Born in New Mexico, Huerta grew up in Stockton, California, in the heart of the state’s large agricultural industry. She was raised by her mother, who at one point worked at a cannery.
Huerta first became a teacher after graduating from university before turning to organising workers and shepherding the Chicano power movement. She became the emotional throughline of several revolutionary movements rallying for better wages, and living and working conditions for the poor.
She later worked on civil and women’s rights and gender equality, as well as environmental issues, all while raising 11 children. She continued that work into her 90s.
“I would like to be remembered as a woman who cares for fellow humans,” she is reported by multiple sources to have once said. “We must use our lives to make the world a better place to live, not just to acquire things. That is what we are put on the earth for.”
Earlier this year, Huerta said Chavez, who died in 1993, had “manipulated and pressured” her into having sex and on another occasion forced her in the 1960s.
That was after the New York Times published an investigation detailing allegations from Huerta and two other women, who said Chavez groomed and sexually abused girls involved in the labour movement.
Huerta said the two encounters with Chavez resulted in pregnancies that she chose to keep secret, arranging for the children to be raised by other families.
Chavez’s family said in a statement at the time that they were “devastated” by the reports and praised the women’s “courage to come forward”.
Leave a comment