Category Archives: Social Justice

Reflections from Within: Explorations of Spirituality, Identity and Social Justice

December 10, 2012

Photo by Crysti, (Flickr, taken June 19, 2008)

By Brenda Sendejo and students at Southwestern University

This trensa, or braid, weaves together the voices of a group of students in this semester’s Latina/o and Latin American Spiritualities course at Southwestern University. The course is cross-listed in anthropology and feminist studies and students come from a wide array of majors. I invited students to reflect upon the ways in which the class and our explorations of spiritualities, identities, ways of knowing and issues of social justice have impacted them. I am grateful to them for “risking the personal”[i] and for serving as teachers to me in so many ways.

***

I took this class hoping to find something, a tradition, a practice, anything to help me better define myself. I have always struggled to identify as Latina. My mother was adamant about it, “you are not white, you are not biracial, que gacho, you are Latina.” Not that I didn’t want to be Latina, but I questioned it sometimes, it was easy to: I was never treated as a Latina by anyone. I can’t blame people, I don’t speak Spanish and I don’t look the part, my mother’s family gave me nicknames like güera — sometimes it felt like one step above gringa. I never thought my spirituality would give me this identity until I took this class and I realized that this spirituality, this piece of my identity was uniquely Latina, uniquely Mexican. What I now see as the source of my Latina identity I fought growing up. It wasn’t until I was older that I appreciated the relationship with God, the relationship to my ancestors, the relationship to my culture. Bless my mother for her patience because I fought her every day, resisting her spirituality, which I now cling to, for they are the roots of my Latina identity.
–A. O.

My entire life I have grown up with the Catholic faith: going to church every Sunday, being baptized, celebrating my first communion and becoming a godparent in the eyes of the Catholic Church, twice. Now, I find myself going to full moon drumming circles, using sage to cleanse my room and experiencing nature and peace at Alma de Mujer. Part of me wants to embrace the spiritual side, the one that gives me the agency to find my true self and empowers activist work. The other part of me wants to rid itself of the Catholic faith, but this is the side that also represents my family and my family’s faith and comfort, so I hang on to it. “It is this learning to live with la Coatlicue that transforms living in the Borderlands from a nightmare into a numinous experience. It is always a path/state to something else.”[iii] I signed up for this course out of the pure interest in knowing what it was; it was never about knowing who I was. My identity continues to be questioned, even today, but the path that I am on has taught me to not simply continue going through it but the experience of “growing through it.”[iv]
-L.C.

My concern with religion has always been of an epistemological nature. I’ve understood religion as different peoples ways of articulating the world for themselves. I must admit that rooted as I was in a ‘Modern’ way of thinking—that privileges the empirical and scientific over the spiritual—I viewed religion with skepticism and sometimes disdain. However, Latino/a/Latin American Spiritualities provided me with different insights. The colonization of the Americas tends to present itself as the domination of the colonizer over the colonized. In particular, colonial violence lies in the subject’s (colonizer) attempts to strip the ‘other’ (colonized) of their subjectivity. However, Latino/a/Latin American Spiritualitites, demonstrates that these attempts have failed to be successful. The course provided me with numerous examples of different peoples exercising their subjectivity through their spirituality. In particular, it demonstrated to me how knowledge can be both geopolitical and geohistorical. New identities were crafted in response to attempts of domination, new subjectivities and new epistemologies. Spirituality has gained new significance for me. It seems to be the manner by which the ‘other’ not only resisted objectification, but carved out a space for itself, providing Latin America with new meaning.
-A.J.

I now truly understand the importance of remembering the past in order to shape a brighter future because of this class. Recently, by overcoming a bout of susto, I have developed a new routine of meditation every morning to align myself in the divine light. My true nature is God, but as I stray from that point of awareness, interesting things happen. Gloria Anzaldúa is an excellent scholar who eloquently explains the experience of conocimiento: the path towards the “Ah HA!” moments in life. In reading her work, I felt a sense of security and ease, in realizing that all of my personal hardships and setbacks were not in vain. Every experience has a purpose, and our lives are valuable, not only to our friends and family, but to society and the entire global population. Stemming further from that note, I now am able to see immediate connections through indigenous practices and beliefs across the world. Eastern religions use similar practices like ridding the body of negative energy, or using prayer or meditation to quiet the mind. Coming from a purely spiritualistic approach, this class has shown me the ways in which scholarship can be applied to spiritual aspects of life.
-I.M.

