News of Huerta’s death was shared by family members through her Instagram account, though the post did not disclose a cause of death. The New York Times reported that the cause of death was cancer, citing a spokesperson for Huerta.
Read More: TIME100's Most Influential People of 2026: Dolores Huerta
—Harvey Richards Media Archive
In March 2026, Huerta publicly accused Chavez of sexually abusing her decades earlier, breaking a silence she said she had maintained to protect the farmworker movement. Her disclosure accompanied a New York Times investigation into allegations that Chavez sexually abused women and girls.
Indeed, when Huerta received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, Obama noted that she "does not play."
"On a personal note, Dolores was very gracious when I told her I had stolen her slogan, Sí se puede, Yes we can," Obama added. "Knowing her, I'm pleased that she let me off easy."
Huerta is presented with a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama on May 29, 2012. —Alex Wong—Getty ImagesHer father was a miner and farmworker who went on to join the New Mexico state legislature. After her parents' divorce, her mother opened up her own hotel in Stockton, California, and often offered affordable or free rooms to low-wage workers, according to a biography by the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF). Huerta often said she became a feminist because of her mother. As a girl, Huerta was a high-achieving student, an active member of several school clubs, and a member of the Girl Scouts. Huerta now has a Scouts patch dedicated to her.
After Huerta graduated from high school, she obtained a provisional teaching credential at the University of the Pacific’s Stockton College, which later became San Joaquin Delta College, and began teaching at an area elementary school. She also got married and had two children with her husband at the time, Ralph Head. She has repeatedly said that her students, many of whom were children of farmworkers, inspired her activism.
Huerta decided to pursue a career in community organizing in 1955 when she met Fred Ross Sr., founder of the Community Service Organization (CSO) and a nationally influential community organizer who began his career fighting for the rights of Dust Bowl-era farmworkers.
Dolores Huerta accepts TIME100 Impact AwardFinding her voice
She described a day she was volunteering there when she was 25 years old and a disabled farmworker walked in asking if someone could help him apply for disability benefits. She went to a welfare office with the man, but she was not allowed to submit an application on his behalf. Defeated, she returned to CSO, where Ross told her to go back and demand that a supervisor allow the man to submit an application.
Ross taught Huerta to make demands of people, she said, especially public officials. He also instilled the importance of voting.
Ross died in 1992, but Huerta described Ross as her "spiritual father" for the rest of her life, and the first person to teach her and Chavez community-organizing techniques.
They were motivated to found the association after hearing from scores of California farmworkers working under harsh conditions: no benefits, low wages, and no access to bathrooms or water while in the fields. The Bracero Program, established through a 1942 agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, recruited Mexican workers to address wartime agricultural labor shortages and continued until 1964.
Huerta with a union flag that reads 'Viva La Causa', ca. 1970s. —Cathy Murphy—Getty Images
Huerta and Chavez continued their fight for workers' rights, including leading protests, worker strikes, hunger strikes, and arguably their most famous tactic, national boycotts. Huerta helped organize the nationwide grape boycott that supported the Delano grape strike of 1965-1970. The strike began with Filipino farmworkers affiliated with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee; Huerta and Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association subsequently joined them. The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott convinced grocery store chains to stop selling the fruit until industry labor standards were set.
"I think one of the things about when people are oppressed is that they start accepting their condition and they often kind of blame themselves," Huerta said during a 2015 Q&A with the National Portrait Gallery. "Our job was to convince them again that they could make a difference and that they had the power to do it."
Huerta, along with union organizers, speaks to strawberry workers and supporters gathered at the United Farmworkers Union office in Oxnard, Calif. as they awaited the results of a union representation election in 1999. —Monica Almeida—The New York Times/Redux
"[Chavez] didn't win you over with his rhetoric, [Chavez] was always soft spoken, but he also radiated strong internal leadership qualities," Garcia said. "[Huerta], by contrast, was always much more verbal, a much better speaker than [Chavez]."
"I think that’s very typical of women," she said. "I had been acculturated to be supportive, to be accommodating, to support men in the work they do. We never think of getting credit or recognition or even taking the power. We didn’t think in those terms."
In March 2026, Huerta disclosed that Chavez had sexually abused her in the 1960s. She alleged that he pressured her into sex on one occasion and raped her on another. Both encounters resulted in pregnancies, she said, and she arranged for the children to be raised by other families. She said she later developed close relationships with them.
Balancing activism and motherhood
Huerta was a change-maker while also raising 11 children, which gave her kids a front-row seat to her activism.
"There were times when my home was terrorized in the middle of the night, my windows broken when I'm there alone with my children," she told MAKERS. "We had shotguns and rifles aimed at us."
American labor activist and cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) Dolores Huerta and her daughters sit outdoors on a tree, Keene, California, mid-1970s. —Cathy Murphy—Getty Images
"I had a lot of criticism from family and friends for years until huelga [the strike] became famous and now they all like me," Huerta jokingly said during the 2015 National Portrait Gallery Q&A. "But it was difficult. We were pretty much living like the farmworkers."
"In the strike, women were always on the picket lines with the children," Huerta said.
"The thing about that is that every single mother in every single working family has that question every single day. Who am I going to leave my children with? Are they going to be safe? Are they going to be protected? That’s something women have to deal with all the time," she told TIME in 2018.
Her lasting legacy
Despite those types of encounters, Huerta continued to mobilize and fight for causes through her Dolores Huerta Foundation. She established her foundation in 2003 after receiving a $100,000 prize from the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship in 2002. Her youngest daughter, Camila Chávez, helped run the foundation as the executive director.
Huerta during the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago, on Aug. 21, 2024. —Victor J. Blue—Bloomberg/Getty Images
Huerta endorsed presidential candidates, including speaking at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in support of Hillary Clinton. She was also the subject of a PBS documentary, Dolores, which won a Peabody Award in 2018.
In July 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill declaring April 10 Dolores Huerta Day. "Dolores Huerta deserves proper recognition for her numerous sacrifices in the name of justice and the amelioration of severely inadequate working conditions," the bill’s text said.
"Change comes from the bottom," Huerta said during a May 2012 interview. "But you've got to be able to organize those folks at the bottom to be able to get out there and make the changes that they need. And of course, if you don't have organization, then you don't have a democracy."
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