Dance responds to community needs and realities. In the United States we reflect the experience of being undocumented, of coming from families of mixed-citizenship status, and of the disconnect between grandparents in Mexico and grandchildren in the US, separated by immigration policies.
—Susana De Leon
Childhood in Coahuila
I was born in Torreón, at the southern tip of the state of Coahuila, Mexico. It has a twin city in the state of Durango. Today there are three million people in the metropolitan area. It was smaller when I was a child. I was the eighth of nine children. I felt a lot of love around me from my family, including aunties, grandparents and cousins.
We spent a lot of time in El Vergel, a rural town in Durango, where my grandma was the church caretaker. The community was made up people who worked at the winery there. When we visited, we kids were also part of the labor force. We would sit at the kitchen table, fold wine tags and put ribbons on bottles.
My grandmother was a teacher with a sixth grade education and one year of Normal school. She grew up during the Mexican Revolution. She was respected in her community; sought after for her council.
When my mom was growing up, she picked cotton and grapes. She went to school for one year, before quitting to take care of her siblings and work. She writes me beautiful letters and is great at math. When I was growing up, she was a seamstress, sewing clothes for rich families and doing maquiladora work for Sears from home. She sewed so much the machines broke. Then she got an industrial machine that made the house shake. Eventually she hired someone to help her–a home-sewing business.
It was our task as kids, to deliver the clothes she made to wealthy families. We had to go to through the garden to the back door. They would give us leftover food. I resented those rich people. Sometimes they would say “I’ll pay you later.” We needed that money right away.
My dad was a mailman. My aunts and grandma on his side were teachers. In Mexico that did not mean much schooling. He and I were close when I was little. He would have parties and I would sing and wear a long dress. My sister would introduce me: “And now the star of radio and TV…Susana!” I was funny and cute. My dad would teach me songs and would give me money for singing. He never laid a hand on me. In fact he let me get away with murder. I was a bit of a brat. When I was little he would defend and celebrate my rebelliousness. I never lost that rebelliousness. None of my other siblings are like this. I am more entitled than them.
My mother and father separated when I was seven. Dad was a womanizer. Much of his income went elsewhere. When my mother found out, she kicked him out. He took the oldest four children—born from a different mother but raised by my mom—with him. That was hard. We missed our siblings.
As I got older, I came to resent my Dad. If he had not cheated, we would have had more. When my mom divorced him he had to provide child support. That made him bitter. We had to go to him every month and he would give us coupons for school books.
When I turned 13, we had a fight and I decided I didn’t want see him anymore. My sister and I had decided we would take all the coupons we got from him and buy all the books and pencils and school supplies we needed for the year. It was the first time we had colored pencils like the other kids. My dad was angry because the coupons were taken from his salary. I saw how other people were helping us out. My grandfathers would bring us sacks of beans. Neighbors would bring us food. I thought: you are fighting with us because we have all the books we need?! Because we have colored pencils?! He was not thinking about us. I stopped seeing him. I didn’t talk to him again until my first child was born.
Though Mom suffered a lot because of my dad’s betrayal, she never took him back. He would come and beg. He would try to hit her. I remember her once holding a chair to defend herself. He would come and she would not let him in. She would say. “If you get drunk and pass out, I will kill you.”
I learned from her that you can cry and kick and the same time.
I learned a lot about how to deal with life from my mother’s courage. She wanted all of us to go to school. She believed education was the path to self-sufficiency and empowerment. She did not want us girls to be dependent on a man.
We all worked. We each had jobs in the house. When I was little I swept. My little sister picked up things. My brother mopped. My oldest sister took care of us and was the disciplinarian. My second-oldest sister did the washing. She was eleven, washing clothes by hand. The first thing my mother bought after my father left was a washing machine to make it easier for her. It was the kind with rollers. We younger ones thought putting the clothes through the rollers was fun, so we were eager to help.
We didn’t have a refrigerator until I was fifteen, but mom found a way to buy a couch, a record player and a TV. She wanted to make the house beautiful and comfortable for us. We would listen to Sandro de America, Napoleon, and Camilo Sesto on the recorder player.
