Speech to CLUW National Executive Board and Conference on Family Issues, (26 January 1985) San Diego, CA

Context

Dolores Clara Fernandez, later known as Dolores Huerta, was born on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico. When she was a toddler, her parents divorced and her mother moved with her three children to Stockton, California. Her mother served as a role model for Huerta as she provided for her family as a single parent. The family’s financial situation changed when her mother remarried and the couple decided to invest in a hotel that allowed the family to experience a middle-class lifestyle.1 As a third-generation Mexican American with a middle-class upbringing, Huerta had access to opportunities many Mexican Americans did not at the time.2 After graduating high school, she married Ralph Head, her high school sweetheart; they divorced after three years of marriage. Around this time, Huerta also attended the University of the Pacific’s Stockton College, where she earned an associate’s degree with a teaching certificate.3

Huerta eventually grew dissatisfied with her career as a teacher. Seeing that her students did not have their basic needs met, Huerta decided she could do more for her community as an organizer.4 In 1955, she became involved in the Community Service Organization (CSO) chapter in Stockton, an organization interested in increasing Mexican American participation in civic life. Huerta also met César Chávez through the CSO. During this time, Huerta married Ventura Huerta. Because her involvement in community organizing conflicted with her role as a housewife, the couple started to face marital issues. Huerta prioritized her community over her marriage. As she explained, “I hedged, I made excuses, I didn’t come out and tell my husband that I cared more about helping other people than cleaning our house and doing my hair.”5 Huerta ended up divorcing her second husband in 1961, but she decided to keep the last name since Dolores Huerta meant “sorrow in the orchards.” She thought it reflected her purpose to help farm workers.6

In 1958, the Catholic Priest Thomas McCullough decided to organize farm workers to foster community, which resulted in the creation of the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA). This organization dissolved after the AFL-CIO decided to get involved in unionizing farm workers and developing the Agricultural Workers’ Organizing Committee (AWOC). Former members of the AWA joined the new AFL-CIO affiliated organization. Huerta became part of the staff, but she soon grew frustrated with the CIO industrial organizers, who were not familiar with the daily life and struggles of farm workers. Meanwhile, César Chávez started to distance himself from the CSO because of his devotion to organizing farm workers exclusively. The CSO instead devoted more attention to middle-class Mexican Americans.7 In 1962, Chavez invited Huerta to co-found the National Farm Workers Association that later became the United Farm Workers (UFW).8 Huerta accepted the invitation and the two went on to develop cross-cultural and cross-racial coalitions that allowed the organization to reach 100,000 members during its peak in 1975.9

Huerta’s efforts were crucial to the success of the organization. She helped lead the grape boycott efforts in New York City. The UFW became a nationally recognized organization after the grape boycotts, creating coalitions with institutions such as student movements, churches, and other labor unions.10 She was also the creator of the union’s newspaper, El Malcriado.11 Huerta implemented new initiatives for the union such as the Economic Development Fund, child care center, retirement village for farm workers, and a two percent dues structure.12 Her efforts also contributed to securing benefits for migrant workers, such as disability insurance, old age pensions, and unemployment insurance.13 As a result of such leadership, Huerta became the first Chicana and first woman to negotiate a farm labor contract.14 She also used her persuasive skills to demand the enforcement of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, a law shaped by UFW efforts, which granted farm workers the right to unionize in the state of California.15

Despite such successes, Huerta also faced many challenges in her activist career. As a divorced, full-time working mother with eleven children, she had to make unconventional adjustments to comply with the union’s schedule.16 She was also criticized for wanting to take on leadership roles in the labor movement. Many Mexican farm workers were Catholic and subscribed to a more traditional view of gender roles and family life. Many believed that women should primarily care for their families. In the beginning of her organizing career, Huerta had to work using the identities of her brother and husband as a cover.17 Despite the pushback from the men in the UFW, Huerta never backed down, insisting that women were essential to keeping UFW’s commitment to nonviolence. She also believed that women’s support for the union was important because if women were supporting the union, entire families would be more likely to support the cause.18

Although Huerta was aware of women’s relevance to the labor movement, she only developed an awareness of how feminism and labor activism intersected while coordinating the grape boycott in New York City. She felt energized by second-wave feminism, and was encouraged by activist Gloria Steinem to join the cause.19 Motivated to connect the fight for farmworkers with women’s rights, Huerta assisted in founding the Coalition for Labor Union Women (CLUW) in 1974 to help strengthen women’s voices in the bargaining process.20

On January 26, 1985, Huerta spoke to the Conference on Family Issues sponsored by the National Executive Board of the CLUW. At this time, labor unions such as the United Miners Workers of America and the United Auto Workers were negotiating new contracts that addressed parental leave in the bargaining process.21 The attention to parental leave in new contracts signaled a significant shift in awareness of women’s issues in the workforce. In the speech, the issue of establishing child-care centers and paid parental leave is framed as a pro-family policy, which demonstrates that family structures were changing and unions had to adapt to such changes. The speech exemplifies Huerta’s lifetime commitment to expanding women’s labor rights while also raising awareness about an issue that deeply impacted her career as an activist: the lack of institutional support for working parents.

