Chicana strategies for success and survival: Cultural poetics of environmental justice from the mothers of East Los Angeles

Frontiers

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 48-72

  Platt, Kamala ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0040562538     PISSN: 01609009     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3346965     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. Ana Castillo, So Far From God (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), and Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus: A Novel (New York: Penguin, 1995); Maria Elena Lucas, Forged Under the Sun/Forjada Bajo el Sol: The Life of María Elena Lucas, ed., Fran Leeper Buss (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993); Cherríe Moraga, Heroes and Saints & Other Plays (Albuquerque: West End Press, 1994), and The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (Boston: South End Press, 1993); and Belinda Acosta, "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," unpublished manuscript, 1994.
2. Ana Castillo, So Far From God (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), and Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus: A Novel (New York: Penguin, 1995); Maria Elena Lucas, Forged Under the Sun/Forjada Bajo el Sol: The Life of María Elena Lucas, ed., Fran Leeper Buss (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993); Cherríe Moraga, Heroes and Saints & Other Plays (Albuquerque: West End Press, 1994), and The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (Boston: South End Press, 1993); and Belinda Acosta, "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," unpublished manuscript, 1994.
3. Ana Castillo, So Far From God (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), and Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus: A Novel (New York: Penguin, 1995); Maria Elena Lucas, Forged Under the Sun/Forjada Bajo el Sol: The Life of María Elena Lucas, ed., Fran Leeper Buss (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993); Cherríe Moraga, Heroes and Saints & Other Plays (Albuquerque: West End Press, 1994), and The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (Boston: South End Press, 1993); and Belinda Acosta, "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," unpublished manuscript, 1994.
4. Ana Castillo, So Far From God (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), and Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus: A Novel (New York: Penguin, 1995); Maria Elena Lucas, Forged Under the Sun/Forjada Bajo el Sol: The Life of María Elena Lucas, ed., Fran Leeper Buss (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993); Cherríe Moraga, Heroes and Saints & Other Plays (Albuquerque: West End Press, 1994), and The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (Boston: South End Press, 1993); and Belinda Acosta, "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," unpublished manuscript, 1994.
5. Ana Castillo, So Far From God (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), and Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus: A Novel (New York: Penguin, 1995); Maria Elena Lucas, Forged Under the Sun/Forjada Bajo el Sol: The Life of María Elena Lucas, ed., Fran Leeper Buss (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993); Cherríe Moraga, Heroes and Saints & Other Plays (Albuquerque: West End Press, 1994), and The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (Boston: South End Press, 1993); and Belinda Acosta, "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," unpublished manuscript, 1994.
6. Ana Castillo, So Far From God (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), and Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus: A Novel (New York: Penguin, 1995); Maria Elena Lucas, Forged Under the Sun/Forjada Bajo el Sol: The Life of María Elena Lucas, ed., Fran Leeper Buss (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993); Cherríe Moraga, Heroes and Saints & Other Plays (Albuquerque: West End Press, 1994), and The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (Boston: South End Press, 1993); and Belinda Acosta, "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," unpublished manuscript, 1994.
7. Ana Castillo, So Far From God (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), and Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus: A Novel (New York: Penguin, 1995); Maria Elena Lucas, Forged Under the Sun/Forjada Bajo el Sol: The Life of María Elena Lucas, ed., Fran Leeper Buss (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993); Cherríe Moraga, Heroes and Saints & Other Plays (Albuquerque: West End Press, 1994), and The Last Generation: Prose and Poetry (Boston: South End Press, 1993); and Belinda Acosta, "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear," unpublished manuscript, 1994.
8. These stances are evident in the promotional and educational literature that the organizations distribute to community members and potential allies.
9. Norma Alarcón, "The Sardonic Powers of the Erotic in the Work of Ana Castillo," in Breaking Boundaries, ed. Asunción Horno-Delgado, Eliana Ortega, Nina M. Scott, and Nancy Saporta Sternbach (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), 96.
10. Some of the ideas in this paragraph and in the next five paragraphs have appeared in my "Ecocritical Chicana Literature: Ana Castillo's 'Virtual Realism,'" ISLE Ecofeminist Literary Criticism 3:1 (spring 1996), 67-96, and/or in my "Pedagogies of Environmental Justice" in Greening the Campus Conference Proceedings, Ball State, Indiana, spring 1996.
