Candlelight vigil for Dolores Huerta draws hundreds in Tucson

Dozens of candles flickered Wednesday evening as the sky darkened over Tucson. All were lit for feminist and workers’ rights champion Dolores Huerta, who died that morning in Bakersfield, Calif.

The nearly 200 people that gathered at Joaquin Murrieta Park shortly before twilight held the candles while listening to stories about Huerta from those who knew her. A spokesperson for Huerta’s family said she died of cancer but remained active almost until the day she died.

At times during the vigil, the crowd chanted “¡Que viva Dolores Huerta!” and “¡Si se puede!” The latter phrase, said uttered decades ago by Huerta, became emblematic of the Chicano and workers rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s.

The vigil was planned “last-minute,” said Eva Carrillo Dong, co-chair of the Arizona Dolores Huerta Holiday Coalition.

But it was meaningful to her that so many people made time to come.

“I heard a lot of people tell me they could only stay a little while, ‘I’ve got this meeting or I’ve got this thing,'” she said.
But when Dong looked around at the end of the evening, many of the people who told her that were still there.

“Even though their lives are busy, they still felt compelled to stay for her,” she said.
The memorial vigil for Huerta started with a ceremony led by Calpolli Teoxicalli before Dong and elected officials shared some of their most memorable moments with Huerta.

The election is on Nov. 3, several speakers noted, just days after Huerta died.

“God, I wish she could have lived just one more week so she could have seen a blue wave,” Dong said.

‘Have it in your heart’

U.S. Rep Adelita Grijalva, who told the Tucson Sentinel earlier Wednesday that Huerta was like a tía to her, said the late union organizer was present for countless family celebrations and life moments.

It’s comforting to think that Huerta is now watching her from the afterlife with her father, late U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who died while holding his office in early 2025, she said at the vigil.

Adelita Grijalva, in a special election later that year, was elected to serve out the rest of his term.

Huerta convinced Grijalva to speak to California congressional candidate Randy Villegas, and consider endorsing him, after Democratic Party officials endorsed his opponent during the primary election earlier this year, the Tucson congresswoman said.

Within days, Grijalva said, she was knocking on doors in Bakersfield to aid Villegas’ campaign.

“I believe that is the legacy that we have to keep going,” she said. “The glass ceilings are just that, and we have to punch through them.”

Villegas took second place in California’s nonpartisan primary, meaning the progressive Democrat is challenging the established incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. David Valadao in the Central Valley district.

Huerta “fought hard and worked tirelessly,” Grijalva said. “And then she took opportunities to fill up her soul and hang out and dance at my wedding.”

Mayor Regina Romero, whose parents were farmworkers near Yuma, said Huerta changed her life before the two ever met.

“It was because of her that my parents had better working conditions. They had water in the fields. They had 15-minute breaks,” the mayor said. “They even fought for dental benefits and healthcare benefits for farmworkers.”

Romero, who would eventually host Huerta regularly in her home when she’d visit Tucson, said one night the two broke out a bottle of wine.

They’d finished three of them by the time the clock struck 3 a.m., Romero said, when she asked Huerta asked her what compelled her to keep working so hard for what seemed like little in return.

“She said, ‘You’ve just got to have it in your heart,'” Romero said. “‘Touch base with the niña that was running around the fields in Somerton and in Sacramento, Calif. Touch base with that niña every single day so that you don’t forget the needs of that little seven, 10, 12-year-old.”

‘Turn it into power’

Rubén Reyes, Romero’s husband and a senior advisor in Grijalva’s office, told those at the vigil that Huerta rubbed elbows with kings and presidents. But she always felt at home in Tucson.

Years ago, Reyes said, Huerta championed a boycott of Wendy’s to demand they ensure workers throughout the fast food supply chain were protected.

But during another late night while he was working in Washington D.C. for Raúl Grijalva’s office, he and the late congressman found themselves very hungry, and a Wendy’s was close by.

The two opted to order to-go meals, telling each other it was only one time. They made sure to pay in cash, Reyes said with a chuckle.

They paid cash and ate in Reyes’ apartment, leaving Wendy’s wrappers on the table. The next morning, Reyes and the late Grijalva started work early with plans to attend a committee meeting.

Then Huerta called to tell Reyes she was in the area and needed a place to stay. Grijalva told him to forget the meeting and hurry home to hide the evidence.

“In the middle of me running through the streets of D.C. I’m thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m worrying about racing to beat an 85-year-old woman to my apartment,'” he said, drawing laughter from the crowd.

Though Huerta was widely know for her workers’ rights work, Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon Jose said her activism work extended far beyond that.

He and Huerta protested together a decade ago near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation against the construction of an oil pipeline across Native land.

“We might feel a little bit of sadness in our hearts, but we should turn it into power,” he said. “That candle that you’re holding is going to burn out eventually. But the light of Dolores Huerta will never burn out, will never go dim, unless we allow it to.”

In March, a multi-year investigation by the New York Times yielded extensive evidence César Chávez, who co-founded the United Farm Workers Union, sexually abused her and two underaged girls in the 1960s and ’70s.

“Within this story, we must see that the women must be elevated,” said Isabel Garcia, founder of local immigrant rights group Derechos Humanos. “That’s what Dolores showed us in the end, that all of us women, we matter.”

The Tucson and Pima County governments quickly removed his name from their properties, while statues, murals and signs with his name throughout Southern Arizona came down. On Tuesday, coincidentally the day before Huerta’s death, county officials released plans to rename the former César Chávez Remembrance Day to Farmworkers Appreciation Day.

Groups throughout the United States cancelled their celebrations of the upcoming César Chávez Day.
Members of what’s now called the Arizona Dolores Huerta Holiday Coalition, which also previously included Chávez’s name, quickly rebranded their event as the Comunidad y Labor Unity Fair, focusing more on Huerta and other farmworkers’ contributions.

Dong said the group planned to keep that tradition in the coming years.