- I would not have been able to see what's hidden in the fields of our country without Dolores.
narrator: Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez fought for farmworkers' rights.
- She was the chief negotiator.
She was hard as nails.
- Cesar was surrounded by a lot of yes-men, and she was not the yes-men.
- The assumption was, he was the leader, and Dolores was the housekeeper of the movement.
narrator: Filmmaker Peter Bratt shines a spotlight on a lifetime of dedication... - She's the first general that I followed into war.
narrator: Of one of American history's most unstoppable social activists.
- She wasn't asking for permission.
She just did what she felt needed to be done.
- Down with sexism!
Abajo!
We had this ambience that you could really change the world.
narrator: The award-winning film, "Dolores," now only on "Independent Lens."
[energetic percussive music] [dramatic music] ♪ ♪ [engines revving, crickets chirping] [dog barking] [pensive upright bass music] ♪ ♪ [people chattering] [people speaking Spanish] ♪ ♪ [indistinct chatter] ♪ ♪ - I'm gonna bring her out here right now.
Dolores!
[cheers and applause] [slow percussive music] ♪ ♪ [dramatic percussive music] ♪ ♪ - While the reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was leading the charge in the South, one California woman was fighting on the front lines for workers' rights.
[rhythmic clapping] And while her name's rarely mentioned in the history books, she may just be the most vocal activist you've never heard of.
- Come along, brothers!
We are waiting for you!
- Dolores Huerta helped lead a worldwide grape boycott that forced growers to agree to some of the country's first farmworker contracts.
♪ ♪ - Viva la Causa!
all: Viva!
Viva la Huelga!
all: Viva!
- She's the first general that I followed into war.
all: Huelga!
Huelga!
Huelga!
- The workers are on the rise.
- Dolores Huerta, who's an old friend of mine... ♪ ♪ - What she is, she's an insult to the farmworker.
- Why are the growers and the Teamsters so against her?
- Because they're threatened.
♪ ♪ - We're never giving up.
- Dolores is an icon.
- Dolores Huerta has said Republicans hate Latinos.
♪ ♪ - She also writes the alternative to capitalism is democratic socialism.
- She's not afraid to speak truth to power.
♪ ♪ - She's a clown.
- We thank you for all you have done and all you still do to promote the dignity and human rights of America's family.
♪ ♪ - She's a civil rights hero.
- She's been beaten up, and she's gone to jail.
- She's a very volatile individual.
- We always like to say that we didn't cross the border; the border crossed us.
- The FBI knew how dangerous Dolores was.
[rhythmic grunting] - Conservatives on the Texas Board of Education removed the legendary farmworker organizer, Dolores Huerta, from the state social studies curriculum.
- I gotta tell ya, I never heard of this woman.
- We really gotta set the record straight.
I mean, women cannot be written out of history.
♪ ♪ - You were a young girl, growing up in America in the '40s.
You must've had a dream.
[reflective piano music] - I guess my only dream was just to be accepted.
I think that's what a lot of young children feel, just to be accepted for what you are, and, you know, that's not possible.
- Tell me when you were first aware of having a social conscience.
- I think that I felt it very deeply as a teenager, and it was mostly because of the police brutality against Mexicans and blacks, the kids that I grew up with.
And you find out that the justice, it's not there.
The equality isn't there.
- If you were coming of age in the 1950s in California in the San Joaquin Valley, you were coming of age in a time of conformity.
Everybody was being fit into a mold, and if you were Dolores Huerta, there was no mold.
- My mom, she grew up in the 40s, you know, at the dances, the bebop, the big band, the swing, you know.
She's an American girl, you know.
- Back in those days, all of the Latina women got married very young-- 15, 16, 17 years old.
My first husband, we had a lot in common.
We were both into jazz.
But I don't think that we were ready for marriage yet.
Then, my second husband, we had kind of a culture clash because of the way that I grew up and the way that he grew up.
My mother was a single parent; she was a businesswoman.
And like her, I worked all the time.
You know, my mother-in-law could never understand why I didn't just stay home with the children.
- And so Dolores talks about her life as a young mother and as a married woman, and not feeling that was quite enough, that she needed to do more than that.
[soft instrumental music] That's when she met Fred Ross.
♪ ♪ - When I met Fred Ross, and he talked to me about how people could get together in an organization and really start changing things, to me, it was just a revelation.
- Fred Ross was a community organizer with the Community Service Organization who developed house meetings.
You're on the ground, identifying individuals who are willing, you know, to do the work to make their communities better.
- I still remember my first house meeting.
Fred showed us pictures of the improvements that they had done in East Los Angeles, like bringing in streetlights and sidewalks, bringing in health clinics.
But the one that really hooked me was when he showed us press clippings of police that they had sent to prison for beating up Mexican-American kids.
And I thought, "Any organization that can do that, I wanna belong to that organization."
- I think that my mom experienced enough of that injustice or discrimination to where she just could not keep it down.
She could not keep quiet.
[laid back guitar music] - In 1959, I became the political director for the Community Service Organization and helped draft a lot of the legislation that we ultimately got approved in Sacramento.
I was only 25 at this time.
[laughs] Or 26 years old.
I was very young.
- There were very, very few Latinos, and I'm talking about men, in the legislature in California in the '50s and '60s.
It was all white men, and here you have someone like Dolores Huerta.
You know, that was just-- people just didn't do that in those days.
- We had one piece of legislation to take away the requirement that you had to be a U.S. citizen to get public assistance.
I took parents whose kids had served in World War II to this one senator who was key for us to get that legislation, sat them in his office with the pictures of their kids in uniform.
They couldn't speak English, Senator Kolbe couldn't speak Spanish, but I told them, "Just stay here until he says yes that he'll vote on that bill."
- What kind of a lobbyist is she?
- Oh, she's a great lobbyist.
Um, she's indefatigable.
She's unorthodox.
You know, Dolores will bring in hundreds of people, and they'll camp outside your office.
So when Dolores is in Sacramento, everybody knows she's in Sacramento.
- Fred Ross was always talking about this great organizer, Cesar Chavez, so Fred introduced us.
Cesar was very shy.
I remember one time, he was sitting down by himself at a table, and so I rushed over and sat down and started trying to talk to him, and he immediately got up and walked away.
- Fred would always tell Cesar how he met this woman, she's dynamite, great organizer.
He was a little bit jealous when Fred would talk to him about her.
You know, he was a little bit jealous about that.
- I gave my report on the legislative work that we were doing up in Sacramento.
He and Fred Ross came over and invited me to have lunch with them.
So I was very thrilled, because I thought, "Oh, my, they're fi-- Cesar's finally paying attention to what I'm doing."
- They were having a meeting, and they needed a Chicano legislator to do some things, and he was arguing why it couldn't be done.
And it was when my mother began telling him all the reasons why he needed to get done, that Cesar took a step back and he goes, "Now I see what Fred was talking about."
[smooth jazz music] - All this work that we were doing, Cesar organizing the farmworkers in Oxnard, my organizing farmworkers in Stockton, was under the auspices of the Community Service Organization.
But when it came time then to make it a union, the CSO decided not to support us.
That's when Cesar called me to come over to his house, and he said, "We have to organize a union."
He put it this way, he said, "Unless you and I do it, it's never going to happen."
And then he said in the next breath, "But we will not see a national union "in our lifetime, "because the growers are too rich, they're too powerful, and they're too racist."
[tense guitar music] ♪ ♪ [horn honking] [dog barking] ♪ ♪ - One of the really tragic contradictions about the United States of America is that it has presented itself before the world as a beacon of independence and liberty and human rights.
Of course, the real stain on this mythology is slavery... [harrowing string music] And with it, the potential for the enslavement of others.
This was a very real threat for all the Mexicans living in California after 1848.
It was a continuing threat for all of the immigrants that came from China, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam.
Racism has been endemic to American history.
The feudal wage slavery of agribusiness is really just an extension of the attitude that has persisted in the country.
