Dolores Huerta, the labour leader who co-founded the organisation that became the United Farm Workers and gave it the slogan "Sí, se puede", has died at the age of 96. Her family announced her death on Wednesday 28 October 2026; a family spokesman said she died of cancer at her home in Bakersfield, California.

A slogan that travelled far beyond the fields

Huerta grew up in Stockton, California, organised farmworkers in the San Joaquin and Coachella valleys, and helped lead grape boycotts that drew national attention to conditions in California's fields. With Cesar Chavez, she co-founded the organisation that became the United Farm Workers, in its 1960s and 1970s heyday. Union contracts won farmworkers job security, healthcare, retirement plans and protections such as rest periods, clean drinking water and protection from pesticides.

Activism into her nineties

Huerta was credited with coining "Sí, se puede", loosely translated as "Yes, we can", which was later used by Barack Obama during his successful 2008 presidential campaign. The movement she helped build contributed to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, establishing collective bargaining rights for farmworkers. In 2012, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honour.

Huerta remained active well into her nineties, campaigning and protesting. The Bakersfield-based Dolores Huerta Foundation, founded by her in 2002, continued her work through grassroots organising, and held a sold-out celebration of her 96th birthday in Los Angeles in June 2026. In March 2026, Huerta had spoken publicly for the first time about sexual abuse she said she suffered at the hands of Chavez in the 1960s, an account she said she had kept private for 60 years because she believed revealing it would hurt the farmworker movement.

Sources: Reuters, USA Today.