We Wear Lavender Bracelets

to symbolize our unity and to remind us we are not alone

Latinas Who Made a Difference

 

  Rita Hayworth

      Margarita “Rita” Carmen Dolores Cansino was eight years old, when her father, Eduardo opened a dancing school on Sunset & Vine in Hollywood.  Some sources claim that Rita was sexually abused by her father when she was 12.
On the one hand she was quite proud of having been a Dancing Cansino, and on the other hand she did feel robbed--never having had a "normal" childhood. Rita and Eduardo were the stars performers and from their dances, most people assumed they were husband and wife, rather than father and daughter. Rita's daughter, Yasmin, said that she really had mixed feelings about her childhood.
     At Columbia Pictures, her Spanish image slowly began to fade. One of the first things they did was change her last name to her mother's maiden name, "Hayworth". Rita's hair color was lightened from jet black to a shade of dark brown (her trademark auburn tresses would come later). They then moved back her hairline to give her a broader forehead and emphasize a widow's peak. With all these changes going on, she began to emerge as one of her studio's prospective stars.
    The Rita Hayworth image was always sexy and alluring, but she didn't play in only one type of film. She was the dancing star of 1940s escapist musicals, and at the same time she played femmes fatales in a series of films noir. Two of the most financially successful and best remembered films of the war years starred Hayworth: the musical Cover Girl, in which she co-starred with Gene Kelly, and the sexually suggestive Gilda (1946), opposite Glenn Ford.

If This Was Happiness: a Biography of Rita Hayworth
by Barbara Leaming

    We follow Hayworth's life from reluctant child performer to incest victim, glamour queen and wife to Orson Welles and Prince Aly Kahn. Some readers will doubtless appreciate the details of the star's sex life and inner thoughts

    In Gilda she is used and abused by more than one man, and her apparent passivity allows her to be victimized and degraded, culminating in her famous striptease "Put the Blame on Mame, Boys."
    Hayworth's image as a destructive but pliable woman seemed to stick with her after Gilda. Rita's love life took a positive turn when she entered into a relationship with Orson Welles.   http://members.tripod.com/~claudia79/middle.html


Explorando el rol que abuso juega en el desarrollo de los Desordenes Alimenticios

Definitivamente, parece haber una relación entre abusos físicos, sexuales y/o emocionales y las víctimas de los desordenes alimenticios. De acuerdo con los estudios, un alto porcentaje han sufrido algún tipo de abuso en su vida. Esto , por supuesto, no quiere decir que todas las personas que sufren anorexia, bulimia o comedores compulsivos, los hayan sufrido, pero un número de víctimas admiten que algún tipo de abuso ha jugado una parte importante directa o indirectamente en el desarrollo de su desorden alimenticio.


Físico y Emocional

Los niños y las víctimas de los abusos domésticos que son golpeados repetidamente, tanto con las manos, puños, pies, cinturones, maderas, o otros objetos se sienten impotentes y asustados. Las manos que se entienden como amorosas de repente se convierten contradictoriamente en armas usadas para dañar. La gente que supone que debe quererle y proteger, ahora se vuelven contra él con rabia y le hieren.

EN ESPAÑOL

Petro Lo Amo (but I love him)


   She is a Mexican/American recording artist living in LA.
She has recently released her new CD called
Empowerment
    
      Being greatly impacted in her life by abuse, through her recovery she is determined to help others.  She has dedicated the following song to educate young people about this serious problem that is reaching epidemic proportions


Raquel Welch

Born Jo Raquel Tejada was born in Chicago, Rachel was the oldest of three children born to Armando Carlos Tejada and Josephine Sarah Hall. Her father, an aerospace engineer, was an immigrant from Bolivia of Castilian Spanish extraction and her mother was an American of Irish descent.

Raquel personally tells her experience of protecting her mother and sister from her father with a fireplace poker in her Biography Channel episode. 