I grew up praying once a week and spent every day watching out of the corners of my eyes for duendes and earth-bound spirits that my family told me about. Later, my mother began immersing us more in the Catholic faith. I began to study the Catholic Church. Soon I studied any religion: Buddhism, Wicca, etc. In many religions, something would strike a chord with me. The chakras in eastern religions, the worship of a feminine deity in Wicca, the pillars of Islam, all fell in with the way I perceived the world and my existence in it. I believe “God” to be genderless yet able to take on a gender. Catholics perceived God as male, but Wiccans saw the Moon Goddess and the Horned God. Likewise, monotheism, duotheism, polytheism- all rang true. I became confused about how to practice what I believed in. I confirmed Catholic, but my other beliefs remained. This course has given me concepts that eliminate that past confusion. The writers whose theories and practices we have explored, the fusion of indigenous beliefs with more organized religions we have studied, all of it, has enabled me to grow comfortable in my practices and beliefs.
-J.E.

This class has been a unique experience. I have been able to vocalize ideas and emotions that haven’t been validated within my academia before. Meeting other people, students, professors and Austinites, who are “all in the same boat” has renewed a sense of peace within myself and sense of solidarity with my communities. It has given me a framework to think about my experience in activism and spirituality. This and the communities we build give me strength to deal with hardships concerning activism and spirituality. I’d like to share a poem concerning a difficult conversation with a friend over what we discuss in class.

It’s because I like the mountains and you like
the ocean. Both lack oxygen, and we like to have
our breath taken away. Despite our similarities, there are
clear boundaries where water ends and sky begins. I admire
that you haven’t changed as much as I have. You are still
conservative, steady as the tide. But there are problems
bigger than your own anxiety. I was fourteen
the first time I was called an exotic beauty
by your parents. My skin is olive but my eyes
are light; to most who see me, my race doesn’t
compute like they think it should. But I am not made
of palm trees and sand; and while activism
may not be important to you, it is important to me.
And you’re only Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.
-A.G.

From the black they are revealed to me. First, and most clearly my granddad, shining a bright radiant gold. More vibrant than he ever was in those last few years. He does not say anything; indeed, none of them do, but his smile is the best of family-acceptance, understanding, home. To his right is grandma sitting on that same couch from her trailer behind my grandparents’ house—piles of family albums stacked up beside her, holding the vaguely remembered mythology of my childhood. The next and least clear of the recognizable ones shifts shape—boy then girl, old then new, toddler, youth, each flickering seamlessly into the next. The one who never was. Surrounding these filling in the gaps, linking to the time the living ancients do not remember are the old ones. They are more a feeling than a reality now, I hope of a time to come, a time when I will know them and gain some connection, some rooting to this me that is more than my time here. This is the way I see—my classroom daydream. But I question—imagination, vision or possibility, I wish it the legitimacy of a drumming circle, a prophetic vision, the safety of sacred space-of the earth or church. Still, I do not desire to care. This is what has been given to me or maybe what I have taken for myself. And I dare you to try to assign it a religion. I am embraced by “the practice of imagination. . . its ability to speak to [me] about [my] worlds”, by the notion that “to imagine spiritual mestizaje is in some ways to enact it.”[ii]
– A.H.

Brenda Sendejo is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Southwestern University. She researches religion, spirituality, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, racialization and feminism. She shares authorship of this week’s Mujeres Talk blog essay with her students.

[i] “Risking the Personal: An Introduction.” Interviews/Entrevistas by Gloria E. Anzaldúa, edited by AnaLouise Keating. New York: Routledge, 1-15.
[ii] Delgadillo, Theresa. Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race, and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative. Durham: Duke University Press, 2.
[iii] Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 95.
[iv] This was a statement made by A.G. in class.

Comment(s):

Sara Ramirez December 13, 2012 at 9:48 PM

Brenda, it sounds like you’ve impacted these students for life! Thank you and congratulations!

