Dolores Huerta Remembered by Director Gregory Nava After Death

Director Gregory Nava is paying tribute to civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, who died Wednesday at 96.

Huerta introduced Nava to his wife, Barbara Martinez Jitner, and served as a witness at their wedding. In the last years of her life, she sat with them for more than 70 hours and told them things she had never told anyone.

On Tuesday night, the two filmmakers drove to Bakersfield to say goodbye.

Huerta, the co-founder of the United Farm Workers and the woman who gave the country the phrase “Sí, se puede,” died Wednesday morning at her home, surrounded by family. A family spokesperson said the cause was cancer.

“We were blessed to be by Dolores’ side last night in Bakersfield, to say goodbye and stand with her family in love,” Nava and Martinez Jitner wrote in a joint statement. “Dolores was a great light and a fearless warrior for justice. She set the world ablaze with her passion for equality and inspired generations to discover their own power.”

The pair have spent the better part of three years preparing the first dramatic feature about Huerta’s life, which Variety first reported in April 2024, with Nava writing and directing and Martinez Jitner co-writing and producing with him. Huerta, who had been approached by a long line of filmmakers for her life rights, chose the two people she had known for decades.

“In these last few years, Dolores and her beautiful family welcomed us even closer, entrusting us with the telling of her life — its extraordinary courage, its struggles and joys, its deepest pain,” they said. “It has been one of the greatest privileges of our professional lives, and a deeply personal trust. We will honor it with tenderness and care, carrying her voice and her story to generations yet to come.”

Nava helmed films like “El Norte,” his 1983 drama about two Guatemalan siblings crossing into the United States, which earned him an Oscar nomination for original…