And the irony is that none of us can live without food.
None of us can live without what's produced in our fields.
This is life, and yet, these are the worst paid workers on the planet.
- When we came here to this little, tiny town in California called Delano, I started working in the fields when I was 15 years old, when they were paying 90 cents per hour.
There was no cold drinking water, and the weather gets to be about 115 degrees.
If you complained about any of these conditions, you were told to get the hell out.
There were plenty of other people that could come and take your place.
- And the women were treated worse than the men.
You had no protection.
There was a lot of mistreatment and a lot of rape and a lot of--you know-- I mean, there was a lot of that going on.
- My grandfather was living on a vineyard in a house that was owned by the people who employed him.
It was sort of this sense of slavery, right?
You couldn't do anything wrong against your employer, 'cause if you did, were they gonna kick out your family?
Where were you gonna go?
You don't speak the language.
You're not even a citizen of the country yet.
- They used to say that they wanted to hire Mexicans, because we were... built closer to the ground.
And that... in my opinion, was the worst part, the humiliation of knowing that people held you in contempt.
[light percussive music] ♪ ♪ - After I had seen the miserable conditions of farmworkers, and knowing how to organize people, having achieved these incredible successes on legislation, I just felt that that's what I needed to do.
It was just such a calling.
I felt it so strongly, that in spite of all of the negatives, or you might think, "Well, you can't do that.
"You've got seven kids.
You know, you're going through the middle of a divorce."
Many people thought I was making a very foolish decision.
- [giggles] [chatters] ♪ ♪ - My uncles, my aunts, our family didn't understand why my mother would give up everything to work with farmworkers who have nothing.
- I did pray that if I was doing the wrong thing, I wanted a sign that I was doing the wrong thing.
Making this huge, huge decision to leave my home in Stockton, to come to Delano, not knowing where my next meal was going to be coming from.
I was worried about how my kids would be able to take the move, because they left all their friends behind, and we had a very comfortable home.
I left a couple of my younger children behind.
I knew that I was doing something that I wanted to do.
They had no choice.
[bluesy guitar music] The last thing that I did before I went to Delano, I went to the Monterey Jazz Festival.
I always loved jazz music, and that was one of the big sacrifices that I made when I went to Delano, because after that, I didn't hear any music for years.
[slow, smooth jazz music] ♪ ♪ - It was very, very sad.
Went from a home where we were surrounded by family to Delano.
First and foremost because... we didn't have our mother at that point.
She was off and running.
- We soon recognized that, um, my mother really didn't belong to us.
- ♪ De colores ♪ ♪ De colores se visten ♪ ♪ Los campos en la primavera ♪ [cheery acoustic music] - The reason for the existence of the union is to try to get power for the powerless.
The farmworkers don't have any power to solve any of their own economic and social problems.
You know, they're faced by not only economic discrimination and social, but also racial discrimination.
This is true of the Mexican farmworkers, it is of the black farmworker, the Arabian, and sometimes, even the poor white farmworker.
- Cesar, what made you pick Dolores, a woman, to help you form the United Farm Workers?
- We had worked before together, and she believed, as I did, that this job could be done, that workers could be organized.
She had the faith and the drive and the enthusiasm, so those are some of the reasons.
The, uh--the skills, a lot of knowledge and a lot of just, uh, willingness to sacrifice.
[man and woman singing in Spanish] ♪ ♪ - We divided the San Joaquin Valley.
Cesar took the southern half, I took the northern half, and we did house meetings in all the different counties.
So we had all of these committees that we organized.
We had 1,000 members.
We had benefits.
We had a life insurance plan.
We had an office.
We started a credit union, the first farmworker credit union in the history of the United States of America, where people could get loans.
We had a cooperative store.
We did services, we did immigration work, we did their income taxes.
We had, like, a five-year plan to have a national strike in the Central Valley, because we wanted all of the growers to negotiate together.
But what disrupted that plan was when the Filipino workers went out on strike, because there was so much violence against the Filipinos.
They locked them in their bunkhouses in the labor camps.
They turned off the light, gas, and the water.
Some of them were beaten up.
And so, when these stories came back to us, well, we thought, "We don't have any option," so we joined forces on the strike to support the Filipino workers.
["This Land is Your Land" sung by Sharon Jones] - ♪ This land is your land ♪ ♪ This land is my land ♪ - We want you to know that our struggle is not with you!
- ♪ From California ♪ [indistinct yelling] ♪ Well to the New York islands ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ From the redwood forest ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ To the gulf stream waters ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I tell ya ♪ ♪ This land ♪ ♪ Was made for you and me ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ As I went walking ♪ ♪ ♪ - That was an amazing thing for me, as a young Chicano, to suddenly come upon two people in the field that were actually working on a social problem that had affected my whole life.
I saw them up close, and I had no problem believing that I had to follow them.
I had to become a follower.
all: ♪ Solidarity ♪ - Let's hear it!
all: ♪ Forever ♪ - I was not an easy follower.
I was pretty independent.
But here, suddenly, is Cesar, and here is Dolores, and I devoted all of my energies, all of my waking hours to follow them into the cause.
- [speaking Spanish] - [chuckles] - I too have the dream, that I learned from Dolores Huerta, that farmworkers can share in the wealth that they help to produce.
She has such a firm belief in what she's doing that she infects you with it.
Dolores Huerta.
Un aplauso!
[cheers and applause] - [speaking in Spanish] - Then I think she looks deep within you, and she understands what you're capable of, that you actually can do more than what you thought was possible.
- When we started to organize farmworkers, people would say to us, "They're poor.
"They don't speak English.
They're not citizens.
How are you going to possibly organize them?"
And, of course, the response that we had to that is, "The power is in your body."
Viva la Causa!
all: Viva!
Viva la Huelga!
all: Viva!
[cheering, shouting] - One of the things that was very helpful in the beginning was that Dolores being out there made it all right for women to be on the picket line, and so it made it all right for the husbands to permit their wives to be on the picket line and their daughters and their mothers and so forth.
We found that it's a tremendous advantage to give women equal participation in the union, because, well, there's tremendous resources there, and they should be used.
- We had women who ran the clinics.
We had women as field directors.
Women did a lot of the clerical work.
I remember hearing people say to Cesar, "Why do you have so many women?"
And he'd say, "'Cause they do the work."
- Whether it be Dolores Huerta, Jessica Govea, or Helen Chavez, there were more women involved in the UFW than probably every other labor union in the United States combined.
- The one place where we were lacking was on the executive board, and for many, many years, I was the only woman on the board.
- Cesar, you represent a culture that says the women must be protected at all costs, yet you take Dolores right out in the picket line, into a demonstration.
Do you ever worry about her life?
- We worry, sure.
There are some situations that are very dangerous.
But she's a leader of the union, and those are the risks that have to be taken.
- These were not small farmers.
This was agribusiness, and the growers were tied into local government and had control of local sheriffs, so when we would go on a picket line, the sheriffs would not hesitate to beat somebody.
The contractors or the foremen or some of the tractor workers wouldn't hesitate to run over a striker.
- I know of no grower in the Delano area who has refused or who would refuse to sit down and to talk with the workers on his farm.
- But not with the union organization?
- But they do not feel that the organizer and the agitators represent their workers.
- We had been on strike since September of 1965, and at the beginning, we had a lot of people that brought donations, contributions to keep the strike going.
But as the months went on, it was tapering off, so we knew we had to do something different, and that's when we came up with the idea of doing the march to Sacramento.
[jaunty string music] - The strikers and their supporters is beyond question the largest and the most significant gathering on behalf of the farmworkers in California history.
♪ ♪ - Along the march, she negotiated the Schenley Contract, which was the first contract in history between farmworkers and the growers.
- Labor history has been made here in California today, an agreement between the National Farm Workers Association and the Schenley Industries Corporation.
- Dolores Huerta negotiated my grandfather's first union contract, and it was because of Dolores's work that my grandpa was able to get water in the workplace-- drinking water, toilets.
