Luz Alvarez Martinez

Last updated
Luz Alvarez Martinez
Born1943 (age 80–81)
California, U.S.
OccupationActivist
Years active1977–present
Known for Reproductive justice activism

Luz Alvarez Martinez (born 1943) is an American activist and leader in the movement for reproductive justice. She co-founded the National Latina Health Organization, the first national feminist health organization for Latinas in the United States, in 1986. [1] She was an early supporter of the United Farm Workers, and a feminist and environmentalist. [2]

Contents

Early life

Luz Alvarez Martinez's parents were born in Guanajuato, Mexico and had immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s, settling in El Rio, California. [3] Luz Alvarez Martinez grew up in California, where her Catholic farmworker family owned a home in San Leandro and worked the fields in Fremont, Gilroy and Santa Rosa. [2] [3] She was one of 12 children. Luz attended Lincoln School and St. Leander's Grammar School (graduated 1956) in San Leandro and completed high school in Oakland at St. Elizabeth's High School, graduating in 1960. [3]

Following her graduation from high school, Alvarez Martinez began working as a secretary for the Alameda County Probation Department. [3] There, she met a white probation officer whom she began dating at age 19; the two married in May 1964, when she was 21. [3]

Alvarez Martinez enrolled at Merritt College for the fall 1964 semester following encouragement from her husband, but took time off following the birth of her first children, twins, in late December 1964. The family moved to the Lake Shore neighborhood of Oakland in 1967. [3] She ave birth to a third son in 1968 and later adopted a fourth son through the Children's Home Society in the early 1970s. When her children were young, she was a full-time homemaker. [3] [4] Alvarez Martinez has described her marriage as "hard", and the two divorced in 1981, after 17 years of marriage. [3]

Activism

In the 1960s, Alvarez Martinez began "consciousness-raising" through her exposure to the Black Panthers and protests against the Vietnam War. She also began questioning the doctrine of the Catholic Church after being told she couldn't use birth control to space out her children; she chose to use birth control anyway. [3]

In 1977, Alvarez Martinez reentered Merritt College to study to become a nurse midwife; there, she became involved in feminist issues through the Berkeley Women's Health Collective. [3] [4] Motivated by political concerns and personal experiences, she attended the first national conference of the Black Women's Health Project in 1983. In 1986, she co-founded the National Latina Health Organization in Oakland, CA with health educators Alicia Bejarano and Paulita Ortiz, and community activist Elisabeth Gastelumendi. [5]

Their group, the first national feminist health organization for Latinas in the United States, adopted tools of the women's health movement, which encouraged women to tell their own stories and take an active role in their healing. [5] [1] Latinas face neglect and abuse by the medical system, and the group raised awareness about discrimination and barriers to access. [5] Alvarez Martinez served as its executive director until retiring in 2005. Soon after, the organization ceased operations. [2]

In April 1992, Alvarez Martinez organized a protest against a reproductive rights march held by NOW in Washington, D.C., on the grounds that NOW had not made an effort to include women of color in the march. [6]

In 1997, she also co-founded SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective. Alvarez Martinez was an important contributor to the reproductive justice movement created by women of color in the US, and she often represented Latina perspectives on reproductive rights on the national stage, at conferences and in advocacy organizations such as the National Abortion Rights and Access League (NARAL) on whose board she served. [5] She worked with other leaders at SisterSong, such as Loretta Ross, to challenge the implicitly white focus of mainstream feminist organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW). [1] Alvarez Martinez has also served on the Minority Women's Health Panel of Experts of the National Office of Women's Health (1997–2005), and on the Women's Health Council of the Office of Women's Health of the State of California. [2]

Publications

Personal life

Alvarez Martinez has four sons and three grandchildren. Since 1993 she has been an Aztec ceremonial dancer. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Smith</span> American activist and academic (born 1946)

Barbara Smith is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in Black feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s, she has been active as a scholar, activist, critic, lecturer, author, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years. Smith's essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditions and The Nation. She has a twin sister, Beverly Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.

Byllye Yvonne Avery is an American health care activist. A proponent of reproductive justice, Avery has worked to develop healthcare services and education that address black women's mental and physical health stressors. She is best known as the founder of the National Black Women's Health Project, the first national organization to specialize in Black women's reproductive health issues. For her work with the NBWHP, she has received the MacArthur Foundation's Fellowship for Social Contribution and the Gustav O. Lienhard Award for the Advancement of Health Care from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, among other awards.

Sarah Lucia Hoagland is the Bernard Brommel Distinguished Research Professor and Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Women's Studies at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

Frances M. Beal, also known as Fran Beal, is a Black feminist and a peace and justice political activist. Her focus has predominantly been regarding women's rights, racial justice, anti-war and peace work, as well as international solidarity. Beal was a founding member of the SNCC Black Women's Liberation Committee, which later evolved into the Third World Women's Alliance. She is most widely known for her publication, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female", which theorizes the intersection of oppression between race, class, and gender. Beal currently lives in Oakland, California.

Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Sexology has a basis in psychoanalysis, specifically Freudian theory, which played a big role in early sexology. This reactionary field of feminist sexology seeks to be inclusive of experiences of sexuality and break down the problematic ideas that have been expressed by sexology in the past. Feminist sexology shares many principles with the overarching field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a certain path or "normality" for women's sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied ways in which women express their sexuality. It is a young field, but one that is growing rapidly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reproductive justice</span> Social justice movement

Reproductive justice is a critical feminist framework that was invented as a response to United States reproductive politics. The three core values of reproductive justice are the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent a child or children in safe and healthy environments. The framework moves women's reproductive rights past a legal and political debate to incorporate the economic, social, and health factors that impact women's reproductive choices and decision-making ability.

Black Women's Health Imperative, previously the National Black Women's Health Project, was formed in 1983 in Atlanta, Georgia out of a need to address the health and reproductive rights of African American women. NBWHP was principally founded by Byllye Avery. Avery was involved in reproductive healthcare work in Gainesville, Florida in the 1970s and was particularly influenced by the impact that policy had on women of color and poor women. Additionally Avery was also concerned with healthcare choices and wanted "to provide an environment where women could feel comfortable and take control of their own health".

Aurora Levins Morales is a Puerto Rican writer and poet. She is significant within Latina feminism and Third World feminism as well as other social justice movements.

African Americans', or Black Americans', access and use of birth control are central to many social, political, cultural and economic issues in the United States. Birth control policies in place during American slavery and the Jim Crow era highly influenced Black attitudes toward reproductive management methods. Other factors include African-American attitudes towards family, sex and reproduction, religious views, social support structures, black culture, and movements towards bodily autonomy.

Jael Silliman is an author, scholar, and women’s right activist. She currently works as a consultant on gender and development, women of color and reproductive rights, and gender and environment issues. She lives in New York City and Calcutta. She is widely held in libraries worldwide.

The Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center (NAWHERC) is a nonprofit organization that provides health resources to Native American women and also advocates for women's health, reproductive choices, economic issues and land and water rights. NAWHERC is first organization dedicated to women's health to open up on an Indian Reservation in the United States. Its agenda is "consistently broad" because NAWHERC does not separate women's issues from community issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loretta Ross</span> American activist and writer (born 1953)

Loretta J. Ross is an American academic, feminist, and activist who advocates for reproductive justice, especially among women of color. As an activist, Ross has written on reproductive justice activism and the history of African American women.

Monica Simpson is a queer Black activist, artist, and executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, the United States' largest organization dedicated to reproductive justice for women of color.

The SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, also known as SisterSong, is a national activist organization dedicated to reproductive justice for women of color.

Luz Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican reproductive rights advocate.

Latina Roundtable on Health and Reproductive Rights (LRHRR) was a Latina reproductive rights organization based in New York City.

Mia Mingus is an American writer, educator, and community organizer who focuses on issues of disability justice. She is known for coining the term "access intimacy". She advocates for disability studies and activism to centralize the experiences of marginalized people within disability organizing. She is a prison abolitionist, and she advocates for transformative justice in her work against child sexual abuse.

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice is a reproductive justice organization representing the Latina community living in the United States. Previously the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the organization started as The Latina Initiative, which was created in direct response to the lack of Latina visibility on reproductive health and rights issues. Its mission is to ensure the fundamental human right to reproductive health for Latinas, their families and their communities through education, advocacy and coalition building.

Flora Rodríguez Russel was a social worker and attorney in Denver, Colorado. She championed reproductive justice and children's rights.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Levenstein, Lisa (2020-07-14). They Didn't See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties. Basic Books. p. 172. ISBN   978-0-465-09529-2.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Collection: Luz Alvarez Martinez papers". Smith College Finding Aids. Retrieved 2024-10-12.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Transcript of interview with Luz Alvarez Martinez". Five College Compass. December 2004.
  4. 1 2 "Luz Alvarez Martinez," Notable Hispanic American Women. Gale In Context: Biography. 1993.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Silliman, Jael; Fried, Marlene Gerber; Ross, Loretta; Gutiérrez, Elena (2016-04-18). Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice. Haymarket Books. pp. 247–257. ISBN   978-1-60846-664-1.
  6. ↑ Holmstrom, Nancy (August 2002). The Socialist Feminist Project: A Contemporary Reader in Theory and Politics. NYU Press. p. 271. ISBN   978-1-58367-068-2.
  7. ↑ Zones, Jane (May 1997). "Homenaje a Nuewstras Curanderas/Honoring Our Healers". The Network News. 22 (3). National Women's Health Network.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.