UFW credits Huerta with coining its Spanish-language rallying cry

Dolores Huerta, a US civil rights leader who helped found the United Farm Workers Union, died at 96, her family announced Wednesday. Huerta campaigned alongside Cesar Chavez for farm workers’ rights in the 1960s and 1970s, and the two founded the union together.

Family spokesman Erik Olvera said on Wednesday, “As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for us, and we ask for privacy as we grieve this incredible loss to our family.”

Huerta continued her activism through her foundation, addressing immigration and voting issues after the farmworker campaign. The UFW also credited her with helping end the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican men to work temporarily in the US, and with helping negotiate the 1986 Immigration Reform Act.

The union said in a Wednesday statement posted on social media that Huerta coined its motto, “Si Se Puede!” The Spanish phrase means “Yes, we can!” and became a familiar rallying cry for activists seeking better working conditions for Hispanic farm workers.

In its tribute, the UFW said, “Her life’s work was to empower her community to face and overcome injustices, and she has left farm workers and the entire Latino community stronger and more organised than she found it.” The union added, “Her commitment to civic engagement and bringing political power to disenfranchised people is a lesson we all should carry to the ballot box.”

Earlier this year, Huerta said Chavez, who died in 1993, had “manipulated and pressured” her into having sex and, on another occasion, forced her in the 1960s. The New York Times published an investigation detailing allegations from Huerta and two other women that Chavez groomed and sexually abused girls involved in the labour movement.

Huerta said the two encounters resulted in pregnancies that she chose to keep secret, arranging for the children to be raised by other families. Chavez’s family said in a statement at the time that they were “devastated” by the reports and praised the women’s “courage to come forward.”

María Teresa Kumar, president of the voting group Voto Latino, called Huerta a “civil rights giant” who gave “her entire life, until her final days, to championing and fighting injustice for everyone, no matter who they were or where they came from.”