- And her being a young Chicana, sitting at the table facing the growers with farmworkers, who were primarily just Spanish-speaking, some of them illiterate, stayed with me throughout my life.
How individuals, whether they can read, write, or speak English or not, have individual power.
[jaunty instrumental music] ♪ ♪ - If the rules to settle our economic problems are not forthcoming, we will take economic pressures, strike, boycott, to force recognition and obtain collective bargaining rights.
The social and the economic revolutions of the farmworkers is well underway, and it will not be stopped until we receive equality.
- If Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez felt it was possible to organize farmworkers when no one believed that that was possible, it was because many of us during that period were totally convinced that we could change the world.
We were persuaded that revolutionary change was possible.
- ♪ Uh!
♪ ♪ Your bad self!
♪ ♪ Say it loud ♪ all: ♪ I'm black and I'm proud!
♪ - ♪ Say it loud ♪ all: ♪ I'm black and I'm proud!
♪ - ♪ Yeah!
♪ ♪ Some people say we've got a lot of malice ♪ ♪ Some say it's a lot of nerve ♪ ♪ I say we won't quit moving ♪ ♪ Until we get what we deserve ♪ - This was in the '60s.
The civil rights movement was going on, the peace movement was going on, the feminist movement was just starting, and the environmental movement was just starting, and so you had this ambience all around you that you could really change the world.
- ♪ Until we get our share ♪ - There was a lot of electricity in the air.
I mean, it was new.
People were, like, free.
- ♪ Say it loud ♪ all: ♪ I'm black and I'm proud!
♪ - It was electric, especially when you walked past the fields, and there was a lot of people in the fields still working and people were marching and saying... - Venga!
- "Venga, hermanos.
Come on, come on."
[speaking in Spanish] And people would actually come out of the fields.
- ♪ Now we demand a chance ♪ ♪ To do things for ourselves ♪ - It became really apparent that the racism that touches black people is no different than the racism that touches the other groups, and so we were really marching for everybody.
We were marching for social change.
- Oftentimes today, looking back, we think about discrete and distinct movements.
We think that the black movement was one movement, and then the Chicano movement was over here, and then there was the Native American movement.
But all of those movements, and the individuals within those movements, were connected, and we knew that one movement would not be successful without the other.
Today, we talk about the intersectionality of struggles, but I think during that period we actually lived it, we experienced it.
- If you remain truly nonviolent, I'm pledging my support... - We come today to lend our moral support, our fiscal support, and our financial support to the efforts of Cesar Chavez.
[applause] - There was a lot of passion in all of us for what we were doing.
I mean, we were making $5 a week in terms of salary, right?
That was more than just the union not having the resources.
It didn't.
It was also because there was no way you could pay people to work seven days a week, you know.
It had to come from your heart.
- I remember Dolores calling and saying, "Well, why don't you come work for us?"
I said, "Well, how much does it pay?"
"$5 a week and all you can eat."
I said, "I don't think my father will appreciate that, "having helped me get through law school, and going back to where they left."
And, of course, I said yes.
And my father was angry, 'cause he thought it was regressive.
In reality, it was the most transformative period of my life.
[cheers and applause] - We wish to welcome you to Delano.
You know, and I don't have to tell you this, how thankful we are for the gifts that you have brought us.
You also know that the gifts of food and clothing are the things that will keep us alive for the next few months.
- Dolores, if someone just came in and put $5,000 in your lap and said, "I want you to spend this totally on yourself, Dolores, nobody else," what would you do with it?
- Well, I would, uh... [laughs] Turn around and contribute it to the union... That's what I would do.
- No fair.
- Because that would be spending it on myself, because to me, this is my life's work.
To me, you know, this is the reason I live.
- 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?
- Well, to me... [stammers] Having a hairdo and being in a spa would be a terrible waste of time.
[meditative music] - My uncle, Cesar Chavez, and my mother were both greatly influenced by the philosophies of Gandhi.
You can't help people unless you live like them, so we're not going to be able to help organize farmworkers unless we live like the farmworkers.
- My mother and Cesar ingrained themselves in the community, and they lived in those communities.
They didn't fly in from Washington or San Francisco or LA to say, you know, "We know it all, and we're gonna teach you guys how to build a union."
They said, "We need to build an association that addresses the day-to-day needs of folks."
♪ ♪ - I only knew growing up that when we were poor, 'cause we were, my mom would always tell us, "You're poor by choice."
- We have a tendency to wanna be too comfortable, you know, and I'm trying to educate my children in the way that I'm raising them to give their lives to work for other people.
And I'm hoping that out of the, you know, 11 that I've got, I sure ought to come out with a pretty good percentage.
- We didn't get it at the time, the lessons that she was trying to teach us, and, in fact, we were like most teenagers: rebellious and angry about her ideas of materialism.
Our biggest dream was just to be like the kids at school who had all the latest fashions, but we didn't get any of that stuff.
- So we knew we were outside of the norm, for sure.
- Why are you here today?
- Because I don't like the people that are here in our town.
They don't belong here, and I wish they'd all go back to where they came from.
- Now, which people are these you're talking about?
- I'm talking about the outsiders that have come into this strike and have interfered with our daily workers.
Our workers are loyal workers, and they work out in the fields, and yet, they are harassed.
They're insulted.
We have had no trouble.
- Well, now, are you unhappy at the labor troubles?
- We have no labor troubles.
[engine thrumming] [solemn music] [lively chatter] ♪ ♪ - Hey!
- How are you?
- Senator Kennedy actively gave his backing to the unionization campaign.
- Well, I think people are frustrated, and I think they're terribly disturbed by the fact that they haven't had more success, and that the federal government in Washington has not been helpful to them, and that the state has not been helpful to them.
- I remember my grandpa telling me how important it was to the Latino community here in California that Robert Kennedy came in and stood with them, when the sheriff and police department were actually arresting these people for doing lawful things.
- If I have reason to believe that there's going to be a riot started, and somebody tells me that there's going to be trouble if you don't stop them, then it's my duty to stop them.
- And then you go out and arrest them?
- Absolutely.
- How can you go arrest somebody if they haven't violated the law?
- They're ready to violate the law.
In other words-- [crowd groans] - Could I suggest in the interim period of time, in the luncheon period of time, that the sheriff and the district attorney read the Constitution of the United States?
[cheers and applause] - To see this Harvard-educated guy from Massachusetts talk in a funny accent, stand with us, it meant something.
- You can't imagine a political figure of that station these days going after corporations with that vigor.
For who?
Not for his own.
Not even on his coast.
- Wow, right?
We have somebody of national prominence who knows who we are, and he's running for president and has a chance to win.
- We all went and worked on his campaign throughout the state.
- The farmworkers pioneered a voter outreach strategy to Latino voters that had never been done before anywhere in the United States.
Labor's idea of mobilizing for an election was to write a check to the local democrat.
It was the farmworker folks in California who were knocking on doors, persuading them to vote, registering them at the door, all the things democrats nationally are dependent on today.
- There were hundreds of us.
Every door we knocked on, we knew we were gonna win.
You could just taste the victory.
[people chanting] ♪ ♪ We came back for the party, and we had the TV set up, and, you know, I could see my mother on the television screen next to Kennedy, and him acknowledging the farmworkers.
- With them and all of those... Mexican-Americans who were such supporters of mine.
And Dolores Huerta, who is an old friend of mine, and who has worked with the union, to thank her and tell her how much I appreciate her coming tonight.
We have certain obligations and responsibilities to our fellow citizens, which we've talked about during the course of this campaign, and I want to make it clear that if I'm elected President of the United States, with your help, I intend to keep them.
[cheers and applause] Now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there.
Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause] [ominous ambient music] ♪ ♪ [indistinct clamoring] [somber piano music] [man singing in foreign language] ♪ ♪ - I had never before experienced the death of the future.
The death of the past, yes, but when the future dies, it's different.
