mar\u00eda arcelia d\u00edaz (1896-1939): feminist, textile worker, union leader and pioneer of social and work policies in zapopan<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\nIn this essay, I interweave different materials (audio, visual, musical, maps and statistical data) with my historical interpretation on the importance of Mar\u00eda Arcelia D\u00edaz (1896-1939) as a feminist, textile worker, union leader and pioneer of social and labor policies in Zapopan and the resonance of her struggles in our present time. I wove the visual, text and audio materials in my historical narrative to reconfigure D\u00edaz's time lived along with her hushed and quieted experience of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keywords: feminism, working class, union struggle, historical temporalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nPreface<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In early January 2019, Mar\u00eda del Socorro Madrigal Gallegos, director of the Zapopan Municipal Women's Institute for Substantive Equality, invited me to give a lecture about Mar\u00eda Arcelia D\u00edaz (1896-1939), feminist, textile worker, union leader and pioneer of social and labor policies in Zapopan, as part of the event \"A City for All: March 8, International Women's Day,\" at the Zapopan Museum of Art. This conference motivated me to present my findings and research on Diaz in a visual and interactive way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My challenge was how to engage in an agile dialogue with the clues found in various primary sources (textual, visual, material and sound) about his life and political trajectory, my historical and subjective interpretation of a present (2019) and the \"lived time\" and \"lived space\", that is, D\u00edaz's past (1896-1939), (Carr, 2014; Ric\u0153ur, 2004:4). I posed the question of how to show the temporal heterogeneity of D\u00edaz and our present. To answer it, I turned to explanations of the social practices of D\u00edaz's historical context and punctuated the characteristics of the world where she carried out feminist, labor, and political actions (Sewell, 2005). I was seduced by the idea that the images about D\u00edaz's life not only represented something of her experience, but also had a voice to give \"flesh and blood\" to the different temporalities -historical time and life cycle- (Maynes, 2005). et al<\/em>2008:2-3) and the cultural, labor, political and social processes she experienced. Thus, D\u00edaz's voice can challenge the audience and the historian.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn this essay I weave together the various materials described above with my historical interpretation of the importance of this union leader in her time and the resonance her struggles have in our present with various global and Mexican feminist movements such as #MeToo (2015), #Diamantina Rosa (2019) and #UnD\u00edaSinNosotras or #UnD\u00edaSinMujeres in 2020.1<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nI was inspired by the work of American historian Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the margins. Three lives of the century xvii<\/span><\/em>who reflects on the possibilities of historical interpretation based on the evidence gathered in an investigation and the questions that historical analysis implies. In the prologue to this work, Davis converses with the three women biographed-a Catholic, a Jew, and a Protestant; they question her about why she dared to analyze their memoirs and private writings. Davis answers each of their questions; she argues that they as women on the margins made the most of their position and compares them with other women and other men to locate their experiences in Europe in the xvii<\/span> (Davis, 1995: 9-13).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the first part I present an imaginary dialogue between D\u00edaz and myself,2<\/a> which helps to situate the author's present and the audience with D\u00edaz's past. These different temporalities and spatialities-with their respective contingent, complex, and heterogeneous consequences-remind us that \"people are situated within social structures and discursive regimes, but not imprisoned within them\" (Vaughan, 2019: 25). D\u00edaz fought, negotiated, and contributed to transforming the living and working conditions of working-class women and men. In the second part I reconstruct D\u00edaz's biography and political trajectory. I conclude with a waltz dedicated to her after her death, entitled \"Mujer de Occidente\" and composed by Jos\u00e9 de Jes\u00fas L\u00f3pez and performed by Lucy Baruqui.3<\/a> In 2018, artist and teacher Florencia Guill\u00e9n obtained funding from the Ministry of Culture to mount an art exhibition around the figure of D\u00edaz, titled \"Tierra, agua y territorio: r\u00edos de cambio en la voz de una mujer\" (Land, water and territory: rivers of change in the voice of a woman). The conversations and questions posed to me by Guill\u00e9n allowed me to give a new reading and interpretation to the materials I present below.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDialogue between Mar\u00eda Arcelia D\u00edaz and the historian<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
On this International Women's Day, it is a great honor for me to talk about union leader Mar\u00eda Arcelia D\u00edaz, a Zapopan woman who fought for civil, labor and political rights for both men and women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this essay I weave together the various materials described above with my historical interpretation of the importance of this union leader in her time and the resonance her struggles have in our present with various global and Mexican feminist movements such as #MeToo (2015), #Diamantina Rosa (2019) and #UnD\u00edaSinNosotras or #UnD\u00edaSinMujeres in 2020.1<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was inspired by the work of American historian Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the margins. Three lives of the century xvii<\/span><\/em>who reflects on the possibilities of historical interpretation based on the evidence gathered in an investigation and the questions that historical analysis implies. In the prologue to this work, Davis converses with the three women biographed-a Catholic, a Jew, and a Protestant; they question her about why she dared to analyze their memoirs and private writings. Davis answers each of their questions; she argues that they as women on the margins made the most of their position and compares them with other women and other men to locate their experiences in Europe in the xvii<\/span> (Davis, 1995: 9-13).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the first part I present an imaginary dialogue between D\u00edaz and myself,2<\/a> which helps to situate the author's present and the audience with D\u00edaz's past. These different temporalities and spatialities-with their respective contingent, complex, and heterogeneous consequences-remind us that \"people are situated within social structures and discursive regimes, but not imprisoned within them\" (Vaughan, 2019: 25). D\u00edaz fought, negotiated, and contributed to transforming the living and working conditions of working-class women and men. In the second part I reconstruct D\u00edaz's biography and political trajectory. I conclude with a waltz dedicated to her after her death, entitled \"Mujer de Occidente\" and composed by Jos\u00e9 de Jes\u00fas L\u00f3pez and performed by Lucy Baruqui.3<\/a> In 2018, artist and teacher Florencia Guill\u00e9n obtained funding from the Ministry of Culture to mount an art exhibition around the figure of D\u00edaz, titled \"Tierra, agua y territorio: r\u00edos de cambio en la voz de una mujer\" (Land, water and territory: rivers of change in the voice of a woman). The conversations and questions posed to me by Guill\u00e9n allowed me to give a new reading and interpretation to the materials I present below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On this International Women's Day, it is a great honor for me to talk about union leader Mar\u00eda Arcelia D\u00edaz, a Zapopan woman who fought for civil, labor and political rights for both men and women.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDialogue between Mar\u00eda Arcelia D\u00edaz and the historian<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![](\"https:\/\/archive.org\/download\/enc-8-multimedia\/fernandez-arcelia_diaz-img-12.jpeg\")
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