Women defending women: Memories of women day laborers and emotional communities

Abstract

Espinosa analyzes the surprising 2015 day laborer movement in the San Quintín Valley, Baja California, Mexico, and the way the members of Women Defending Women, an organization devoted to defending labor and human rights in the Valley, felt moved to recall their traumatic and/or joyful experiences as migrants, day laborers, students, and political activists. Working with Gisela Espinosa, they build a collective memory that contradicts the mainstream narrative that portrays men and women day laborers as passive, defenseless, or simply a social problem. The women excavate in their memories and discover they are actors with agency and expectations, brimming with emotions, replete with social and political ambitions. Here, memory and political-emotional community intertwine.