♪ ♪ - All this hope, the one person that would actually stand up for us is gone.
♪ ♪ - Some people became very cynical after Robert Kennedy was killed, but we had to continue to keep on working for justice and nonviolence, because that's what Robert Kennedy would have wanted us to do.
♪ ♪ - Dolores was the closest one to Senator Kennedy, and having been witness to something as terrifying as that made her understanding of nonviolence even more important, because she saw firsthand the impact that violence can have.
♪ ♪ - Hatred and racism are extensions of violence, and if we become that which we're trying to end, then, you know, we are becoming like the oppressor then, and we're trying to set up a different system.
[airplane engine thrumming] [solemn music] - To talk about grapes and lettuce produced in poverty and suffering felt like the first step.
An additional step was to talk about grapes and lettuce produced in poisons.
- 90,000 people were poisoned last year.
1,000 people were killed last year.
And then, people say, "Where at?
In Vietnam?"
And I say, "No, in the fields of the United States of America."
- The pesticides that were sprayed in those fields, we never knew what it was, and there were so many times we wound up stumbling out of the fields, because our eyes were watering, our skin was irritated.
You could just see the splotches on your skin.
- It's toxic.
It's poisonous, and people die.
♪ ♪ Earlimart, McFarland, Delano, all those areas have been affected by the use of pesticides since World War II, and they become cancer clusters.
Little kids born with limbs that are misshapen, or they don't have them, you know?
♪ ♪ This is the unspeakable stuff that the United Farm Workers tried to fight against.
- The farmworkers were a living daily reminder and warning system of what everyone was going to experience.
♪ ♪ - What appeal would you make to a consumer, you know, a mother who's concerned about her children?
- This is definitely a flag to them to say, "There's something wrong with the poisons that are on our food that they eat every day."
Well, we have many cases, many affidavits of cases, where workers have been poisoned by pesticides, where they have serious illnesses, and also there's, of course, many reports of deaths that have been caused by pesticides.
- But isn't that just sort of an occupational hazard?
Is there anything that can be done about it?
- Well, we believe that something can be done about this, but, of course, in order to do this, we have to have the cooperation of the employers.
- In the 1960s, labor was seen as anti-environmental.
Well, here's the farmworkers in the vanguard.
They won.
They got DDT banned.
They founded the whole idea of environmental justice.
- Older environmental groups often were concerned with the redwoods.
They were concerned with the trees, not the people.
It was Dolores, among others, who made this linkage by making people look at the human cost.
- The environmental justice movement said that certain environmental hazards are disproportionately impacted on people of color.
That would never be allowed if these people were white middle-class.
So it wasn't simply stopping DDT, but it was also making the larger point: you're only allowing this because of who the workers are and their race and class background.
[people chanting in Spanish] - The farmworker movement, in many ways, was a cultural revolution, because when people saw the farmworkers come out on strike and go on those marches, I think that it really said to people, "If the farmworkers can do this, so can we."
It gave our Latino people a certain pride in who they were.
- We are Indio, Mestiço, Hispano, Mexicano.
The names have all been changed across the centuries, but they all mean the same thing.
We have been Americanos longer than America has existed.
- We are Aztlán.
[Santana's "Oye Como Va"] ♪ ♪ - ♪ Oye como va ♪ ♪ Mi ritimo ♪ ♪ Bueno pa gozar ♪ ♪ Mulata ♪ ♪ ♪ - First time I opened up "TIME" magazine, a little picture of a march, and all the people out there looked like me.
That first impact was huge.
So, the farmworker movement was a catalyst, and it ignited a personal and community-wide self-evaluation of who we were as a people.
- I remember seeing those marches, and it was kind of amazing for a brown boy to see a bunch of brown people in the United States marching in simultaneity about something.
As a Latino kid, the pressure to assimilate was great.
Seeing women like Dolores Huerta out there gave me an example as a young brown kid to be able to engage in a way that's not white, that was actually particular to us as brown people in this country.
- [speaking Spanish] [applause] [speaking Spanish] crowd: Viva!
Viva!
[reflective piano music] ♪ ♪ - Even though I grew up in such this strong Chicano movement, the television and all of the media messages told me everything the opposite, that brown was ugly, being poor was bad.
♪ ♪ - She knew that we were gonna be experiencing persecution based on the color of our skin, and so she was constantly telling us how beautiful our dark skin was.
In high school, I started talking about, "I want a nose job for graduation.
That's what I want my graduation present to be," as if we could afford that, but that was--you know, that was my thing.
I wanted a nose job.
She was like, "Over my dead body will you ever reconstruct "that beautiful nose that God and your ancestors, "your Tarahumara tribe has given you.
You will not touch that nose ever."
♪ ♪ - Revolution starts with self-love, in the sense that if you're a member of an oppressed people, an oppressed class, you have to develop self-respect... ♪ ♪ And that starts by developing some affection for who you are.
♪ ♪ You love your family, and you say, "Okay, but why does the world regard them as inferior?
"Why does the world regard them as ugly, when, in my eyes, they're quite beautiful?"
♪ ♪ - Movements not only affect laws, they also affect the way people feel.
They affect emotions.
♪ ♪ - Well, then, is this more a social movement?
- It's both.
You can't separate it.
It's both a labor movement and a social movement, or you can say it another way.
I think all of the labor movement has also been a social movement.
[wistful trumpet music] ♪ ♪ This might sound kind of corny, but you have to really love people, you know, to want to teach them, to want to help them grow, 'cause you're giving a lot of yourself when you're doing that.
It's not just filling out the form and filling out the paper.
When a farmworker comes in with his problem, and then you're going to start telling him the history of his abuse and start getting him angry, that's going to take something out of you right there, you know?
- She was so dedicated to the work, like a workaholic, that she felt guilty taking time to enjoy life herself.
So going to a jazz concert, music, dance, which was her passion, she felt very guilty about doing those things.
And she said that it was my dad, Richard, who actually helped her look at life a little bit differently.
- Richard was very good to the kids and the family.
He had a very loving nature.
Of course, I wouldn't say Richard was a feminist, but Richard was a great cook.
[chuckles] - We consider you part of us and us part of you.
- You brought Dolores along to organize the union and to be a business partner, and now she's living with your brother, so it's family.
Were you expecting that?
- No, I certainly wasn't.
No.
Life is all an accident, you know.
Sometimes, those things can't be foreseen.
♪ ♪ - When my mother and my father, Richard Chavez, got together, my father was still married to another woman, and, of course, this is my version that I like to believe to make myself feel better as a lovechild... [laughs] Um, you know, being called a bastard by some.
Um, but I believe that my father was in an unhappy marriage.
At some point, my father couldn't be there anymore.
He met the love of his life.
I don't know what happened; I wasn't there.
I was just conceived.
And, of course, I didn't start learning this stuff until we were older, but there was always kind of a-- a negative feeling against my mom.
♪ ♪ - What particularly about Dolores upsets people?
- [chuckles] Well, it's her personal life.
All the children without marriage, and just one every year or so, is not accepted as-- in-- and I think most of us feel the same way.
[indistinct chatter] - She did put up with a lot of ridicule from people who wanted to see her in a more traditional role, by the men who were threatened by her power and her assertiveness.
- She cries, you know.
She rolls down the tears, you know.
And I'm all for the Chicano and all that.
And, like, it's a joke.
Like, everybody knows that the UFW-- that's why they keep her in Sacramento, and that's why they keep her in Washington, you know, to keep them out of their hair, because, you know, she--she--she just-- she just likes to talk a hell of a lot.
- While you guys are trying to stop the money, we have to keep the law going.
- How do you answer the criticism of detractors who say that you have been married and divorced twice, that you have 11 children sprinkled over two marriages, and one relationship with Richard Chavez, to whom you're not married?
- Um, I guess there's not much of an answer I can give to that, you know.
I could probably say, "Well, maybe I shouldn't have had the children," but I don't believe that.
