Esperanza United Statement: Honoring Dolores Huerta 

Honoring Dolores Huerta: ¡Sí, se puede! lives on 

Esperanza United mourns the passing of Dolores Huerta, who died today at her home in Bakersfield, California, at the age of 96. We send our deepest condolences to her children, her family, the Dolores Huerta Foundation, and the farmworker communities she served for more than seven decades.  

Dolores Huerta showed generations of Latines what collective power looks like. As co-founder of the United Farm Workers, she organized farmworkers to win fair wages, safer conditions, and dignity in the fields. She gave our communities a rallying cry, “¡Sí, se puede!”, that still carries us into every fight for justice. 

She was a feminist leader who refused to stay in the roles assigned to her. She challenged gender discrimination inside the very movements she helped build and opened the door for Latinas to lead. In 1993 she became the first Latina inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and in 2012 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Her advocacy reached far beyond the fields. She fought for immigrant families, for voting rights, and for the civic power of working people. Through the Dolores Huerta Foundation, she kept organizing communities well into her nineties. 

Earlier this year, Ms. Huerta showed us another kind of courage. After decades of silence, she shared that she had survived sexual violence within the movement she gave her life to. She said she had never seen herself as a victim but now understood herself as a survivor, and this truth deepened her legacy. As she reminded us, the movement is bigger than any one individual, and justice must be rooted in truth. 

“Dolores Huerta taught us that our communities have the power to change the conditions of our lives,” said Vivian Huelgo, President & CEO of Esperanza United. “She fought for dignity in the fields, in our homes, and in our movements. In her final year, she showed survivors that it is never too late to be heard. We carry her legacy forward by building a world where every person can live free from violence.” 

Esperanza United was built on the commitment that Latine survivors deserve to live free from violence.  We honor Dolores Huerta by continuing that work, today and always. 

¡Sí se puede! 

If you or someone you know needs support, confidential help is available: nationally, through the National Sexual Assault Hotline at (800) 656-HOPE or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at (800) 799-7233. In Minnesota, contact the bilingual Esperanza United Crisis Line at (651) 772-1611.