‘Dolores’
Reviewed: Documentary About the United Farm Workers Revolution
An engaging and informative documentary about the United Farm Workers’ “revolution” and saga, writer/director Peter Bratt’s Dolores could be viewed as a companion piece to the docs (and a feature) chronicling labor hero César Chávez, drawing on a lot of the same footage and timeline. The key, empowering difference: Dolores gives valuable, equal time to Dolores Huerta, an undeservedly lesser-known but vitally important figure in the farmworker struggle and grape boycott who happens to be a woman. Through contemporary interviews — with the subject, Luis Valdez, Angela Davis, Gloria Steinem, Huerta’s articulate children, and others — mixed with archival footage and stills (including of RFK’s historic visit to and support of the Delano, California–based strike), Dolores addresses a great American story of a woman who put the “her” in heroism. A modern sting for these Trumped times also sneaks into the picture. Huerta says: “We always say, ‘We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.’”
