Mike Aguirre, Dolores Huerta and Ruben Navarrette Jr. collide at NCLR conference

July 13, 2008 - 3:53 pm — David Rolland

Near the end of a panel discussion on Saturday at the National Council of La Raza’s annual conference at the San Diego Convention Center, Dolores Huerta, the 78-year-old co-founder of United Farm Workers of America, stepped up to a microphone set up for the audience to ask questions or make comments. She essentially urged the Latinos in attendance to vote for Barack Obama in November because to do otherwise would be voting against their own economic self-interest. Two of the panelists, moderate San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. and Leslie Sanchez, a Republican strategist working for CNN, had earlier urged Latinos to consider diversifying their votes, lest they be taken for granted by the Democrats and written off completely by the Republicans.

Huerta received big applause after her comments, but Navarrette wasn’t impressed. As part of his response, [b]Navarrette said Huerta’s statement would carry more weight if it hadn’t come from someone who works on behalf of an organization that had acted as a de facto agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service decades ago during farmworker unrest. Navarrette’s remark was greeted with boos and hisses from the audience. Huerta made her way to the foot of the stage and shouted, “That’s not true!â€