A powerful and inspiring documentary about Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and one of the most influential labor leaders in U.S. history. Directed by Peter Bratt and produced by Carlos Santana, the film restores Huerta’s central role in the farmworker movement and celebrates her brilliance as an organizer, strategist, and unapologetically feminist leader.

Through rare archival footage and interviews with those who stood beside her, Dolores traces the UFW’s evolution from a small, local effort into a national movement that transformed working conditions in the fields. Under Huerta’s leadership, the union organized strikes, marches, and the Delano grape boycott, mobilizing millions of consumers and forcing growers to negotiate. The victories were groundbreaking: union contracts guaranteeing rest breaks, toilets, and clean drinking water in the fields, pesticide protections, and higher wages — the first time U.S. farmworkers had such rights recognized.

The film also highlights Huerta’s personal and political challenges — enduring misogyny within the movement, police violence, and relentless public attacks — yet never compromising her commitment to collective power. It shows her shaping not just labor strategy but also the intersectional politics of race, class, and gender that continue to define social movements today.

In later years, Huerta continued organizing through the Dolores Huerta Foundation, advancing campaigns for education, voting rights, and racial justice in California’s Central Valley. The film’s closing moments connect her legacy to today’s struggles for immigrant and worker rights, where ¡Sí se puede! (“Yes we can”) still rings as both slogan and strategy.

While the UFW’s influence has declined in recent decades — weakened by union-busting tactics, anti-immigrant laws, and shifts in the agricultural labor market — Huerta’s organizing methods and the gains she helped secure remain a model for building power among marginalized workers. Her life reminds us that rights once won must constantly be defended, and that movements endure when leadership is collective, courageous, and grounded in love.