Features » May 11, 2007

Rebelde for the Cause

United Farm Worker pioneer leads immigrant rights struggle

By Chelsea Ross

Dolores Huerta worked to organize the farm workers in California through the National Farm Workers Association, which later became United Farm Workers.

Dolores Huerta is a hustler. At around 5 foot nothing and 77 years old, she does not look like a force to be reckoned with. And while neither her face nor her name might be familiar, Huerta is one of the most significant rabble-rousers of her time. When Huerta founded the National Farm Workers Association (what later became United Farm Workers, or UFW) with Cesar Chavez in 1965, nobody—let alone a single Latina mother—was organizing farm workers.

But with UFW, Huerta became a thorn in the side of major agricultural corporations. She helped direct the famous five-year Delano grape boycott, and negotiated a three-year collective bargaining agreement signed by the majority of the California table grape industry. She secured unemployment benefits for workers, lobbied against federal guest worker programs and spearheaded amnesty legislation. She was also one of the first to speak out about the dangers posed by toxic pesticides to workers, consumers and the environment.

After more than 50 years of fighting for what she and Chavez called La Causa (the cause), Huerta shows no signs of fatigue or cynicism. At one moment she speaks with the wisdom and affections of a grandmother (she has 11 children, 20 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren), and in the next with the fury of a warrior still on a lifelong mission.

Recently, she has been traveling the country, speaking at marches and $100-a-plate dinners on behalf of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. In These Times caught up with Huerta on the University of Illinois-Chicago campus where she spoke at a conference about the immigration movement in Chicago.

Number one, they moved the immigration debate forward. We ended up getting a bill in the Senate—the McCain-Kennedy bill. Although it wasn’t the greatest bill, at least they proposed a legalization bill. It didn’t stop the conservatives, the people like [Rep. James] Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), from doing their sham hearing, but it gave people a sense of their power.

One of the themes was “Today we march, tomorrow we vote,” and the number of Latinos who voted for Democrats was like 69 percent. Also, we’ve had an increase in the number of people who are fighting for citizenship. And I think the activism in general has increased, although you also have the reaction from the right.

What hasn’t been covered as much is that some really anti-immigrant congresspeople lost their elections. In Arizona, we have two really good examples: Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.) were elected to the Congress. The person Mitchell ran against, J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.), his whole campaign was anti-immigrant, and this guy lost.

When the Republicans put someone like Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who is head of the Republican National Committee, as one of the co-authors of the Senate bill—that to me is a strong signal that they are at least thinking about immigration—that they put a Latino, although not Mexican, on a bill.

Aside from the marches—which have been unifying and have generated debate and brought the cause to national attention—what else can be done?

One of the things I’m promoting—which comes from Chicago—is support of Elvira Arellano, the woman who has taken refuge in a Methodist church. The idea is to promote children’s marches for the weekend of April 28-29.

April 30 is Dia de los Niños, Children’s Day in Latin America. It’s a call to justice for immigrant children and immigrant working parents—a call to all grandchildren and great grandchildren of previous immigrants, so they will also come in and support the cause.

Almost everybody is the great grandchild of some immigrant in this country—unless, of course, they’re indigenous. So we’re calling for all the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren of immigrants to join us in this call for justice for immigrants’ children.

You mentioned Elvira Arellano. In many ways, she has become the face of the movement—almost a martyr symbol. Do you think her actions have been productive?

Absolutely. First of all, she’s very tiny, but she’s got all this strength and this sincerity, and you just feel her strength. And she’s very eloquent. She speaks simply, but profoundly. So in terms of the Latino community right now, she really is an icon.

I tried to get Cardinal Roger Mahony in Los Angeles to call for a sanctuary movement in California. Unfortunately, Cardinal Mahony did not endorse a sanctuary movement. So, clergy are just doing it on their own. I think they have about 69 churches signed up right now. Clergy like Father Richard Estrada, who is from Los Angeles. They’re trying to sign up other churches of other denominations too.

Father Estrada has been very active in the immigrants’ rights movement. Every single year he takes different labor and political leaders out to the desert, and they set up poles with flags on them, marking where people coming across can find water. He’s been doing this now for the past 10 years or so.

