{"id":84858,"date":"2026-10-29T00:56:02","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T07:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=84858"},"modified":"2026-10-29T00:56:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T07:56:02","slug":"el-rojo-tocino-a-personal-reflection-on-the-life-of-dolores-huerta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=84858","title":{"rendered":"\u2018El Rojo Tocino\u2019 \u2013 A Personal Reflection on the Life of Dolores Huerta"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>David Bacon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Renowned activist and organizer Dolores Huerta, who helped co-found the United Farm Workers (UFW) union and whose work on behalf of civil rights for farmworkers and migrant laborers won her international acclaim died Wednesday October 28. She was 96. Below, photojournalist and labor organizer David Bacon shares reflections and images from his interactions with Huerta, which span decades, from the early years of the Delano Grape Strike in the 1960s through to Huerta\u2019s continued anti-war activism in the 1990s and beyond. (All images copyright David Bacon)<\/em><\/p>\n

Three years ago I walked from Poplar to Delano, Calif., in honor of Larry Itliong, who started the 1965 grape strike and boycott there. I walked alongside Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers (UFW). She was 91 then, and I had a hard time keeping up.<\/p>\n

She sent me a note afterward that ended, \u201cS\u00ed Se Puede con El Rojo Tocino<\/em>.\u201d It was a beautiful joke.<\/p>\n

\u201cS\u00ed Se Puede<\/em>\u201d are three words we all use now, but she invented this confident way of saying \u201cYes We Can!\u201d \u201cTocino<\/em>\u201d was the nickname the union gave me in the years I worked as an organizer\u2014it means \u201cbacon,\u201d my last name. And calling me \u201cEl Rojo<\/em>,\u201d or \u201cThe Red,\u201d in this way honored my politics.<\/p>\n

When I came back from a solidarity work brigade in Cuba in the 1970s, I landed in New York City with no place to sleep. I called Dolores\u2019s daughter, Lori, a friend from California. Not only did I get space on the floor of the NYC boycott\u2019s headquarters, but Dolores and her partner, Richard, C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s brother, took us out to eat.<\/p>\n

Over pizza I enthused about the island. I had stars in my eyes, for both Cuba and Dolores, and still do.<\/p>\n

I went to work for the UFW as an organizer a few months later. There was often tension in the union about radical politics, and being called a red was sometimes the route out the door. But for Dolores and Eliseo Medina, stalwart leaders of the union, being a good organizer was the bottom line\u2014doing what the workers needed.<\/p>\n

Over the years, long after I had left the UFW and worked for other unions and then as a photojournalist, I would see Dolores again and again. Going to Watsonville to cover the organizing drives of strawberry workers or to Salinas for the strikes in the vegetable fields, I knew she\u2019d be there.<\/p>\n

It was a profound experience to watch her in union contract negotiations\u2014this diminutive woman facing off against the beefy growers across the table\u2014and see the sense of power it gave workers.<\/p>\n

Returning from Iraq, where I photographed workers after the 2003 US invasion, I took her picture in the front line of marchers against the war. When we were in Sacramento trying to stop the anti-immigrant, anti-affirmative-action, anti-bilingual initiatives, she was the first to speak out.<\/p>\n

So when she called me El Rojo Tocino<\/em>, I thought, \u201cWhat a compliment!\u201d I hope I live up to it.<\/p>\n

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ByDavid Bacon Oct 28, 2026 Renowned...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84859,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84858\/revisions\/84859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}