Challenges.
Dolores Huerta is not one to back down from them.
At 92, the longtime activist is still fighting for working people.
Huerta is back on her native New Mexico soil to participate the 30th Annual César Chávez and Dolores Huerta Celebration on Saturday at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
Huerta and Chávez were the driving force behind the activist group, United Farm Workers of America, which fought to improve the lot of workers in the 1960s and ’70s. She was born in Dawson, now a ghost town in northeast New Mexico.
The event takes place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. where Huerta will not only be the keynote speaker but will also march with attendees down the street that bears both her name and César Chávez.
“God willing,” she says with a smile about the march. “It will be a slow march.”
A half-century later, Huerta says marching is still a good way to make an impact.
“I think marches make the difference,” Huerta says. “I think when people march together, they feel their energy and their collective power. It’s something that is memorable because people don’t forget.”
Today’s celebration, which is put on by the Recuerda a César Chávez Committee, is the only one of its kind in the country that honors both civil rights leaders.
According to the RCCC, the organization “shares the vision that César and Dolores championed – that nonviolence is our strength.”
Huerta says she is fortunate to be an activist, but she couldn’t have predicted the journey it would take her on.
“I say to people that when you become an activist, you never know where that road is going to lead you because there are so many exciting things that happen on that path,” Huerta says. “When you become an activist, you make history. If people don’t understand that, then they should at least understand why it’s important for them to become activists.”
Huerta works closely with the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which helps provide educational opportunities for communities across America.
She says the struggle is never over because there’s always an inequality.
“When you have so many people that are homeless right now, in the richest country in the world,” she says. “You see that we still don’t have equal rights for women. We don’t have free health care. We don’t have free college education. We don’t have free child care. Then we say, ‘What’s wrong with us?’ There’s a huge division in our society and that means we have to do a lot more.”
Huerta says the key is for more people to get involved in the democratic process of voting and getting involved.
Education is also on her list where communities can make a difference.
“The division in our country comes from ignorance with people not knowing the history of the United States of America because they have been denied that history,” Huerta says. “Because education is key, we need to put more money into education. Our teachers are underpaid. They don’t have the support systems needed to succeed.”
Huerta says she is humbled to be involved with the 30th anniversary celebration in Albuquerque because the community honors the work of both activists.
“I would say it’s a symbolic thing for the whole country,” she says. “When you think of someone like César, who his entire life worked for farmworkers, and in the end we might say it precipitated the Chicano movement and ended up making so many changes in our country.
“Albuquerque is one city that chooses to celebrate that and it makes me really proud of it because it’s in my home state of New Mexico. I always invite people to come to New Mexico and get humanized because we’re full of kindness and service.”
