Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers Co-Founder Who Coined 'Sí Se Puede,' Dies at 96
Huerta died Wednesday at her home in Bakersfield, California, her family announced — a labor leader whose grape boycotts and contract fights won farmworkers clean water, rest breaks and bargaining rights, and whose slogan outlived the fields.
Dolores Huerta, the labor leader who co-founded the organization that became the United Farm Workers and gave American organizing its most durable slogan, "Sí se puede," died Wednesday, Oct. 28, at her home in Bakersfield, California. She was 96. Her family announced the death, and a family spokesman, Erik Olvera, said the cause was cancer, according to the reporting carried by USA Today, Reuters and the Smithsonian.
Born in New Mexico in 1930 and raised in Stockton, California, Huerta began as an elementary school teacher and turned to organizing after seeing farmworkers' children arrive at school hungry and barefoot. With Cesar Chavez, she built the union that led the grape boycotts of the 1960s and negotiated contracts that won farmworkers job security, clean drinking water, toilets in the fields, guaranteed rest periods and protection from pesticides, Reuters reported. That work helped pass the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which established collective bargaining rights for farmworkers.
The standards Huerta fought for in California's valleys shaped farm labor far beyond them, including in Texas, where generations of farmworker families — many with roots in San Antonio and South Texas — measured field conditions against the protections the United Farm Workers won. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, and she remained on the lecture and campaign trails into her 90s, registering voters and endorsing candidates around the country, according to Reuters.
Her final year brought a painful chapter into the open. Earlier in 2026, Huerta said publicly that Chavez had sexually abused her decades earlier — accounts she said she had kept secret to protect the movement, CNN and Reuters reported. The United Farm Workers said Wednesday that the greatest possible tribute to her life is for her work of organizing to continue. Her family said memorial arrangements will be announced.
Photo: Dolores Huerta in 2016. Tom Hilton via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
