Luisa Morena
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For my Latina/Chicana/Hispanic profile I chose Luisa Morena. Luisa Morena was born on August 30, 1907 to a wealthy family in Guatemala City, Guatemala. She was a leader in the United States labor movement and a social activist . As a teenager she organized La Sociedad Gabriela Mistral, which enabled women to enroll im Guatemalan universities. She went to Mexico City in her teens to pursue a career in journalism. While there she met and married an artist names Angel De Leon. They then moved to New York City. About a year after they moved Louisa gave birth to a baby girl names Mytyl.
While they were living in New York an anti Mexican film named Under a Texas Moon was protested by a group of Latinos led by Gonzalo Gonzalez. Police brutalized the protesters, killing Gonzalez. This brought on a Latino Protest in which Louisa participated in. She said it was that experience that “motivated her to work on behalf of unifying the Spanish speaking communities.” In 1929 Luisa had to work as a seamstress in Spanish Harlem to support her daughter and her unemployed husband. There she organized her co-workers into a garment workers union. In 1935, Moreno was hired by the American Federation of Labor as a professional organizer. She left her husband, who had become physically abusive, and moved with her daughter to Florida. There she unionized African-American and Latina cigar-rollers. She joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a newly formed alliance of unions devoted to organizing unskilled workers. She soon was elected as the first woman and the first Latina member of the California CIO Council and became a representative of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America becoming the editor of its Spanish-language newspaper in 1940. As a representative she encouraged alliances between workers at different plants. She also encouraged women to take leadership roles in union organizations. In 1939 she was one of the main organizers of the Spanish Speaking People’s Congress. This was the first conference that brought together Mexican American unions, mutual aid associations, political clubs and other organizations. In the same year, she co-founded an employment office in San Diego She also organized San Diego-area cannery workers and persuaded employers