Estela Vazquez joined the staff of 1199, the Healthcare Workers union, in 1986. She served for over three decades as an organizer, vice president, and executive vice president. In her words, she “was ecstatic to have been able to serve the most extraordinary union and members for as long as I did.” For decades, she inspired union members around immigration advocacy, international labor solidarity, voter registration, and political action. An effective fighter for workers’ rights, women’s rights, and immigrants’ rights, she rallied support for marches on Washington, lobby days, and political campaigns. She started early, becoming active in 1961 as a junior high school student in the Dominican Republic, demonstrating against supporters of the brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo. Participating in a popular uprising against a new US-supported military dictatorship in 1965 landed her in jail. Four months later, her mother managed to attain her release, and she immediately left for New York City, which she has called home ever since.

In the late 1960s, she became active in the movement against the Vietnam War, and with African-American and Latino community movements like the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and El Comite. The work of these organizations inspired her because through their work she “learned that there was ‘struggle in the belly of the beast.'” Through her life, Ms. Vazquez made it her mission to fight for social and economic justice. In the 1970s, she joined the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and was a founding member in 1984 of Latinos for Jesse Jackson. In 2017, she was a board member of the annual Dominican Parade in NYC.