In 1947 Armando moved Raquel and the rest of her family to San Diego. Racquel took dancing lessons and won severa beauty pagents prior to entering San Diego State College on a theater arts scholarship. Raquel married her high school sweetheart, James Welch, a year after she started college. Life was very busy for Raquel as she became the mother of two children and took a job as a weather forecaster. Her schedule was so busy she eventually quit college.

When Raquel's marriage failed she and moved her children to Texas where she modeled for Neiman-Marcus and worked as a waitress. Though Racquel had originally planned to move to New York to start an acting career, she moved to Los Angeles and began to work as an actress in movies instead. Although most of Raquel's movies were not very successful, her beauty made her a popular acting personality in the 1960s and 1970's. She even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Angelic Medina   La oscura realidad 

  Por siglos la cultura Latina ha estado bajo la sombra oscura del “machismo”. Con sus mujeres sufriendo el abuso y el dolor de sentirse insignificante y maltratada, pero la oscura realidad es una, la razón por este grave problema que ha infectado los latinos por tanto tiempo es nada más y nada menos que nosotras, la mujer latina.¡ Sorprendente verdad! ¿No crees que sea cierto? Vamos a analizar las evidencias.
      En la cultura Latina las madres son las que se encargan de la crianza de los hijos mientras los padres se encargan de proveer la economía del hogar. Desde el momento de nacimiento al varón le dan un trato diferente, ellos son los príncipes, los reyes del hogar. Le sembramos la semilla de esta plaga desde bebe. No se les da la misma crianza a las niñas como a los niños. A las niñas se les enseña que es su deber aprender a mantener la casa, cocinar y sobretodo respetar a su padre y sus hermanos por ser varones. A los niños básicamente tienen que botar los desperdicios y aprender a ser HOMBRE. Cuantas veces nos dijeron “Respeta a Tu HERMANO él es Hombre y tu no puedes hablarle así” o “Eso es cosa de Hombre no te metas” o “Déjale eso a tu hermana ella lo limpia”

     Una mujer muy sabia (mi abuelita) me dijo un día hace muchos años, “Nosotras nos quejamos de que los Hombres son monstruos pero no nos damos cuenta que somos nosotras que los creamos” Me enseño que a nuestros hijos al igual que hay que darle el mismo amor hay que darle la misma crianza. Me dijo “Tanto tus hijos como tus hijas necesitan aprender a lavar la losa, cocinar sus alimentos, limpiar pisos, botar los desperdicios, arreglar el patio entre otras cosas ya que tu no vas a estar por siempre y TU deber es enseñarle a sobrevivir en todas las maneras. Haciendo eso te aseguraras que tu hijo no sea un abusador y tu hija no sea una victima ya que crecerán entendiendo que en la vida somos todos iguales, los hombres y las mujeres, al igual que nunca lo enseñaras a ser racista.” ¿Sabes algo? Eso fue la mejor enseñanza que mi abuela pudo darme.
     Ahora nos toca a nosotras asegurar que en un futuro cercano ni una persona mas tenga que sufrir por esta plaga que llamamos “machismo”, es mas vamos a llamarlo como de verdad es “mamismo”. Hermanas, amigas, en tus manos esta el futuro.

      As a Latina-led training and advocacy non-profit based in Texas, Arte Sana has sought to empower the participation of Latinas and Latinos in the prevention of violence against women, especially along the Texas-Mexico border. Under the leadership of the organization's co-founders, Laura Zárate and Oralia Díaz, the group began to proactively promote the link between art and healing with the intent of focusing on predominately underserved populations. Arte Sana hoped to not only heal current wounds, but prevent new ones as well.
    By year's end, more than 6,000 visitors had visited the group's website and numerous trainings around the United States and México had taken place. In 2002 Arte Sana's collaborations and outreach increased significantly via the award of grant funding and the first art exhibit for sexual abuse survivors went international. 
www.arte-sana.com
The Power of Pop Culture

Los recursos en español