“Strategic necessity,” “preserving legacy,” women have been told to swallow their pain to protect the movements they built with their own hands for decades.
Dolores Huerta spent 60 years keeping a secret because she believed the truth would cost the farmworkers everything she, with many others, had fought for. That is what patriarchy demands of us — our silence, our protection of the very structures that harm us, our willingness to disappear so that something we love can survive.
The farmworker movement was never the story of a single man. It was built by Dolores, Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas, Esmeralda Lopez, and every woman who marched, organized, worked in the fields, raised families, and fought tirelessly. Too often, they were told to bury their pain in service of the cause. Patriarchy and misogyny have profoundly distorted and shaped the course of history. It has buried the contributions of women and weaponizes the movements they built against them. We refuse to let that stand.
Patriarchy takes the labor, the love, the loyalty, the body — and demands silence too. They build monuments to men on the foundations women pour. They call it a movement. They call it a cause. They call it sacred. And they ask survivors to carry the weight of that sacredness in their bodies, alone, in the dark, for sixty years if necessary.
We have seen it in farmworker organizing. We have seen it in civil rights history. We have seen it in the unsealed Epstein files — another archive of powerful men protected by networks of money, silence, and institutional complicity. We have seen it in our own movement spaces, where women who raised the alarm were told they were threatening the struggle. Where survivors were asked to hold their pain quietly so the larger cause would not fracture.
“I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor — of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me and other women as property. I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here.” – Dolores Huerta
Survivors are not just witnesses to injustice — they are its most clear-eyed analysts. They hold multitudes: grief and brilliance, betrayal and vision, the wound and the map forward. They are not problems for movements to manage. They are the reason movements exist.
“The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual… We must continue to engage and support our community, which needs advocacy and activism now more than ever.” – Dolores Huerta
We believe Dolores. We believe Ana. We believe Debra. We commit to honoring that truth — across every movement, every political party, every system that has rewarded patriarchy and punished truth-telling. To the survivors who keep speaking anyway: we will stop being part of the machinery that coerces silence to protect a legacy, a brand, a name. We are our movements. We have always been. And we are not afraid to tell the truth, with survivors at the center, from the beginning, until liberation.
In solidarity, and on behalf of Women’s Foundation California
Bia Vieira, she/her/elle
CEO, Women’s Foundation California
If you are a survivor or if you have been impacted by any type of sexual violence, please visit the Dolores Huerta Foundation website, where you will find a list of resources for support.