11. Some of the ideas in this paragraph and in the next five paragraphs have appeared in my "Ecocritical Chicana Literature: Ana Castillo's 'Virtual Realism,'" ISLE Ecofeminist Literary Criticism 3:1 (spring 1996), 67-96, and/or in my "Pedagogies of Environmental Justice" in Greening the Campus Conference Proceedings, Ball State, Indiana, spring 1996.
12. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., "Foreword" to Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots ed., Robert D. Bullard (Boston: South End Press, 1993), 3.
13. Gail Omvedt, "Green Earth, Women's Power, Human Liberation: Women in Peasant Movements in India," in Close to Home: Women Reconnect Ecology, Health and Development Worldwide, ed. Vandana Shiva (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1994), 99-100.
14. The effects on male reproductive systems are different and are generally less extensive than those on women's systems.
15. Among the many who have addressed the issue of mainstream feminism's exclusion of women of color are Sonia Saldívar-Hull, "Feminism in the Borderlands: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics" in Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology, ed. Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991): 203-20; Ann Russo, "'We Cannot Live without Our Lives': White Women, Antiracism, and Feminism," and Lourdes Torres, "The Construction of Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies," as well as other articles in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); many of the writers in Gloria Anzaldúa, Making Face, Making Soul/Hacienda Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990); and many writers in Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981).
16. Among the many who have addressed the issue of mainstream feminism's exclusion of women of color are Sonia Saldívar-Hull, "Feminism in the Borderlands: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics" in Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology, ed. Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991): 203-20; Ann Russo, "'We Cannot Live without Our Lives': White Women, Antiracism, and Feminism," and Lourdes Torres, "The Construction of Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies," as well as other articles in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); many of the writers in Gloria Anzaldúa, Making Face, Making Soul/Hacienda Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990); and many writers in Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981).
17. Among the many who have addressed the issue of mainstream feminism's exclusion of women of color are Sonia Saldívar-Hull, "Feminism in the Borderlands: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics" in Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology, ed. Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991): 203-20; Ann Russo, "'We Cannot Live without Our Lives': White Women, Antiracism, and Feminism," and Lourdes Torres, "The Construction of Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies," as well as other articles in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); many of the writers in Gloria Anzaldúa, Making Face, Making Soul/Hacienda Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990); and many writers in Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981).
18. Among the many who have addressed the issue of mainstream feminism's exclusion of women of color are Sonia Saldívar-Hull, "Feminism in the Borderlands: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics" in Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology, ed. Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991): 203-20; Ann Russo, "'We Cannot Live without Our Lives': White Women, Antiracism, and Feminism," and Lourdes Torres, "The Construction of Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies," as well as other articles in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); many of the writers in Gloria Anzaldúa, Making Face, Making Soul/Hacienda Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990); and many writers in Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981).
19. Among the many who have addressed the issue of mainstream feminism's exclusion of women of color are Sonia Saldívar-Hull, "Feminism in the Borderlands: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics" in Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology, ed. Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991): 203-20; Ann Russo, "'We Cannot Live without Our Lives': White Women, Antiracism, and Feminism," and Lourdes Torres, "The Construction of Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies," as well as other articles in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); many of the writers in Gloria Anzaldúa, Making Face, Making Soul/Hacienda Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990); and many writers in Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981).
20. Torres, "The Construction of the Self in U.S. Latina Autobiographies," 275.
21. Laura Pulido, "Sustainable Development at Ganados de Valle," in Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism, 125.
22. Mary Pardo "Identity and Resistance: Mexican American Women and Grassroots Activism in Two Los Angeles Communities" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1990), x. MELA (and occasionally MOELA) is the acronym used initially by the group. When they split into two organizations, the second group, apparently the most active of the two, changed its name to the Spanish and added their parish identity - Madres del Este de Los Angeles, Santa Isabel (Las Madres). Therefore, when I refer to events after the split, I specify the branch involved or, if both are involved, use both acronyms.
