Dolores Is an Exhaustive History of One of America’s Most Influential Civil Rights Activists
Photo: © 1976 George Ballis / Take Stock / The Image Works
Barack Obama stole his campaign slogan “Yes we can!” from the farm workers’ union that took root in California in the 1960s. And by “stole,” I mean he openly noted that the slogan had been coined (In Spanish: ¡Sí se puede!) by legendary labor rights agitator Cesar Chavez.
Then he had to apologize to Dolores Huerta, because while the acknowledged face of the farm workers’ movement was Chavez, it was co-founder Huerta who’d come up with the saying.
Dolores, from Independent Lens, is an exhaustive history of one of the most influential American civil rights activists you’ve maybe never heard of. (Those of us raised in California who are Of A Certain Age probably remember the grape boycott she led, and I certainly remember her face, but I don’t think her name was ever brought up in a classroom when I was in school). A jazz aficionado, a native of California’s agriculturally vital Central Valley, and an utterly tireless force in the fight to grant union rights to American farm workers (most notably grape pickers in California), Dolores raised eleven children, and most of them will tell you the kid that got all the attention was the union. She would leave them, sometimes for months and sometimes with complete strangers, in her relentless effort to campaign on behalf of voiceless, often non-citizen, field workers. To many, Huerta was a hero. To a good number of others she was pretty much a pain in the ass. Indeed, the film, executive produced by Carlos Santana, has been around a while now, but he had trouble finding an outlet for it—as he opined to Billboard, many networks seemed intimidated by her or “afraid of her light.” Many people feel that her intensity and effectiveness were too much to handle, perhaps especially from a Latina woman, and that she was deliberately erased from history. (Indeed, there’s pretty ample evidence that there was specifically a vote to exclude her from educational materials in Arizona schools.)
Peter Bratt’s vibrant, archivally rich film is a little scattered, and it’s big on feeling and in spots a little light on fact—ideally, a program designed to educate the public about a figure who is understudied and was controversial in her day would have an abundance of both. But it offers a fascinating look at what we now call intersectionality. Huerta spoke for the farm workers. She spoke for Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. She spoke for all non-white people. For all people. She spoke for women. For feminists. She spoke for the poor, the illiterate, the underserved. Not always all of those at once and not necessarily in that order, and in part it depended on whom you asked.