Oct. 28 (UPI) — Dolores 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 the age of 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.
Huerta organized and led strikes and boycotts throughout the1960s and 1970s and was the union’s vice president for nearly 40 years. United Farm Workers was the first nationally recognized union for farm workers in the United States.
“Our greatest monument to her memory is for the union that she helped found to continue to grow,” United Farm Workers said Wednesday in a social media post. “Dolores fought for farm workers to the very end of her life. The union she helped found will always continue that work.”
Huerta was born as 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, with whom she would found the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. That organization would eventually become the United Farm Workers union.
As a union leader, Huerta worked for the rights of agricultural workers in a time when they had few. 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.
As time went on, Huerta also worked for other progressive social and political causes, including the rights of immigrants and women, environmental justice, LGBTQ+ equality and more. 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 her 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 that time. “It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today.”
Earlier this year, Huerta was in the news again as she 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,” she 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.”