The Festival was a full spectrum of possibility for women. We did it all because no one told us we couldn’t.
--Diane Avila, Festival Coordinator
To start the exhibit, go back in time to Pilsen in 1979 and join this inclusive Festival by watching this short video by Eleanor Boyer and Karen Peugh.
Festival de Mujeres, 1979. Video Producers: Eleanor Boyer & Karen Peugh; copyright: Eleanor Boyer & Karen Peugh; Source: Media Burn Archive (https://mediaburn.org/video/festival-de-mujeres/) You may not copy, reproduce, upload, post, distribute, republish, retransmit or modify, the VIDEO, or portions of the VIDEO. Permission for use or reproduction must be requested of copyright owners.
The Festival de Mujeres 1979 was a historic women's street festival organized by the community-based organization Mujeres Latinas en Acción ("Mujeres" or MLEA), then and still one of the “most prominent Latina organization[s] in Chicago” (Fernández, 2012, 261). The Festival took place on June 30 between Wood and Wolcott Streets, the block where Mujeres’ storefront was then located in the Pilsen neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. An early and rare Latina street festival in Pilsen, it was “in celebration of what we as women have done, are doing, and can do!” (Festival poster). A day when Latinas claimed one barrio street and danced into darkness, the Festival demonstrates the remarkably broad and inclusive scope of 1970s feminism in Pilsen, the heart of Mexican immigrant culture and activism in the Midwest.
Fernández, Lilia. Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Festival de Mujeres 1979 Poster. Based on photographs by Diana Solís.Copyright Chicago Women's Graphics Collective..
Credits
Digital Exhibit by Hinda Seif with Diana Solís