Message from Festival Co-Coordinator Diana Solís
A MESSAGE FROM FESTIVAL CO-ORGANIZER DIANA SOLíS:
In 1979, as a young college student, I was a part-time staff member at Mujeres Latinas en Acción (MLEA) in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. I was a youth resource coordinator and editor of the organization’s quarterly newsletter, “La Mujer Despierta.” (See June 1979 copy of newsletter, L.) I also coordinated art workshops for women and young girls. We offered photography, poetry, and writing workshops in collaboration with neighborhood artists. My friend Jacqueline [Negrete] and I, who was enrolled in a pre-apprenticeship community carpentry program, built a makeshift darkroom out of an existing kitchen area on the second floor of the building. That same year, my co-worker, and education coordinator, Diane Avila, proposed a one-day festival celebrating women to show who we were and what we were capable of. I, along with other staff, worked with Avila to organize what was to become a pioneering, radical, Latina, feminist event held outdoors on a neighborhood block in the heart of the Pilsen community.
Diane Avila, the festival organizer and coordinator, saw an abundance of resources that needed to be made available to women in the community. There was no better way than to make it available all on one block. The festival was born of the necessity to address important issues that affected us as Mexicana Chicana women who grew up in the neighborhood, and more broadly, issues faced by Latinas and women in general.
Mujeres Latinas en Acción sponsored and took responsibility for the Festival. The other crucial part was provided by a strong network of grassroots and community-based organizations that had grown from over a decade of fighting for Latino rights. These organizations’ work ranged from immigration, bilingual education, better schools and educational opportunities, childcare, workers’ rights, employment, mental health, and arts programming. A good number of these organizations where founded or led by women who had become politicized by the movements of cultural nationalism, workers’ rights, and the need for better social services. This was also a time when the arts community was flourishing with programs geared toward community youth. For many of us, it was our first opportunity to teach in community-based arts organizations. This, and the support and autonomy given to us by the leadership of Mujeres Latinas en Acción allowed us to have an invaluable experience that would lay the foundation for the choices that each of us would later take in our lives.
Ambitious in scope, Festival de Mujeres’ singularity lies in the fact that this was even possible at all and that it included controversial issues with respect to women’s reproductive health care and choices in a predominately Latino Catholic community. The festival demonstrated women’s empowerment and self-reliance on many levels. It brought together Latina and non-Latina women allies & volunteers from within and outside the community to participate in community-building. The festival fostered dialogue, action, and connections between women of diverse social and political backgrounds and sexual orientations. I remember inviting a group of non-Latina friends to volunteer that included a small group of lesbian friends from different racial backgrounds who I had met on the North Side through different gay and lesbian social and sports groups. I also invited some friends who had a women’s band called Sister Blues and the Blue Suede Dyke band led by an African American woman to perform at the Festival in addition to the Negrete sisters, a progressive Chicana singing group known as “Chispa” from South Chicago.
As festival organizers, the leadership and staff at Mujeres drew from our personal and political experiences, families, and friendships within and outside of the community to volunteer and maintain the festival. We were bolstered by new levels of consciousness in feminism and self-organized women’s study groups. We wanted the Festival to be intergenerational, multicultural, and to show solidarity and support for other Latin American women. As the main organizer, Diane Avila’s vision for the festival was that of an event for and by women that showcased how all facets of women’s lives are important. The motto and slogan of the Festival, created and put forth by Avila, was “In celebration of what we as women have done, are doing, and can do.” She also recognized the vital role of women of all ages in the community in doing the collective work of community building in Pilsen. Avila told me, “We did it all, because no one told us we couldn’t do it.” The festival served as a gateway to enrich and enlighten women, to build bridges and new possibilities. It was a space where local Chicana, Mexicana, Puerto Rican and other Latin American women activists, writers, poets, social workers and community organizers interacted and would later collaborate. The festival was a place where we could come together to define and create our own distinctive identities and Chicago Latina feminisms.