WOMEN ON THE BORDER
Working women on the Mexico US border have been overwhelmed by the region’s violence, the lack of any substantial investment in their development, and the anti-immigrant phobia promoted by the Arizona conflict. They are afloat in the turbulence of the economic crisis, struggling to hold on to their hard fought development model, in efforts to liberate themselves from the abyss of poverty and underdevelopment that is the reality for working women on the Border.
After fighting every step of the way and never giving in to the powerlessness that the system tries to impose on them, nor tolerating the humiliation that a male-dominated economic system can produce, they have managed to build the first major steps to a comprehensive model of development for women on the border.
These initial steps include having renovated four abandoned garment factory buildings to create Centro Mayapan—a collection of social purpose businesses and programs that serve as the initial facilities for a women workers’ development program on the U.S./Mexico border. Through its daycare, housing complex, restaurant, festival marketplace, museum, media center, adult education program, grocery store, microenterprise incubator, and artisan import company, La Mujer Obrera is creating a development model: building a sustainable economic base, rooted in human needs—things people can create and consume, set in a community, with permanent employment to better the area’s conditions. These facilities serve as centers/schools for teaching, learning, planning, practicing, evaluating and advocating respect for and pursuit of women’s rights to cultural and human development, community and economic development, and women’s control of their own intellectual property.
This is a beachhead of women-controlled development—a critical mass of resources, facilities, people and practice centered in low-income women workers, virtually unparalleled in the region’s history, or anywhere else in the US.
Although it would seem that the women “have made it”, what they have achieved, through their hard work, sacrifice and determination, is nothing short of a miracle, in the face of profoundly destructive discrimination. And it is only the initial steps towards long-term viability and sustainability. The women’s efforts are still profoundly vulnerable.
And without a sustainable women’s development program, there is little hope for growing a working women’s movement on the border. There is the occasional conference or protest—but that’s not a movement. La Mujer Obrera and Centro Mayapan are key to establishing a viable movement that can address the profound conditions of women on the border.
So how do women build such a movement? There has to be writers and artists; there has to be space and resources that support the women to think, learn, write, create, plan and implement. There has to be an effort to build the resources needed for a movement: training local leadership, developing the diverse infrastructure needed (the beginnings of which we have in La Mujer Obrera and Centro Mayapan), and pulling together the resources to support of all of this.
This movement building is the next major step in the development program which the women are ready to take. But we cannot do it without the help of other women who can provide resources and help fight against the opposition to the women’s development.
National help is needed because we have already committed all of our internal and local resources, which historically have always been very limited because of the discrimination against working women’s development on the border, to get to this historic point. So we must have resources from other women, from across the country, to take the next step.
For this reason, we seek support from women and institutions across the country who share our determination to end this injustice and create genuine development with low income women workers of Mexican heritage. To break the blockade of financial resources and national media attention, we seek to build national resources for this ground breaking and profoundly significant struggle by women workers to forge a future for themselves, rooted in the dignity of their heritage and lives and enabling them to provide inspiration, leadership, resources for a working women’s movement.
We need women to join with us to fight for resources at the foundation level, the government level, and at the individual level, in support of women workers on the border. Our work still is in a precarious state—with the Mercado only having operated for 18 months, we are closer to being self-sufficient, but resources beyond revenues are still needed to support the full development investment and costs of the model. Currently we project needing substantial funding for at least the first six months of 2011.
As Gloria Steinem has said: There is no safe space for women. We have to create that space. We have to build that community”.
This is the mission of La Mujer Obrera’s work. Please help us to achieve that mission. Donate today.
Overview of Women's Conditions on the Border
