Idar Jovita

Jovita Idar was a pioneering Mexican-American female journalist.

Since she was  a child, she worked in the newspaper of her family. In 1903 she became a teacher in Ojuelos. However, her inability to improve the poor conditions of the school incited her to resign and join the family weekly newspaper, La Crónica. It was a vocal in criticizing certain aspects of Hispanic-Anglo relation. The newspaper also supported efforts of the revolutionary forces in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution.
In 1911 Idar became the first president of the League of Mexican Women to promote the education of poor children.

"Mexican children in Texas need an education...There is no other means to do it but ourselves, so that we are not devalued and humiliated by the strangers who rurround us"

That same year, she founded the Liga Femenil Mexicanista, a social, cultural, political, and charitable organization for Mexican-American women. Several of women operated their own schools and allowed the children of the poor to attend free of charge. The league is one of the first-known attemps by Mexican-American women to unite for a social and political cause, and it attracted the most educated women of the community.


Webography:
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fid03
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0886845.html
http://www.latinorebels.com/2016/03/04/latinahistorymonth-jovita-idar-journalism-pioneer/

Vilma Socorro Martínez

Vilma Socorro Martínez is an American lawyer, civil rights activist and diplomat who formerly served as the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina. She was the first woman to hold this position.

Vilma Socorro Martínez was born to Marina and Salvador Martínez, a Mexican American couple living in San Antonio, Texas. She was raised in a climate of certain racial hostility; as an honor student in high school, for example, she found herself steered away from academics by a counselor who tried to convince her that someone of her background would be better off attending a trade school than a major university. Martínez ignored that advice and instead enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin.

While working her way through college in the biochemistry lab, Martínez met a professor who recognized her potential. In marked contrast to her high-school counselor, the professor insisted she pursue further education; after receiving her bachelor's degree, Martínez went on to Columbia Law School, and graduated in 1967.

The same year, she then joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). At LDF, she defended a number of poor and minority clients. She also served as the attorney for the petitioner in the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Company, a landmark action that ultimately went before the U.S. Supreme Court and helped establish the doctrine of affirmative action.


In 1982, Martínez became a partner at the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson, where she specialized in federal and state court litigation, including defense of wrongful termination and employment litigation and other commercial litigation. In 1994, she helped in the fight against California’s Proposition 187—which sought to ban illegal immigrant children from attending the state’s public schools—while representing the Los Angeles Unified School District

During the 1990s, Martínez was also vice-chair of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation and a member of the board of People for the American Way and The Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society, and she has served on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including theLos Angeles Philharmonic Association.

In conclusion, Vilma Socorro was the U.S. ambassador to Argentina, has a long history of straddling the worlds of corporate boardrooms and legal defense of minorities. One of the leading voices in Hispanic civil rights since the 1970s, Martínez has run the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and been a part of legal fights on behalf of both documented and undocumented immigrants from Latin America. She also served on the board of directors of beer giant Anheuser-Busch for 25 years. Martínez was confirmed as ambassador by the Senate July 24, 2009.

Vilma Socorro was undoubtedly a exceptional and powerful woman!

Here we can see a short and interesting video about her determination.

We hope you like it!:

Webgraphy:

http://biography.yourdictionary.com/vilma-socorro-martinez

http://ms.shellus.com/news/press120996

http://www.bookrags.com/biography/vilma-socorro-martinez/#gsc.tab=0

http://www.allgov.com/news/appointments-and-resignations/ambassador-to-argentina-who-is-vilma-martinez?news=841262

Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta was born in 1930 in New Mexico. When she was three, her parents got divorced and her mother took her and her brothers to Stockton, California. There, her mother worked in a farming community very hard to provide her children a good education.During World War II, her mother ran a restaurant and the family's economic situation was improved little by little. Dolores did not lose her relationship with her father, who became an union activist. He and her mother were a clear inspiration for her.

Dolores was a good student, but she suffered from the racism against Mexicans and Mexican Americans: she was bullied at school for her ethnic origin.

After graduating, she changed of job many times until she decided to obtain a teaching degree. She worked as an elementary school teacher until she resigned due to the poor conditions of many of her students, who were farm workers’ children.

She decided to help:

• In 1955, she started the Stockton chapter of the Community Services Organisation (CSO),which fought against segregation, police brutality and discrimination and worked for the improvement of economic and working conditions of farm workers.
• In 1960, she started the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) to lobby the politicians to allow migrant workers to receive public assistance and pensions and to provide them voting ballots and driver’s tests in Spanish. Meanwhile, she met a CSO official called Cesar Chavez, who with she collaborated to lobby the CSO to make it help also farm workers, but the Organisation was focused just on urban issues. That is why they left the CSO and started the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA).
• The NFWA and the AWA combined to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in 1965 and, after five years, the UFW signed an historic agreement with 26 grape growers to improve working conditions for the farm workers (reduction of the use of harmful pesticides, unemployment and healthcare benefits, and so on).
• During the 1970s, Dolores Huerta helped to create the political climate to arrive in 1975 to the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which recognized the right of farm workers to bargain collectively.
• During the 1980s, she was the vice president of the UFW and co-fundated the UFW’s radio station.

Today, she is still being honored for her entire life of work for the rights of the farm workers and against the racism. She received many prizes and she started the  Dolores Huerta Foundation, in which she is still working by lecturing and speaking out on social issues as immigration, incoming inequality and the rights of women and Latino-American people.

