Commemorating the Delano Grape Strike of 1965 with Dolores Huerta
At the National Portrait, Dolores Huerta shared recollections and wisdom gained through a life of activism.
Fifty years after the Delano Grape Strike and boycott, it may seem like it was easy to catapult the plight of farm workers onto the national stage in 1965, creating a historic turning point in the United Farm Workers movement. But the preparations alone took three years, longtime movement leader Dolores Huerta told an adoring audience last month during a public discussion at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
The event commemorated the golden anniversary of the strike and was one of several public appearances in Washington this year by Huerta in conjunction with the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition about her life. She’s now 85 years old but still active in social justice causes and full of the same optimism and verve that helped her through the movement’s darkest hours.
“I give a lot of credit to the ‘cultura’ or ‘culture’ we have,” she told the audience. “When you see someone that needs help it’s your obligation to help them. But helping someone out of self-interest takes away the grace of the act […] helping those in need is just a part of who we are.”
That’s a big part of what has driven her work as an activist, she said, despite the hardships. Whether it be lack of progress in grassroots organizing, the loss of friends in the midst of violence, or a raid in her own home, having lived through it all, she offered this advice: “Don’t get discouraged. We had people that were killed…it’s very disheartening to continue the work [after that]. But look at the victories and step back a little bit.”
The men, women and children who filled the auditorium of the National Gallery didn’t have to be convinced. As soon as Huerta walked on stage, everyone leapt from their chairs and the room instantly filled with the clamor of the applause, whistles and calls of “Si se puede!”—the Farm Workers’ slogan coined by Huerta fifty years ago. Quiet only returned when Huerta jokingly said how surprised she was that the traffic from the Pope’s visit didn’t keep the audience from arriving on time. With a unified laugh, everyone sat back down to listen.
The Sept. 24 event took place as the District was already brought to a near standstill by the arrival of the first Latin American Pope. Across town, Pope Francisco addressed Congress the same day. However, he was not the only one imparting words of wisdom at a public gathering.
The National Portrait Gallery tells the stories of prominent American personalities from important moments in U.S. history. Huerta is first Latina figure honored with a “One Life” exhibition reserved for some of the most significant figures in U.S. history. The exhibition, on view until May 2016, documents her legacy as a leader in the California Farm Workers’ movement of the 1960s and 1970s who later co-founded United Farm Workers with the better-known UFW leader, Cesar Chavez. Organizer, negotiator, picket captain, lobbyist, relentless activist, survivor of police brutality, mother, feminist, Latina emblem of power…these brief descriptions hardly do her active and eventful life justice, yet she is very seldom talked about in American history.
“She proposed a new way of being a woman [..] a new paradigm of womanhood that is very active in all aspects,” according to Taína Caragol, the curator of the exhibition and moderator of the discussion. The exhibition thus had more significance because it was about more than simply the movement; it was now an exhibition about a woman with “a story that had to be told” according to Caragol.
There were several mentions of the exhibition as well as the 2014 movie, “Cesar Chavez: An American Hero,” which dramatized the boycott with Rosario Dawson playing Huerta. But the real-life Huerta returned the discussion again and again to her principal purpose: fighting for social justice.
She explained how organizing played an integral part of her life from the very beginning. Her father, she said, was a union man, while her mother was a woman with an exceptionally relentless character and an inspiration for her unconventionality.
She urged fellow activists to remember the role grassroots organizing plays in social justice, especially with marginalized populations with very little hope, like the farmers she worked and lived with.
“Our job was to convince them that they had the power to do it, they just had to take responsibilities […] the only thing they need is their own person,” she said. “Sometimes I think we forget that we can’t feel sorry for them. It’s very hard, [but] we need to just remind them that they have power.”
Not that such feats were easy; Huerta discussed the three years of work that led up to the grape strike and boycott. What is even more remarkable is that the plan was to prepare for a full five years and include farm workers in the entire Central Valley of California. But circumstances presented themselves when Filipino farm workers went on strike first, offering an unexpected opening.
Fifty years after the Delano Grape Strike and boycott, and after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by President Barack Obama, Huerta says she is still active through her nonprofit organization, The Dolores Huerta Foundation, which aims to “organize communities in pursuit of social justice through systemic and structural transformation.”
—Lucia Jimenez
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Nice portrait painting and article, besides Huerta’s legacy it helps to value the strength of women in social justice fight!