Against the Odds, Women Workers Shake a Mountain
FNS Special Feature
Editor’s Note: The following story is an update of a piece run by Frontera NorteSur last September that covered the struggles of an El Paso group
representing displaced factory workers, La Mujer Obrera, to chart a new economic future for low-income women workers. The story was made possible in
part by a grant from the McCune Charitable Foundation of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
From a corner of a converted garment industry plant, poetry and prose pierced walls long sealed with sweat and struggle as the cool, late fall
borderland evening set in. In an eclectic performance, cosmic artwork exhibited by Gabriel Gaytan, Veracruz-style tunes strummed by musician Francisco
Rodriguez and readings by local writers Nancy Lechuga and
Griselda Rodriguez helped inaugurate Cafe Mayachen, the latest project of El Paso’s La Mujer Obrera (LMO) and the El Puente Development Corporation.
Housed in the sprawling quarters of Mercado Mayapan in the Texas border city’s old garment district, the cafe is planned as a showcase for grassroots
literary, artistic and musical talent. Between events, visitors can browse books and check out videos on topics like Mexico’s Zapatista National
Liberation Army, while sipping Chiapas-grown coffee also available by the pound.
“We decided to open this space to have it close to this community that has been abandoned for years, after NAFTA,” said Maria Lopez, director of the
Mayachen Museum which sits next to the new cafe. For Lopez, the cafe and other facilities tucked into Mercado Mayapan represent the stirrings of an
economic and cultural revival in a city which suffered tens of thousands of manufacturing job losses during the years surrounding the negotiation and
implementation of NAFTA and other free trade agreements.
In a unique display, the history of El Paso’s garment workers, who at one time sewed together the threads which festooned the latest fashion rages
sweeping the US and the world, is detailed in the Mayachen Museum.
Rounding out the tribute to border working-class history, an exhibition outside the museum’s doors is dedicated to the Mexican farm and rail workers
who came to the US during the 1942-64 Bracero Program.
“We thought that it was important to show the community how the Mexican community has contributed not only to the economy but to the culture and to
the values of the American society,” Lopez said.
Besides regular multi-media cultural events, Lopez and other organizers of the museum/cafe intend to involve local youths in mural and oral history
projects. In between events, community members may even pass the time away with domino games.
Cafe Mayachen’s opening is a noteworthy development in light of local controversies over the viability of La Mujer Obrera’s alternative economic
development initiative which, if successful, could be a model for other low-income communities in the US/Mexico borderlands and far beyond.
In a briefing paper to the Obama White House this fall, LMO contended that its project means not only jobs, but also education and empowerment for
Latina women workers. El Paso’s Latina workers, who average about half the income of Anglo women’s median income, are in particularly dire straits
and largely left out of the loop of federal stimulus spending, according to LMO.
Much of the stimulus funding has been directed at construction and other industries primarily dominated by men, the group said.
According to LMO: “Mercado Mayapan is a path out of this endemic structural poverty for women, not only workers who lost their jobs when factories
closed, but also for the younger women whose only option for their families has been public assistance or the underground economy….”
The struggle to emancipate and empower border working women has been far from easy.
Earlier this fall, a funding crisis prompted members of LMO to stage a noisy occupation of El Paso Mayor John Cook’s office. In justifying the action,
LMO charged that start-up monies for its projects pledged by a variety of government agencies were slow in coming.
Rankled by the protest, and noting that La Mujer Obrera was in default of an earlier city loan, Mayor Cook told Frontera NorteSur he would
nevertheless recommend the El Paso City Council approve an additional $400,000 in Empowerment Zone monies for the worker/community group. By a 4-3
vote margin on September 22, however, the City Council turned down the
funding until LMO’s finances were “in order” and “not running a deficit.”
Sponsored by Representative Eddie Holguin Jr., the City Council action also stipulated that the Empowerment Zone Advisory Committee give the City
Council a recommendation as to where to allocate business development
funds in the zone.
Denial of the Empowerment Zone money, LMO Executive Director Irma Montoya said, set back plans by some community members to launch new businesses that
could tap into mercado Mayapan’s emerging nexus. “More than affecting
us in the organization,” Montoya said, “it affected the community itself.”
Yet LMO has since preserved and expanded its project, partly through the volunteerism of more than 100 workers who greed to work without pay for a
period of time until new monies began flowing. Most recently, a $25,000 grant from Bank of America has helped plug the budget hole, according to a
statement from LMO. Another $250,000 in stimulus funds and a pending $1,000,000 grant from the North American Development Bank will help the Mercado
survive, Montoya added in an interview with Frontera NorteSur.
On other fronts, LMO and its 40,000 square-foot center have fared well in
the public spotlight. For the second year in a row, large crowds flocked
to Mercado Mayapan to celebrate the annual Days of the Dead festivities in
early November. In 2009 LMO has been the recipient of an award from Texas
State Senator Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso), and has been invited to
participate in projects sponsored by the Smithsonian Latino Center and
Leveraging Investments in Creativity’s Artography Project.
Each month, a new theme permeates the walls and halls of Mercado Mayapan.
In October, for example, photos and treaties informed visitors of the struggle surrounding a cultural staple and symbol of Mexico and indigenous
America-corn. Distributed to the public, the recent Corn Declaration issued by a coalition of rural Mexican organizations and allies criticized the
impact of free trade on small growers, the loss of food self-sufficiency and the
epidemic of malnutrition afflicting Mexican society.
“Today, now more than ever, the demand for independence, land and freedom vibrates in our hearts and in our stomachs,” the statement read. “We convoke
the people of Mexico to join efforts to defend what our peoples have created, reproduced and defended for centuries.”
Like the younger Maria Lopez, El Paso writer Joe Olvera considers the Mercado and its satellite institutions as essential for the future of
south-central El Paso. The museum/cafe, he said, are vital linkages between previous generations of El Pasoans and newer ones, especially recent
Mexican immigrants who might be unaware of the long history of
working-class and community struggles in El Chucho, as El Paso is colloquially known.
The first Chicano television news reporter in El Paso back in 1971, Olvera is from an older generation that struggled for cultural recognition and
equality in the media, academy and other institutions. Although Olvera has lost both legs from “that devil diabetes," the former staff writer for the
now-defunct El Paso Herald-Post and El Paso Times was on hand for Cafe Mayachen’s opening to read from his book Chicano Sin Fin.
“It’s just a start, eventually we’ll fill it up,” Olvera said, adding that he and his wife had long collaborated with LMO’s project. “We need
something literary, because we’ve have some real giant Chicano writers like Ricardo Sanchez, Abelardo Delgado, Rudy Anaya, of course.”
In today’s challenging times, both older and newer voices must be heard, Olvera insisted.
“We need to promote them, push their works, let people know about those types of works so they can begin to understand who they are,” he said. “Many
of our people haven’t been given that opportunity to say ‘I am a Chicano and proud of it.’ They don’t know who they are, and we need to
remedy it.”
While Cafe Mayachen gears up, the staff at Mercado Mayapan plans for a busy holiday season. Besides a wide assortment of gifts such as traditional
Mexican handicrafts and attire, visitors to the complex can dine on holiday tamales and other seasonal foods. According to Montoya, upcoming December
activities include piñata-busting, Christmas plays and
more.
-Kent Paterson
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University Las Cruces,New Mexico
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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