09 Nov 2026, 10:26 PM

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American activist and trade unionist who fought for the rights of farm workersAlthough she was never the president of the United Farm Workers union, Dolores Huerta, who has died aged 96, was one of the most significant American trade union leaders of the 20th century. Her battle cry, “Sí, se puede!”, coined in the midst of tensions with police in Arizona in the 1970s, was adapted to the English “Yes, we can” and became Barack Obama’s slogan during his successful campaign for the US presidency in 2008.While the UFW leader Cesar Chavez was the public face of the union as its president, Huerta was the organiser who helped break the resistance of California’s grape growers by building bridges to secondary boycotts by unions packing and transporting grapes, and by organising boycotts of national supermarket chains such as A&P and Finast, who sold them. “To take on agriculture, which to this day is still a powerhouse, that took a lot of guts,” her son Emilio said. Continue reading...

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