Another (Reauthorization) Act to Follow

December 3, 2012

Photo: “Human Trafficking” by Leonard John Matthews from Flickr/Creative Commons

By Susan C. Méndez

There seems to be no end to the potential human collateral that can be caused by the United States Congress’s inaction. Along with the delay in renewing the Violence Against Women Act, recent news coverage has focused on another delay in reauthorizing the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA). The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime defines human trafficking as “an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them.” According to a news article by Mounira Al Hmoud in the Times Argus online, more than 2,500 alleged incidents of human trafficking were filed between January 1, 2008 and June 30, 2010 in the United States. About 82% of these reported incidents involved sex trafficking: more than 1,200 incidents involved adult sex trafficking and 1,000 incidents involved child sexual exploitation. And these are just the reported cases for this time period. Notably, human traffickers largely target women and children of color. As such, those who have rose up to speak on this issue are tied closely to this community. Recently Jada Pinkett Smith and her daughter Willow Smith made the news with their appearances in Washington, D.C. to talk to government officials about this issue. Reportedly, more than 2,500 alleged incidents of human trafficking were filed between January 1, 2008 and June 30, 2010 in the United States. About 82% of these reported incidents involved sex trafficking: more than 1,200 incidents involved adult sex trafficking and 1,000 incidents involved child sexual exploitation. And these are just the reported cases for this time period. Pinkett Smith founded an anti-trafficking group named “Don’t Sell Bodies” and sang a song in Spanish entitled “Nada,” whose video highlights the story of a young woman being trafficked by a love-interest and is directed by Salma Hayek. It is no coincidence that these key actions which stress the issue of human trafficking have come from members of the larger women of color community; such actions and participants are good indicators as to who should be paying attention to human trafficking. Pinkett Smith and her daughter’s most recent actions include participating in the Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking. Their advocacy on this issue has brought much needed attention back to the fate of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA).

This act, also known as the largest piece of human rights legislation in the United States, was the first federal law to address comprehensively trafficking as a crime on both the international and domestic fronts. According to Polaris Project (a non-profit, non-governmental organization that fights modern day slavery and human trafficking), the TVPA is composed of three aspects: “prevention through public awareness programs overseas and a State-department led monitoring and sanctions program; protection through new T-visa and services for foreign national victims; and prosecution through new federal crimes.” This legislation was significant because it created an Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking, whose task it is to rank other countries based on their efforts to halt human trafficking (and the President of the United States may choose to impose sanctions on countries that do not meet the minimum standards to end trafficking); established the temporary legal status of “continued presence” and the new T visa which allows survivors of human trafficking to stay in the United States temporarily and to apply for permanent residency after 3 years; and made trafficking a federal crime along with the new crime of forced labor (individual and corporate employers are the ones liable to be charged with these crimes). The TVPA of 2000 (P.L. 106-386) was an astounding act of humanity and compassion; it was reauthorized in 2003 (H.R. 2620), in 2005 (H.R. 972), and in 2008 (H.R. 7311) easily. Its renewal is purposefully scheduled every two to three years in order to address that fact that traffickers change their modes of operation periodically. Each time this act was reauthorized, improvements were made that enhanced the original bill’s approach to end human trafficking.

Although various academics, journalists and activists may have differing perspectives on the impact of human trafficking and the methods and language used to convey assistance to those who are trafficked, the impetus behind this act appears to be extending offers of help to those who find themselves to be survivors of exploitative practices. Consequently, the need for this act still is apparent and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2011 (S.1301) began its renewal process on June 29, 2011 when the act was introduced and referred to its committee led by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). Initially, this Reauthorization Act had 42 Senatorial co-sponsors (it now has 52). According to Leahy aides, when this committee turned to the House of Representatives, there was a need to strike a deal and that need has delayed renewal. The Act expired on September 30, 2011. Mounira Al Hmoud reported for the Times Argus online that for the past fifteen months, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2011 has been referred to five different committees of the House, has undergone significant revision, and has Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) as its sponsor. An editorial piece in The New York Times, dated March 21, 2012, explains how these revisions have not always been beneficial. For example, one revised aspect is the moving of financing for survivors’ services from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Justice. This shifting makes little sense as the Department of Justice, in comparison to the Department of Health and Human Services, is not equipped to deal with the multi-faceted experiences and needs of survivors. Besides ill-conceived revisions, another detrimental aspect to the stalling of passing this reauthorization act is the inaccurate application of language used to discuss human trafficking to prosecute undocumented immigrants in states such as Arizona where anti-immigrant fervor is strong.