Jesse Jackson has been pounding this issue now for the last five years, saying, “we gotta work together,” saying to the leadership of the black community: “You all have got to learn to speak Spanish.” Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte have organized conferences bringing together not only Latinos, but also indigenous leadership. They had conferences in Atlanta, in Mississippi and in California—to get people to work together on the issues of education and incarceration.

I think something has to be changed. When we talk about immigration, we don’t talk about why people are coming here. And the reason that people have to leave the beautiful places they live—where we go to as tourists—is to come here to work as indentured servants because they can’t find jobs in their own countries. So we’ve got to look at our foreign policy in regards to Latin America, a policy I call economic colonization. We want to go into these countries and take over their economies and make these people again into just low-wage earners.

We don’t help them develop their own economies, so that they can stand on their own and employ their own people. There is more than enough work that needs to be done in all of these countries, right? But our policy is one of exploitation. So we need to look at our free trade agreements and what we’ve done. All of these countries now are worse off: Their unemployment is rising and their wages are lower because of the changes that were made.

Compare this with what happened after World War II. We defeated Germany, Japan and Italy, and we had the Marshall Plan where we lent them millions of dollars to help them rebuild their economies. We forgave those loans. So, American companies didn’t go into Japan and Germany, we just gave them the money to develop their own economies.

This is totally the opposite from what we’re doing with Latin America, where American companies go in and take over. Here we have small shopkeepers in Mexico who cannot compete with Wal-Mart. You have corn farmers who cannot compete with agribusiness. So small corn farmers have been wiped out, you have 2 million corn farmers who are now in the United States trying to survive. Right now Mexico is actually importing more corn from the United States than what they grow in Mexico.

It’s economic colonization. We can’t keep blaming the victims, who are the immigrants. We’ve got to say, “OK, what are we doing to make this happen?” I think that’s got to be part of it. When we talk about immigration, let’s talk about the free trade agreements.

The best people to police the Mexican border are the Mexicans. Some people keep talking about terrorists, but no terrorists have ever come in through Mexico. Terrorists have only come in through Canada. And I remember one congressman saying, “Well, you can’t tell the difference between a Mexican and an Arab.” Well, maybe he can’t, but the Mexicans can. It’s all very xenophobic.

I really do believe that unless women get into positions of power, we will never end wars, we will never have peace, we will never end violence. I think part of the changes that we need in our world is for women to take power.

I haven’t been asked yet. But, yes, I think I will endorse Hillary because she’s intelligent and she’s compassionate and she’s tough. She’s going to have everyone in the world trying to bring her down because she’s a woman.

• Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
• Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND BARS!

  Dolores Huerta is my all-time personal hero. I had the privilege to meet this wonderful woman and shake her hand a few years back in Laredo, Texas.  Thank you for bringing this timely interview with a great lady on an issue of paramount importance to your readership.

  In her footsteps and perhaps, today, beside her, a number of us are organizing to fight the cause of imprisoned immigrant children.  “Free the Children” is a loosely knit, but highly motivated grassroots group of volunteers who are working to bring attention to the wrongful incarceration of children at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, 35 miles northeast of Austin. 

  Hutto is a private-for-profit prison.  Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a for profit company running the majority of privatized prisons in the US, is paid 2.8 million dollars a month (7k per child per month or 84k per child per year) to keep these children behind bars at Hutto.

  In the name of national security, innocent women and young children—babies, and toddlers included—with immigration issues are imprisoned—yes, in cells, locked down, in uniforms.  It’s a shameful problem. 

  I know Hutto is just one small piece of a huge problem, but it’s a most important piece since it involves the most vulnerable among us—powerless women and children. 

  The ACLU and others have recently sued for the release of ten children they were able to identify. A federal judge has stated they are likely to prevail. More recently, Jorge Bustamante, a U.N. “rapporteur” (investigator), was to have visited Hutto, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security shut the door on his visit at the last minute. 

  Please visit www.myspace.com/free_the_children for more information—registration is free and you can contact our group through this website. www.childrenspeak.net is an additional site devoted to this issue.

  Please assist us in whatever way you can to make Hutto known to every American and to the world.  We need everyone’s help to free the children and close Hutto.  Together we can prevail.

