logo

Three volumes, mainly in digital format, include networks of content linked to the Commonwealth project.

No translation available for this content.

Now Reading: Issue 2

Publication Date: 12/18/20

logo

Three volumes, mainly in digital format, include networks of content linked to the Commonwealth project.

Now Reading: Issue 2

Publication Date: 12/18/20

No translation available for this content.

Alicia Díaz

By: Por: The Editors, Alicia Díaz and Patricia Herrera

Download PDF VersionDescarga la versión PDF

  • English
  • Español
  • English
  • Español
  • videonino

    Between Puerto Rico and Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall not be Moved  Video Full Credits

    Christine Wyatt and Christina Leoni-Osion in a production still from Between Puerto Rico and Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall not be Moved, 2020, by Alicia Díaz, co-created with Patricia Herrera, Christine Wyatt, Christina Leoni-Osion, Luis Vasquez La Roche, Héctor “Coco” Barez, Yaraní del Valle, and David Riley.  Photo: courtesy the artist and collaborators

    Dancer and choreographer Alicia Díaz evokes both history and ritual in her work for Commonwealth, which centers on a performance filmed in Richmond at the former site of The American Tobacco Company (ATC) factory. Díaz was interested in the relationship between the tobacco industry in Virginia and Puerto Rico and the ways that both were tied to power and resistance. For centuries, Virginia’s economy was rooted in both tobacco and the labor of enslaved people that supported it. In the late 19th century, even though slavery had been abolished, Jim Crow laws were in effect and as a result the ATC factory segregated Black and White women workers. In 1898, as a result of the Spanish American War, the US occupied Puerto Rico, making it possible for the ATC to take over its tobacco industry. Thus narratives of the African Diaspora, capitalism, and colonialism become intertwined. The characters portrayed in the film are inspired by labor organizers: the Puerto Rican feminist Luisa Capetillo (1879–1922) and the Afro-Puerto Rican nationalist leader Dominga de la Cruz (1909–1981). At the ICA, the video was presented within an installation that interwove these histories of resistance with contemporary activism. Both the installation and the film’s mise en scène reference Puerto Rico’s strong tradition of ritual, which can be found throughout the Caribbean.

    – The Editors

    Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Bridging Stories of Resistance
    Alicia Díaz and Patricia Herrera, with Bio Poems by Patricia Herrera

    In the aftermath of the Spanish American War of 1898, Puerto Rico became a “possession of the United States.” Established in 1952, the current name—the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico—is an attempt to conceal the United States as a colonial power over Puerto Rico. Although geographically distant, Puerto Rico and Richmond, Virginia, share interrelated histories of racism and exploitation, especially through the tobacco industry.

    The American Tobacco Company (ATC) was founded in 1890 by J. B. Duke (for whom Duke University was named) in a merger with several other cigarette manufacturers, including the company belonging to Lewis Ginter (for whom the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden was named). ATC operated a factory in Richmond where both Black and white women worked in segregated facilities. When the US occupied Puerto Rico in 1898, the ATC took over the tobacco industry and leaf market on the island, pushing the transition from artisanal shops to capitalist factory production. This transition led to a rising working-class consciousness, mass migrations to the US, and recurrent confrontations between organized labor and factory owners.

    The dance film on view in this online publication, Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall Not Be Moved, brings forward these deeply connected stories. Evoking history and ritual, the film honors a lineage of resistance against US colonial capitalism through the activism of Afro-Puerto Rican radical nationalist leader Dominga de la Cruz Becerril (1909–1981) and white Puerto Rican anarchist, labor organizer, and feminist writer Luisa Capetillo (1879–1922). Both were hired as lectoras, readers in tobacco factories where they read classic literature and union newspapers out loud to the workers. This tradition of tobacco factory readers in the Caribbean and parts of the United States played a role in raising political consciousness amongst workers and informed protests demanding better working conditions. Luisa became an important labor organizer in Puerto Rico, New York, and Tampa, FL.. Dominga joined Puerto Rico’s Nationalist Party and played a significant role in the struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence.

