Who Is Dolores Huerta? The Civil Rights Leader Breaking Her Silence on Cesar Chavez Allegations

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Mar 18, 2026 11:59 PM CUT

Dolores Huerta speaks onstage during Together For Democracy 2026, hosted By Democracy Forward at Conrad Washington in Washington, D.C., on January 29, 2026.

Dolores Huerta speaks onstage during Together For Democracy 2026, hosted By Democracy Forward at Conrad Washington in Washington, D.C., on January 29, 2026.Paul Morigi—Getty Images/Democracy Forward

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Mar 18, 2026 11:59 PM CUT

Renowned labor and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta has come forward with allegations that she was sexually abused by Cesar Chavez, with whom she co-founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) union.

“I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here,” Huerta, 95, said in a statement on Wednesday. 

Huerta said she was driven to share her experiences following an investigation released by the New York Times on Wednesday that revealed accusations that Chavez, an icon of the labor movement who died in 1993, groomed and sexually abused multiple girls and women who worked in the movement, including Huerta.

“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for,” Huerta said in her statement. 

“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work. The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.”

Huerta is considered one of the most influential labor activists of the 20th century. She and Chavez worked for decades fighting for the rights of farmworkers in California and beyond. Huerta was also a strong proponent for causes including women’s, immigrants’, and LGBTQ rights, and is credited with coining the slogan “Sí, se puede,” which became a battle cry for activists around the country—and which President Barack Obama adopted in his groundbreaking 2008 presidential campaign in its English translation: “Yes, we can.” 

In 2012, Obama awarded Huerta the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for her lifetime of service. 

Here’s what to know about Huerta’s life and work, and the allegations against Chavez.

A lifetime of activism

Huerta was born in Dawson, New Mexico, in April 1930 and raised by a single mother in a farm community in Stockton California, where she was exposed to the harsh conditions faced by many migrant farm workers.

Huerta earned an associate teaching degree and briefly worked as a teacher in the 1950s before beginning her career in activism, co-founding the Stockton chapter of the Latino civil rights Community Service Organization.

She founded the National Farm Workers Association, which went on to become the United Farm Workers three years later, with Chavez in 1962. The UFW is recognized as the country’s longest enduring and largest agricultural workers’ union. 

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Huerta served as the vice president of the union until 1999, during which time she broke barriers as a rare woman leader in a male-dominated movement and helped secure better conditions for many farm workers.

In the 1960s, Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strikes, and was the lead negotiator for the resulting contracts for grape workers. She also served as the driving force behind the nationwide table grape boycott that led to a historic union contract in 1970. And in 1973, she led another consumer boycott of grapes that led to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which permitted farm workers to form unions and participate in collective bargaining. 

Huerta lobbied for labor legislation throughout the ’70s and ’80s, and in the ’90s and 2000s, she worked to get Latinos and women elected to office.

She has received a number of honors for her lifetime of activism, the Presidential Medal of Freedom among them.

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The allegations against Cesar Chavez

Huerta alleged that she had “two separate sexual encounters” with Chavez in the 1960s.

“The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to,” she said in her statement on Wednesday. “The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.”

Huertas said that both encounters led to pregnancies, which she opted to keep secret, and that she arranged for the children “to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives.”

Huerta told the Times that Chavez raped her in 1966, when she was 36 years old and the two were working together to secure rights for farmworkers. She also detailed an earlier encounter in which she alleged she felt pressured to have sex with Chavez in August 1960 in the interview with the outlet, the first time she publicly disclosed her accusations. 

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In its investigation, the Times also spoke with two women who alleged that Chavez sexually abused them in the 1970s when they were girls and he was in his 40s and already a high-profile leader in the labor movement. One of the women, Debra Rojas, told the outlet that Chavez first touched her inappropriately when she was 12 and raped her when she was 15. The other, Ana Murguia, alleged to the Times that Chavez began abusing her when she was 13.

The Times reported, citing interviews with more than 60 people and extensive records, that the accusations appeared to be part of a broader pattern of alleged sexual misconduct by Chavez.

In the wake of the allegations, several upcoming events planned to honor Chavez surrounding Cesar Chavez Day, which commemorates the labor icon on his March 31 birthday each year, have been cancelled. The UFW announced on Tuesday, ahead of the release of the Times investigation, that it would not take part in any Cesar Chavez activities in light of the “deeply troubling allegations.”

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Huerta on Wednesday urged continued work to advocate for agricultural workers.

“The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual,” Huerta said in her statement. “Cesar’s actions do not diminish the permanent improvements achieved for farmworkers with the help of thousands of people. We must continue to engage and support our community, which needs advocacy and activism now more than ever.”