By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Celebration of International Women’s Day will resume at the Casa De La Cultura on
Saturday and Sunday after a hiatus of several years.
Events will be held at the Casa, 302 Cantu St., beginning at 9 a.m. on Saturday, March
22, and continuing until 3 p.m. An additional slate of events is planned for Sunday,
March 23, again beginning at 9 a.m. and continuing until 3 p.m.
All International Women’s Day events are free, open to the public and all genders are
welcome, organizers said.
Free childcare will be provided by the Casa throughout both days of the event.
Among the event’s organizers are Xochi Abrego and her mother Diana Abrego.
The two women spoke to The 830 Times about plans for this year’s resumption of the
celebration.
“I think the last celebration we had was in 2017, and then COVID hit, so it’s been a while
since we’ve a celebration like this. We’ve had other activities, small activities; we
haven’t stopped,” Diana Abrego said.
She spoke about how she became involved in organizing the Casa’s original celebration
in 1986.
“That came about when we were working with a group of the Indigenous Women’s
Network. We had gone to a retreat in Austin at Alma De Mujer and the director at the
time was Marsha Gomez, and she was just a big organizer and part of that movement, and
they had a gathering of indigenous women and different leaders from throughout the
United States who had gathered for this event, which was a conference, but also a
healing.
“I got invited by a friend who was working with a group that did work from California to
El Paso all the way down to the Valley, on issues that were affecting migrant
farmworkers, border towns and maquilas, and we went to talk about issues that were
affecting our communities, and one of the things affecting us at the time – back in the late
1970s – was the maquilas and the abuse of women in that workforce.
“When we went to that gathering, we formed a subcommittee, and after the conference,
we had a delegation of women who agreed to travel around helping other women that
needed assistance in different ways in their communities, and the group that I got picked
with was a delegation that was going into El Paso and Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua,
Mexico,” Diana Abrego said.
A group of seven women, including Diana, traveled to Chihuahua, Mexico, with two
trucks containing food, medical supplies, clothing and blankets and stayed for two weeks,
seeing to the needs of women in those communities.
The hands-on activism, especially meeting with female indigenous elders, inspired Diana Abrego to bring that energy and purpose back to Del Rio.
“It was that and the fact that I had been raised by a single mom, and the fact that my dad
had passed so young and my mom really struggled, I would always tell my kids, when I
was a little girl, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, I didn’t want to see women like my mom being taken advantage of and . . .I want to help other women not be mistreated and
taken advantage of.
“So when I met those strong, powerful women there in Mexico, a fire lit in me, and I was
committed and I’ve always told my kids, if you’re going to do something, do it with
heart, do it with meaning and don’t expect nothing back in return, because the doing is
going to be your fulfillment,” Diana Abrego said.
Xochi Abrego said the desire to resurrect the International Women’s Day celebration
grew out of a conversation with her mother regarding their perceived need for healing
among women in the community.
“I think this happened in October or November of last year, and I said, ‘You know what?
We should just ignite International Women’s Day again,’ and my mom said, ‘Hold on,
I’ve been doing this since the 1980s, and I can’t do it by myself,’ so we decided to
definitely get a committee involved,” Xochi said.
Xochi said she also drew inspiration from the young women she works with in her ballet
folklorico classes at the Casa and the talented young female artists she encounters there.
Xochi said when she and her mother went over books and programs from the first years
of the International Women’s Day celebration and realized that many of the same issues
being discussed almost 40 years ago are just as relevant to women today.
“We thought, we have to do something to reignite all that history that we fought so hard
for, and what we really wanted to highlight is that we need to keep fighting, we need to
keep pushing forward. We need to not step back, and maybe that just means empowering
and educating the new leaders in this generation and amplifying them and showing them
how to use their tools,” Xochi said.
Xochi said the committee planning the celebration ranges in age from women of her
mother’s generation to twentysomethings.
Xochi said the first day of the International Women’s Day celebration will include a
registration period beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday and continuing for about 30 minutes.
Those attending the event will then be invited to participate in a healing circle to initiate
the festivities.
During the next hour, those present will be invited to attend various sub-sessions.
“These sessions will include three topics the first day and three topics the second day,”
Xochi said.
Topics that will be examined include health, women’s literature and artistic talents, home
wealth, financial literacy and legal rights, border community and education and self-
defense and domestic violence.
“We want this to be a rebirth. We want it to be a rebirth of women feeling safe and
included, educated and empowered, by knowing that there’s a community here for them,”
Xochi said.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com .