    Dominga de la Cruz Becerril

    Dominga de la Cruz Becerril (1909–1981)

    Soy Dominga
    Dominga de la Cruz Becerril
    An Afro-Puerto Rican woman
    Nacionalista, activista
    Lectora de tabaquería
    Rebelde, atrevida, luchadora
    Daughter of manual workers Domingo Clarillo de la Cruz y Catalina Becerril

    Amo mi patria
    I love poetry
    La batalla de resistencia vive en mi

    My body is tired
    Pero me gusta moverme con fuerza y alegría, como en los bailes de bomba en Mayagüez

    Trabajaba hasta la medianoche a la luz de una lámpara de aceite y aún así no ganaba lo suficiente para cubrir nuestras necesidades básicas.
    My daughters starved to death.

    En la tabaquería
    I learned about el Asalto al Capitolio
    The US legislation was co-opting our Puerto Rican flag for the official colonial symbol
    Entonces el pueblo se metió en el Capitolio
    And 18-year old nationalist Manuel Rafael Suárez Díaz was killed
    defending the dignity of our flag.

    Al aprender ésto yo tenía que hacer lo mismo
    I became líder del Partido Nacionalista junto a Pedro Albizu Campos
    I protect the freedom of my people
    Lucho por la igualdad de la mujer en el Partido

    La Masacre de Ponce
    Los vi
    Tendidos a mis pies a todos mis compañeros
    Con sus vientres abiertos
    March 21, 1937
    I dodged bullets to rescue the Puerto Rican flag splattered in blood
    Era terrible, luchar contra un imperio que tenía toda la fuerza en su favor.

    Thank you to the twelve-year-old boy who gave me flowers many years later.
    “¡Toma estas flores, Dominga, porque a tus hijos te los mataron en Ponce!”
    And I was reawakened!

    Dominga reimagined the role of women in the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She survived the 1937 Ponce Massacre, in which a peaceful march commemorating the end of slavery in Puerto Rico and protesting the imprisonment of Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos by the US government was attacked by the police. After being politically persecuted, Dominga relocated first to Mexico and later to Cuba, where she continued to fight for the independence of Puerto Rico.

    Luisa Capetillo

    Luisa Capetillo (1879–1922)

    Luisa Capetillo was arrested for wearing pants in public.

    Soy Luisa
    Luisa Capetillo
    Feminista, escritora
    Labor union activist
    Fearless leader
    Lectora de tabaquería
    Creyente del anarco-comunismo
    Daughter of labor workers Luisa Margarita Perone, a Corsican domestic worker, and Luis Capetillo Echevarría, from the Basque country of Spain.

    Amo la madre tierra y la naturaleza eterna
    Defiendo la autonomía e igualdad de las mujeres
    Creo en el amor libre

    The US invades Puerto Rico
    July 25th, 1898
    I was twenty years old
    A witness of colonial power

    Tengo en mi corazón a mis hijos y lo que significa ser madre

    Lucho por la emancipación de las mujeres
    Lucho por los derechos de los trabajadores
    Lucho por la educación for all people regardless of sex.

    Vivo mi visión

    Desafío las tradiciones sociales
    Me arrestaron por usar pantalones en público
    Eso fue 1912 y otra vez en 1915
    No temo nada

    He logrado mucho
    I was amongst the leaders who organized the Sugar Strike of 1916, one of the largest strikes in Puerto Rico’s history.
    More than 40,000 sugar industrial workers protested for five months.
    I opened a vegetarian restaurant, a place for anarchists and socialists to convene and dialogue
    Viajo a New York, Ybor City, Tampa, La Habana, and the Dominican Republic donde participé en political rallies and strikes.

    “This planet belongs to all of us and is not the privilege of only a few. Why are there so many injustices?”

    I organized workers until my death from tuberculosis on October 10, 1922.

    Luisa was a prolific writer and a playwright. She denounced the exploitation of workers and women in the capitalist system and envisioned a more just and equitable world. She is recognized as the author of one of the earliest feminist treatises in Puerto Rico, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

    Workers at the American Tobacco Company, Richmond, Virginia. Photo: Courtesy The Valentine

    Black Female Tobacco Stemmers at the American Tobacco Company

    Underlining interrelated histories of Puerto Rico and Richmond, the film Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond was shot on location at the American Tobacco Company in the Southside of Richmond in one of the company’s last remaining warehouses before it was torn down to build a mixed-income housing complex. As the physical space disappears, we honor the spirit of resistance and liberation of Black women who worked in tobacco factories in Richmond and who organized to denounce the injustices they faced.

