Students, colleagues recall Huerta's ability to connect with anyone

1988 beating led Huerta to feminist activism, Spillar said

When Dolores Huerta visited a central California college, a group of farmworkers’ descendants — many of them students — choked back tears over the then-94-year-old taking the time to listen to them. That was the effect Huerta had on young people, said Ana Padilla, executive director of the Community and Labor Center at the University of California, Merced, which had hosted Huerta for the event.

“It was transformative,” Padilla said. “Something that I heard a lot from students in particular was just how accessible she was. That’s just what made Dolores a natural organizer, just an ability to connect immediately with really anyone.”

Huerta, the activist and icon who helped improve the lives of laborers in farming and other industries, died Wednesday from cancer at 96, surrounded by family at her home in Bakersfield, California.

Living up to her rallying cry, “Sí, se puede!” (“Yes, it can be done”), the civil rights activist never stopped fighting. She marched alongside protesters, spoke on countless panels and lent her voice to progressive causes well into her 90s — on issues affecting Latinos, African Americans, the LGBTQ+ community and women. During every major election she encouraged voters and endorsed candidates, and she pushed more Latinos to consider running for office.

Huerta co-founded with César Chavez the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. It became the United Farm Workers of America a few years later and then joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. The movement fought for better wages and working conditions for agricultural workers, such as fair hours and access to bathrooms. Her work earned her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2012. From the United Farm Workers union to the Latino Victory Project, many groups said they would not exist if not for Huerta.

Admiration for Huerta only strengthened after she revealed in March that she was among the women and girls who say they were sexually abused by César Chavez, the labor leader she was inextricably linked to in history.

Huerta once said she simply wanted to encourage younger generations, particularly women, to use their voice. “I hope that they know they have a place,” Huerta told The Associated Press in August while attending the Los Angeles premiere of the documentary “American Pachuco.” “Never be afraid to take the leadership,” she said.

Her leadership made Huerta almost a mythical figure, especially in Latino households. Anabelle Sanchez, 20, of Lansing, Michigan, texted her parents when she learned of Huerta’s death. Sanchez, who is Mexican American and a political science and public policy major at Michigan State University, was a child when her mother taught her about Huerta and hopes to emulate Huerta’s “strength and her courage.”

“I’ve always looked up to her. She was very civically involved throughout her life and just using her voice even when things were scary,” Sanchez said. “She was a part of everyday life and she would always go to events like pretty much up until her last breath,” she said. “Always being an advocate, thinking of others who may not have that opportunity. That’s just something that will always stay with me about her.”

Irasema Coronado, director of Arizona State University’s School of Transborder Studies, became friends with Huerta over 20 years ago when they met at a feminist-centered conference on a cruise ship. She remembers Huerta as someone with boundless energy who showed up for people. Once, Huerta attended a protest in Phoenix and then left immediately after to make appearances at demonstrations in New Mexico and Texas. “She was everywhere,” Coronado said. “She never missed an opportunity to be on the right side of something. I never saw her with a script. It was from the heart.”

During the farmworkers movement of the 1960s, Huerta put up with a great deal of sexism, often the only woman in the room. “She was expected to be quiet and stay in the background and instead, she was out in front and demanding change,” said Kathy Spillar, executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation, on whose board Huerta served.

The two women met at a conference for the National Organization for Women in the late 1980s, when Spillar approached Huerta with the idea of launching the foundation. “It was the only way that the issues Dolores was talking about could be addressed,” Spillar said. “She said, ‘Sign me up. I’m with you.’ And that was the beginning of almost 40 years.”

Spillar met Huerta around the time that a police officer attacked and beat her. On Sept. 14, 1988, while protesting outside an appearance by then-Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush in San Francisco, Huerta was beaten with a baton. She was hospitalized with broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and other injuries. She later won an $825,000 settlement from the city.

The ordeal also got Huerta thinking about how to help others besides farmworkers, Spillar recalls. Huerta noticed that the women caring for her at the hospital as she recovered from the police assault were under-appreciated. “They all would talk with her about the struggles that they faced,” Spillar said. “And she decided, I think then, that she was going to become very active in the feminist movement.”

Many schools in California bear Huerta’s name. The state also joins Washington, Oregon and New Mexico in marking her legacy on her April 10 birthday.

After the revelations about Chavez’s abuse, Huerta rejected pledges by some to use her name as a replacement for his on streets, schools and other sites. Instead, those places “should not be renamed after her, but the UFW martyrs, organizers, farmworkers, and families who sacrificed everything to build something bigger than any one person,” a spokesperson for Huerta told The San Francisco Standard earlier this year.

Huerta used her influence when it felt needed. That is how the labor center in Merced was officially founded in 2020, Padilla said, after the labor rights pioneer lobbied state lawmakers to fund it. Talking to students there was among Huerta’s favorite things. “She would want to spend as much time as she could with you and regardless of your standing,” Padilla said. “She treated folks the same.”