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The Story Behind the Story
As
the first Mexican-American woman to head a winery,
Amelia Ceja Moran exemplifies a life well worth
telling. Not only does she hold a firm belief in
giving back to the community from which she came,
but Ceja eagerly shares her experiences from
laboring as a migrant worker in the vineyards to
owning and marketing her family label, Ceja Vinyards.
Her profile in Latinas in the United States: A
Historical Encyclopedia provides a perfect example
of what we had hoped to achieve in this reference
work – bringing to a wider audience Latina leaders,
entrepreneurs, and community builders, women who in
the past and present make a difference every day but
whose labors often remain relatively unacknowledged
outside their local environs.
When we began the project in 1998, we gathered a
team of astute associate editors (Lillian Castillo-Speed,
Bárbara Cruz, María Cristina García, Cynthia Orozco,
and Nélida Pérez) and we had the good fortune to
recruit our amazingly talented managing editor,
Carlos Cruz.
As a group, we decided that while we would include
selected contemporary women, our focus would be
historical, documenting through individual
biographies, thematic essays, and regional overviews
the imprints of Latinas in U.S. history. Whether
carving out a community in St. Augustine in 1565, to
reflecting on colonialism and liberty during the
1890s, to fighting for civil rights through the
courts of the 1940s, Latinas have made history
within and beyond national borders.
Utmost in our minds, we wanted readers to have a
sense of individual personalities – their dreams and
possibilities, as well as restoring to the
historical record their specific contributions. A
few examples of these remarkable women follow:
The grandmother of two Mexican governors of
California, María Feliciana Arballo came to
California from northern Mexico with the De Anza
expedition in 1775. A widow, she rode to California
with one daughter in front of her in the saddle and
the other behind.
Born in Cuba, Loreta Janeta Velásquez fought for the
Confederacy during the Civil War. Disguising her
ethnicity and gender, she led soldiers into battle
at First Bull Run, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh.
Luisa Moreno, a poet from Guatemala, helped organize
the first U.S. Latino civil rights assembly in 1939.
During World War II, she emerged as a leading union
organizer in the United Sates.
A rural schoolteacher from Puerto Rico, Antonia
Pantoja arrived in New York in 1944 and became a
powerful community leader. Her youth organization,
ASPIRA, provided the educational springboard for
over two generations of Latino leaders.
 As
editors, we were committed to presenting these
Latina legacies in accessible, lively prose. In
envisioning the encyclopedia as a volume that would
become both an essential reference work and an
engaging read, we are heartened by a recent e-mail
sent by María Garciaz, Director of Salt Lake City
Neighborhood Services (SLNS), a non-profit housing
agency that combines community development with at-risk
youth employment. She commented:
The publication is beautiful and on weekends I sit
with my nine-year old daughter and eleven-year old
son and they each read a section. We have some
wonderful conversations about each woman they read
about. They will be surprised when they get to the G
section! The encyclopedia is a powerful tool.
Funded by a generous grant from the Ford Foundation,
our next endeavor is a digital Latina history
project, “Latinas in History” – a multimedia CD-ROM
and interactive website filled with first person
narratives, photos, and music, poetry, and lesson
plans. Reclaiming Latina history, a multi-vibrant
mosaic across time, region, gender, and borders,
remains the heart of our scholarly and educational
mission. |
