Dolores Huerta, the towering labor organizer and feminist pioneer who spent decades demanding dignity for agricultural laborers and popularized the rallying cry “Sí, se puede,” died Wednesday. She was 96.
Huerta died at her California home, her family said in a statement released through her foundation. Family spokesperson Erik Olvera asked for privacy during an “incredibly difficult time,” while BBC News reported that she died of cancer.
A Lifetime on the Front Lines
Alongside Cesar Chavez, Huerta established the National Farm Workers Association in the early 1960s, a labor group that later became the United Farm Workers of America. Serving as a fierce contract negotiator and union vice president, Huerta challenged agribusiness giants to secure the first health benefits, disability insurance, and collective bargaining rights for farm laborers.
Born Dolores Clara Fernandez in Dawson, New Mexico, on April 10, 1930, she moved with her mother to Stockton, California, following her parents’ divorce. Huerta initially worked as an elementary school teacher, but witnessing her students arrive barefoot and undernourished prompted her to pivot toward community organizing. “I thought I could do more by organizing farmworkers than by trying to teach their hungry children,” she said in a 2017 PBS documentary.
Huerta walked picket lines alongside Filipino grape pickers during the historic Delano grape strike in 1965 and orchestrated nationwide boycotts of grapes and lettuce. Those efforts forced growers to negotiate and helped pave the way for California to pass landmark legislation recognizing farmworkers’ right to collective bargaining. Over decades of protest, authorities arrested Huerta 22 times. In 1988, a police officer’s baton severely injured her during a peaceful demonstration in San Francisco, breaking several ribs and shattering her spleen.
Political Clout and Later Revelations
Huerta became a potent force in national politics, volunteering on the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy and standing alongside him on stage in Los Angeles moments before his assassination. Decades later, Barack Obama adapted her Spanish union slogan—translating to “Yes, we can”—for his 2008 presidential campaign, and he presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
Through the Bakersfield-based Dolores Huerta Foundation, she marched and advocated well into her 90s on issues involving racial equality, voting access, and LGBTQ+ rights. Earlier in 2026, Huerta shared painful personal revelations with The New York Times, alleging that Chavez sexually abused and raped her during the 1960s, which resulted in two secret pregnancies. She told the radio show Latino USA that she kept the abuse quiet for six decades to prevent damaging the wider farmworker movement.
Huerta had 13 children, including four with her longtime partner Richard Chavez, who died in 2011. Her family said it would release details regarding memorial plans in the coming days.
