WSU Vancouver Welcomes New Diversity Fellow,
Luz María Gordillo
By Sue Peabody
Associate Professor, Department of History

How does the experience of migration change the lives of women and their communities in their Mexican hometowns and in the United States? This is the question that our new WSU Vancouver Diversity Fellow Luz María Gordillo seeks to answer in her dissertation, “Engendering the Great Lakes Area: Mexican Women and the Other Side of Migration, 1942-2002.”

Gordillo – who goes by her full name, “Luz María” – was born in Mexico City and comes to WSU Vancouver from Michigan State University, where she is working on her doctorate in US/Chicana/o history. “I am really interested in the lives of women and how the experience of migration shapes and reshapes both their identities and their everyday lives,” says Gordillo.

Gordillo is challenging the traditional historical wisdom that says that Mexican women’s experiences only begin to change upon arrival in the United States. According to Gordillo, “Most Mexican migrant men historically came first to the United States at the end of the 19th century and at the turn of the century; Women and families followed later.

Photo: Ryan Lamar
Once in the United States, however, Mexican women began to maintain, change, create and develop social networks that men had previously formed.”

But Gordillo’s many interviews – with men and women on both sides of the border, in Detroit and in the Mexican states of Guerrero and Jalisco – reveal that women begin to take on new roles and new identities prior to leaving Mexico. “When the men leave, women have to do everything – they transgress social spaces that were traditionally assigned to men
such as becoming head of households and main providers of family’s needs,” says Gordillo. Their process continues when women arrive in the United States. In addition to joining the workforce, women are usually the ones to challenge, negotiate and navigate within social institutions: schools, banks, healthcare providers, and so on. They often become the spokespeople for their families, changing their self-perceptions in the process.

But Gordillo’s passion does not begin and end with historical research. After graduating Summa Cum Laude from Brooklyn College in Film and Photography in 1991, studying two years in a Master’s degree program in cultural anthropology at the New School for Social Research, and graduating with a Master’s degree in Media Studies in 1996 at the New School in New York, Gordillo achieved meteoric success as a visual artist in New York City. She created a state of the art darkroom in her Manhattan loft in Spanish Harlem and her photographs caught the attention of the prestigious Carla Stellweg Gallery, where her work was displayed as an individual show. Soon Gordillo found herself part of a vital group of artists in New York, performing original poetry and collaborating in multimedia performances of dance, images and words.

Luz María Gordillo is the first Diversity Fellow to come from outside WSU Vancouver, as part of a new campus program to support emerging and established scholars from diverse backgrounds. This semester Gordillo is teaching CES 357 Chicana/o Identity, Power, and Empowerment. In addition to continuing her scholarly research, she will work with the campus community to expand awareness of American diversity and challenge faculty, staff and students to see the world through new eyes. Her photography show, “Las/Los Héroes del Domingo: Soccer, Family and Community in Great Lakes Latino Barrios” opens, Wednesday, April 7, 2004 in the halls of the Multimedia Building. Be sure to come see it and introduce yourself to Luz María Gordillo!