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3. Empowerment and Politicization in the Colonias
- University of Minnesota Press
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· 141 ·· CHAPTER 3 · Empowerment and Politicization in the Colonias Poco a poco se anda lejos. Little by little, one goes far. Bathing al Fresco While we were walking in the midday sun, Ernie and I were doing some door-to-door visits in the colonia when we decided to see if the new woman was in. We had heard independently that there was a new young mother living in a trailer on the back ofa lot in Los Montes and we thought she might like to take part in some community activities. Cold calls like this can be difficult, especially when we knew the woman in question was living in pretty rough conditions, so most likely her life was very busy. Concha was living on an illegally subdivided lot. Since it had become illegal to create new colonias in the mid-1990s, the biggest problem had become the subdivision of already-existing colonia lots by their current owners. Concha was renting a very small plot of land for her trailer, and, without any papers, she could not hook up to the water lines or electricity . She was running a power cord from the neighbor’s trailer and getting water from his spigot. We had few expectations about her aspirations for a leadership role in the colonia. As we passed the first trailer on the lot, I was taken aback by the site we encountered. In front of a very rundown trailer was Concha, leaning over a large metal tub containing two small children and steaming bubbly water. Apparently, we arrived at bath time. As we approached the tub, the kind in which you might wash a large dog or use to hold drinks at a barbeque, Ernie introduced us, and my mind raced through the mechanics of the situation. Clearly, as we had suspected, Concha had no running water and therefore no plumbing, so bathing was an outdoor affair. My first thought was: did she bathe out here as well? If so, she had no privacy 142 EMPOWERMENT AND POLITICIZATION IN THE COLONIAS at all. My next thought, how did she heat the water? She must have filled the tub with the hose we saw running from the trailer in front of her trailer. Did she possibly do this by heating the water on a hot plate or was she running a stove off an extension cord? That was unspeakably dangerous. Either way, she had to have carried pot after pot of hot water out of her trailer to fill the tub. All I could think was that Concha’s daily responsibilities took infinitely longer without running water and only the power of one extension cord. My final thought was, there is no way she had the extra time to devote to community activism; she had her hands full just doing the caretaking activities required of her as a mother. She is going to think we are crazy asking her to take part in the community-organizing efforts while watching her bathe her children in a tub in her front yard. Even with the guidance of the Community-Organizing Group (COG), she could not possibly have the spare time or energy. I was rather abruptly shaken out of my thoughts and disbelief at her situation when Concha’s face lit up and she enthusiastically said, “Yes, yes, I have heard about you, and I would like to take part.”1 Not surprisingly, Concha’s enthusiasm could not live up to her circumstances , and she did not become a leader at that time, although she did attend a few meetings. From what I hear, she has maintained some interest in the community’s organizing. Building wastewater systems, paving roads, and laying pipe for natural gas are not usually the everyday fare of stay-at-home mothers. In between overseeing these projects, leaders might do a load of laundry, bathe a child, or bake a birthday cake. The saying “all in a day’s work” takes on new meanings for stay-at-home mothers in the colonias. In this chapter, I examine the results of community activism in the colonias. I use the term “results” here in a very general sense; this discussion is really about what women’s activist work produces, including desired outcomes, unintended consequences, and, sometimes, failures. In these communities, women’s leadership produces physical improvements, a greater sense of community, personal growth for those involved, and new forms of governance through their involvement with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Some...