I think that a relationship should bear children.
- Now, the thing is, who maintains these kids?
Who takes care of them?
Who supports them if she's out on these adventures?
- We were told-- remember in the beginning, one of the criticisms was that, "You don't know what you're doing to your families.
"When they grow up, they're going to disown you.
"They're going to really hate you, "because you're not giving them the things that ordinary children would like to have."
- Do you think the children ever resent you, because you're always so busy with the organization?
- Oh, definitely.
They wouldn't be human if they didn't.
And, of course, that lends for a lot of friction, which, you know, we always have to work out.
The hardest thing for my children has been the absences.
[meditative music] ♪ ♪ - She was always gone.
It wasn't a 9-to-5 job.
She was, you know, gone before we got up.
We'd have to get ourselves ready to go to school and try to find something to eat.
[indistinct chatter] - Well, my mom's absences had some positives and negatives.
I dropped out of high school, and my mom didn't find out till ten months later, you know, so-- [laughs] - [speaking Spanish] ♪ ♪ - We were spending the night in people's homes that we didn't know.
We were going to labor camps and not knowing if somebody was gonna shoot at us, as they did many times.
- [speaking Spanish] - It was very hard.
I'll be honest with you.
Um, tough.
♪ ♪ - The movement became her most important child.
I realized the importance of the work, but I was also very jealous of it.
So there's scars there.
You know, there's scars there, because of that.
♪ ♪ - When she was around, we were just, like, soaking in as much as we could of her, because we just knew she was gonna be gone again.
[children chattering] - [shakily] It was really difficult.
♪ ♪ It was really difficult not to have my mom around, especially when you would see your friends and how involved their mothers were, and there's something about a mother's love, you know, and attention, so it was hard.
There were a lot of very difficult nights... ♪ ♪ And months.
- I lived with a woman in Bakersfield for a few years while my mom went to New York, but when my mom came back for me, I didn't wanna go with her, 'cause I liked my new home.
There was stability.
I had meals every time I was supposed to have a meal.
I mean, eventually, I had to go back with her, but I remember crying and feeling like, "This is my new home," you know?
And then, getting older and being like, "Why was I left there?"
Obviously, that has an impact on a child's psyche.
♪ ♪ [sighs] You know, but as I look back at it, I'm like, I understand it.
I fully understand it.
You know, it's like-- and I know there's brothers and sisters that, you know, had the same experiences, but maybe they weren't so lucky to be placed in a loving home, um, you know, but that's part of the sacrifice... that we made and that we had to make.
♪ ♪ - And we've all learned that we're not afraid to struggle.
We're not afraid to sacrifice, because you can't make change if you're not willing to give something up.
You've gotta give up some comfort, you've gotta give up some time, and then we can see the changes come.
♪ ♪ Not every woman is going to take the kind of risks that I took with my children, you know, what they had to go through, and I wouldn't really wanna wish it on any child or on any other woman, what--what I did, in terms of sacrificing my children.
I know it was very painful for them, and it still pains me when I think about it.
♪ ♪ - And yet, I also feel very, very strongly that she felt she was giving them so much more than what she was asking them to sacrifice.
She was giving them meaningful lives, which is something that is very, very rare in this society.
♪ ♪ - You've gotta have some kind of faith, you know, if you're going to be walking away from your kids like that, you know, and leaving your families like that.
You've gotta believe in something bigger than you, you know?
[upbeat instrumental music] [people clapping, chattering] ♪ ♪ - Grape picking may be a California problem, but the United Farm Workers are determined to let New Yorkers know about it.
♪ ♪ - In the strike, we were not able to succeed, because the growers refused to negotiate.
They could just bring in strike breakers continuously.
So we really had to think about what other options we had, and it was actually an attorney from San Francisco, and he said to us, "Have you ever thought of trying to boycott?"
♪ ♪ - We had boycott committees in Detroit, in Chicago, in New York City, and in San Francisco, and then in other cities throughout the country, including Canada and Europe.
- I was in charge of the New York boycott, and I remember speaking at Madison Square Garden, and they told me I had 60 seconds to deliver my message.
And my message was, "Farmworkers are on strike.
"Don't buy grapes.
Don't shop at stores that have grapes."
That was it.
- What first comes to mind is what Dolores modeled, which was to go out and meet new people and make those connections about this struggle for justice.
- The first support that we got was from the African-American community, the Puerto Rican community.
We did not have to go into Harlem to get them to take the grapes out.
They did it on their own.
The same thing in the Bronx, with the Puerto Rican brothers and sisters.
They said, "You wanna get the grapes out, we'll get them out," and they did.
But it was the farmworkers themselves that went out there and told their stories, getting people involved to volunteer to get those stores to take the grapes out.
- I am not ashamed because I am poor.
I am proud, because I am a farmworker.
- All of the farmworkers grew.
They learned to be public speakers.
Whereas they had been treated as dirt in the outside society, suddenly they were being given a podium to tell their story and regain their own sense of worth in that process.
[solemn music] - I didn't really know Dolores before New York, but I think I was scared of her.
[laughs] I don't think that Dolores thought I was worth the trouble until I got Huntington Hartford to picket the A&P, which of course got press, because the heir to the A&P fortune... [laughing] Was boycotting the A&P.
After that, we became partners.
♪ ♪ - My mother was raised a Catholic and very traditional, and prior to going to New York City, she really didn't speak of feminism.
- I was in New York when the feminist movement was being born, but my mind was focused on getting all of those women at those conventions to support the farmworkers.
- There was a time when rarely could you discover women of color who would identify as feminists, because it was assumed to be a question simply of gender, and if it was a question simply of gender, that gender was white.
- When social justice movements arise in a patriarchal system, all kinds of false divisions are made.
And then, there was the additional problem in a lot of the Hispanic community of Catholicism, which is especially oppressive to women.
- I think that the feminist movement is extremely important.
I don't, of course, agree with the idea of abortion, because I do know from having 11 children that a fetus is live, you know?
- I think perhaps in the beginning, she didn't quite see that those of us who were supporting safe and legal abortion are supporting the choice to have a child just as fiercely, that we were advocating the right of a woman to decide the fate of her own physical self.
- That was difficult for me at the beginning, but then, it made me realize that a woman really cannot decide what she wants to do with her life unless she has the right to decide how many children she wants to have.
- It took us all a while to get over our divisions, but we came to realize that if we had the same adversaries, we had a lot in common and needed to organize together.
- I was out there fighting for the Mexican-American movement, but I was not focused on the rights of Mexican-American women, and I think that was the big shift that I had.
- I hope you don't mind if I give a minute of that time first to Dolores Huerta from the Farm Workers.
- Down with grapes!
all: Abajo!
- Down with Gallo wine!
all: Abajo!
- Down with violence!
all: Abajo!
- Down with racism!
all: Abajo!
- Down with sexism!
all: Abajo!
♪ Sí, se puede!
Sí, se puede!
♪ - Everybody!
- I know that she set me on fire, in terms of racial injustice.
I would not have been able to see what's hidden in the fields of our country without Dolores.
- We've picketed all of the firms that were carrying scab grapes today, and we've gotten commitments from several of the people out here that they won't handle scab grapes anymore.
- There is no strike in the-- in the vineyards.
The Chavez group, representing, at best, a tiny minority, are seeking to force, by what amounts to blackmail, the growers to recognize their group as the bargaining agent.
- I think that the growers could not envision their serfs... standing up for themselves and demanding fair treatment.
And they just couldn't come to grips with that.
- You had the most exploited workers in this country rising up and pushing back, and pushing back in a very effective way, building coalitions.
Cesar, Dolores, los demas, they looked like the people that they were representing, and I think that scared the hell out of them.
- If they should succeed with this illegal and this immoral maneuver, they then move through the agricultural community of California.
- The administration was buying even more grapes to send, ironically, to the soldiers in Vietnam, by the thousands of pounds.
I mean, it was total government interference.
