A teacher once accused her of cheating because her writing was considered “too well-written” for a Mexican American student, a moment that revealed the low expectations placed on students of color. She also remembered an incident in which white servicemen violently attacked her brother for wearing a zoot suit at the end of World War II, another reminder that Mexican American lives were closely policed and undervalued. After college, Huerta briefly worked as a teacher in California’s agricultural regions. She later reflected that she could not remain in the classroom while her students arrived hungry, barefoot, and exhausted from laboring alongside their parents. Watching children struggle under those conditions convinced her that education alone could not address the deeper injustices surrounding farm labor.“
In the 1960s and 70s, along with other activists, Dolores organized farmworkers and migrant laborers in a fight for fair wages and safe working conditions. This effort would become the United Farm Workers (UFW), and changed many lives for the better, even as the struggle continues today. In her role as a leader in the UFW, Dolores helped organize the Delano Grape Strike in 1965 as well as consumer boycotts across the country. The contracts she negotiated raised wages, banned dangerous pesticides, and expanded access to health care and unemployment benefits for agricultural workers.
Dolores went on to become a strong advocate for women’s rights and reproductive justice through the Feminist Majority Foundation and her Dolores Huerta Foundation, a civic advocacy organization.
TWU’s Executive Director Dr. Corrine Sanchez reflected:
Dolores Huerta was a long-time shero of mine from an early age. She, along with the foremothers of Tewa Women United, showed me that women can lead with heart and fierceness, with a never-ending commitment toward justice for everyone. Dolores proved that together change is possible and healing is an on-going process. Si, se puede, Dolores!
Later in her life, Dolores was a founding member of the National Council of Elders. TWU’s Elder Kathy Sanchez, also a member of NCOE, encourages us to watch this video of Dolores speaking at its founding in 2012:
In the past year, we witnessed the heartbreaking story of the sexual abuse she endured from Cesar Chavez, co-founder of the UFW. Her story echoed that of countless women who have put the wellbeing of community first, and in the process experienced unimaginable pain. Dolores said,
I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work. The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.
We pray that this and future generations of women will not have to go through that experience, and our heartwork every day is to nurture a Culture of Consent and Peace that upholds the dignity of all peoples.
Gracias por todo, Dolores!
“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist,
every minute a chance to change the world.”
– Dolores Huerta