My mother was not religious, but she forced us to go to church and learn the catechism. She had one santo at home, the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was from my Dad’s family. It is the only item of his that stayed in our house. It had a missing hand. She told us that if we lied to her he would move his hand. She would manipulate it to look like a moving hand. She just gave me that santo a few months ago. I put it in my alter.
Sundays were reserved for futbol and football. My brother Victor was a soccer player and my brother Hernato played American football. We’d go see them play, or watch the Pittsburg Steelers on TV. My mom would make us clean the whole house before we could watch. But no one cooked on Sundays. We made lonches — big fat sandwiches with avocado. It was fun.
Developing Consciousness of Class and Empire
Schools are not free in Mexico. You have to pay for uniforms and school supplies. As soon as we were old enough we worked outside the home. We all gave our money to my mother and she would give us the things we needed. I got a job sweeping and mopping a nearby store. I think they just gave me the job to help out my mom.
In school I began to learn about Mexico and el otro lado. There was this book about how the United states took our resources. Every March 18, we commemorated the day in 1938 when we nationalized our oil; took back our petrol from the foreign companies. We learned how much we had to pay to get back what was ours.
We lived near a part of the city that was undergoing development. We kids would go there and collect tiles. I can’t believe we never got caught, scavenging at those construction sites. It felt wrong, watching those fancy buildings go up in the new development. They were so big. Our casita was tiny.
It also felt wrong that my mom had to buy boxes of shoes from the neighbors, and often they did not fit. And that rich house where we brought the clothes our mother sewed, and how we had to hide and go around the back, so as not to be seen. I began to put all these things together — the injustices. It made me bitter.
Getting an Education
When I was little I wanted to be a teacher because that was the only profession I knew. When I got older, I wanted to be a lawyer or an agronomist, or an engineer. My mother said No. I can not pay for law school. Your wings are just developing. Let them grow. Go to Normal School. Let me give you that wind beneath your wings. Then you can fly.
When I started Normal School, I began to run dance groups for pay. I taught folklore, ballet and a form of Indigenous dance that I had learned in ballet class. And I would substitute teach. I would get up at 4am, go to school, teach, dance, run to stay in shape. My life hasn’t changed a bit.
I graduated and it was time to get a job. My Dad’s family wanted a lot of money to pass on a teaching position in Torreón. My mom couldn’t afford it. I got a position in the highlands of Puebla, and I was ready to go, but that week a teacher in that town was murdered. My mom said, “You’re not going”.
El Otro Lado
I wanted to go to the US and work. I had cousins near LA. When I first arrived in the Simi Valley, I would sit at the North Ridge Mall and watch people, to see how they lived. I spoke basic English so I quickly got a job cleaning.
At work I met people from Southern Mexico and Central America, fleeing violence. It was the mid 1980s. I had a friend who spoke eleven different languages, who had worked in southern Mexico selling her wares. Now she was working in the fields in Oxnard. I roomed with woman whose father had been disappeared in El Salvador. I was young— nineteen —still with stars in my eyes. To hear those stories of war and disappearances was really hard.
And I was learning about the realities of immigrant labor in the United States. Oddly enough, because I knew a little English, they made me a supervisor after two weeks. There I was, nineteen, supervising people who were 35. Of course that made them angry. I understood that.
I got a job at a hotel as the front desk clerk, which was funny because my English was really bad. My attitude was, “You are the stupid people. You only speak English. I speak Spanish and English — even if poorly.”
I brought my younger sister to live with me, put her in school. I told my mom to make me her legal parent. I don’t know how I knew to do that. She finished school and got married.
Coming to Minnesota
When I met my first husband — the father of my son — and came to Minnesota, I was so homesick. I would call my mother every day. After the first $500 long distance phone bill, I learned to write letters.
It seemed liked there weren’t any Mexicanos in Minnesota! When I discovered the West Side of St Paul, I cried for two days. I couldn’t go back for months. It made me too homesick. Finally I did; found a place to buy tortillas. Eventually I found community there.
I started Community College, but I was sexually assaulted while getting into my car on campus. I was lucky. I don’t know where the strength came from, but I kicked the shit out of him, knocked him out, got into my car and drove away. I didn’t go the police. I couldn’t go back to school. It took me a long time and the intervention of friends, to not feel so vulnerable.