So what does this act look like now? Where does it stand and what does it have to do with the Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking? The aforementioned editorial in The New York Times also details how in October 2011, a Senate bill to renew this act through 2015 cleared the Judiciary Committee, yet has not come to a floor vote. The bill for this act’s renewal cuts appropriations to 130 million but increases “victim” assistance to $25.5 million. It also has strengthened enforcement measures. The Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking is co-chaired by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Robert Portman (R-OH). They aim to engage caucus members in agreeing upon common goals and creating policies to achieve these goals in the quest to end human trafficking. There are 13 Senators on this caucus, and it is fitting that Blumenthal and Portman are co-chairs because in June 2012, they sponsored the End Trafficking in Government Contracting bill. (In this bill, these two Senators hoped to change pending defense fund legislation in order to stop funds for government contractors who employed trafficked laborers.) It is suspected the work and attention that this caucus will garner can only bring the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2011 back to both public and governmental discussion. The caucus has already begun productive conversation as Jada Pinkett Smith has expressed her hope that the caucus will establish an advisory council of survivors that can help the government comprehend the various complexities of human trafficking. It appears good results can come out of this caucus.

Recent news reports have restated the need for this act, along with the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, to pass Congress before the end of this year. However, with much needed attention and work focused on the “fiscal cliff,” the renewal of these crucial acts seems doubtful and such a delay would be disastrous for those seeking assistance. The same editorial in The New York Times describes recent successful efforts made to reach out to survivors of human trafficking. These efforts include: “a new trafficking hot line, financed through a grant by health and human services, for instance, [which] has taken more than 49,000 calls, connected 5,770 potential victims with services and provided more than 2,155 law-enforcement tips.” Such services are not plentiful and whatever resources exist to help people who find themselves to be survivors of exploitative practices like human trafficking should be maintained if not expanded.

References

Blumenthal, Richard. “Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking.” n.p. n.d. Web. 16 November 2012.

Hmoud. Mounira Al. “Leahy Seeks Action on Two Upcoming Bills.” Times Argus. Times Argus, 12 November 2012. Web. 12 November 2012.

Polaris Project. Trafficking Victims’ Protection Act (TVPA)-Fact Sheet. Washington: Polaris Project, 2008. PDF file.

“The Fight Against Modern Day Slavery.” Editorial. The New York Times 21 March 2012: A30. Print.

“Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2011.” Govtrack.us. Civic Impulse, LLC, n.d. Web. 16 November 2012.

Susan C. Méndez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English & Theatre and the Department of Latin American & Women’s Studies at the University of Scranton. She teaches courses on Multi-Ethnic American Literature and Women’s Studies. Primarily, she conducts research on novels written by Latino/a authors.

Comment(s):

Sara Ramirez December 13, 2012 at 9:43 PM

Thank you for your post, Prof. Méndez. I voted in California last month, and Prop. 35 had to do with human trafficking and penalties. Like most voters uninformed on this measure, I unquestioningly voted YES for increased penalties on those convicted of human trafficking crimes. I soon learned from my progressive colleagues that I should have voted NO. Do you know about this measure and how it affects people of color?

Community-Based Research: Reporting Back

October 1, 2012

By Seline Szkupinski Quiroga, Ph.D.

In September 2012, I and my research partners from Arizona State University hosted a Community Forum in South Phoenix to report back to this community the preliminary results of our research. The room at the community center was almost full. A few people were still serving themselves dinner from the taco bar set up by a local restaurant. No one complained that in deference to providing a healthier dining option we had not put out flour tortillas, cheese or sour cream. I looked out over the audience, trying to see if any of the faces were familiar, if I had seen them across a kitchen table while conducting an interview. I saw a few colleagues from the University, students who had worked on the project, employees of local health agencies, and community members in workout clothes who had perhaps been lured into the room after their aerobics class with our promise of discussing community health and well-being. I took a deep breath and gave an announcement in English and Spanish that the Forum would be starting in just a few minutes.

After completing data collection for a multi-year study, I had organized the Forum to fulfill the promise made to study participants during multiple visits to their households to inform them of our findings. We were limited in the topics we could cover in the allotted 2 hours as I had required that all proceedings be presented in a bilingual format, and I wanted to make sure we had sufficient time for discussion. We briefly covered how recent changes in immigration policy, specifically SB1070, had affected families; how households were dealing with the economic downturn; and the current health issues of community members. The results were not encouraging and so I tried to also communicate the assets of the community: the resilient social networks, tested as they were by the years of hardship and deprivation, and the strong sense of community that persisted despite incidents of discrimination. The presentation ended, and we invited questions. There was a silence and then the first question: could not the findings of high rates of psychological distress be linked to the high rates of unemployment? And we were off!

The time of discussion was not so much a question and answer period as I had feared, but rather a time of commentary and people responding to each other. A woman commented eloquently in Spanish about the need for recognizing the dignity of all in this time of anti-immigrant sentiment. An African American woman spoke up about how she was willing to volunteer her time to teach a Junior Chefs class, but that no one seemed interested in her offer. Another man noted that the most important things needed to make change were present in the room already. We had successfully initiated a dialogue about community concerns! The local community college stepped up and offered to host the next forum so the dialogue could continue.

