United Farm Workers vows to continue Huerta's fight

Huerta was the union’s vice president for nearly 40 years

The United Farm Workers said Wednesday that Dolores Huerta “fought for farm workers to the very end of her life” and that the union she helped found will always continue that work. Huerta, a pioneering labor leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers in the 1960s and was a prominent force for civil rights, died Wednesday at age 96, her family said.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved mother, Dolores Huerta, has passed away today,” the family said in a statement. “Our greatest monument to her memory is for the union that she helped found to continue to grow,” the United Farm Workers said in a social media post.

United Farm Workers was the first nationally recognized union for farm workers in the United States. Huerta organized and led strikes and boycotts throughout the 1960s and 1970s and was the union’s vice president for nearly 40 years. As a union leader, she worked for the rights of agricultural workers at a time when they had few rights.

She was instrumental in many protests and boycotts, including an international consumer boycott of grapes to protest labor conditions for farm workers, and was arrested more than 20 times.

Huerta also worked for other causes, including the rights of immigrants and women, environmental justice and LGBTQ+ equality. In 2019, at age 89, she was arrested while taking part in a union protest for better pay for home healthcare workers.

In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Huerta the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. “The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized and took direct action,” Huerta said at the time. “It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today.”

Huerta was born Dolores Clara Fernandez on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, N.M. Raised by her mother after her parents’ divorce, she graduated from college with a teaching certificate and worked for a time as a teacher.

Several years later, Huerta started working with the Community Service Organization, a grassroots organization that worked for the rights of Latino people in California. There she met Cesar Chavez, and together they founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. The organization eventually became the United Farm Workers union.

Earlier this year, Huerta told The New York Times that Chavez had raped her during their time working together. The Times was reporting on the evidence that Chavez had also groomed and molested girls as young as 12 for years. “I saw him, again, as my boss, as my hero, as, you know, somebody that would do the impossible,” Huerta said. “I never talked about it to anybody, and the reason I didn’t is because I just didn’t want to hurt the movement.”