Dolores Huertawho co-founded the United Farm Workers union to improve working conditions in the country’s fruit and vegetable fields and coined the eternal “Sí, se puede!” rallying cry, is dead. She was 96 years old.
Huerta died of cancer Wednesday at her home in Bakersfield, Calif., surrounded by her family, said Erik Olvera, a family spokesman.
Huerta remained busy well into her 90s, protesting and encourage activists to continue speaking out on race, poverty, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights.
“It seems like history keeps repeating itself,” she told the Associated Press in August. “You see what is happening in our country right now and we know that people need to stand up. »
Huerta’s determination cemented his place in history as one of the country’s most influential labor leaders, civil rights icons and feminist activists. Its three-word slogan in Spanish – which translates to “Yes, it can be done” – was based on the belief that people who take action can bring about change.
His honors over the decades included the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When President Barack Obama presented her with the nation’s highest civilian honor in 2012, he praised Huerta as a tenacious leader and said she had been gracious when he stole her slogan for his 2008 campaign. “I’m glad she let me off easy … because Dolores doesn’t play,” Obama joked.
“Her life’s work was to empower her community to confront and overcome injustices, and she left farmworkers and the entire Latino community stronger and more organized than she found them,” United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said in a statement Wednesday.
Revealing a secret that shook Latino culture
This year, Huerta revealed a shocking chapter of his life — that she was sexually abused in the 1960s by farm worker movement co-founder César Chavez, leading to the birth of two children, a secret she kept for 60 years, long after his death. Chávez’s reputation immediately deterioratedits name removed from streets and buildings and the holiday that had been a point of Hispanic pride.
Huerta said she stayed silent for so long because she feared that coming forward would jeopardize her life’s work and undo all the progress made for workers. Since the early 1970s, Huerta’s life partner was Richard Chavez, César’s brother, and together they had four children. She also had seven children from two previous marriages.
Asked in a 2026 interview with the Latino USA news agency about the need to keep it a secret, Huerta said: “It was my personal pain, it was my personal problem and, you know, I think it was worth it because it was my cross to bear. I’ll put it that way.”
Demonstrate a “passion for justice”
Huerta’s advocacy changed many lives beyond the farm fields, said former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who called her a “staunch champion for American workers.”
“Dolores wore many hats: voting rights advocate, human rights champion, die-hard Democrat, self-described ‘born-again feminist’ and co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America,” the Clintons said in a statement. “To see her in action was to witness a living legend who never stopped promoting progress. »
Gov. Gavin Newsom said California wouldn’t be where it is without his “passion for justice and equity.”
“Dolores’ fight for gender equality, workers’ rights and civil rights paved the way for generations to come, teaching people what was possible with determination and heart,” the Democrat said.
Becoming an activist long before meeting Chavez
Huerta was born Dolores Clara Fernandez in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico. His father was a miner and union activist who won a seat in the state Legislature. Her parents divorced when she was 3, and her mother took her and her brothers to California.
Immersed in a melting pot of Mexican, Filipino, African-American, Japanese and Chinese working families, Huerta learned from her mother – who owned a restaurant and hotel – independence, compassion and activism.
Huerta was a young and energetic elementary school teacher in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley when she decided to take another call after becoming frustrated with the poor living conditions of her students.
“I couldn’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes,” she said in a 2017 PBS Independent Lens documentary about her life. “I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their starving children.”
Huerta’s early work with a civil rights group in Stockton led to his meeting with Chavez. The two men wanted to focus more on the plight of farmworkers, and so in 1962 they created the National Farm Workers Association, which a few years later became the United Farm Workers of America. She was a key union leader and negotiator for years.
She was among those who joined Filipino grape pickers on the picket line in what became known as the five-year “Delano Grape Strike.” With Chavez, she negotiated collective bargaining agreements and contracts with large producers, winning the first health and benefits plans for farm workers.
Chavez, who died in 1993, once described her as fearless, committed to the cause and tough in negotiations.
Campaign for Presidents and Voting Rights
She met Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 and volunteered for his presidential campaign, registering Mexican Americans in California to vote. Huerta was on stage with Kennedy after she won the California primary and he publicly thanked her moments before he was shot.
The assassination devastated Huerta, but she continued to organize. Huerta was imprisoned 22 times for protesting against the union.
In 1988, she was seriously injured while protesting Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush’s opposition to the UFW’s grape boycott during his visit to San Francisco.
Caught in a crowd, she was hit by a policeman’s baton, suffered three broken ribs and a pulverized spleen, and had to undergo blood transfusions. She reached an agreement with the city to settle her claims.
After a long recovery, Huerta changed her focus, campaigning for women’s rights and encouraging Latinas to run for office.
She also campaigned for Democratic Presidents Clinton, Obama and Joe Biden.
Leave a legacy of civil rights advocacy
Emilio Huerta, one of Dolores’ 13 children, said his mother’s courage motivated his life’s work.
“To dedicate your life to building the dream of a union for agricultural workers, to taking on agriculture, which to this day is still a powerhouse… It took a lot of courage,” he said.
Huerta won financial aid for the unemployed and disability insurance for California farm workers. She has spoken out against toxic pesticides, called for amnesty for illegal immigrants in the country, and campaigned against federal guest worker programs.
By organizing national boycotts of grapes and lettuce in the early 1970s, she helped create the economic pressure and political climate necessary for California to pass the first state law recognizing farmworkers’ rights to collective bargaining.
But it has not always won the favor of more liberal activists.
In 2016, when she supported Hillary Rodham Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, actress Rosario Dawson — a Sanders supporter who played Huerta in a 2014 film about César Chavez — said Huerta had become “a tool of the establishment.” The two eventually reconciled.
Huerta’s leadership in the labor movement made his name synonymous with civil rights in the United States and beyond. In the 2025 documentary “Seeds of Change: The Life and Legacy of Dolores Huerta,” she credited the women’s movement of the 1970s with providing her with the validation needed to take the stage alongside other union leaders.
“I hope my legacy is that of an organizer who organized to fight injustice,” she said in the film. “We want to give our children a legacy of justice, of law, not of jewels or possessions or money, because they will just fight over that. So the main thing is to give them this love of justice – and that is the greatest gift any of us can receive.”
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Associated Press contributors include Leslie Ambriz, Brian Melley, John Seewer and former AP reporter Russell Contreras.
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