As of this writing, Huerta is still attending rallies and spotlighting worker injustices. She attended the 31st annual César Chávez and Dolores Huerta March and Celebration held in Albuquerque, New Mexico in April 2024.22 Across her activism, Huerta has lent her strong voice and energetic speaking style to the farm workers movement. She refused to fit the molds of gender traditionalism imposed on her, and her unprecedented career helped shine a light on women and their crucial work in the labor unions and the fields. The echoes of her famous slogan, “Sí se puede” (“Yes, it can be done”), are felt by new generations of activists, who are energized to follow in her footsteps. Huerta captures the impact of her activism and her sacrifices for others: “I would like to be remembered as a woman who cares for fellow humans. We must use our lives to make the world a better place, not just to acquire things. That is what we are put on the earth for.”23

Endnotes

  1. Margaret Rose, “Dolores Huerta: The United Farm Workers Union,” in A Dolores Huerta Reader, ed. Mario T. García (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 8-9.
  2. Stacey K. Sowards, Sí, Ella Puede! The Rhetorical Legacy of Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019), 36.
  3. Alicia Chávez, “Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers,” in Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community, ed. Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez Korrol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 243.
  4. Sowards, Sí, Ella Puede! 40.
  5. Barbara L. Baer, “Stopping Traffic: One Woman’s Cause,” in A Dolores Huerta Reader, ed. Mario T. García (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 99.
  6. Eileen Foley, “Sorrow in the Orchards: Her Life for Years,” in A Dolores Huerta Reader, ed. Mario T. García (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 93.
  7. Dick Meister and Anne Loftis, A Long Time Coming: The Struggles to Unionize America’s Farm Workers (New York: Macmillan Company, 1977), 92-96, 118.
  8. Rose, “Dolores Huerta,” 12.
  9. Rose, “Dolores Huerta,” 18.
  10. Matt García, “A Moveable Feast: The UFW Grape Boycott and Farm Worker Justice,” International Labor and Working-Class History 83 (Spring 2013): 146-153.
  11. Sowards, Sí, Ella Puede, 42.
  12. Farmworkers paid two percent of their wages to be a member of the union. See: Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, Breaking Ground and Barriers: Hispanic Women Developing Effective Leadership (San Diego, CA: Marin Publications, 1992), 96.
  13. Judith Coburn, “Dolores Huerta: La Pasionaria of the Farmworkers,” in A Dolores Huerta Reader, ed. Mario T. García (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 107.
  14. Baer, “Stopping Traffic,” 100.
  15. ‘“Dolores Huerta: La Pasionaria of the Farm Workers,’ by Judith Coburn,”  Box 1, Folder 51, Agricultural Workers History Collection (LR002183), Part 1,  Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University Archives, Detroit, MI, https://archives.wayne.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/665284; “Proclamation: Dolores Huerta Day,” Governor Gavin Newsom of California, April 9, 2021, https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Dolores-Huerta-Day-proclamation.pdf.
  16. Rose, “Dolores Huerta,” 14; “Frequently Asked Questions,” Dolores Huerta Foundation for Community Organizing, 2023, https://doloreshuerta.org/faq/.
  17. Sowards, Sí, Ella Puede, 31.
  18. Barbara L. Baer and Glenna Matthews, “The Women of the Boycott,” in A Dolores Huerta Reader, ed. Mario T. García (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 84, 86.
  19. Dolores, directed by Peter Bratt (2017; Crystal City, VA: Public Broadcasting Service), documentary film.
  20. Chávez, “Dolores Huerta,” 251- 252.
  21. Dolores Huerta, “Speech to CLUW National Executive Board and Conference on Family Issues,” para. 5, 28.
  22. Eddie More, “Photos: Dolores Huerta and Others Take Part in the César Chávez and Dolores Huerta Parade,” Albuquerque Journal, April 13, 2024, https://www.abqjournal.com/multimedia/photos-dolores-huerta-and-others-take-part-in-the-cesar-chavez-and-dolores-huerta-parade/collection_de900146-f9dc-11ee-8405-33699d149baa.html#1.
  23. “An Interview with Dolores Huerta,” Southwest Research and Information Center, October 29, 2003, http://www.sric.org/voices/2004/v5n2/huerta.php.