Who is luisa moreno

But Luisa Moreno dedicated herself to civil rights and to improving working conditions for laborers, especially Latinas. She spent time in Mexico before she migrated to New York in and became a labor organizer. As a young woman Luisa Moreno was an avid writer.

She worked for a brief period as a journalist and enjoyed writing poetry. Luisa Moreno worked with several unions throughout the s and s. Her bilingual outreach sought to improve working conditions in fields and canneries in the Southwest. She wrote pamphlets, organized strikes, and encouraged participation in unions. Two burly policemen grabbed her by the elbows. They lifted her off the sidewalk and hustled her into the entrance way of a nearby building. She came out with her face bleeding and considered herself fortunate that she was not disfigured.

On June 25, , Moreno and her husband were divorced and she now had to raise an infant daughter named Mytyl alone. A few years before Moreno had become a labor union activist.

In the American Delegation of Labor hired her as a professional organizer. Moreno was shaped by the liberal intellectuals and activists of that era and she had a faith in the idealism that molded the new Soviet state. Along with many other labor organizers she believed in Marxist ideology and was attracted to the American Communist party due to the attention it devoted to Latinos and labor issues in factories and in agriculture.

The Party was active not only in organizing workers but also in community issues: working for school desegregation, opposing segregation in public facilities such as swimming pools and housing, protesting police abuse, obtaining relief aid, and preventing the deportations of Mexicans during the s. During the early s Luisa Moreno worked in a variety of areas. She unionized Blacks and Latina cigar rollers and other tobacco workers in Florida. While in Tampa, Luisa helped a dwindling cigar workers union that the Ku Klux Klan had been terrorizing.

Then she organized cane workers in Louisiana. Through the years she gained valuable experience that she would later use in the fields and packing houses of California and finally among the Latino tuna packing workers in San Diego. By Moreno joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a newly formed alliance of unions devoted to organizing unskilled workers.

In , Luisa moved to San Diego to help the fish and cannery workers organize unions in the tuna industry. At that time tuna packing was a major employer of Latinos who mostly lived in Boyle Heights. They operated around the clock in sweatshop conditions. The workers found Luisa to be trustworthy and likeable. Few realized that she was an astute politician. She was never beholden to any political party or business interest.

Poverty-stricken Anglo Americans had come from other states during the Depression by the thousands and settled there. Even so, their bitter experiences educated many of them quite rapidly and they, too, were among those who joined in some of the struggles of those days.

It made life pleasant for her. This would be the first ever conference that would bring together Mexican American unions, mutual aid associations, political clubs and other organizations.

The purpose of the meeting would be to exchange information, establish a network of Mexican American organizations, and to discuss a civil right agenda. After months of planning and some frustration, Moreno working with Josefina Fierro de Bright saw their dreams realized when El Congreso met in Los Angeles on April 29, Dies accused the Congreso of being affiliated with communists and suspected their anti-agribusiness stance.

Pending the full investigation, Moreno decided to go to Texas to organize women working in the pecan shelling factories. She arrived with her child, Mytyl, in and rented a small house in San Antonio. When she visited the barrios she saw the vicious cycle of poverty and hopelessness ravaging the Hispanic community.

Following this, Moreno spent three months in the Lower Rio Grande Valley where she saw the harsh life of the farm workers.

Naturally, she worked as a union organizer, and made contacts with vegetable, fruit canning, and packing industry workers. Also she helped to organize the field workers who harvested beets, sweet corn, cabbage, spinach, and other vegetables for only fifty cents a day.

In September , Moreno moved on to organize sugar beet workers in Colorado and then returned to California. For the next few years she lived in Los Angeles and was involved in historical events that shaped Mexican American history.

At first she joined the Anti-Nazi League. It sponsored a labor rally, organized with her help, at the Los Angeles Coliseum and a Quarantine Hitler rally at the Shrine Auditorium. She traveled constantly trying to break the discriminatory hiring habits of canneries and factories. In San Diego she was successful in getting non-discrimination pledges from the Royal Packing plant that processed Ortega brand chiles. As the general manager of the California Walnut Association, W.

In San Diego Moreno spent most of her time organizing cannery operatives. With the patience of a saint, Moreno tackled the most routine and boring tasks in order to reform California canneries. She put all her energy into every detail. Finally, after a much effort her dedication paid off and contracts were signed with most of the canneries. This affected thousands of cannery workers, seventy-five percent of whom were women. Moreno was moved by the sufferings of these women and men when she saw life inside the San Diego canneries with its segregated policies and terrible working conditions.

If a female operative cut her finger slightly while paring or canning fruit, she hesitated to bandage it. She was afraid to fall behind because she was being paid the piece rate so much per box.

As a result, the finger became infected and pus oozed out of the wound and contaminated the fruits. There were very few labor lawyers in San Diego and Los Angeles. Both were violently anti-labor towns. McWilliams worked to expose abuses done to farm field and factory workers by the agricultural industry.

As David F. Manpower needs were critical. Moreno spoke out against the relocation of the Japanese Americans to camps and saw that a disproportionate number of Chicanos were drafted because they lacked jobs which carried draft-deferral status. Once again thousands of Mexicans poured across the border and took the least skilled, low-paying jobs, for which they competed with other unskilled workers. In San Diego, housing was in short supply. Rations became a nuisance. Transportation became a problem.

