Read: My Mother the Matriarch

Gracias Hermano Javier ~ She must of been a great woman to know and you are surely blessed. Earth's cry, Heaven's smile~ ~ Hermano Peta

javier rodriguez <bajolamiradejavier@yahoo.com> wrote:

My Mother the Matriarch

By Javier Rodriguez May 27, 2008

Isabel Hernandez de Rodriguez, the Matriarch of our family, passed and moved on to eternity on May 20^th 2008 at the age of 94. She was admired as a feminist and a giving strong willed woman who built, guided and was the spiritual pillar of the activist Los Angeles based Rodriguez Family, my family. Through decades she built an enviable network of close friends and adopted sons and daughters, mostly all activists including activist Isaura Rivera, Atty. Alba Marrero, her neighbor Senator Gloria Romero, Senator Gil Cedillo, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Richard Alatorre, Mexican Congressman Jose Jacquez Medina, Union leader Joel Ochoa, Nativo Lopez and many many more.

Like the late Bert Corona, a historical figure and mentor of the immigrant rights struggle, she traveled many years and many miles in her lifetime and was touched by history and truly, she is the history of our family. She was a mother, a friend and a confidant who was with you in all the battles and victories. She raised us in the most difficult of conditions, including extreme poverty. Personally she was an inspiration to me and like magic realism, even in death she handed me historical realizations that had been hovering around the family for years, like transparent but invisible veils.

On two occasions before on her 80th and 90^th birthdays I published biographical articles on her in the LA Times and Eastern Group Publications. Then I thought her political awareness commenced here in Los Angeles in 1966. I was wrong. The beginnings of her political formation were in Mexico, our home country. She was born in 1913 in Durango, the birthplace of Francisco "Pancho" Villa, in the midst of the Mexican Revolution. Like Corona, born in 1917 in El Paso, Texas, she lived the rumblings of the war against the tyrant Porfirio Diaz and the rich. In the twenties she saw firsthand the Mexican Civil War against the reactionary right wing Cristeros. Then at the age of eighteen, approximately in 1931, she married my father Antonio Rodriguez, a miner, a union delegate and a Cardenista, who like her had a very limited formal education. With him she lived the revolutionary nationalist years of President Lazaro Cardenas and the epical nationalization of Mexican oil in 1938.

They began their trek northward migrating from the High Sierra of Durango to Torreon and from 1939 to 1948 the family began to grow and lived relatively well off. Then we moved to the border town of Juarez and in the early 1950s she experienced the painful years of the Bracero Program because her husband contracted as a farm laborer in the US. Three years after, my father got his permanent residency. So on August 19, 1956, our family became part of the Diaspora that has migrated by the millions to the land that once belonged to us, Mexican people. This was her background when she crossed into El Norte.

It is no wonder she joined and supported us wholeheartedly when the civil rights movement of the sixties swept our whole family into the social struggle. Along with us she became active in denouncing discrimination and police brutality. She supported the East LA Walkouts of 1968 and 1970. On August 29, 1970 she marched against the war in Viet Nam and 33 years after she was a staunch opponent of the war on Iraq. As an immigrant she became a precursor of the immigrant rights movement in Los Angeles, as an officer of the Autonomous Center for Social Action-C.A.S.A. Since then she fought and marched for immigrant rights and supported many progressive causes. In 1985 she acquired her US citizenship only to vote for her son's candidacy (Antonio) for the LA City Council and since then never missed an election. That same year she was a co-founder of the nationally famous La Serenata de Garibaldi Restaurant.

Her eight sons and one daughter have been activists and movers in LA politics since the late sixties and were key leaders of the mass street movement that led to the 1986 IRCA Amnesty Law that successfully legalized several million immigrants. Again in 2006-2008 they have been motivators and initiators of several of the mega mass street demonstrations that have made history in this country, in the fight for a humane immigration reform and legalization for over 13 million undocumented immigrants.

In the heart of the US, Isabel Rodriguez is a symbol of Mexican pride. She never uttered the words "God Bless America" because like us, she was conscious of the history of this country. Since she entered in 1956, not once did she ever own or display the flag of the US in her home. She was a proud Mexican nationalist till the end.

This memoir of my mother is dedicated to her 76 descendants, to the more than five hundred members of our extended family, to all our friends, to all the women in the struggle and finally to the history of our people.

Javier Rodriguez is a journalist and a media and political strategist. He was the initiator of the historical mega immigration march in Los Angeles on March 25, 2006.
bajolamiradejavier@yahoo.com

_._,_.___

Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic

Messages | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar

Monitor: Peter S. Lopez "Peta": sacranative@yahoo.com
List owner: Guillermo Bejarano: aztlannet@yahoo.com

To see and modify all of your groups, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/mygroups
You can subscribe to four (4) groups:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_Arte
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_Action
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_Native-Views
OFFICIAL WEBSITE http://www.NetworkAztlan.com

Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

.

__,_._,___

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~ aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/

http://www.networkaztlan.com/
C/S