Dolores Huerta, the labor organizer and civil rights leader who co-founded the organization that became the United Farm Workers (UFW) of America, negotiated landmark contracts for agricultural workers and originated the rallying cry “Sí, se puede,” died Wednesday at her home in Bakersfield, California. We know that many of you around the world share in our mourning, and we will be following up on plans to recognize and celebrate her incredible life and legacy.” The Dolores Huerta Foundation said she died surrounded by close family. No cause of death was immediately announced.
Her family asked for privacy and said plans to recognize and celebrate her life would be announced later. Huerta became nationally significant by helping organize a largely Latino and Filipino workforce that had little political power and was excluded from many federal labor protections. As a negotiator, strike organizer and lobbyist, she helped farmworkers secure contracts providing higher wages, job security, healthcare, retirement plans, rest periods, clean drinking water, field toilets and protections from pesticides.
Her public life extended far beyond organized labor. Over more than six decades, she advocated for voting rights, women’s political participation, immigrant rights, racial equality, environmental justice and LGBTQ+ rights, becoming one of the country’s most prominent Latina activists. Huerta helped transform farmworkers from a dispersed and frequently exploited workforce into a national labor and political constituency.
Although César Chávez became the farmworker movement’s most recognizable public figure, Huerta handled many of its most consequential negotiations and legislative battles. She served as a chief negotiator, organized strikes and consumer boycotts, lobbied elected officials and became one of the United Farm Workers’ most visible spokespeople. According to the Dolores Huerta Foundation, her legislative victories included extending Aid to Families with Dependent Children and disability-insurance protections to California farmworkers.
She also helped secure a measure allowing driver’s-license exams in Spanish. Huerta was instrumental in the passage of California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which established farmworkers’ rights to organize, select union representation and bargain collectively. The law was the first of its kind in the United States.
Huerta was born April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, a mining community in the northern part of the state. After her parents divorced, she moved with her mother and two brothers to Stockton, California. Her father, Juan Fernandez, worked as a farmworker and miner, participated in union activism and later served in the New Mexico Legislature.
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