Review: Dolores Huerta documentary
By hola | Published | No Comments
“Dolores” is a masterful and long-overdue documentary about civil rights icon Dolores Huerta. The film not only explores Huerta’s life but also the conditions endured by immigrant workers in the 1960s, when she founded the United Farm Workers Union along side her longtime ally Cesar Chavez.
Directed by Peter Bratt, the documentary serves as a homage and recognition of the life of Huerta, whose own story was often overshadowed by Chavez’s fame.
The film, which first premiered at the Landmark E Street Cinema in downtown D.C. and elsewhere around the country in 2017, came at a pertinent time considering the issues U.S. society is facing in relation to immigration. It explores Huerta’s struggles as a rebel, activist, feminist and mother. Although the documentary touches on sensitive and profound issues, it manages to keep the audience entertained and find humor in discourse that contradicts Huerta’s beliefs.
The documentary starts by exploring the environment of resistance and social movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Huerta was at the forefront of it all. Bratt highlights the challenges she faced as a single mother and as a woman. He shows the sacrifices she had to make with her family and how she gave up her dream of becoming a dancer.
Huerta also confronted sexism both outside of the labor union and from within it. Bratt incorporates an interview with Huerta and Chavez in which the women interviewing them ask Chavez why he chose a woman to help with his movement. Chavez asks Huerta, “But don’t you ever have the average woman’s dream of going out to some spa and being relaxed and having a new hairdo and buying a great dress and having a big party?” With a smile on her face and the charisma that characterizes her, Dolores responds, “To me, being at a spa and having a new hairdo would be a terrible waste of time.”
Huerta played a key role in securing major achievements for the United Farm Workers Union. She was the main organizer and negotiator of the 1965 Delano grape strike, through which workers successfully negotiated a landmark contract. Despite her many successes, she was eventually forced to resign because the union was not ready for female leadership. But Huerta’s impact did not end there. She established the Dolores Huerta Foundation and continued fighting for social justice.
Today, Huerta is one of the most prominent, yet least recognized activists and feminists in the U.S. Throughout history, her hard work has been overshadowed due to sexism. Bratt’s film does a great job of recognizing her activism in social and cultural movements. For example, the documentary clarifies that it was Huerta and not Chavez, who came up with the slogan “Si se puede” (“Yes, we can”) that Barack Obama used in his presidential campaigns 6 decades later.
Now in her late 80s and still active on social justice issues, Huerta has finally begun to receive her much-deserved recognition. In 2015, an exhibition about her life opened at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in D.C. However, her fame does not rival that of Chavez, who has statues, streets, and even a D.C. charter school named after him.
The film does a great job of bringing attention to Huerta’s life and accomplishments and serves as a reminder of the power and voice that people can have in politics, no matter the odds.
— Estefani Flores
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