La autorización de mujeres crea el cambio.

[Miss Maia]

La radio ha sido siempre una manera de escuchar las noticias y la música, pero en la comunidad de Immokalee en la Florida la radio se está utilizando como herramienta del cambio social. Radio Conciencia, la estación de radio de la Coalición de Trabajadores de Immokalee, está dando a campesinas hispanas una voz.

Para aprender mas sobre las problemas que estas mujeres están trabajando para traer la atención a, y de la comunidad de Immokalee, mire la presentación Lucas Benítez dio en la conferencia 2008 de Los Bioneros.

[Miss Maia]

For those who do not speak Spanish, the above blog speaks briefly about Consciousness Radio, the radio station of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a non-profit working on behalf of the mostly Spanish speaking community of agribusiness farm workers in southern Florida.

I was privileged to listen to a speech given by Lucas Benitez, one of the founding coalition members and organizers, at the 2008 Bioneers Conference, and I left the auditorium feeling inspired yet conflicted.

I am a 1st generation US citizen on my father's side, and 2nd generation on my mother's side, with my family coming from Colombia and Mexico, respectively. My father came to this country as a young man to attend the University of Minnesota and my grandmother came to this country with her family as a young girl to escape the Mexican Revolution in the early 1900s. When I think about the luxuries and opportunities I have been blessed with due to the circumstances of my family's migration into this country I realize how lucky I am and how unfair it is that the way in which immigrants, especially Latin American immigrants, enter this country either doom them to poverty or bless them with prosperity.

The journey towards El Norte (the north) is dangerous and those who choose to undertake it are lucky to complete it alive. What drives them forward is the promise of a better life in "the land of opportunity", but what they often encounter is extreme prejudice, poverty, menial jobs and loss of family and community.

I have spoken with several immigrants, both legal and illegal, and in speaking with them I have met former engineers, professors and government employees who have left their homelands, friends and families for whatever reasons and are now janitors, dishwashers, bussers, migrant farm workers, cheap laborers, and more often than not a combination of the two, having been forced to take more than one job in order to survive.

What saddens me the most though is that despite the hardships of life here, many Latin American immigrants do not choose to go back to Mexico/Guatemala/Honduras/Nicaragua etc etc etc, but rather choose to stay here. It makes me wonder, what must the quality of life be like back home for mis hermanos y mis hermanas in order to accept the quality of life afforded to them in this country?