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I develop this account by examining Latina activism in which engagement in pas-
toral/community work is linked to women’s activism, identities, and community roles
surrounding a variety of social concerns.
To ignore the broader dimension of Latina religious practice – that is, their place
in community or pastoral work – is to fail to recognize the complex ways in which
Latinas are active agents of social change, and the variety of roles they play within and
outside the Latina/o community. The following discussion, based on my ethnographic
research along the U.S.-Mexico border as well as secondary sources, focuses on the
important role U.S. Latinas play in both private and public spheres through religiously
based community work that often crosses ethnic lines. This activism advances women’s
interests, allows them to claim a myriad of identities, and at the same time advances
the interests of their communities. Through such work, they define themselves in ways
that transcend the socially conventional understandings of them as women and as
Latinas.
LATINAS, CULTURE, AND THE SUBVERSION OF PASSIVITY
As suggested earlier, Latinas are not a homogenous group and this discussion is not
meant to “essentialize” the Latina experience. I highlight how women’s empowering
processes, rather than only affecting women as individuals, can be linked to communal
efforts to challenge socioeconomic realities and cultural inhibitors such as patriarchy.
By focusing on the cultural context in which Latinas operate, we can better understand
why so many Latina women work with religious groups and other nongovernment
organizations (NGOs), to empower themselves within and outside the home. A recent
study conducted in two Los Angeles communities found that women’s activism grew
out of responding to issues that affected their families and that organizing around
those issues was nurtured in community networks (Pardo 1998: 228). The activism
also became the basis on which they generated broader political involvements. In fact,
we learn from Pardo’s study that Latinas “use existing gender, ethnic, and community
identities to accomplish larger political tasks” (ibid. 228).
In a study of Latina activism in Boston, Carol Hardy-Fanta (1993) found that Latinas
spent their organizing efforts going door to door, talking about community concerns
with other Latinas over coffee, and making the gender and ethnic connections that
proved effective in that community’s organizing. In my own research on the border
through work I did with the Colonias Development Council in Las Cruces, New Mexico,
I observed Latinas take on more active roles in their communities after succeeding in
creating community day care centers. From day care centers they moved on to par-
ticipate in other efforts to force local city and state government to build roads and
eradicate sewage problems, particularly because these issues affected the lives of their
children.
In community work, Latinas challenge stereotypic notions that portray them as pas-
sive and submissive. Latina engagement in the home and in the community contrasts
sharply with the passivity/submissiveness paradigms that are often promoted in some
Catholic Marian devotions or in religious traditions that promote patriarchy. As one
indication, their images of Mary can be described as many Catholics might describe
God: As Absolute, Infinite, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Powerful, Redeem-
ing, and All-Wise (Pe ̃na and Frehill 1998). In addition, despite official Catholic teaching