So this was very clearly not only a battle against the growers, it was a battle against the government and their support of the growers, who had helped to put them in office.
It was political from the beginning.
- I'm against the grape boycott, and I stand firmly against it.
[crowd cheering] - I think Dolores and the leadership, they knew what they were up against.
What the union did is, they made it a national issue, and once the moral imperative became part of the issue, then whatever power they have, you're gonna crack it.
[jaunty instrumental music] - At the height of the boycott, there were around 17 million people who had stopped eating grapes, and it was a pretty incredible feeling to know that people were receptive to it.
- That's what the grape boycott was.
It was a mass coalition of people that came together and helped the poorest people in the land bring the most powerful people in the state of California to the negotiations table.
- Why did you sign with the union?
Why did you negotiate the contract?
- Well, it was the effects of the boycott.
♪ ♪ - There it is, the union stamp, the eagle, the symbol of the United Farm Workers, and now the symbol of victory.
After 10 years of struggling, these now are union vineyards.
- My mother had negotiated an agreement with the Schenley Corporation a few years before, but having reached an agreement with an entire industry went beyond people's initial expectations.
The dream of a union was now reality.
- For the first time, we began to understand that we were, in fact, the architects of our own destiny.
- The grape boycott, above all, shows strategy does make a difference.
You can have a big heart, try your best, work 24/7.
You don't have the right strategies and tactics, you're not gonna succeed.
Organizing, it does make a difference.
- Under the new contracts, the wages increase each year.
There are paid vacations and other fringe benefits.
The most important is insurance and a good medical plan.
All of that was barely dreamed of a few years ago by most of the pickers.
[people clapping, singing "No Nos Moverán"] all: ♪ No nos moverán ♪ ♪ No, no ♪ ♪ No nos moverán ♪ ♪ No, no, no nos moverán ♪ - After my mother went to New York, I think it solidified her beliefs in the power of women.
I mean, she knew it, but it just took it to a whole different level.
And when she came back to the union, she stood up more for herself with the executive board, which were all men.
She wasn't so much asking for permission to do things.
She just did what she felt needed to be done.
And I think Cesar felt he lost a little bit of control of her.
- She realized the knowledge and skillset that she brought to this partnership, so it became more challenging.
[off-kilter organ music] - The relationship between Cesar and my mother was extremely complicated.
There were probably the best of friends, and they had the most passionate and heated arguments that I've ever heard.
- There's gotta be a time where the two of you don't agree on something.
What do you do?
- Well, we agree, we fight with each other.
We argue, and-- [clears throat] But it's always on the issue, and it's never been a personality thing.
- They were each other's peers, and she felt she had every right to speak up and say her piece, and he didn't like that.
You know, he would fire her, and she'd say, "I quit," but she'd be there, you know, the first one in the office the next day, and it would be business as usual.
- She and Cesar were having a heated argument, and Dolores walks out of the room, and in Spanish, she says... [speaking Spanish] [chuckles] - Growing up, we saw so many people bowing down to him, and it was really hard to see that.
She was a person who was just real with him, you know, like nobody else would be.
- My tio, Cesar, was surrounded by a lot of yes-men, and she was not the yes-men.
- She was the chief negotiator.
She was the cool head and hard as nails, and people knew it.
And yet, there was a group of men that preferred to do things without her.
- I saw a lot of resistance to her leadership, putting obstacles or blocks, and it clearly only was because she was a woman.
- I even said to Cesar at one point in time, I said, "Look, we have a lot of machismo here "in the farmworkers' movement, and I am not going to take it anymore."
- One year, when she came out in a national magazine, she criticized her own union for being sexist, and I remember, she called me up and she said, "Oh, [bleep]'s gonna hit the fan, because, you know, as soon as it gets out, and Cesar"-- and she said everybody was pissed at her.
I thought that was incredibly brave of her to do that.
- Through her example, she was able to get other women to assume leadership roles within the union.
Before Dolores, you know, it was all men, and that was the expectation, that it was men's work.
- The only reason that we've been able to eliminate our enemies one by one-- Nixon, Reagan, the growers, the labor contractors-- the reason that we're going to win is because of the marches and the strikes, the boycott, and the sacrifices of time and our families, you know, going to jail.
This is the reason that we've been able to survive.
[cheers and applause] [energetic percussive music] ♪ ♪ We had contracts not only in California.
We had contracts in Arizona, New Mexico, and even parts of Texas.
- Workers saw the benefits of the contracts: the wage increase, the safety regulations, where they couldn't spray pesticides while the workers were in the fields.
But the contracts were only three-year contracts, so in 1973, the growers signed the Sweetheart Contract with the Teamsters Union.
- Are the Teamsters Union easier for the farm growers to deal with than you people?
- Oh, much so, yes, yes, because they don't make any demands on the employers.
See, the Teamsters Union came into agriculture to protect the growers from the United Farm Workers, so under the so-called Teamster contracts, the farmworkers don't really get any protections.
♪ ♪ - So, at that time, workers went on strike.
- At issue is the future of the United Farm Workers Union.
The opposition force is the biggest and richest union in the world.
The Teamsters have poured both money and muscle into the fight to represent all California grape workers.
- You're a lousy bunch of commie bums!
- [chuckles] - He's a freak.
- You stink!
You smell!
- They had all these injunctions against us, so there was a decision made to go ahead and violate them.
- Sheriff's deputies have arrested a reported 1,700 farmworkers on picket lines in four counties.
The arrests have given new impetus to the farmworkers in this battle the Teamsters have called a fight to the finish.
- After that came all the violence.
♪ ♪ [helicopter blade thrumming] ♪ ♪ [pepper spray hisses] ♪ ♪ [people screaming] ♪ ♪ - Leave me alone!
♪ ♪ [clamoring reverberates] [bleak ambient music] ♪ ♪ [man singing in foreign language] ♪ ♪ [solemn guitar music] ♪ ♪ - My great-grandfather was in the Civil War on the union side.
My father was in the military.
My brother was in the military.
And I remember when I first read the Constitution of the United States in grammar school, I always felt so proud of being an American.
I thought, "God, we have all these rights," you know.
In a democracy, you make your demands, and then somebody will listen to you.
Justice will prevail.
But I found out that when you do this in an economic situation, it doesn't quite work like that.
Once we started making those kind of demands, we had the same response that the black movement has had.
Our people were killed.
The system doesn't really want brown people or black people to have an organization and to have any power.
♪ ♪ I found out that no matter what I did, I could never be an American.
Never.
[soft ambient music] ♪ ♪ [machinery hissing, rumbling] - Big business and agribusiness and racist police departments and corrupt police departments, whoever it is that's taking part in that, nobody's ever been convicted for any of the murders of any of the martyrs of the United Farm Workers.
You know?
Think about that.
- That animosity is visceral, and it's hate, and it's racial hate.
- You know, it's basically the economics of racism, you know?
They were willing to sign contracts with the Teamsters, pay a lot of money, as long as the workers can be kept oppressed.
They will not accept workers as their equals.
[people yelling] - You've been fighting so long.
Do you ever get so tired of fighting, you think you can't do it another day?
- Well, I haven't felt that way.
You have to have commitment.
It's got to be a total commitment.
It's not something that you can just come in and leave.
You've got to stay there and keep working in order to make a difference.
[solemn music] - One has to understand that Dolores does not waste time in negativity.
Yes, what could we have done better, et cetera, but it's forward.
Do what has to be done, and move forward, and move forward.
- California legislature passed a farm bill it hopes will end violence in the fields there.
- Under the new Agriculture Labor Relations law, we'll be certified as a bargaining representative, and the employers have a duty to bargain with us.
- Could you support Jimmy Carter?
- At this point, no, unless he can really prove that he is willing to keep the social contract with the people.
The reason that we've lost ground is political.
It's because of the Agriculture Labor Relations board.
Because of the appointments that were made, the growers refused to bargain.