In the glow of accomplishment, the challenges I had confronted in the weeks leading up to the Forum were pushed to the back of my mind. Many of the most salient challenges had to do with the academic-community divide, a few of which I will note here.
For example, in gathering research findings to present at the Forum from my colleagues, there were differing ideas of significance and what was appropriate to share. From the perspective of many an academic researcher, if proposed hypotheses are unproven or if findings are similar to what is already reported in the literature, then they are deemed non-significant. However, purely descriptive findings can be important and useful to community members and stakeholders.

Another major challenge was translating the descriptive findings into a language accessible to a lay audience by avoiding academic jargon. The subsequent Spanish translation also had to be assessed for accessibility and appropriateness for the study participants. I usually use narrative accounts as a bridge between statistics and significance but there wasn’t time at the Forum and room for only a few carefully selected quotes in the bilingual newsletter that was handed out.

I also spent time trying to define “community.” Before the Forum started, I wasn’t sure exactly who was going to show up. We had mailed out invitations to all study participants and local government officials, placed an advertisement in a local paper, been interviewed on a local Spanish language radio show, and flyered the study neighborhoods extensively. I tried to be strategic in extending invitations, balancing the diversity of the attendees with real life practicalities: Should I invite a representative of the police? They would benefit from hearing about the concerns over increased discrimination, and the confusion people had between policies of the police and the sheriff but their presence might frighten away people from participating in the Forum. (I didn’t invite them to the Forum but met with a prosecutor to discuss giving a special presentation to a police officer committed to community policing).

I was encouraged to see African Americans in the audience. While study participants were overwhelmingly Latino, the study area has the highest percentage of African American residents in the state. Although much of the discrimination experienced was triggered by the passage of SB1070, African American study participants decried the changing tenor of their community, and the health issue of unequal chronic diseases burden also affected them. The findings of this study were not just relevant to Latinos.

I was able to successfully engage this South Phoenix community, but I am unsure as to who is going to support the efforts to continue the dialogue now that the grant funding has been exhausted. However, I do know that I will continue to work with this community as I am committed to support them through my research in working to improve quality of life and honor the dignity, wisdom, and experience of these Arizona residents.

A copy of the newsletter with descriptive findings handed out to Forum attendees can be found at http://www.asu.edu/clas/ssfd/cepod/SMVnews092012.pdf

Seline Szkupinski Quiroga is a child of immigrants and a medical anthropologist living in Phoenix, Arizona. She is a member of the Mujeres Talk Colectiva.

Comment(s):

Theresa Blight November 19, 2012 at 5:49 PM

These community outlook and endeavor restores my faith in humanity each time. I commend the people who take a proactive role in advocating change for the good of their communities. I feel more attached with my community since joining live in care, a nutritional program for the elderly.

Learning from Mexican and Native Women

August 20, 2012

Photo Credit: Pepe Rivera. Taken June 26, 2011. From Flickr.

By Theresa Delgadillo

Yesterday, as I continued my work on translating an oral history interview from Spanish into English, I was struck by something that this particular participant in the project said – as I often am in this work. I’ve had the honor of interviewing some very wise and determined Latinas in the project that I began in 2008 to collect the oral histories of Latina leaders in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. These are some very interesting women! Fortunately, I am near the end of the editing and looking forward to sending it off the publisher soon. To get back to my point: my interviewee, commenting on the social customs of Mexico and the U.S., says at one point, “There it is the same as here, exactly the same as here. The only difference is that there is still a fiction that in Mexico it’s different.” She was talking about the acceptability of divorce, but it resonated with me on other levels, such as the changes in daily life, work and environment, partially because there was some interesting news from Mexico recently in the The New York Times about a group of indigenous women in Cherán, Michoacoán, who mobilized against armed illegal loggers and are now defending their town from violence and their forest from deforestation. To readers of Latina/o literatures, or literature about migration, the name Cherán might be familiar, since it was one of the sites of migration to the U.S. portrayed in Ruben Martinez’s Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail(2001). The August 2, 2012 article by Karla Zabludovsky titled “Reclaiming the Forests and the Right to Feel Safe,” describes the events in Cherán and the women’s actions as “extraordinary” as it details their effectiveness. Motivated in part by the loss of the beautiful forest that was once their patrimony, a loss that must be visible to them on a daily basis, the women see themselves acting not only for themselves but for future generations. When I read it, I wondered, and not for the first time, if Luis Urrea’s novelInto the Beautiful North (2009) hadn’t come to life – because this is not the first instance in recent years of Mexican women taking the lead to end violence and environmental destruction. Meanwhile, New York State is set to join the ranks of states allowing fracking. In an August 19, 2012 CBS News Report, “New York State to Allow Fracking,” Jeff Glor’s article notes that the process of fracking releases dangerous contaminants that have high potential to endanger air and water supplies, yet quotes local farmers who need the money. The women of Cherán, Michoacán, also need money to live and they are supported in part, according to the article, by remittances from residents who have migrated to the U.S., yet it seems they are living in the aftermath of a disastrous environmental decision and working to make it right. Like the people of Cherán, Michoacán, Mexico, we face some very difficult decisions in these energy-gobbling times, and we might consider what we can productively learn through a comparative perspective that doesn’t consign indigenous women to a lost past, but instead examines the experience of both residents and migrants from particular regions about what doesn’t work – because as my interviewee says: “There it is the same as here, exactly the same as here. The only difference is that there is still a fiction that in Mexico it’s different.”

