MCN’s Fifth Annual Women’s Conference: Empowerment, Community Organizing at the Mexican Consulate

This weekend, 126 Austin-area Latinas gathered for the annual Women’s Conference, hosted by the Mexican Consulate in Austin and Migrant Clinicians Network.  With the late autumn Texan sun streaming through the Mexican Consulate’s windows, participants listened to three keynote speakers, and visited the 18 vendors that provided services and resources for women to improve their health and well-being and to encourage women to prioritize self-care for the betterment of themselves and their family.  The conference, now in its fifth year, brings together Latinas from Mexico and the US with other women leaders from the region to learn, to develop networks of collaboration that strengthen community, deepen commitments, and build on a tradition of resilience.

As participants arrived, Priya Ramamoorthy, MCN intern, and Kavya Ramamoorthy welcomed them; Grace Schrobilgen, David Billé, Roxana Pineda, and Jessica Calderón helped them sign in. Participants enjoyed a photo-booth after check-in, where Diana Jauregui took pictures that participants received at the end of the conference.  At the Galeria Room, attendees had the chance to visit vendors to network and pick up resources and information before the conference started. Jimena De Leija, MCN intern, was stationed to serve a light breakfast as they headed to their seats. The bilingual conference offered two sessions in Spanish and one in English, with interpreters at all sessions.

Consul Dr. Pablo Marentes González gave a welcome talk to open the conference. The consulate gave some words of appreciation for the Austin community and motivated the women to continue learning and taking care of themselves. MCN’s Deliana Garcia then reviewed the previous year’s outcomes and introduced this year’s theme. Our three keynote speakers provided compelling accounts of their lives and influences.

María del Socorro Limón, from CU Denver’s Center on Domestic Violence, spoke about how our stories empower us with her talk, “Sana, Sana Colita de Rana... Nuestras Historias Nos Empoderan.” Limón talked through the links between economic, cultural, and environmental violence affecting communities and the violence people experience in their personal relationships. She invited participants to reflect on the forces we confront that work to limit the health and well-being of ourselves, our families, and communities. Limón shared her experiences as a community organizer, and argued that connection is the strongest protective factor in practice. With her unique combination of experience as an adult educator, facilitator, organizer, and advocate, she rallied in support of programs seeking to build or strengthen a community’s response to the challenges and health inequities women face.

Suzanne Seriff, PhD, from the University of Texas at Austin, presented, “Let’s Talk About This: Women’s Tradition and Community Empowerment.” Dr. Seriff is an independent museum curator and faculty member in the Departments of Anthropology and the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin where she teaches courses on museum history, immigration, Jewish material culture, and arts-based activism for social change. She also directs an innovative new social justice internship program for liberal arts majors at UT. Her talk explored the stories of remarkable women from around the world embroider an image of women’s empowerment through traditional artisan work. She emphasized that women artisans from Africa to Asia to the Americas draw on their homegrown craft traditions to build leadership skills, raise living standards, promote literacy, preserve a dying heritage, provide a safe haven from violence, and transform the lives of their families, their communities, the world.

After Dr. Seriff’s talk, we took a short break to visit vendors’ tables, including partaking in the delicious and healthy quesadillas de jícama from Mi Vida Sana.

Elena Aranda, a community leader in Boulder, Colorado, asked conference participants to reconsider the messages that affected us emotional during our childhood during her talk. She spoke about devaluing messages many women receive throughout life that we occasionally repeat without realizing it.  Aranda works to promote the well-being of Spanish-speaking women in the Boulder, improving quality of life through access to educational and cultural programs, developing a political consciousness, and mobilizing collective social justice actions, through the AMISTAD Center. She has worked as a family therapist at Boulder Mental Health Partners for 23 years specializing in early childhood mental health. Aranda’s workshop invited women to practice living in the moment, accepting reality so we can heal and continue to grow recognizing our own resilience.

Following the speakers, conference participants enjoyed lunch and were invited to participate in a raffle. Participants attended a Personal Narrative Workshop, offered by Aranda, visited vendors, and networked.

“It was amazing to see how women interacted in the workshop, to see them feel free to share what they needed and wanted to say, to breathe the solidarity and kindness in the group,” reflected Pineda, MCN’s Ventanilla de Salud coordinator and the primary organizer of the conference.

Pineda received assistance in the organization and hosting of the conference from MCN’s Jessica Calderón, Luis Retta, Deliana Garcia, and Nelly Salgado de Snyder and by Ana Carrasco from the Mexican Consulate. We are grateful for the support and time of Priya Ramamoorthy, Kavya Ramamoorthy, Jimena De Lejia, Grace Schrobilgen, David Billé, photographer Diana Jauregui, Miguel Soto, and Lydia Perez.

“This team pulled out all the stops,” Garcia concluded. “It was a phenomenal event.”

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