Lessons from the Past, Forging the Future
In the San Antonio ILGWU, Mexican American women garment workers joined a local chapter of a much larger International organization. As a part of the International, the local benefitted from institutional support like the resources from the Educational department and money and lawyers to support striking workers. While, the workers were also held back from leadership by the prejudice of higher-level management and had to conform with the ILGWU's anti-communist and business-friendly ideals in order to stay members of the union, those who stayed had some gains from successful strikes.
In Austin, men and women workers at the Economy Company Furniture factory struck for better working conditions. Their persistence in the face of years of institutional suppression secured their right to unionize and awakened the Austin Chicano political consciousness.
The Raza Unida Party (RUP) was a third party in the US that mobilized Hispanic communities to participate in politics and address issues like discrimination and poverty. It successfully won local elections in the South and border regions but faced opposition from major political parties. Despite its decline, the RUP's legacy continues to empower marginalized communities and inspire grassroots organizing for social and political justice in Hispanic communities throughout the US.
In Cuba, during another anti-communist push in Batista's dictatorship, Virgilio Martínez Gainza published a comic book to represent Cuban youth's anger and frustration. After the revolution, La Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas saw the value of mass culture in organizing opinion and published Gainza's work as well as their own children's magazine entitled Bijirita, which was more focused on basic values and Cuban history for children. The comic book and children's magazine was an engine for leftist political organization in Cuba.
Despite the challenges they encountered, the collective efforts of each of these organizations realized visions of the future that were meaningfully different from the present. In an age of weakened political imagination and the omnipresence of the market, their strategies offer a playbook waiting to be picked apart and used in the formation of a new world.