The Abridged version:
- At 96, Dolores Huerta is returning to public life after stepping away to heal following reports from earlier this year revealing that Cesar Chavez sexually abused girls in the United Farm Workers movement, including Huerta.
- Huerta said reconnecting with people and hearing how her decades of activism changed lives has helped her through one of the most painful chapters of her life.
- Huerta is supporting a new California Museum exhibit, a Peace and Justice Cultural Center in Bakersfield and a national effort calling on men to confront violence against women.
Dolores Huerta emerged from one of the most painful chapters of her life by doing what she has always done.
Huerta, the 96-year-old farmworker rights advocate, traveled to Sacramento for a whirlwind week of back-to-back rallies at the state Capitol, committee meetings on fair labor and wage practices and launching an exhibit at the California Museum.
She came to the state capital from her home in Bakersfield, a trip she’s taken many times. This time, the activist returned from an absence from the public eye unlike any in her front-facing career.
“I think I’m doing as well as I can,” Huerta said in an interview with Abridged by PBS KVIE.
In March, a years-long investigation by The New York Times detailed allegations that Cesar Chavez, the revered labor leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers of America with Huerta, had sexually abused girls and women associated with the movement. Two of the women told the news outlet Chavez sexually abused them when they were minors.
“I had no idea, I had no clue,” Huerta said. “And the disappointment. Cesar — what he did was awful.”
When the other women spoke, Huerta said she had to step forward in support of the women, and of the truth, to share something she expected to take to her grave.
Huerta revealed that she, too, was raped by Chavez twice in the 1960s. Both sexual assaults resulted in pregnancies. Huerta’s brother raised one of the children and a close family friend raised the second. Huerta told Abridged that she decided to keep the sexual assaults to herself, believing that telling what Chavez did to her could damage the cause that had transformed the lives of farmworkers.
Huerta never confronted Chavez and said she thought she was his only victim. Her revelations immediately became national news, and she had to tell the story.
Again. And again.
Huerta went through a round of national interviews, repeatedly recounting what she had carried privately for most of her adult life.
The telling took a toll.
It was right after her 96th birthday in April when the legendary civil rights activist and labor leader, who has spent decades fighting for farmworkers’ rights, retreated from public life, as she said, “to heal.”
Seclusion didn’t work.
“Her very breath of life is people,” said Carla Guerrero with the Dolores Huerta Foundation.
“She is back where she belongs,” Guerrero said. “The key word is ‘belongs.’ It was a hard-fought space she carved to belong in these spaces where she is today, so that we all could belong up there with her.”
No longer a simple legacy
Huerta’s return to public life does not mean she has resolved how to reconcile what Chavez did with the movement they built together.
She is unequivocal about his actions toward her and other women and girls.
“He clearly had a dark side and what he did was awful, unjustifiable,” Huerta said.
But she remains adamant that his actions cannot erase what thousands of other people built through the farmworker movement.
“You have to take the good with the bad,” she said.
Huerta points to young organizers who came through the United Farm Workers and went on to spend their lives in labor and social justice movements.
“You can’t erase the good that came out of the movement,” she said.
The lesson from her mother
Huerta’s instinct to be around and serve others began long before the farmworker movement.
Huerta credits her mother with giving her the philosophy that has guided much of her life.
“My mother was very Catholic,” Huerta said. “She was a devotee of St. Francis.”
Huerta’s mother taught her children that when they encountered someone who needed help, they had an obligation to help regardless of whether they ask.
“Don’t expect any kind of a reward,” Huerta said, “because if you expect a reward, then you’re taking away the grace of the act.”
Huerta said she carried that lesson into the homes of farmworkers across California, where organizers spent years holding small meetings before attempting a major strike. She also carried her mother’s words to negotiating tables, political campaigns and eventually the White House.
‘Like a thank you from the universe’
Earlier this month, during one of her first events back, a man recognized Huerta and asked to speak with her.
The man told Huerta that he had received legal status through a landmark immigration law passed in 1986.
Huerta told the man she had spent months in Washington, D.C., working to pass that legislation through Congress when Ronald Reagan was president.
“The man was overwhelmed,” Huerta said.
After the year she had just endured, she said his words landed differently.
“To me, that was like a reward,” she added.
“When you meet people like that and you meet someone that has been helped by the work that we’ve done, it makes it all worth it.”
Huerta described the moment in almost spiritual terms.
“It’s like a thank you from the universe, a thank you from God,” she said.
‘Help us start this movement’
Huerta said women around the world have been reaching out with their own stories of silence and survival.
“There have been many, many, many women who have reached out to me and had similar stories that they never told anyone,” Huerta said.
And what she wants to do with those stories is something she has done her entire life: organize.
Huerta is working to launch a national effort confronting violence against women. This time, however, she wants men to lead it.
“Men have to take responsibility for violence against women,” she said.
Something is rising in Bakersfield
There is another project waiting for Huerta about 300 miles south of Sacramento.
In Bakersfield, the second floor of the Dolores Huerta Peace and Justice Cultural Center is taking shape.
The center is expected to be completed in spring 2027.
“People can drive by there and see that this huge building is going up,” Huerta said.
Huerta makes a point of saying the idea wasn’t hers. She credits her children with developing the project and bringing it to the Dolores Huerta Foundation board.
“I want the building to be dedicated to the farmworkers,” Huerta said. “And we’re talking about all of the different groups that came to work in our fields, starting with the Native American farmworkers.”
The center will also recognize generations of people from different cultures who have worked America’s fields, including Mexican, Punjabi, Filipino, Yemeni and Korean workers.
“These are the people that need to be honored and respected,” Huerta said.
Huerta envisions a center that teaches grassroots organizing and civic engagement, a place where people learn how to participate in the decisions being made in their own communities.
Huerta said the center’s message is about “getting out there to communities, to let them know that they have a place in society” and that “they can claim their place.”
Back among the people, presidents and the pope
Huerta recently traveled to Rome and met Pope Leo XIV.
She was given about a minute to speak with him. Huerta did not waste it on small talk.
“When are we going to have women priests?” she asked.
According to Huerta, the pope responded, “Slowly, but slowly.”
“He didn’t say no,” Huerta said. “So that’s hope, right?”
Huerta admitted this chapter has taken a toll on her, both mentally and physically. But she said she finds strength in her message that has changed remarkably little over the years — people have power, and they have a responsibility to use it.
“Luckily, I survived the scandal, and I think people still respect me,” she said. “At least most people still have respect for who I am and the work that I do.”
At 96, Huerta’s calendar is full again, but her rally cry now comes from her voice and her heart.
“‘Sí Se Puede’ means ‘Yes, we can,’” Huerta said. “But, it also means, ‘Yes, I can.’”
