VivirLatino

As I’ve mentioned before, Latin@s in the midwest often don’t have a really strong base of other Latin@s to organize with. The community is a transient one, moving to where the crops are every season, rather than nurturing roots of their own. So that invokes a lot of cross ethnic/racial organizing. That usually means with the huge Arab community in the Detroit/Dearborn areas and that usually means organizing together over immigration issues rather than racial ones. Which is not to say that race isn’t recognized as an integral reason behind the violence and discrimination so many of us experience–but rather instead, race as it plays out through immigration looks different and takes on a different experience than race as it plays out for a group of people that are solidly US citizens and have been for generations.

I say all this to introduce my latest Remembering Women’s History Month post. It is a live reading of a poem by Arab poet, Suheir Hamad. In it, she talks about the death of white US activist, Rachel Corrie–who was killed by Israeli forces. You can read about the incident here.

I post this not so much because I think the details are worth debating (I don’t)–but because Suheir Hamad shows that there are ways for those of us who come from completely different backgrounds, from completely different points of view, from completely different cultures, to organize together. To be brave together, to love each other, and to defend each other. She shows that most times that organizing through love happens through women. Who must carry their babies on their hips, take their children to meetings, and engage in activities that put their bodies on the front lines with little to no defense or protection.

Many people have asked how I can engage in a more radical politic even as I support reform policies. This is how. There are women all through Latin America (I am thinking mostly of the Zapatistas, but recognize that there are countless others) who are standing on the same front line that Rachel Corrie was–who are facing low intensity warfare every single day of their lives, seeing their children murdered through starvation, seeing their loved ones murdered because they organized a union, seeing their lands disappear. The women who fight on those front lines, on those borders–who fight with their bodies and their love and their belief in humanity–deserve no less.

That is how we will negotiate that uncomfortable Latin@ identity–through love.

To the women of Puerto Rico, Mexico, Chile, Columbia, Brazil, Palestine, Tejas, Califas–to the all the Border Women: I say VIVA.