Director Gregory Nava is paying tribute to civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, who died Wednesday at 96.
On Tuesday night, the two filmmakers drove to Bakersfield to say goodbye.
Huerta, the co-founder of the United Farm Workers and the woman who gave the country the phrase “Sí, se puede,” died Wednesday morning at her home, surrounded by family. A family spokesperson said the cause was cancer.
“We were blessed to be by Dolores’ side last night in Bakersfield, to say goodbye and stand with her family in love,” Nava and Martinez Jitner wrote in a joint statement. “Dolores was a great light and a fearless warrior for justice. She set the world ablaze with her passion for equality and inspired generations to discover their own power.”
“In these last few years, Dolores and her beautiful family welcomed us even closer, entrusting us with the telling of her life — its extraordinary courage, its struggles and joys, its deepest pain,” they said. “It has been one of the greatest privileges of our professional lives, and a deeply personal trust. We will honor it with tenderness and care, carrying her voice and her story to generations yet to come.”
Dolores Clara Fernández was born April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, the daughter of a coal miner and a mother who ran a hotel in Stockton, Calif., that catered to farmworkers. She taught elementary school for a year and quit after watching hungry children arrive in class barefoot, deciding she could do more for them by organizing their parents.
The last time I saw Nava and Huerta in a room together was Oct. 24, 2025, at the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Latino Cinema and Television in Beverly Hills, a night I co-programmed and hosted. Huerta was the evening’s Icon Award recipient, and it was Nava who walked onstage to hand it to her. He talked about her as a force of history, while she spoke about the young people in the room and how they needed to get off the sidewalk and into the street to fight. She was 95 then, and nobody in the ballroom was sharper and more energizing.
“Today, we mourn,” Nava and Martinez Jitner wrote. “We send all our love and gratitude to her family. The baton is now in our hands. We will carry it forward, Dolores.”