Becoming Chicana and Indigena at the University of Minnesota
I saw a U of M outreach worker putting up posters on St. Paul’s West Side. I asked her who could go to the U. She said “Anyone. You should apply.”
That outreach worker — Tina — became a friend. Many years later she told me she had her doubts about me. I was older, and pregnant. But I never sensed those doubts. I believed her when she said I could do it. She helped me navigate the whole process. Without her I don’t think I would ever would have done it.
I was having a rough time in my marriage. I had become a QMRP —- Qualified Mental Retardation Professional — and was working with disabled adults with behavior problems. I was angry with how people were segregated and treated. I thought I would become a social worker and advocate for people with disabilities. I started at the U with that idea, but soon decided the best way to be an advocate was to become an attorney.
I was at the U from 1992- 2001.
I separated from husband, moved into student housing, started school, had my baby, and began taking Chicano Studies courses. In Chicano Studies, stories of my childhood began to make sense. I finally understood why we had pyramids. As a child I had wondered, what happened to our Indigenous cultures? I began to understand the stripping to our civilization, our clothing, our dances. I remembered the pictures of my mom as a girl, in traditional clothing. I thought about the kind of hate that led my mom to want to abandon her roots, to want to have bangs, to not look Indigenous, how my Auntie took a razor blade to my mom’s braids.
I got involved in social issues at the U and outside of it. They wanted to take our funding for La Raza Student Cultural Center. I made friends with others Chicanas. Gender became much more present in my interactions with the University, and a bigger part of my identity. Latinos were moving into Minneapolis, organizing stores on Lake Street, They had immigration issues to contend with. I also came to understand the experience of Mexicans in the United States.
When I was little my Uncle was working the fields in the US. He had an accident and he and his children came to stay with us while he recovered. At that time — we didn’t know any better — we called them “pochos”. They talked funny Spanish. They stayed with us until my Uncle recovered and then they went back to Donna, Texas.
When they lived with us in Mexico I thought they had a much better life than us. The father of my best friend was a Bracero. He would go and work and then come back. He would always have money. My uncle and cousins lived in the US I thought they must be even better off.
I kept in touch with those cousins. They were like my brothers. When I was in California one of them was stationed at Camp Pendleton. I asked him why he joined the Marines. He said “ I don’t want to pick any more oranges in Florida.”
I went to his wedding in Donna, Texas. My uncle’s house was in really bad shape. I realized that I never knew how they lived, I just assumed. I learned then that the reason the letters from them took such a long time, was because my little cousins were working with my Aunt and Uncle in the fields. My cousin told me getting my letters was a real treat, but it was sad for him, because he had to wait to make enough money for stamps before he could answer me.
I decided right then, that being poor in Mexico was better than being poor in the land of milk and honey. People like my cousins had to struggle for their language and their identity, as well as their survival. Everything was a paramount obstacle.
So when I started at the U, making friends with Chicanas from Texas and California who had grown up in the same kinds of conditions as my cousins, it made sense to me that they wanted to have better everything — including a better space at the University.
We created a group — Ome Cihuatl — which means two spirit woman. Some in our group were queer. We would show films at La Raza like Salt of the Earth. We fought battles with the University, and with international students in La Raza from rich families who treated us like shit. We established a Minnesota chapter of MEChA and became involved in a foco to plan events at a NACCS, National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies conference. We formed alliances with Chicanas at St. Cloud State and supported their hunger strike, demanding a department.
My education at the U was in the classroom, in the activities we planned, in my relationships. I began to identify as a Chicana. People would say, “How can you be? You are from Mexico!” I would say, “Well, to have a Chicana, you first have to have a Mexicana, so that’s me. It is my political identity.”
We made friends with other Native women. We learned about sweat lodge. We went to Rosebud, Pine Ridge, and Prairie Island. Sometimes we got a University car. We were all poor. I remember going to Pine Ridge. We packed bread and a bunch of hot dogs. Most of us were on WIC so we had peanut butter and cheese. We brought whatever we had and ate on the side of the road. Through those connections we met Vernon Bellecourt, Clyde Bellecourt, Russell Means. How lucky we were to come to know these Indigenous leaders.