The war triggered anxiety and people searched for scapegoats. Moreno testified before the Los Angeles Grand Jury which was investigating the famous Sleepy Lagoon Case — a sensational trial in the summer of where nine teenage Mexican Americans were put on trial for murder. Her prophecy turned into a reality. In June of , the Los Angeles Zoot-Suit riots began, sparked by violence between soldiers and sailors on leave and young Chicanos. They took place in the largely Spanish-speaking neighborhood close to the downtown sections of Los Angeles.

Encouraged by police indifference, sensational news stories flourished. Mobs grew larger. During one evening, Zoot-suitors were dragged out of downtown motion picture theaters, their fancy suits torn from their bodies. They were beaten and chased through the streets. On the second night of the rioting there was an emergency meeting of several hundred citizens. One of the concerns was to stem the wild rumors that were sweeping through the communities of southern California.

Moreno pointed to the war stress, racism and paranoia that had caused this media over-reaction. Luisa Moreno along with members of El Congreso and other Mexican-American community leaders sprang into action.

They mobilized a defense committee on behalf of the youngsters who had been arrested by the police even though they had been attacked by the servicemen.

The youths made their getaway in the darkness. After years of strikes, pickets, organizing, negotiating and fighting for labor unions throughout the Southwest and moving from town to town, Luisa Moreno finally moved to San Diego permanently to live with her new husband Gray Bemis. After a brief courtship they were married on February 1, in Yuma, Arizona.

Luisa was attracted to Gray Bemis because of his intelligence and sensibility. It seemed now that she was ready to settle down in one place for the first time in her life.

She wanted others to avoid her mistakes. Slowly her project turned into an autobiographical narrative of her labor union activities. Determined to be a traditional wife, Moreno withdraw from most of her major labor activities, resigning from the staff of the CIO.

She remained, however, an active dues-paying member of the union and gave moral support and was involved in several local projects. In , the soft-spoken Bemis built her a small frame house, painted red with white trim at Medio Drive. The location with the view of the sea and the hills evoked a soothing sense of timelessness. In the back yard Luisa cared for an extensive azalea garden.

The garden became her sanctuary from years of turmoil and a retreat for her meditations and intellectual pursuits. He was a great husband and my best friend. Not once did they raise their voice at each other or argue. They had a high regard for each other. Bemis even wall-papered the room for her with her favorite design. For her birthday, he bought her a fine Navaho rug and some Pueblo pottery. Ceramics sat on top of her huge cabinet — her memory bank — full of letters, reports and other narratives about her activities in labor unions.

One bedroom was used for a well-equipped photo lab. Both of them loved company and they frequently had a variety of dinner guests.

Luisa enjoyed cooking and gardening and hired a Mexican gardener to keep the landscape beautiful. As a perfectionist, she extracted certain azaleas from her garden whose tint of color was not quite right. To rearrange her garden, she clipped sprigs of new azaleas in bloom and set them in Coke bottles. The bottles were then relocated about in the landscape until Moreno was content with the color and harmony.

She was slowly forming a Japanese garden. Moreno loved things well done. She had numerous books and had a few Pre-Columbian objects and different types of wall masks and colorful Mexican rugs.

After three years of marital bliss in San Diego, her domestic world was shattered by Cold War fears and McCarthyist hysteria. Nation-wide an atmosphere of paranoia about Communist infiltrators prevailed. Kenny, who had a law office in downtown San Diego.

Kenny was a remarkable lawyer who sometimes antagonized other lawyers because of his legal successes. Moreno considered him a courageous man of ethics. In September, , as she awaited confirmation of her citizenship application, Moreno was subpoenaed by the State Senate Committee on Un-American Activities. On September 10, a trim Moreno in a black dress and white gloves took the witness stand and faced Senator Jack B.

Anyone who was in favor of overthrowing the Government, was likely to be hauled up and smeared by inquisition and innuendo. His methods have done more damage to the cause of intelligently combating Communism than almost any other influence in California.

He reduced his victims to tears. By the time he finished with them, they felt depleted. She remained calm while suppressing her anger against the bigoted ignorance so apparent in the questioning. Moreno was asked directly if she had been a member of the Communist Party. The council persisted with the same question. She made it explicitly clear to Richard E. Coombs, Chief Council for the delegation and Jack Tenney that they had no right to ask that question and that she had no intention of answering it.

Coombs asked her pointedly whether she might not be risking the right to become a full-fledged citizen by refusing to answer his question. One youth was even hustled from the room by officers. Constitution when applying for naturalization and that was what I intended to do in the hearing.

Jack Tenney threatened me with sending the transcript to the [U. A transcript of her session was forwarded to U. After a few weeks after the San Diego hearing on September 30, , the U. Luisa was desperate to find witnesses, but many people were afraid of being smeared as communist sympathizers. Lopez, editor of the Spanish language newspaper La Opinion , testified about her dedication to labor union and civil rights. But that was not enough. After the interview, the INS finalized her deportation.

During all this, Moreno was offered citizenship by the FBI in exchange for her testifying at the Harry Bridges investigation. Sadly, Moreno was forced to retire from her activism and flee the U. She died in her home country on November 4, , leaving behind an incredible legacy for future activists everywhere. Moreno may not be well-known in mainstream history, but it was her activism that paved the way for organizations like the United Farm Workers.

We honor Luisa Moreno by continuing to fight for immigrant and civil rights, while striving for a more just, inclusive and equitable labor movement.

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