SENATE MEMORIAL 122

54th legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - first session, 2019

INTRODUCED BY

Jacob R. Candelaria and Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

A MEMORIAL

REQUESTING THE GENERAL SERVICES DEPARTMENT AND THE CULTURAL AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT TO STUDY AND DEVELOP RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MEMORIALIZING AND PRESERVING THE BIRTHPLACE OF DOLORES HUERTA.

     WHEREAS, activist and labor leader Dolores Fernandez, better known as Dolores Huerta, was born April 10, 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico; and

     WHEREAS, Dolores Huerta is a Mexican-American social activist and labor leader who has spent a lifetime representing those who do not have power or a voice; and

     WHEREAS, Dolores Huerta's own experiences of discrimination and her innate sense of justice and a desire to help others led her to join forces with Cesar Chavez; and

     WHEREAS, together, through nonviolent protest and a nationally and internationally successful grape strike, they changed the way people who were striking were treated; and

     WHEREAS, Dolores Huerta worked to improve social and economic conditions for farm workers and to fight discrimination; and

     WHEREAS, to further her cause, Dolores Huerta created the agricultural workers association in 1960 and co-founded what would become the united farm workers; and

     WHEREAS, Dolores Huerta set up voter registration drives and lobbied politicians to allow non-United States citizen migrant workers to receive public assistance and pensions and to provide Spanish-language voting ballots and driver's tests; and

     WHEREAS, Dolores Huerta, a skilled community organizer, traveled from poverty to political victory and became the second Mexican-American woman in history to be honored with the presidential medal of freedom; and

     WHEREAS, Dolores Huerta's birthplace, Dawson, is located about seventeen miles northeast of Cimarron and was the site of two separate coal mining disasters; and

     WHEREAS, the mining town was abandoned and became a ghost town in 1950; and

     WHEREAS, legislators have expressed an interest in preserving Dawson and possibly creating a museum; and

     WHEREAS, Dolores has expressed support of lawmakers seeking to restore her birthplace, while requesting that any effort should also focus on the labor history of the mining town;

     NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the general services department and the cultural affairs department be requested to study and develop recommendations for memorializing and preserving the birthplace of Dolores Huerta; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the general services department and the cultural affairs department be requested to present their recommendations to the appropriate interim legislative committee by October 1, 2019; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the secretary of general services, the secretary of cultural affairs and Dolores Huerta.

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