While it is true that Cesar Chavez is considered a hero to California farmworkers, he did not work alone. Dolores Huerta, who recently turned 90, helped to improve social and economic conditions for farm workers across the state by fighting against discrimination, and she continues to do so today.
Huerta helped influence the labor leaders and activists for Latinos and Hispanic people, as the founder of the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) and, with Cesar Chavez, she became a cofounder of the United Farm Workers (UFW), which is now affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Among her other accomplishments, Huerta directed boycotts to help support the farm workers when they went on strike and she helped create the UFW’s motto of “Si, se puede,” a now-familiar phrase in Spanish which means “Yes, you can” or “It can be done.”
While Huerta experienced both racism for being a Mexican and sexism for being a female, she has used her life and her skills to fight those biases in others and to increase awareness of the discrimination that she has faced. While she stepped down from an official roll in the UFW, she continues to fight for women of Mexican heritage through her role in the Dolores Huerta Foundation which, according to their website, “recruits, trains, organizes, and empowers grassroots leaders in low-income communities to attain social justice through systemic and structural transformation.” If you’d like to know more about this foundation and ways you can help support Hispanic leadership, visit https://doloreshuerta.org/.