    We are Black female tobacco stemmers
    Posing in front of the American Tobacco Company Richmond Stemmery

    Sat right there at that table
    De-stemming tobacco leaves by hand

    Sort
    We grabbed and untied a handful of tobacco leaves

    Clean
    Spread them flat

    Stem
    Pull the stem away

    White female workers had cleaner jobs
    They inspected and packed the tobacco
    While we sorted, cleaned, and stemmed

    That pungent smell of tobacco leaves
    Clouds of tobacco dust coated the air
    And our lungs

    Made us cough
    Choke
    Difficult to breathe
    We wore kerchiefs over our mouths and noses
    And placed orange in our mouth to keep us from throwing up

    Our bosses ruled with an iron fist
    “If you don’t catch up, you will be fired”
    Without any increase in our meager pay of 15–25 cents an hour

    August 1938
    Over at Richmond’s I.N. Vaughan Export
    Louise Harris*
    A stemmer herself
    Organizes sixty Black female fellow workers
    Over the noise of the factory she defiantly shouts
    “Strike!”
    White women also walked the picket lines in support of striking tobacco workers
    After 17 days on strike
    factory owner conceded
    They won a wage increase, an eight-hour workday and the right to unionize

    Like her
    We don’t back down
    We fight back!

    *Louise “Mamma” Harris was born in 1891 in Richmond, Virginia. She was a fierce labor organizer and tobacco worker who joined the Congress of Industrial Organization and led strikes against the terrible working conditions of tobacco factories in the late 1930s.

    Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall Not Be Moved is part of a larger mixed-media installation at the Institute for Contemporary Art. This installation, Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Bridging Histories of Resistance, includes Altares of Resistance, honoring this lineage of activism in both Puerto Rico and Richmond, and commonwealth​     ​ colony, an image board that offers a broad historical context of the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Re-membering and interweaving these local and global histories through these acts of commemoration, we aim to problematize the term “commonwealth” in the context of massive protests in 2020 in Richmond as well as in Puerto Rico and its diaspora.

    – Alicia Díaz and Patricia Herrera

    Video Credits:
    Video credits: Alicia Díaz, Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in
    Resistance Shall not be Moved, 2020
    Conceptual and Creative Project Collaborator, Dramaturg, Script Writer:
    Patricia Herrera
    Movement Researcher/Choreographer, Costume Arranger, Creative &
    Cultural Organizer/ Facilitator, Performer: Christine Wyatt and Christina
    Leoni-Osion
    Set Designer, Research Assistant: Luis Vasquez La Roche
    Music: Héctor “Coco” Barez
    Voice: Yaraní del Valle
    Producer and Editor: David Riley
    Videography: Tyler Kirby, Janelle Proulx, and Dana Ollestad with
    Departure Point Films
    Color correction and sound mixing: Metta Bastet for Digital Fruit Snax
    Project Consultant: Matthew Thornton and Esther “Ñequi” González
    Special thanks to Port City Apartments, the former American Tobacco Complex, for allowing us to film on location.

    Go to Top

    SHARE
    backBack to Explore backVolver a publicaciones
    cw-logo
    • Home
    • Publication
      • Issue #1
      • Issue #2
      • Issue #3
    • Artists
    • Contributors
    • Comic
    • Tools for Uncertainty
    • Artist in Residence
    • Public Programs

    Commonwealth is organized and curated by Beta-Local co-directors Pablo Guardiola, Michael Linares, and nibia pastrana santiago and former co-director Sofía Gallisá Muriente; ICA at VCU Chief Curator Stephanie Smith; Noah Simblist, Chair of Painting + Printmaking at VCUarts; and Kerry Bickford, Director of Programs, Nicole Pollard, Program Coordinator and Nato Thompson, Sueyun and Gene Locks Artistic Director at Philadelphia Contemporary.

    bl pc ica

    Many thanks to everyone who contributed their presence, voice, creativity, and care to this project. through their collaborations with Beta-Local, See the ICA full list here

    The project is supported in part by the William Penn Foundation and Virginia Commonwealth University; the local regranting initiative in Philadelphia is supported by the Penn Foundation.

    wp vcu

    This online publication is designed by Tiguere

    cwfooter