A CRUSHING LOVE: Chicana mamas, 30 years later
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How do women do it all? Is it possible to balance the needs of family with the desire (and need) to work outside the home? Is it possible for neither a woman’s children nor her work to suffer from not having her full attention? Thirty years after the women’s movement, we are still asking these questions, as we observe a society that has been reshaped into a place where women are likely to both have jobs and be responsible for the majority of childcare and household work.
It is also thirty years after the Chicano movement, when leaders like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta organized for farmworkers’ rights and sparked new feelings of pride and empowerment among Latinos. Director Sylvia Morales has a long standing interest in both women’s issues and the Chicano movement. In 1979, she made the film Chicana, honoring the women behind the Chicano movement. Now she has followed up with those same women to find out how they managed being mamas and also organizers. The result is her film A Crushing Love: Chicanas, Motherhood, & Activism (distributed by Women Make Movies). The women she profiles are Dolores Huerta, Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, Cherrie Moraga, Alicia Escalante and Martha Cotera.
Through interviews and archival footage, we gain a new appreciation for the creativity, dedication and endless energy these women had to muster to fulfill their dual roles. At the same time, the filmmaker makes a humorous comment on her own life, where her daughter often interrupts her at her home office. Occasionally Morales hands her daughter the camera, and we get a teenager’s perspective on the documentary process.
As the stories of women’s political power are revealed (see, for example, Pray the Devil Back to Hell), we come to a fuller understanding of how societies can enact positive change. Often, concern for children is at the center of women’s campaigns. For the women who step out to claim a better life for themselves and their children—and the world—the love in question seems to be not crushing, but enlivening, liberating, and inspiring.
by Mattie Akers
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| Posted on July 6, 2010
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