Sí, se puede honor Huerta a better way
“The renaming of this portion of Bridge Boulevard to Avenida Dolores Huerta ... honor(s) the legacy of leaders like Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez and (brings) their history of work to future generations.”
— County Commissioner Steven Michael Quezada
Native New Mexican Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta cofounded the precursor to the United Farm Workers union, helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
And to add to her illustrious career, the Bernalillo County Commission has renamed roughly two blocks of a street for her — what was Bridge Boulevard from the Rio Grande west all the way to ... Isleta Boulevard.
She must be overwhelmed.
From the river east, the road currently is named for her fellow civil rights activist César Chávez. The stretch bearing his name runs from the river across Interstate 25 to Yale Boulevard, where the road changes names to Santa Clara Avenue. Apparently the city is planning on giving Huerta the bridge and two blocks just east of the river.
Meanwhile, what remains of Bridge Boulevard west of the new Avenida Dolores Huerta no longer involves a bridge.
Who thought this was a good idea worthy of a civil rights icon who coined sí, se puede (yes, we can)?
Sure, it’s symbolic to have a street named for the two activists who worked together. But a couple of blocks on a road that has three other names? Now motorists get four names for the same road, Huerta gets some roadway adjacent to a park that also bears her name (the former Gateway Park), and, as local resident Estevan Lujan wrote in a letter to the editor after the announcement, “generations of Bernalillo County residents have many stories that are based around Bridge Boulevard . ... our history is being erased.”
To the County Commissioners who voted unanimously for this bureaucratic bungling guaranteed to confuse drivers, disappoint longtime residents and barely register as an honor, sí, se puede mejor (yes we can do better).