Civil rights leader Dolores Huerta will soon have a road named after her in one of New Mexico’s busiest areas.
This week, commissioners in Bernalillo County, the Southwest state’s most-populous county, voted to change a part of Bridge Boulevard in Albuquerque’s South Valley to Avenida Dolores Huerta.
Avenida Dolores Huerta is expected to run from the Rio Grande west to Isleta Boulevard. In 2017, a park located along the road was also renamed after the Mexican-American activist.
Huerta, a lifelong labor leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers, was born in Dawson, New Mexico in 1930. At the age of three, she moved with her mother and siblings to Stockton, California. At 89 years old, Huerta, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2012, is still present in movements for workers, immigration, gender justice and more.
In addition to New Mexico’s soon-to-be Avenida Dolores Huerta, the activist also has an intersection named after her in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles that’s called Dolores Huerta Square.