23. Verta Taylor and Nancy Whittier, "Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization," in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 106.
24. Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 54.
25. See, for instance, Aldon D. Morris, "Political Consciousness and Collective Action," in Morris and McClurg, Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, 351-73; and Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin, "Doing the Work of the Movement: Feminist Organizations," in Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women's Movement, ed. Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 356-71.
26. See, for instance, Aldon D. Morris, "Political Consciousness and Collective Action," in Morris and McClurg, Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, 351-73; and Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin, "Doing the Work of the Movement: Feminist Organizations," in Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women's Movement, ed. Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 356-71.
27. Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 86.
28. Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 6.
29. William A. Gamson, "Constructing Social Protest," in Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, vol. 4 of Social Movements and Culture, ed. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 97.
30. The term "barrio" is not often used in the writings I examined. Though I might speculate that the majority of popular media, alternative media, and academic reports were considering the possible negative connotations the word might have for the largely non-Latino audiences, I use the term in my study because I believe that the Spanish term, in the context of Chicano literary studies, stands "against the grain" of a stereotype and undermines it, much as movement and academic uses of the term "Chicano" co-opt and redefine earlier, often negative, connotations.
31. Interview, October 1993; and Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 138.
32. Interview, October 1993; and Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 138.
33. Juana Gutiérrez sets the date for the inception of MELA as May 24, 1985 (interview, October 1993).
34. Mary Pardo, "Doing It for the Kids: Mexican American Community Activists, Border Feminists?" in Ferree and Martin, Feminist Organizations, 361.
35. Lucas offers parallel transformations of Mexican Catholic religious experience into social justice struggle in the context of farmworker organizing. For instance, she makes picketing more acceptable to the farmworker women when she depicts their struggle (against growers) as sacred in Forged under the Sun.
36. This arrangement also allowed the women in general to avoid conflict in their families and encouraged their husbands to demonstrate support when marches and other mass mobilizations were planned. The women planned their schedules around their children's school schedules, taking the children along to meetings and mobilizations when they were not in school.
37. MELA flyer, early 1990s.
38. The photo appeared in La Opinion's Metropolis section, Sábado, 21 de Julio de 1990. An accompanying article by Marcelo M. Zuviría opened as follows: "El Sindicato de Trabajadores Agrícolas (UFW), cuyos líderes dicen que la uva está contaminada con insecticidas, intensificó su compaña contra el consumo de esa fruta, al declarar un boicot total contra la cadena de mercados Tianguis, tal cual lo hizo el mes pasado con la cadena Vons, se anunció ayer al mediodía en un acto en el City Park de la ciudad de Montebello donde se contó con la participación del dirigente sindical César Chávez y el actor Martin Sheen."
39. Nexus Lexus collected the following number of articles with references to MELA in each of the respective years: 1986-2; 1987-1; 1988-6; 1989-7; 1990-24; 1991-17; 1992-27 and 1993-16.
40. For an extensive treatment of MELA and other environmental justice groups in a "mainstream" environmental context, see Dick Russell, "Environmental Racism," Amicus Journal 11:2 (spring 1989): 22-32.
41. Raymundo Reynoso, "Juana Beatriz Gutiérrez: La Incansable Lucha de Una Activista Comunitaria," Acceso 1 and 6 in La Opiníon, August 6, 1989.
42. Reynoso, Acceso 1.
43. Reynoso, Acceso 1 and 6. Frank Villalobos, an architect, is mentioned repeatedly as a supporter of MELA and other community activism.
44. Erin J. Aubry, "Community News: East Los Angeles; Mothers Group Awards Scholarships," Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1995, 7.
45. Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 74.
46. Cynthia Pansing, Hali Rederer, and David Yale, "A Community at Risk: The Environmental Quality of Life in East Los Angeles" (master's thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1989), 6. This was a client project for the Mothers of East Los Angeles.
47. "Local Heroes," Shades of Green, April/ May 1992.
48. The institutions from which they graduated include the University of California, Santa Barbara (twice) and Princeton (twice).
49. Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 292.
50. Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 292.
51. Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 24.
52. Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 4.
53. While I have not been able to precisely determine the derivation of the rebozo, this word for shawl is an Americanization of the penisular Spanish verb rebozar, to muffle; this would place the rebozo's origin in the Americas.
54. Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 292-93.
55. Quoted in Pardo, "Identity and Resistance," 294-95.
56. Pansing, Rederer, and Yale, "A Community at Risk," 8.
57. Quoted in Pardo, "Identity and Resistance, 108.
58. This example is from a NEWS release by Laurie Wolfenschmidt, April 30, 1995, from Nexus Lexus.
59. Garry T. Marx, "External Efforts to Damage or Facilitate Social Movements: Some Patterns, Explanations, Outcomes, and Complications," in The Dynamics of Social Movements, ed. Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy (Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop Publishers, 1979), 108.
60. The study of borderlands in the social sciences and literary studies currently abounds; for just one example, the 117th Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society (Austin, Texas, April 26-29, 1995) was titled Border Anthropologies. Thus, the term "borderland studies" seems an appropriate name for focal point of political, social, cultural, and other geographic and semantic intersections that might range from García Canclini's analysis "of the border as a laboratory of postmodernity" (Barrera Herrera, Abstract, Border Anthropologies conference program, 22) to the study of "immigration wars," and from the history of land disputes to the edges of cyberspace (Lisa-Justine Hernandez dissertation prospectus, University of Texas, Austin, 1995).
61. The study of borderlands in the social sciences and literary studies currently abounds; for just one example, the 117th Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society (Austin, Texas, April 26-29, 1995) was titled Border Anthropologies. Thus, the term "borderland studies" seems an appropriate name for focal point of political, social, cultural, and other geographic and semantic intersections that might range from García Canclini's analysis "of the border as a laboratory of postmodernity" (Barrera Herrera, Abstract, Border Anthropologies conference program, 22) to the study of "immigration wars," and from the history of land disputes to the edges of cyberspace (Lisa-Justine Hernandez dissertation prospectus, University of Texas, Austin, 1995).
62. Anzaldúa extensively demonstrated this concept, implicit in the titles of the essays collected in This Bridge Called My Back, in a lecture at the University of Texas, Austin, in the early 1990s.
63. "Si se Puede!" brochure by Madres del Este de Los Angeles, Santa Isabel, ULFT Water Conservation Project First Anniversary Celebration, July 31, 1993.
64. "Si se Puede!"
65. Cleaning up graffiti may again be seen as taking the homemaker role to the streets. My view of the current mainstream "demonization" of graffiti creates misgivings for me about this project. However, I understand that the graffiti cleanups for MELA and the barrio are differently nuanced than those perpetrated by national campaigns that demonize graffiti and its makers; thus, within the setting it may be entirely appropriate.
66. Elsa Lopez, "Plan to Restore Mono Lake, Los Angeles Times, October. 2, 1994, 4.
67. William L. Kahrl, Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles' Water Supply in the Owens Valley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 431.
68. Kahrl constructs his story of Southern California water usage primarily from "published documents and other materials available to the general public" (xi) in order to bring up to date and reassess the legends, fictions, and other histories surrounding the Owens County-Los Angeles controversy in and prior to the 1930s. However, he less than adequately acknowledges what I would contend is an important polemic in the controversy - that the real issue in legislating water rights is often "a misguided concern for plants" (as in industrial plants and agribusiness) "over the needs of the people." Kahrl's text is nonetheless important in that he presents the controversy as a "story" that has "been shaped in a large part by the controversy itself" (Water and Power, 434, vii-xi).
69. Kahrl, Water and Power, viii.
70. The prize carries with it a monetary reward of $75,000.
71. Fuerza Unida form letter to Bob Haas, CEO for Levi Strauss & Co., protesting the closure, summer 1995; the exact nature of the "devastation to the environment" is not specified.
72. Fuerza Unida flyer, "Boycott Levi's: Latina Garment Workers Fight Corporate Greed, Youth Leaders Speak Out in Support," summer 1995.
73. Juana Beatriz Gutiérrez, letter to President Clinton, in Environmental Action 25:1 (spring 1993), 35.
74. "Incinerator is challenged in court by locals," newspaper article (publisher unknown), November 8, 1989, section A, 1-2, from Juana Gutiérrez files.