From Tampico, to Texas, and beyond: The transnational networks of feminism and anarchism of Caritina Piña, 1920-1940

• In Event: Alien, Subversive, Recalcitrant: Migrants, Exiles, and Cultural Brokers in Latin American Transnational Anarchist Movements, 1880s-1940s

Abstract

In 1920, shortly after the end of the military phase of the Mexican Revolution, a young norteña, Caritina M. Piña, became involved in one of the most active anarcho-syndicalist organizations in the Gulf of Mexico port of Tampico. Caritina participated in an elaborate network linking Tampico, south Texas, Buenos Aires, and other ports of entry who dedicated their lives to creating a pro-worker society. Caritina served as a critical transnational cultural broker who brought south Texas, Tampico, and the world so much closer in the 1920s and 1930s. Caritina received news of labor issues and women’s conditions from across the globe and served as a transnational cultural broker for the circulation of ideas and the production of knowledge about labor issues. Women from throughout the region sent commentaries expressing their localized concerns and struggles that were re-published in her organization’s printed media. Caritina and other women engaged in and practiced a feminismo transfronterista that had emerged in tandem with an increasingly transnational, global labor movement—particularly one associated with anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist, sindicalista movements. Caritina and her connections to Tejanas reveal early transnational feminism grounded in the language of worker dignity. Thus, Caritina was a transnational cultural broker—a woman of color who claimed and used an “interstitial space” to promote and sustain a global pro-labor movement. These global conversations of radical thought reveal the ways in which localized struggles and regional ideas of women’s rights, labor, citizenship, and community were framed in a global, class-gendered context.

Author

• Sonia Hernandez, Texas A&M University