Hameed Gado
Us history
Dr. Van Natter
Essay 3
The context around history is very important. It plays a pivotal role in shaping our understanding of historical contexts. The story of Dolores Huerta, the co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association is one of the important United States history. So it’s important for her story to be portrayed the right way with the right information. I’ll compare and contrast how Dolores Huerta has been portrayed in the textbook by Eric Foner and in a documentary film by Peter Bratt, and which one has better effects on the audience/reader, and what changes I would make to make her story better portrayed.
From the perspective of the textbook “Give Me Liberty!,an American history by Eric Foner, The book briefly states phases of her life like her background, her work as an activist for farm workers and what she accomplished. However, the documentary goes in depth and gives a lot of information that the book doesn’t provide to the reader. They both have some similarities but there’s a huge difference in the amount of information and understanding you get when reading, compared to when watching the documentary. Example, the book states “Through a CSO associate, Huerta met activist César Chávez”(course pack 22,page3). The documentary mentions the associate of hers named Fred Ross, a community organizer who told her about an organization that can make a change. This is one of the main differences in the book compared to the documentary as there were more names of important activists that were not mentioned in the book like female activists like Jessica Govea, Helen Chavez , Angela Davis, Gloria Steinem and volunteers like Wendy Greenfield, Ramona holguin. And also male activists like Billy Lucy, Art Torres, Raul grijalva and Scott king. The documentary also shared that Cesar was at first shy and jealous of Dolores until they had a meeting and then he saw why Fred rates Dolores highly which the book did not have. In addition, the documentary shared that she left her home Stockton and moved to Delano and how they did house meetings with Cesar taking the southern half and Dolores taking the northern. Doing Immigration work, insurance plan, credit union to get loans and income taxes for farm workers. While the book barely gave any indication or description of how Dolores and Cesar did things.
According to both the book and the documentary, she was responsible for conducting and promoting contracts such as health care benefits and safe workplace for agricultural workers. And how she was a working lobbyist throughout the 1970s and 80s, leading the boycott table grapes across the nation in the late 1960s, which resulted in a favorable union contract being reached by the 1970s. However, the book only mentions her work as an activist for farm works but the documentary adds that she joined forces with the Filipinos in 1965, feminists, African American groups and Puerto Rican communities in New York. And that she didn’t just advocate for farm workers. From this example they both have some similar information of her work as an activist but you can see that the documentary just adds more and very important details that helps the audience understand the history of Dolores Huerta and the additional work she did as an activist and why it is so important to Mexicans and women communities. Lastly the book concluded with the honors she received for her work(course pack 22,page3) and her working to elect more Latinos and women to political office and promoting women’s issues during the 1990s and 2000s. However, the documentary takes a different approach, showing when Dolores was brutally beaten by police in front of the demonstration George Bush was speaking at during the protest. And how Cesar Chavez later died of natural causes. But Dolores was not elected as the next president of the NFWA by the executive committee despite being there at the start of everything and being a crucial member even better than the work Cesar Chavez did. After that Dolores went back to advocating to go back to the original ways in terms of advocating and promoting movements but she was receiving a lot of opposition and disrespect from the leadership and the media, for example Fox News even calling her “Cesar’s sidekick” which made her leave the organization. And her slogan “Si se quede” meaning “yes, we can” was credited to Cesar Chavez by the new president of the NFWA Arturo Rodriguez. But she was later acknowledged and credited by President Obama who also used her slogan in a speech.
I think the documentary has more effects on the audience than the book. It shows visuals and real footage of what happened. Which builds an emotional connection between the audience and the activists/movements they are learning about. In this case it builds a strong bond between the audience and the Mexican community and Female activists. Also the documentary has experts or people who were there in person, giving it more credibility to their story. The book is ok, it wouldn’t really spark interest or inspire the reader compared to watching the documentary. If I were to change what is written in the book to make her story portrayed better, I would put a lot of pictures of the events that happened to help the audience understand what is happening and also a lot more detailed information the documentary has, because I think it perfectly showed what happened during that historical period.
Consequently, the book did not portray her story really much, it briefly stated some events that happened during her work for the farm workers but the documentary showed more to the storyline. She sacrificed herself and her time with her children to help the farm workers and females who were not properly represented by their male counterparts. She was disrespected even for everything she did. However, deserves to be shown and taught to the world for the work she did and the generations of Mexican people and females she inspires.
