Dolores Huerta, pioneering US farm workers’ rights leader, dies aged 96

Dolores Huerta, the pioneering US labour organiser and civil rights campaigner who helped build the United Farm Workers union, has died aged 96, her family has announced. She continued campaigning for workers’ rights, immigration and voting issues into her 90s.

Huerta worked alongside fellow organiser Cesar Chavez during the farm workers’ rights campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. The pair founded the United Farm Workers, which paid tribute to her after her death, crediting her with coining its rallying cry, “¡Sí, se puede!” — “Yes, we can”.

“Her life’s work was to empower her community to face and overcome injustices,” the union said, adding that she had left farm workers and the Latino community “stronger and more organised”.

Born in New Mexico, Huerta grew up in Stockton, California, and trained as a teacher before turning to organising workers. She helped recruit union members, led protests and pickets, and helped negotiate farm workers’ contracts. Her campaigning also included civil and women’s rights, gender equality and environmental issues. She raised 11 children.

Family spokesman Erik Olvera said the family was grieving and asked for privacy. Huerta died of cancer, the BBC reported.

Her public work also included recent disclosures about Chavez. Earlier this year, Huerta said he had pressured her into sex and forced her to have sex on another occasion in the 1960s. The allegations followed a New York Times investigation in which Huerta and two other women said Chavez groomed and sexually abused girls involved in the labour movement. Chavez’s family said at the time it was “devastated” by the reports and praised the women’s courage in coming forward.

Former president Bill Clinton, who presented Huerta with the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award in 1998, called her a “stalwart champion of working Americans”. California Governor Gavin Newsom said she “represented the best of us”, while Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass praised her as an “icon” and “fearless leader”.