Here we can see many videos of her life and labor: http://www.makers.com/dolores-huerta

Webgraphy:

http://www.makers.com/dolores-huerta
http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=history/sp/07.html
http://doloreshuerta.org/dolores-huerta/
http://www.biography.com/people/dolores-huerta-188850#early-life-and-career

The Bus Boycott

Once upon a night, Rosa Parks, who was a black American woman living in Alabama, was tired because she spent her day working on a tailor department store. She was so exhausted that she just wanted to take a seat on the bus and to arrive soon at home. But, something happened to her.

A white man asked her for her seat on the bus but she refused to move.  When a bus became full, it was usually to give white passengers the seats in which black people were sat.

Thus, the bus driver ordered Parks and three other African Americans seated nearby to move to the back of the bus. But, Rosa Parks didn’t move and she was arrested and fined $10 for violating a city ordinance, and this dared act began a movement that ended legal segregation in America.

Rosa Parks

 

We didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.

Rosa Parks was born in Alabama. At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States. The school’s philosophy was “take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were”.

Therefore, the bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The main aim of this association was to call for a boycott of the city-owned bus company.

A Supreme Court Decision struck down the ordinance under Mrs. Parks had been fined and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.

In 50s, Black people were discriminated because of racism. They were bad treated, they had bad conditions at work and there was segregation in schools, restaurants even in public transports such as the bus. Surprisingly, the bus accident would have positive consequences and all this situation would change. 

Webgraphy:

http://www.ushistory.org/us/54b.asp

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/par0bio-1

Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral was born in Vicuña, Chile. Her early life was traumatic. She was brought up by her mother, after her father left the family when she was 3 years old. When she was 17, she met and fell in love with Romeo Ureta. However, three years later he committed suicide. More tragedy was to strike later, when a nephew also committed suicide.


Despite these tragedies, Gabriela Mistral became a great poet and an international renowned figure in literature and education. She taught elementary and secondary school for many years until her poetry made her famous. She played an important role in the educational systems of Mexico and Chile, was active in cultural committees of the League of Nations, and was Chilean consul in Naples, Madrid, and Lisbon. She taught Spanish literature in the United States at Columbia University, Middlebury College, Vassar College, and at the University of Puerto Rico.


She was the first female Latin American poet to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945. Mistral's works deal with the basic passion of love as seen in the various relationships of mother and offspring, man and woman, individual and humankind, soul and God.

                           


Moreover, Gabriela Mistral was a brave and determined who defended the rights of children, women, and the poor; the freedoms of democracy; and the need for peace in times of social, political, and ideological conflicts, not only in Latin America but in the whole world. She was a good example to people, a talented and clever woman.

With regard to her work, Mistral's writings are highly emotional. In her poems speak the abandoned woman and the jealous lover, the mother in a trance of joy and fear because of her delicate child, the teacher, the woman who tries to bring to others the comfort of compassion, the enthusiastic singer of hymns to America's natural richness, the storyteller, the mad poet possessed by the spirit of beauty and transcendence.

The love poems in memory of the dead, Sonetos de la muerte (1914), made her known throughout Latin America, but her first great collection of poems, Desolación (Despair), was not published until 1922. Her complete poetry was published in 1958.

Here we can see some of her poems: http://www.poemhunter.com/gabriela-mistral/poems/

A short documentary of Gabriela Mistral’s life: https://vimeo.com/7603796

Webgraphy:

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1945/mistral-bio.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/gabriela-mistral
http://www.biographyonline.net/poets/gabriela_mistral.html

Native American Women

Women played a very important role in the life of the Native American. They were more than just mothers of the tribes' children. They were builders, warriors, farmers and craftswomen. 

The men knew that women were the source of life and provided a feeling of stregth and consistency to their lives.

The Clan Mother chosen the chiefs

The women had several roles, but probably the most important role of them was having children to ensure the future of their tribes. Each of the long houses they lived in were generally occupied one clan, with the eldest or most respected woman of the clan ruling it as Clan Mother.

It was also women who decided which men should be speakers, although the Tribal Coundil was dominated by male speakers.

Women occasionally even fought in battles beside the men -"War women" - and all the people respected them for their bravery.

By the 1800s the majority of the Native American tribes had lost their independence and had become dominated by white Americans. At this time white Americans did not believe that it was proper for women to fight wars, vote, speak in public, work outside the home, or even control their own children. The Native Americans began to imitate whites, and native American women lost much of their power and prestige.

Webgraphy:

http://www.indians.org/articles/native-american-women.html

http://tribaldirectory.com/information/native-american-women.html

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-sampler/1882

http://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A890552

http://cantonasylumforinsaneindians.com/history_blog/tag/native-american-gender-roles/

Eva Perón: her social labour moved her whole life.

 Eva Perón was an Hispanic and very notable woman in the 20th century. She was the second wife of Juan Domingo Perón, the President of Argentina. She moved to Buenos Aires when she was 15, and some years later she succeeded in becoming an important actress and politician.

But, why is she such an important woman even nowadays? Because she achieved the political equality between men and women. In addition, she fought for the social and labour rights and worked very hard to improve the lives of the poorest. Her determination, strength, wisdom and courage made her become a legend in Argentina by gaining the favour of many people.

Eva Perón, nowadays, is still a notable example for many women all over the world but also for all those who fought and are still fighting for the equality, the justice and a better future. The advances that she obtained for her determination show that impossible is nothing. Therefore, she makes us wonder if we could, somehow, contribute to a real equality among men and women.
Althouhg this equality is said to be real, it is not in many cases. Eva Perón fought for it, what about us?

Undoubtedly, analysing this woman's life and deeds will help us to realize that it is actually possible to change the world, little by little.

Here, we can see a summary of Eva Perón's life: Eva Perón

Webgraphy:
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pe-Pu/Per-n-Eva.html

http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/evita

http://www.biographyonline.net/politicians/american/eva-peron.html