Carolina Munguia and Emma Tenayuca: The Politics of Benevolence and Radical Reform

There should exist something greater... that will speak higher of us as women, wives, and as Mexicans—that is the betterment of our people—all for country and home.

Carolina Munguía to members of Circulo Cultural "Isabel la Católica," January8, 1939

Everyone felt we [Communists] were trying to take over the government. What we were trying to do was organize labor, organize the unemployed, so they would have their rights.

Emma Tenayuca, quoted in the San Antonio Express-News, March 6, 1988

On August 25, 1938, labor leader and Texas Communist Party chair Emma Tenayuca barely escaped with her life as she and other party leaders attempted to hold a meeting at the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium. Outside the auditorium, a large anticommunist mob prepared to storm the building. Inside, police guided party members to a secret tunnel. Everyone escaped safely, but that climactic day marked the end of Tenayuca's public career in radical reform politics. Two days after the Municipal Auditorium riot, but a world away, the ladies of the Círculo Cultural "Isabel, la Católica," led by their president, Señora Carolina Munguía, held their bimonthly meeting at the San Antonio Latin American Center. The members of this female benevolence organization delved into a full agenda consisting of a report on securing free legal aid for the poor; a discussion on sending delegates to a conference at the Mexican Library; plans for an upcoming art exhibit sponsored by the Círculo; and, acknowledgments for charitable services provided by the organization. Tenayuca and Munguía shared a vision—to help la Raza (the Mexican-origin community)—but they chose to do so in different ways. ¹

Chicana community politics in Depression-era San Antonio reflected a diversity of ideas and strategies. Responses to the challenges of racial discrimination and severe poverty in the city's West Side barrio, the historic Mexican American neighborhood, ran the gamut from the conservative politics of benevolence as expressed by Carolina Munguía's passionate summons to Mexican-origin women to work for la Raza in their capacity as "women, wives, and Mexicans," doing it "all for country and home," to Emma Tenayuca's radical reform politics as reflected in her equally compelling revelation on how Communism served as a means to "organize labor, organize the unemployed so they would have rights." ²

Munguía and Tenayuca's community activism provides a study in contrasts. For Munguía, the politics of benevolence defined the gender and class parameters within which she could negotiate individual and community improvements for la Raza. As a middle-class, married Mexican woman with children, she took wife and mother as her primary roles in life. As a maternalist with Methodist influences, she expanded these primary roles into the community, providing Mexican-origin women with tools for self-improvement and a mandate to uplift their families and community. Tenayuca, though married during the height of her political activism, did not organize around the mantle of domesticity. She married Homer Brooks on October19, 1937, and divorced him on April14, 1941. Tenayuca did not have children during her activist career, but in 1952 she gave birth to a son in San Francisco. During her activist career, Tenayuca turned to the Communist Party and organized as a worker, not as a mother. The politics of radical reform often placed her at odds with gender and class conventions. ³

The history of Chicana community politics is replete with examples of women pursuing all manners of organizational strategies, and that diversity highlights the creative ways in which people on the margins have empowered themselves. Munguía worked within a tradition of benevolent reform that included women's clubs and, to some extent, women's auxiliary groups such as Ladies League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Before the 1930s, the politics of benevolence often...