We also had the support of Chicano Studies Professors’ Rojas and Valdes. Dionicio Valdes organized a trip to Tierra Maria in New Mexico, to meet the 5th generation, still fighting the dispossession of their land, led by Reies Lopez Tijerina. I fundraised for that trip but wasn’t able to go because my son was too little. When they came back I helped organize debriefings.
We challenged Dean Rosenstone, for shortchanging Chicano Studies. Coffman Union closed up and remodeled and we lost our space at La Raza. It was during those struggles that I learned that when an administration doesn’t want to deal with you, they create a task force and put you on it so that they waste your time, and then they don’t do anything. We went through that.
We were also involved with the Zapatistas. We were able to disrupt speeches that ignored the Zapatista struggle. It was a good time to get a grasp of the two Mexicos that exist. The Zapatistas provided a big lesson in self-determination which we could transplant here, and use in our work with the Lakota, Dakota and Ojibwe people.
I graduated as an Indigenous student, with honors. A friend also received honors and we walked together in full regalia. We had a ceremony with the Native leadership, and they gave us eagle feathers to wear. We had our braids. I had on my full headdress as well. All the white people were pissed. They said, “I can’t see.” Going to school with White people was hard. It was all about them. I told them, “Too bad. Now you know how I felt for six years.”
Surviving Humphrey Institute and Law School, with Community
I was all ready to go to Law School. I had been accepted at William and Mitchell. I had financial aid and scholarships. But friends of mine and professors told me I should go to the Humphrey Institute for Public Policy. The GRE was in a week. I figured I’d take the test and see what happened. I got a great score and was accepted with a full ride. I asked if I could defer law school. They said yes.
It was grueling. They give you a key, with the expectation that you will want to stay at the school until 4AM studying. I had my second baby one week before the semester began. My sister Pati became the mother of my two children. I would go to school, work, come home, express my milk and go back to school. Pati would come to the school to pick up the next milk and bring me dinner. It was crazy.
And I had to work with all these White people. They were so petty– like high schoolers. There was only one other Latina — Jennifer Godinez. We were there for each other. I also had Eden Torres from beginning to end, my source of strength, my goddess. When I was ready to fall she would say ”No, do it this way. Use this technique; Approach it this other way.” Dr. Sam Myers Jr. at Humphrey, and his assistants were there for me too. With this support I survived.
I never stopped being involved with activism. We brought Gloria Anzaldua to speak. Twice. We gathered with her in my apartment and cooked. I was only able to do that because my friends worked together, supported each other. One of our friends had an accident while I was at Humphrey. She was another student who was living with us. She broke neck bones. She had metal brace holding up her head. We took care of her. That was the community we had.
When I went to law school I was very glad I went to Humphrey. I learned how people behaved. The pettiness. The competitiveness.
The William and Michell Law School parking lot would be filled with luxury cars, white people with privilege, the sons and daughters of lawyers and judges. I was ready for it, but it was still a shock. There were just a few people of Color, and of course we gravitated toward each other.
My first week, I was studying late in the cafeteria. A big White man came up to me and said,“You shouldn’t be here. You don’t belong here. You only got in because you are Mexican.” I replied, “I probably have better grades than you. I got in with honors. You probably got in because you are White.”
I reported it to the Dean. Of course they created a commission. I had to go to meetings. It didn’t result in anything.
But I found professors who helped me navigate and survive. Peter Erlinder saw me one day walking down the hallway. I was looking at all the pictures of all the White men —alumni. He said “Are you admiring the White legacy of this school?” I looked at this White guy, and thought, Really? is that coming out of your mouth?” He became a mentor, helped me deal with the bureaucracy, introduced me to the National Lawyers Guild, which was my salvation. They said: Human rights are more sacred than property interest. What a profound thought.
There was an African American woman named Val Jensen. I could go a cry in her office. She was very supportive. Richard Cabrera was there for us. Micheal Jordan was an African American professor who played jazz. We had a contentious relationship. I would tell him. “You are the only African American professor. Why aren’t you out there defending us?” I would lay out my case for creating revolution. He would say “You are right. You are here to get your degree. Don’t get side tracked”
One day he got out his saxophone. “Look: this is like jazz. We trade turns. Now it is my turn. Soon you will pick up the riff. Sometimes we create harmony. Sometimes we trade forces. Come to this office any time you like, whether I’m here or not, and think about the power you have to share, inside and outside of this institution, the power you will gain with your degree.”
