LOS ANGELES — Dolores Huerta, the labor organizer who co-founded the United Farm Workers union with Cesar Chavez and spent seven decades fighting for poor farm workers, has died at the age of 96, her family announced Wednesday.
“As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for us, and we ask for privacy as we grieve this incredible loss to our family,” family spokesman Erik Olvera said. The BBC confirmed that she died of cancer.
Born in New Mexico and raised in Stockton, California, Huerta worked as a teacher before turning to organizing. She helped negotiate the first farm worker contracts in North America and later took up civil rights, women’s rights and environmental causes while raising 11 children, continuing her work through her foundation into her 90s.
The UFW said Huerta coined its motto, “Sí se puede” — “Yes, we can” — and that “she has left farm workers and the entire Latino community stronger and more organised than she found it.”
Earlier this year Huerta said Chavez, who died in 1993, had “manipulated and pressured” her into sex and on another occasion forced her in the 1960s, after a New York Times investigation detailed abuse allegations against him, the BBC reported.
Former President Bill Clinton said “we’ve all lost a stalwart champion of working Americans,” while California Governor Gavin Newsom said Huerta “represented the best of us.”
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