We've filed charges, they're dismissed, you know, so there's no protections out there for workers.
- Farmworkers still toil at the bottom of the economic ladder, often exploited in ways that are still shocking.
- Immigrants were discouraged from voting, and so we have got to say to them, "Look, it's okay for you to vote."
It's important, and we want them to participate in the political process.
- Work on the bill resumes today, with debate centered on the controversial amendment granting amnesty to illegal aliens.
- Since we do have a special legalization program for the farmworkers, they will not be afraid then to make complaints, if they know that they won't get deported.
It's gonna make a tremendous amount of difference.
- Some 4 million illegal aliens are expected to seek amnesty.
- We're ready to give those people permanent residency.
[lively jazz music] - But the growers don't want them to be legalized, because once they're legalized, they can contest against pesticide poisoning.
They can protest the low wages that they're being given.
- George Bush spent the day in California talking about the economy and the need for compassion.
- Last night in San Francisco, police moved in to break up a protest outside a fundraiser for the vice president.
- I must say, you have a peculiar breed of demonstrators out there.
They're giving me grief there, and his hair was flying around, and, "No drilling!
No drilling!"
I finally said, "Well, I don't wanna do anything that's gonna hurt the environment."
"What about contras?
What about contras?"
I'm glad to be inside.
[applause] My friends-- yes, I do mean friends-- we know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth, with free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will, unhampered by the state.
[people screaming] America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle.
For democracy belongs to us all.
[tense music] - No one is quite sure how things got out of hand at the demonstration outside the hotel where George Bush was speaking last night.
♪ ♪ This police footage clearly shows UFW leader, Dolores Huerta, trying to move, as ordered by police.
♪ ♪ [low-pitched wallops reverberating] ♪ ♪ [bell sounds] [audio rewinds] [atmospheric music] ♪ ♪ [trumpet music playing] [bell dinging] [people chanting] [percussions rattle, whooshing intensifies] [soft atmospheric music] ♪ ♪ - A crowd control officer bashed her body with a police baton, and when we thought that we lost her, it was really scary and really unexpected.
I was not ready to lose my mom before turning 20 years old.
- Tonight, Dolores Huerta is recovering from three broken ribs and emergency surgery that removed her spleen.
Huerta's son, Emilio, is grateful to the hospital she is alive.
- Without their support, she would not be alive today.
[poignant music] ♪ ♪ - It was very hard to see this powerful, strong, beautiful, like, intimidating woman just be reduced, you know, to just being bedridden, you know?
♪ ♪ - If you could use one adjective to describe Dolores, it is "dynamic," so the hardest thing that could happen to her is to be immobile.
♪ ♪ She was lying in bed and looking terrible, physically, and, you know, I just felt terrible and said, "Dolores, what can I do for you?"
And she just said, "Boycott Safeway."
[laughs] - The only good thing that I can think that came out of that experience was that it was forced family time, and so we all got to have as much of my mom as we wanted around.
- My kids were with me 24 hours.
They took turns, 24 hours, and I was sick for many, many months.
They never left me alone, not even one day.
And when you think about all the times that I left them alone, with different people taking care of them, sometimes complete strangers, and yet, they were so kind to take care of me.
♪ ♪ - It was interesting, 'cause all of her children got together to support her, and that's when she realized that family was really important to her.
♪ ♪ There was a reconciliation on the part of the children, too, with their mother.
- That was sort of an awakening.
We felt that we needed to be less critical of my mother and her lifestyle, and we needed to support my mother more in whatever role that she decided to take on.
♪ ♪ [dialogue inaudible] ♪ ♪ - [speaking indistinctly] [laughs] ♪ ♪ - After that incident in San Francisco, you know, it took her a long time to recover and come back.
And her absence made Cesar more aware of her importance.
Her coming back and being there 100% reestablished his commitment to her.
I remember when they were working together, she came home and she said, "You know what Cesar told me today?
"He thanked me for keeping him honest all these years.
Those were his words."
And she goes, "I was taken aback by that."
- That was so unusual of Cesar, because within a few moments that we were together, we would usually be picking and fighting with each other.
His whole behavior was so, uh, not like Cesar.
[solemn guitar music] [people chanting] ♪ ♪ [man speaking in Spanish] - As long as there's one ounce of strength in our bodies, that ounce of strength will be used to fight for this good cause, and in the end, we will win.
♪ ♪ - Cesar Chavez was found dead yesterday in Arizona, apparently of natural causes.
An estimated 25,000 people turned out Thursday in Delano, California, for the funeral of labor leader Cesar Chavez, many of them farmworkers Chavez helped to organize.
♪ ♪ - I know she misses my tio, Cesar, a lot.
♪ ♪ He was the glue.
He was like a certain binding agent, you know?
[scoffs] Like you miss the sun on a cloudy day, you know what I'm saying?
♪ ♪ - Who will fill his shoes or what process will you go through?
- The executive board of the union will be meeting, and then they will decide who the next president of the union will be.
That is the process that we have in our constitution.
- Do you feel you could fill his shoes, if you had to?
- Well, um... [chuckles] I think--I worked many years with Cesar, but I think it's-- you know, I don't-- it's up to the executive board to decide who they want, you know.
- It certainly was an expectation on a number of people's part that when Cesar died, Dolores would take it over, since she had been in there since the beginning.
- You could imagine.
A farmworkers' union run by a woman?
That would've been history.
- But she was not chosen.
- She called me to tell me, after Cesar passed, that she was not gonna succeed Cesar as president, and I, like, got so upset.
And then, you know, she said to me real calm, like, super calm, but I could tell there was hurt in her voice, she said, "Barbara, it would be a fight, one fight after another, if I fought for this."
- The workers wanted her, the volunteers wanted her, you know, the membership wanted her, but it was not about her.
It was about the union's survival.
And so she advocated for someone else, Arturo Rodriguez, to become the president, who remains the president of the union, you know, to this day.
♪ ♪ After that, my mother started advocating to go back to the original way of community organizing, but she was receiving a lot of opposition from the leadership.
- I think there were indications that her input was not as welcome as one would've thought.
- It was very hard to see that, after all that my mother had given, all the years of her life putting the union above all else, you know, including all her 11 children.
♪ ♪ - A lot of things changed, and I just felt that maybe it was really time for me to leave, and I left.
♪ ♪ - I remember the convention where she actually gave her resignation.
It was a very emotional experience and I think very difficult for her.
- La compañera, Dolores Huerta.
[cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ [cheers and applause] - [speaking Spanish] ♪ ♪ - I remember my sisters and I and my brother being on the stage and surrounding my mother, you know, for support.
- [speaking Spanish] ♪ ♪ - It's almost like when Cesar died, you know?
It was like a big part of the farmworker thing dying.
Everybody there was like, I don't know, in shock, disbelief, you know?
[speaking Spanish] ♪ ♪ I tell ya, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
[poignant music] ♪ ♪ - [speaking Spanish] ♪ ♪ [speaking shakily] [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪ - Viva Dolores Huerta!
Viva Dolores Huerta!
Viva Dolores Huerta!
[cheers and applause] [slow piano music playing] ♪ ♪ - I can't imagine what she went through, resigning from the union.
♪ ♪ There had to have been some grieving, but knowing Dolores, there also had to have been some... "Sí, se puede" moments also.
"I'm gonna do something significant, despite this."
- Then she got a Puffin/Nation award, which was $100,000 to do whatever she wanted to do with it.
There were no strings attached at all.
- She could've kept that money to have a comfortable life for herself, but Dolores has never been interested in a comfortable life for herself.
- After feeling bad about having to leave the union, I thought to myself, "I'm gonna use that money to start doing community organizing."
My friend, please stand up.
- That is when Dolores announces that she is founding the Dolores Huerta Foundation.
all: Escucha!
Estamos en la lucha!
- We're gonna start off with Organizing 101.
- [speaking Spanish] - She is really going to the grassroots, into people's homes again, the house meetings, seeing what people's issues are, helping to give them the support, so that they become vocal, and training the people to become community organizers.