  Posted by gbenacci on May 12, 2007 at 9:52 PM

  At least Dolores has a sense that Mexico needs to reform its own country/economy so not so many people feel they have to leave.

  However, I find it interesting that she focuses solely on the U.S. as being the problem and seemingly bearing all the responsibility for what’s happening or not happening in Mexico.  Is there perhaps not some blame to be shared with those in charge in Mexico for all these decades?

  Posted by Natalie on May 13, 2007 at 4:14 AM

  Yes, Natty,

  Some blame does accrue on the Mexican political leadership.  However, since Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy dating from WWII, Mexico’s government has been mostly subordinate to and corrupted by Uncle Sam and his corporate interests, gradually eroding the gains of the Mexican people from the 1917 revolution, the lions share of responsibility does come back to the good ol’ Yewesovay.

  The election fraud, mostly dismissed by the powers that be, in the recent Mexican elections are traceable to manipulations by some of the same the same US companies and institutions responsible for fraudulent elections in Florida, Ohio, et al.

  Posted by luminous beauty on May 13, 2007 at 5:35 PM

  I wish that Ms Huerta had given a little more complete answer to the questions about open borders, and the role of the border patrol.  All I could gather is that she thinks that we should just back off and let the Mexican government handle all of that.

  Posted by JPetersmith on May 13, 2007 at 10:03 PM

  Corporations, business, technology, etc., are simply the products of human ambition, innovation, and ingenuity.  It’s how governments choose to utilize, and how much they deem necessary to interfere with these undeniable forces that determines the quality of life and the amount of opportunity that’s afforded to their citizens—- upper, middle, and lower class. 

  That’s where Mexico’s leaders have failed.  They have taken the easy routes, and allowed either businesses or the drug cartels to buy them off, and the economy’s health and integrity take second chair. Your characterization of Mexican officials as powerless victims only enables them to continue on in the same old rut.  Mexico has tons of resources and has the ability and potential to transform itself into a place where Mexicans want to stay and work and live, and even where Americans might want to move to.

  Blaming corporations for all your problems is like blaming a car for your injuries when you chose to drive it 90 mph without paying attention and without wearing a seatbelt.

  That’s right, I forgot.  Whenever the leftist/socialist/collectivist loses, it’s ALWAYS because the more free-market candidate cheated.  It’s NEVER because a system that doesn’t interfere with an individual’s ability to excel if they so choose appeals to people’s common sensibilities, hopes and dreams more than a mediocre, state-controlled, economically oppressive and bureaucratically top-heavy one.

  The reason people are fleeing Venezuela in droves is NOT because they instinctively sense that their individual economic freedom and happiness/self-fulfillment potential is at great risk, and with a self-declared permanent Chavez reign that this risk will only increase, it’s because they are going forth to spread the word about the great things that are happening in their country, and to urge others to follow the same path. 

  The reason why people routinely boat from Cuba to Florida and not the other way around is NOT because they expect their lives to be better in the U.S., but simply because once they get here they become so poor and down-trodden that they can’t afford to equip for a return trip.

  Everyone wants to come to the U.S.  I can’t figure out why.  The U.S. sucks, just like CNN.

  What’s wrong with people?

  Posted by Natalie on May 13, 2007 at 10:25 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 43 posts.

Also featured Duck and Cover
The Fraudulence of Voter Fraud
Defining Hate in the United States

Full contents
Previous issues
Subscribe and save!

Also by Chelsea Ross

• A Campaign of Ones Own
  Connie Schultz talks about her column, feminism, endorsing Hillary, and her lovely husband, Ohio senator Sherrod BrownPosted on October 5, 2007
• The Not-So Superfund
  Congress lets fund to hold companies responsible for cleaning up their pollution run dryPosted on July 4, 2007
• Sacred Lands, Sewer Snow
  American Indians fight to stop an Arizona ski resort from making snow out of sewage water. Posted on May 17, 2007
• Making Black Voices Heard
  A new study examines minority youth opinion Posted on February 28, 2007
• Bioneers Bridge the Color Gap
  Bioneers, or Biological Pioneers, are activists committed to green consciousness, racial reconciliation, organic, healthy sustainable foods and social justice coalitions.Posted on December 5, 2006