Theresa Delgadillo is on the faculty at Ohio State University.

María Antonietta Berriozábal August 20, 2012 at 4:27 PM

Dear Theresa:

I find your work fascinating. I am a lover of oral history. Next month my book, María, Daughter of Immigrants, will be published. The first chapters include the stories that my parents told me as a child. With just their stories – no genealogical searches for me – I was able to share the story of my great grand mother and grandparents going back one hundred years. That is rather astounding. To think that these women can share a story, you chronicle them and one hundred years from now someone will be sharing them.

Another reason for my interest in your work is that in 1995 I attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in China as a member of the US delegation. During the conference I met with women from Central America and some from Peru. Some could not even speak Spanish. They spoke their native dialects, but they had leaders who had learned Spanish and they were our interpreters. One of the reasons they had gone to the Beigjing conference, through great sacrifice, was to tell their stories of how their ancestral lands were being taken by businesses. It is the same story that continues to this day of multi-national corporations raping the environment in other countries so they can provide goods and food for the developed countries like the US and others. But the women were fighting; they were organizing and using their voices. I found it interesting that the leaders of the movements, at least of the ones I met, were mujeres. They wore their colorful clothing almost as the shield of warriors.

In any event, I appreciate what you are doing very much.

Sincerely,

María Antonietta Berriozábal
San Antonio, Texas
Theresa (Mujeres Talk Co-Moderator) August 20, 2012 at 6:14 PM

Dear María Antonietta,

I am looking forward to reading the preview of your book that appeared in Frontiers, and to your new book. Please send us an announcement for it as soon as it appears. My project was motivated, too, by the desire to record and share the life stories of Latinas whose experiences don’t appear elsewhere.

Research in the U.S. has shown that indigenous migrants to the U.S. from Latin America often face difficulties precisely because of the language assumptions that you noted in your experience. Despite language differences, we are all struggling with the same difficult questions about how we use our natural resources.

Thank you so much for your comments and encouragement, and thank you for sharing your work.

Take care, Theresa
Lourdes Alberto August 28, 2012 at 8:31 PM

In reading this post I am reminded that indigenous people think of themselves as planetary citizens–they fight for their people, their cultures, their history, but also all of our well-being and that of future generations.
As an indigenous person myself (Oaxaqueña), I struggle with my own part in the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources.
You know, three seasons ago I started growing a garden with the goal of eventually meeting all of my family’s summertime food needs. It was so fulfilling, so liberating, so unexpected. I know now that my challenge is to remember and live the knowledge my grandparents left me about the land, about plants and about the importance of well-being. As you mentioned, there are tens of thousands of indigenous people from Latin America in CA. Growing up we had an informal plant co-op/exchange. Someone would manage to bring over a plant, flower, hierba, from Oaxaca and we would literally share cuttings–yerba santa, varieties of avocado, ruda. It was amazing! A kind of urban indigenous transnational environmentalism!
Theresa (Mujeres Talk Co-Moderator) September 3, 2012 at 5:25 AM

Dear Lourdes,

It’s good to hear from those that grow gardens for sustainability, and I appreciate the work you’ve put into this important task for three seasons, which, as you say, is a combination of memory work, and living a connection to others and growing food. Thank you for your beautiful note!

Take care, Theresa