Chip Chick
On September 15th, National Hispanic Heritage Month, a time to celebrate the cultures of Hispanic and Latinx Americans, officially began. It’s the perfect time to learn about the lives of Hispanic women who fought to make America a better country for all.
One of those women was Luisa Moreno, a labor organizer who fought for worker’s rights in America for decades.
Luisa was born in Guatemala in the early 1900s. She had a spirit for activism and social reform from a young age, as by the time she was a teenager, she was organizing social justice groups to fight against the country’s misogynistic laws surrounding education.
During her later teenage years, Luisa briefly worked as a journalist. But in the 1920s, when she was 20 years old, she moved to New York City with her husband. While living in New York, she had a daughter and worked hard to support her family.
Luisa’s passion for activism was reignited after moving to the United States when she was exposed to the horrors of police brutality against Latin protestors and the poor working conditions laborers faced.
So, in 1930, Luisa joined the Communist Party and became a professional organizer for the American Federation of Labor in 1935.
She began visiting states outside of New York, including Florida, Louisiana, and California, to organize labor unions, draw attention to the deplorable and unfair working conditions in America, and highlight the additional hardships being placed upon Mexican-American and Latino workers.
In 1938, she founded the El Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española or National Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples in California. It was considered to be one of the first American organizations that worked to unite people from Spanish-speaking countries and get them to fight for better treatment and working conditions for laborers.
Despite the American government making efforts to deport Luisa, she stayed strong and held her ground, organizing laborers, representing unions, and leading protests for decades.
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