“Dolores,” a documentary film about civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, has been playing at The Loft since Friday, Oct. 6. There will be a special showing Monday, Oct. 9 featuring the legend herself.
Huerta will be present for a Q&A session after the 7:30 p.m. Monday showing of the documentary. She will also give an introduction for the 10:15 p.m. screening later that night.
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As a civil rights leader, Huerta is a legend in the Latino community. She, alongside Cesar Chavez, founded the National Farm Workers Association and the United Farm Workers movement in the ’60s to advocate for the rights of agricultural workers.
Huerta founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting leadership and advocacy in communities. She continues to be politically vocal, receiving awards from various national organizations, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Anna O’Leary, the department head for University of Arizona’s Mexican American Studies program, said the documentary is important because it will remind people about what Huerta is fighting for for.
“I don’t think there’s been a documentary about Dolores Huerta,” O’Leary said.There has been one about Cesar Chavez, which is important, but then we needed the other side of the story, which is her story. … We haven’t heard that history in any biography that has been dedicated to her and the work that she did,” O’Leary said.
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Ultimately, O’Leary hopes that youth will understand the history and avoid apathy and a “false sense of complacency” by seeing what Huerta lived through in the film.
“That history is not being taught in the schools, because that history … was banned by our legislature, and those are important histories to remember,” O’Leary said. “It’s not the struggle of one group; it’s the struggle of many groups who overcome many of the challenges that have been given by those in power who seek to maintain that power on the backs of the exploited.”
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