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It’s been nearly 50 years, but Richard Chavez still remembers the day he, as a newlywed, really started to understand who his mother’s cousin, the woman he called “prima,” was. Chavez remembers that his wife had made a fruit salad. Prima asked if it contained grapes. Yes, she was told, it did. She refused to eat it.
Dolores Huerta — labor rights leader to the world, but family to Chavez — didn’t say why. Chavez looked into it and would soon learn that boycotting grapes had become a symbol in the fight for farmworkers’ rights, and Huerta was a leader in the struggle. “That was when I started to pay attention to the movement,” Chavez, 69, said Wednesday.
“It was impressive how everywhere she went, she took charge,” Chavez, a Chula Vista resident, said of Huerta. “She was badass.”
Several San Diego area residents who knew, marched with or were inspired by Huerta mourned her death Wednesday and recalled the legacy she left behind. Huerta was 96.
“Dolores Huerta has literally inspired my life’s work,” said Norma Chavez-Peterson, executive director of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties.
California Labor ALF-CIO President Lorena Gonzalez said she grew u...