- In the long term, I think it afforded her a sense of freedom, freedom to touch every issue: feminism, the environment, the politics of our people, Latinos.
She made it all connect.
[dialogue inaudible] - We're not going to stop until we get full legalization.
all: Sí, se puede!
Sí, sí, se puede!
Sí, se puede!
- Viva la mujer!
all: Viva!
- Viva la Raza!
all: Viva!
- We can make the change, but it's gotta start with us.
[cheers, chatter] - And now, in Tucson, Arizona, 800 students heard labor activist Dolores Huerta say this: - Dolores would come to town regularly to speak to our youth.
But the only thing that came from that was that phrase: "Republicans hate Latinos."
The blowback was pretty intense.
- Dolores Huerta, telling our kids that republicans hate Latinos.
- I think that's hate speech.
- The Texas State Board of Education uh, rejected that you, uh, be part of the social studies curriculum.
- The reason people are opposed to Dolores Huerta... - Right.
- She has been quoted as saying some other things that are rather negative.
- Horne says Huerta should not be allowed to address any public school assemblies in Arizona.
- He was testifying on behalf of a bill which would outlaw ethnic studies in public schools.
- Ethnic studies were brought to my attention when a lady named Dolores Huerta gave a speech at the Tucson high school.
She was a former girlfriend of Cesar Chavez.
- If we go full circle to how politicians of the state and then on Fox News would refer to her as Cesar's sidekick, or in the case of Horne, actually saying his girlfriend, it was a perfect example why we need ethnic studies, because we have people in power at the policy level that have no idea of the true heroes of this country.
- I gotta tell ya, I never heard of this woman before.
- [laughs] - She's big in Arizona.
I don't know her.
- I mean, we're knee-deep in sexism.
We're, like, Downtown Sexism City, when it comes to how powerful she is, you know, and how-- and why she isn't studied and why people don't know her.
- It is absolutely important to recognize the extent to which Dolores was viewed as an subsidiary figure.
And Cesar Chavez, I have all the respect and reverence in the world for him.
But the assumption was, he was the leader, and Dolores was the housekeeper of the movement.
- I mean, if you look at the books that were written, you never see Dolores Huerta referred to as co-founder.
- She was there at the very beginning.
She was there as a woman, representing half of the working labor force in the fields.
I think it is absolutely essential that people acknowledge that it's male and female working together.
- We try to impress upon her that it is important.
Latina girls do need to see statues of you, and they do need to have you in their history books.
Like, we really gotta set the record straight.
I mean, women cannot be written out of history.
- It's about all the generations of young Chicanas, young women of color, who are currently involved in their own struggles, and need to be taught by example.
- We're never going to change if folks keep their place and stay quiet, especially women, especially Latinas.
So, my mother, her story will be told, and that's our job to make that happen.
- Her opinion is changing now, but it's a constant struggle for her.
- We as women, we're so used to being accommodators.
We want to try to please people.
We have to learn to think about ourselves.
And what do they say?
As a woman, you're just thinking about yourself, then you are what?
Selfish, right?
If a woman is assertive, they use the B-word, right?
I guess I always felt it was wrong for me to try to take credit for the work that I did.
I don't think that way anymore.
We've got to be able to say our ideas, and then--I'm gonna quote Gloria Steinem on this-- "Put lights around it," right?
Beat the drum.
[pounding on table] You know, put it in writing.
Put your name on it to make sure that you get the credit for the idea that you had.
all: Sí, se puede!
- Sí, se puede!
all: Sí, se puede!
- For Cesar, "Sí, se puede" wasn't just a slogan.
- When people in Arizona said-- they told me, "No, Dolores, no se puede.
You can't do this in Arizona, only in California," my response to them was, "Sí, se puede."
all: Sí, se puede!
Sí, se puede!
- Hers was the rallying cry that would later come to define the presidential campaign of candidate Barack Obama.
- Yes, we can.
- Have you heard President Obama say, "Yes, we can"?
It came from Cesar Chavez: Sí, se puede.
- Dolores Huerta came up with the slogan, "Sí, se puede," and we all attribute that to Cesar Chavez, even Barack Obama.
Of course, when he gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he had to correct himself.
[laughs] - On a personal note, Dolores was very gracious when I told her I had stolen her slogan, "Sí, se puede," yes, we can.
Uh, knowing her, I'm pleased that she let me off easy, 'cause Dolores does not play.
[cheers and applause] [reflective piano music] ♪ ♪ - All that a person has is his or her story: who they are, what they've gone through, what their families have gone through.
This is their story, and when you're trying to deny them their story, you're taking away their power.
- When you hear Dolores Huerta talking about the erasure of indigenous, black, and other memories in our histories, it's really about that struggle for memory and the memory that emancipates or the memory that enslaves.
- That's what we learned from our antepasados and our ancestors and from Dolores: You don't have to cower to power.
You have your own dignity.
It's beautiful to be Mexican.
It's beautiful to be Chicano.
♪ ♪ - A yes would insert Dolores Huerta.
♪ ♪ Vote is 6 to 9.
The amendment fails.
- Arizona governor Jan Brewer has signed a law banning ethnic studies in Arizona public schools.
- No matter what Tom Horne does, or what Jan Brewer does, nothing that they can do can stop us from telling our stories.
- So, her legacy to me is one of sustainability.
You can do this work and not burn out, right?
None of us have an excuse to tap out.
- You were a young girl.
You must've had a dream.
Not the dream of being someone who liberated farmworkers.
There must've been something beyond that.
- Could I have chosen, I would've probably have been a dancer.
[chuckles] I love dancing very much, and music very much, but I found out that I like people better than I did dancing or music.
[cheers and applause] [energetic percussive music] - Despite the fact that Dolores didn't follow her passion to become a dancer, she is a dancer on the stage of justice.
- ♪ Suavemente ♪ ♪ Bésame ♪ ♪ Te quiero sentir tus labios ♪ ♪ Besándome otra vez ♪ ♪ Bésame otra vez ♪ ♪ Yo quiero sentir tus labios ♪ ♪ Besándome otra vez ♪ ♪ Besa, besa ♪ ♪ Bésame un poquito ♪ ♪ Besa, besa, besa, besa ♪ ♪ Bésame otro ratito ♪ [Elvis Crespo's "Suavemente"] ♪ ♪ ♪ Cuando tu me besas ♪ ♪ Me siento en el aire ♪ ♪ Por eso cuando te veo ♪ ♪ Comienzo a besarte ♪ ♪ Y si te despegas ♪ ♪ Yo me despierto ♪ ♪ De ese rico sueño ♪ ♪ Que me dan tus besos ♪ ♪ Suavemente ♪ ♪ Bésame ♪ ♪ Que yo quiero sentir tus labios ♪ ♪ Besando me otra vez ♪ ♪ Suavemente ese coro!
♪ ♪ Bésame ♪ ♪ Que yo quiero sentir tus labios ♪ ♪ Besando me otra vez ♪ ♪ Bésame suavecito ♪ ♪ Sin prisa y con calma ♪ ♪ Dame un beso bien profundo ♪ ♪ Que me llegue al alma ♪ ♪ Dame un beso mas ♪ ♪ Que en mi boca cabe ♪ ♪ Dame un beso despacito ♪ ♪ Dame un beso suave ♪ ♪ Suavemente ♪ [Bob Marley's "War" performed by Sinéad O'Connor] ♪ ♪ - ♪ Until the philosophy ♪ ♪ Which holds one race superior ♪ ♪ And another ♪ ♪ Inferior ♪ ♪ Is finally ♪ ♪ And permanently ♪ ♪ Discredited ♪ ♪ And abandoned ♪ ♪ Everywhere is war ♪ ♪ War ♪ ♪ That until there's no longer ♪ ♪ First class and second class citizens ♪ ♪ Of any nation ♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ PBS Your Home for Independent Film