Guadalupe Luna, Harvard graduate, and Chicano Studies professor who taught me property law as an undergraduate, had given me the tools to question the law school curriculum. Every time they talked about Black or Brown people, it would be cases in which we were the criminals. I’d say, “Why aren’t we learning about Tierra Maria instead of the Theory of Discovery?” They would say “So you can pass the bar.” I would answer, “Why not teach them both at the same time so we can see that this country is built on bullshit?”
By then my children were five and one. I stopped breast feeding. I took my baby to childcare at the school. I survived law school with the help of my family, these professors, and other Latino students. (I got them to change the name of the student org to “Chicano Latino” Law Group. When I left they changed it back to “Hispanic).” We joined forces with the Asian and African American students, and the janitors and the cooks who worked at the law school– the People of Color at Wm and Mitchell.
The Hispanic Bar Association (which I have never joined because it is the Hispanic Bar Assoc) gave me a paid internship at Oficina Legal (Now the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota) on the West Side. I was trained by some great immigration attorneys: John Keller and Lenore Millibergity.
I also worked for Centro Legal. When I graduated–again with full indigenous regalia–they offered me a position as an attorney, if I passed the bar. For six weeks, I did nothing but study. I sent my son to stay with his dad and my daughter to stay with my mom. It was really hard for my daughter, She was three. But I felt like — I was doing this for my family and my community, and I didn’t want to screw it up. I was homeless at that time. One of my professor’s was in Japan. He offered me his place to house sit. I studied. My job paid for me to take the course and the exam.
Now, if I have law students working for me, I give them time off to take the bar and I pay for the exam. It is a ticket out of poverty but an expensive one.
I passed the bar. I didn’t want to swear in until my mother could come. I packed up my van and went to pick up my children. By then I was dating Bruce, my husband. I picked him up in Des Moines and we drove to Mexico to get my daughter. Our plan was to meet at the border. This is before smart phones. It took us eight hours for us to find each other. Finally we realized there are two parking lot. We could just briefly hug and then turn around and drive home.
Activist Attorney
I became involved in the movement in new ways, as an attorney. I had new tools, a degree, and I could analyze things in a different way. I became involved in the campaign to create a Separation ordinance, between Mpls Police and ICE, working in coalition with East African organizations, and Lawyer’s Guild lawyers — particularly Peter Brown, an amazing person, great at consensus building and keeping us on task. This is one of the first lawyerly victories I experienced. It took us a couple years to pass it.
I joined the National Immigration Project, a campaign of the NLG. We litigate in a different way — we don’t compromise.
Around 2007, I began to mentor women’s groups. A group at Waite House decided they wanted to work on a municipal ID and Driver’s Licenses for undocumented Minnesotans. They create groups focused on civil education, community education, pulling in other women to come and train them. We were working on a few fronts, — culturally with the dance, and politically with our Indigenous ways of knowing and organizing.
We had to fight against established politicians, against gender discrimination, and against perceived notions that women can’t organize. The DFL establishment didn’t want women to bring these issues, without the leadership of an established male lobbyist. The women leaders were Indigenous women from Mexico.
This has been going on for years. The women have developed their leadership skills. Women like Maria Cisneros, Jovita Francisco Morales, Josefina Catalan.
There was friction and rupture, like in any organizing. Our oppression sometimes gets the best of us. But the gains have been big and amplified. Now we have the opportunity to not all be on the same page. We don’t speak with one Latino voice. We disagree politically. We are still learning how to trust and work with each other. We had Ricardo Levins Morales help us to with mediation. We have matured, as leaders, as political allies and enemies, as a coalition. We don’t need to have lunch with someone to work in coalition with them. We have learned a lot.
This past legislative session was a great exercise in our self-determination and in looking the other way, sometimes, when boundaries are crossed, realizing that the process is not always in our hands, that we can’t be blaming community members for negative outcomes. We have had some victories, like the Municipal ID and $15 Now. With Driver’s Licenses, we have moved the needle, created an awareness in the community and in the legislature. I think we have been able to cherish and celebrate these victories while knowing that we have a long way to go.
