Dolores Huerta, who grew up in Stockton taking ballet lessons as a child and later co-founded the United Farm Workers, had unfinished business on her agenda when she died Wednesday at the age of 96.
Don’t get me wrong. Huerta, who left the UFW as secretary-general in 1999 and established her own foundation, left us with a hefty résumé from her farmworker movement work.
From doggedly forging the first labor contracts with Delano table grape growers in the 1970s to coining the iconic battle cry “Sí, Se Puede” (Yes, It Can Be Done) in 1972, the diminutive mother of 14 left her fingerprints all over a labor movement that changed the face of the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley.
Today, the children and grandchildren of those farmworkers have left the fields in favor of becoming teachers, lawyers, scientists and politicians. A former farmworker is now the Assembly Speaker (Robert Rivas). State Attorney General Rob Bonta grew up in the UFW headquarters in La Paz, just east of Bakersfield.
Huerta lobbied for farmworker causes in the state Capitol for the Community Services Organization before joining César E. Chávez and Gilbert Padilla in creating the UFW in 1962. Thanks to her efforts, the union was able to secure bathrooms and clean drinking water in the fields, ban the dreaded el cortito (the short-handed hoe that crippled the backs of many farm laborers) in 1975, and establish a health and pension plan for seasonal workers.
“The day has ended when the farmworker will let himself be used as a pawn by employers, government and others who would exploit them for their own ends,” Huerta remarked at a 1966 rally in Sacramento following a 300-mile pilgrimage that began in the UFW birthplace of Delano. “La huelga (the strike) and la causa (the cause) is our cry, and everyone must listen. ¡Viva la huelga! ¡Viva César Chávez!”
Many UFW achievements — passing the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975 to allow field workers to unionize, helping craft the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, outlawing the synthetic insecticide DDT in 1975 — would not have been possible without Huerta’s efforts.
History will rightly remember Huerta, who stood 5 feet tall, as a giant in the farm labor movement. But that only speaks to a slice of her identity.
Although Huerta has been a lifelong supporter of the farmworker movement, her work through the Dolores Huerta Foundation, founded in 2002, has gone beyond the fields.
She advocated for LGBTQ+ rights for years. In 2021, she appeared at a rally to support Kingsburg City Councilmember Jewel Hurtado when she failed to get council approval for a Pride Month proclamation. “It doesn’t make any sense to discriminate against anybody,” said Huerta.
She appeared regularly at schools and colleges to implore students to use their education for the public good. “I know you have been so academically prepared, but now I am going to ask you to be civically prepared,” she told the Cal State Stanislaus class of 2019. “In the critical time we are living in, we need warriors for justice.”
Her foundation trains the community to participate in civic activity, register to vote, promote healthcare and hold politicians accountable. That work will continue. Her legacy has not stopped doing the necessary work.
Candidates sought her endorsement. She counted Hollywood stars as friends, like Jane Fonda (who hosted an online birthday celebration for Huerta during COVID-19) and Eva Longoria.
Huerta got arrested fighting for better pay for home care workers at a Fresno County board of supervisors meeting in 2019. It wasn’t the first time she was arrested for civil disobedience.
My interaction with Huerta has spanned decades, but I didn’t see the other side of her until 2005 at the Dinuba funeral of Los Angeles labor giant Miguel Contreras, a former UFW staffer.
Spotting Huerta in the church parking lot following the funeral services, I walked up to her. We chatted about the Ben and Jerry’s chocolate-flavored ice cream campaign she had promoted.
“How was it?” I asked.
“Delicious!” she replied.
The discussion went in many directions, delightful but not news-breaking stuff. That is the down-to-earth Dolores that I will always remember.
That is the Dolores that attended a Chicano reception at Arte Américas three years ago and refused to go back to her hotel room in favor of having tequila shots with after-party celebrants. According to attendees like former Fresno Poet Laureate Joseph Ríos, she chided the attendees for trying to end the event at 10 p.m.
“You know, the guys in New York go ’til 4 or 5 in the morning,” she told the group.
Let’s all have a shot of tequila in honor of Dolores and her continuing legacy.
