Viva La Mujer
The second biggest obstacle looks a lot like the first one—I just need to get out of my own way and pick one mujer to write about. So I will start with, Ladybird Johnson, yes President Lyndon Johnson’s wife, and an oval-shaped blue button with black letters that says, “Viva La Mujer” which loosely translated means, “Praising the Women” and even then just seems like a weak translation of the power with which praise is being given to impact of 1970s Chicana/Latina Women.
I was in Irvine California, in February, 2017 at the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) conference. I had invited one of the Chicanas from my first film, Pauline Martinez to come and see her comadres from the women’s movment, Ruth “Rhea” Mojica Hammer and Rose Marie Roybal and to hear our project manager Dr. Maria Cotera give a plenary talk that would be an update on our 8 year oral history project, Chicana Por Mi Raza Digital Memory Collective.
I hadn’t seen Pauline since making Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana, 11 years ago in San Francisco—I found her eating breakfast in the conference hotel lobby. She hadn’t changed a bit—these women never get old or feeble (she is in her seventies). We hugged, cried a little and as I ate, colleagues walked past the table and I would introduce them—always younger scholars, faculty to this veteran—icon of the Chicano and Women’s movement. With each introduction of another PhD or MA Pauline would say, “they’re all so accomplished!”
I realized that her generation of groundbreaking chingonas had no idea how many thousands of graduate students now existed because of the struggle. Pauline had no idea her feminist labors as the Texas Women’s Political Caucus Legislative Chair, is what convinces, Kingsville lawyer Irma Rangel to run for office and become the first Latino to win a congressional office since Reconstruction, or her campaign to get Jane Macon appointed the first woman city attorney in San Antonio are now part of Latino/Chicano political coursework.
Pauline is thrilled and stunned and all the things you feel when you go back to the moment of your youth when you did the work because it had to be done, and discover what you did is now studied, taught, learned, admired and your earnest behaviors of forty years earlier, is now a thing of wonder.
Pauline hands me a plastic bag with oval shaped blue buttons and says, “for the longest time I have wanted to give you this but I kept forgetting and I’ve been so busy…” I look in the bag and catch my breath realizing I am looking at history. “I don’t remember which women’s conference these are from—we were doing so much then. I know it was a women’s conference in the mid seventies.” We laugh, knowing how long and hard we have all worked—Pauline, Rhea and Rose Marie, then so young and determined—Maria, Tess and Marco and all the students now working just as hard to put these women back into the history. “Can I give some of these out?” I ask, not wanting to assume, but knowing all the young Latinx scholars, grinding everyday to get to that cap and gown finish line—to teach, to write, to research in and out of the archives because the breadcrumbs may be there in the libraries, but more often than not the trails have gone cold.
Knowing they’ll have to write one more grant, get one more fellowship to go to one more Chicana’s house to look at the carefully preserved speeches, leaflets and programs, kept in large envelopes in the cardboard box on the top shelf in the garage. I walked around the conference hall, looking for those scholars I know, still beating the odds, still presenting on panels, coming up with ideas and knowledge and know-how to bust up how we think about feminism. I gave them each an oval shaped blue button with black letters that said “Viva la Mujer” and said “these were made for a conference in the 1970s—when I find out which conference I will let you know—siguen, en la lucha.” I love them all in their beautiful ferocity, pinning each one of them as a mother pins a bridal corsage, a best man pins a boutonniere, a superior pins a medal on the bravest of them all. One of them responded, "It is an amulet." St. Christopher, Joan of Arc, Frida Khalo, Sor Juana--la Mujer, defending the rights of all women. Praise the Woman, Viva la Mujer.
I am going through the archive of feminist photographer, Diana Mara Henry, looking for images of any Chicanas to use for this project, Chicana Diasporic. Diana asks if I can identify this woman who might be Chicana and looks familiar but I don’t recognize her—it is then I see the oval shaped blue button with black letters. I gasp, just like the first time I looked in the plastic bag handed to me by Pauline. I write back to Diana and say while I don’t know the woman, she must be a Texas delegate because the buttons were made for a Texas conference. Diana writes back and sends another photograph—it is Ladybird Johnson wearing an oval shaped blue button with black letters. It is then I realize these buttons were made for the 1977 IWY National Women’s Conference in Houston, Texas.