There are other changes outside of the legislative process. The May 1st March is an institution now. Danza is everywhere now.
Kalpulli Ketzal Coatlicue. Dancing without Borders
I got started in dance because I wanted to know what happened to the Aztecs. How come we were Indios and then we were Mexican? I started to understand the stories my mother used to tell about being teased when she was brought to Durango, being called Indian and “Teca” because she was from Zacatecas.
Through Chicano Studies I learned that we are still here. We have just been displaced. What happened to the Aztec? They are in me. What happened to the Chichimecas? They are in me too. My great grandmother was Black. My grandfather is Black.
I started learning with videos, from one of the jefes: Andres Segura Granados. It was slow learning. There was a man in St Cloud, Steven Casanova, a professor at St. Cloud State, who was a dancer. Armondo Gutierrez, a Chicano artist, had the good sense to bring us together. Deborah Ramos was involved. And Lupe Castilllo. Later other people joined. We gathered anyplace we could. Slowly, slowly it became more steady.
We encountered awful teachers, abuse and dysfunction. Eden Torres helped us sort it out. There is a part in her book Chicana Without Apology, where she talks about this process.
I walked away from the first group and formed Kalpulli Ketzal Coatlicue. We learned the hard way how to guard against abuse and become accountable to our dancers and to the greater community of dance. That is still developing. The process has been filled with tension, splits and heartache. We have a lot of work to do spiritually, and as a dance community.
There were eight dancers when I started in the 1990s. There are now twelve groups. I have obtained a degree in dance. I became a capitan of dance in Mexico in 2007. Last year I was named a General, here in Minnesota. We have an amazing dance community. All the groups are doing the same thing, going to Mexico to learn, acknowledging that what we do here is Chicano dance — because we are doing it here.
Dance responds to community needs and realities. Being in the United States, our dance respond to the experience of being undocumented, coming from families of mixed citizenship status, the disconnect between grandparents in Mexico and grandchildren here — divided by US immigration policies. We have transplanted the traditions of our ancestors. The soil they are growing in is different.
The Mayordomias — mutual aid societies, are an integral part of Danza. There are now 20 Mayordomias just in Minnesota. We get together with groups in Nebraska. We have a healthy competition.
At our ceremony June 14 and 15 2019, we had visitors from the East coast, West coast, Texas, and Mexico. I organized it, but all of the mayordomias helped me, because this is the tradition form of organizing. Our exchange is not based on money. It is called Tequio, using the Spanish spelling — or, in Nahuatl, Tekio: — you come to my aid, I will show up for you.
This is happening constantly in my community. I have tomatoes, you have corn. If need a tent, I call Ana and say “Your husband has a tent? Bring it.” We don’t buy food. We ask someone in the community to make 300 galletas, or we import food from Mexico. All our mole comes from Chiapas. All of the shelled leggings that we wear are made by a particular family in Puebla. That family is now part of our economy.
I am a General now, so I have different responsibilities. I can not engage in any negativity. I have to bring the light to everything I do. I have to conduct myself in a more respectable way. I have been given that charge by elders. They call me to account. I speak to them almost every day.
When an elder calls and says ‘I heard this happened.” I have to explain myself. One will call and say, “I saw on your page, you are doing this. I am happy about that, but I want you to warn you, you are going to tire yourself out. Call me if you need me.”
The main leader is a 79 year old woman in Mexico. When I see her she hugs me and kisses me and gives me a piece of jewelry. I love smelling her braids, being in her embrace and hearing her stories.
Another lady —she is the heir — is super funny. She cooks great food and she tells me consejos, while yelling at me. She will order me: “I want you to go shower and come back and have breakfast.” She will instruct: “Why don’t you have somebody to help you clean your house? Your fucking crazy — you have to focus on other things. Call someone to help.”
There is a third lady who is really Zen. She does her yoga and meditation every morning. I see that and want to do mine.
I have these women to model after. During their time there were mostly men in leadership. But times are changing. And my leadership will be different because of where I live, because of my community.
Minneapolis Interview Project