Art Review: The singular life of Dolores Huerta
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“Don’t be a marshmallow. Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk. Stop being vegetables. Work for justice. Viva the boycott!” – Dolores Huerta
A 1965 photograph of a woman with a steely and serious expression hangs outside of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery’s “One Life: Dolores Huerta” exhibit. The woman is proudly holding a sign above her head that reads “Huelga,” or strike.
Her name is Dolores Huerta, a passionate leader of the 1960s labor rights movement that changed the way food in our country is harvested. While she’s less famous than the late Cesar Chavez, her long-time alley with whom she founded the organization that eventually became the United Farm Workers union, Huerta has played a vital role defending farm laborers and pushing through legal protections for them.
Before the movement, farm workers did not have access to toilets or cold water, worked excruciatingly long work hours and were essentially ignored by the national government. Huerta, a revolutionary activist, encouraged farm workers to refuse this mistreatment. She was closely involved in organizing countless acts of resistance, including the 1967 grape boycott, which led to the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, a piece of legislation that allowed Californian farm workers to have a say in their working conditions.
She is the first Latina woman to have an exhibit dedicated to her in the Smithsonian’s “One Life” series, a project that has spotlighted eleven important historical figures since its inception. The one-room exhibit is the product of a partnership between the Smithsonian Latino Center, the Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino and the Guenther and Siewchin Sommer Endowment Fund.
In an article from the Washington Post, the exhibit’s curator Tanía Caragol explains that she pushed for a display on Huerta because her story and contribution to the farm worker movement has not garnered adequate national attention, even as Huerta forged a new path for female activists.
“Thanks to that new model of womanhood, she became very much an icon of feminism for mainstream feminists like Gloria Steinem, and she also became a very important icon for Chicanas within the Chicano movement,” Caragol told the Post.
The story of Huerta’s life is told mainly through photos and brief anecdotes, starting from a picture of her and her mother in her birthplace, New Mexico, and ending with a picture of President Barack Obama placing the Medal of Freedom around her neck.
The stories adorning the walls highlight Huerta’s dedication to feminism within the male-dominated labor movement, her relentless belief in nonviolent protest and her passionate dedication to worker’s rights. The stories also emphasize her important role as a lobbyist who expressed the labor movement’s demands to the public through print, radio and television.
After detailing her struggles to unionize workers and lead effective protests, the exhibit emphasizes her ultimate success: In the late 1960s, she became the first woman to negotiate a labor contract with growers. Beside a photo of Huerta stating her demands to a room of men, a quote reads: “For her unyielding character at the bargaining table, growers referred to Huerta as the ‘Dragon Lady.’ One Delano grower remarked: ‘Dolores Huerta is crazy. She is a violent woman, where women, especially Mexican women, are usually peaceful and calm.’”
The exhibit is not limited to photos and quotes. Artifacts of her activism hang on the walls and sit inside of glass cases in the center of the room. These mementos include a vest she wore frequently, a protest poster of a man squeezing juice violently out of grapes in his hands and a flag from the labor movement.
In the corner of the room, there is a television screen where visitors can choose between three videos to play: one of her as a young woman speaking before a crowd in Sacramento; one of her as an older woman describing her experiences; and one of a Spanish song about her successes.
For those who believe Cesar Chavez was the sole leader of the 1960s labor movement, the “One Life: Dolores Huerta” exhibit sets the historical record straight, providing a multidimensional image of Huerta as not only a successful activist but also as a daughter, a mother and an important symbol of womanhood to Latinas everywhere.
—by Emily Birnbaum
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