Margaret Cruz is one of the few people you meet in this life that you remember forever. I remember vividly, being scared to death of Margaret when I first met her at 17 in Houston. She spoke to me in this booming voice tailored to traveling across a football field more than the inside of a hotel suite. ‘Young [...]

So being the proactive semi-retired activist mom can be she contact’s Jose Angel Gutierrez, former head of Partido Raza Unida and asks him about a young man that was filming the 1973 Party Convention in El Paso, Texas. Ruth, Lupe and Martha all attended the conference as delegates from the states of Texas, Illinois and [...]

I do remember when I first met Lupe in Houston, 1977. I had heard a lot about her from my mom prior to the IWY convention. They had collaborated on projects since 1972 when Lupe, Ruth, and Martha, were at the ‘Adelante Mujeres’ Women’s Conference sponsored by the Midwest Council of La Raza at Notre [...]

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I met with Lupe at UCLA. I got lost (even with Mapquest) and misjudged the traffic coming from Wesminster so I was late getting to the Chicano Studies Library. Once I found it, I was greeting with a sunny smile ’y un gran abrazo’ from Lupe. She and [...]

We drove through town to find Martha’s house, the three of us. Mom got a chance to know Katie in the car and by the time we found Martha’s house they were best buds. As I would begin to remember and Katie would begin to know, all the Chicanas I knew from that movement were mom’s first. No [...]

We spent four days in Austin Texas doing research on a timeline of events for the film and working with Martha Cotera at the U/T Austin Benson Latin American Collection. I took my dear friend and official still photographer, Kathryn Haviland with me. Mom, met us at the airport having flow in from El Paso. [...]