The U.S.-Mexico Border and the Framing of Border Women’s Mobilization

By

Milagros Peña

University of Florida

 

Abstract

 

Latinas are framing political discourses on the U.S.-Mexico border that link women-centered issues with larger community concerns informing feminist visions that are creating new possibilities for alliances and coalitions on the U.S.-Mexico.  The framing of a nuanced women-centered discourse is the basis for mobilizing opportunities that has inspired mobilizing strategies that cross international, ethnic, class and cultural boundaries.  As Chicana feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa (1999) put it, the U.S.-Mexico border is “una herida abierta [an open wound] where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.”  It is an environment where dispossessed peoples are most vulnerable.  In this context, Latina activism and the voices that have shaped it offer testimony that Latinas’ grassroots women’s communities are breaking new ground for women-centered activism.  Building on the insights of my published book, Latina Activists across Borders: Women’s Grassroots Organizing in Mexico and Texas published by Duke University Press in 2007, I focus on the fact that today, the experiences Latinas have and the work they do in non-government organizations on the U.S.-Mexico border not only serve to broaden feminist discourses but they create a forum for the “chispa”—the spark—the passion for a type of women’s politics to flower.