Dolores Huerta, the civil rights and labor icon who co-founded the United Farm Workers and helped build the struggle for farmworkers’ rights into a national movement, died Wednesday at age 96, according to the Associated Press.
She died at home in Bakersfield, California, after a battle with cancer, her family told the AP.
Born in New Mexico in 1930 and raised in California, Huerta had longstanding connections to San Antonio through the city’s Mexican American civil rights movement, and she continued to be a political presence here. She appeared before City Council late last year to advocate moving municipal elections from May to November in odd-numbered years.
Huerta started her career as an elementary school teacher but turned to organizing after seeing first-hand the poverty wracking her students’ families. In 1962, she joined César Chávez in founding the National Farm Workers Association, which eventually became the United Farm Workers.
During her time with the organization, Huerta helped organize strikes and nationwide boycotts that won better wages and working conditions for agricultural workers. She won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and remained politically active well into her 90s, fighting for immigrant rights, racial equality, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ causes.
Huerta is credited with coining the rallying cry “Sí, se puede!” — Spanish for “Yes, it can be done” — a phrase synonymous with the farmworker movement that continues to be heard at protests and political rallies.
This spring, Huerta revealed Chávez sexually abused her during the 1960s, resulting in the births of two children, forcing a nationwide reckoning on his legacy. She said she kept the abuse secret out of fear that speaking publicly would harm the movement she devoted her life to building.
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