Las Mujeres in Motion, A collective of WaXicana Spoken Word Activist Performance Art Poets with the purpose of "empowering mujeres to say whatever the
fuck they want!!!" The Mujeres in Motion collective is made up of five women. Maritza Soledad, Laura Alviso,
Madeline Alviso,
Elisa Miranda and Vanessa Alviso. All have stage names, respectively: Soledad,
Lala, Nena, Lil
bit and Bashi. I have worked extensively for over five years with the Alviso family, worked on a Guerrilla Teatro Cooperative with the Alvisos and Maritza Soledad in the spring of 2006. Collectiely we co-hosted a benefit for Atenco and the South Central Farm on
June 10, 2006 in Seattle, WA in solidarity with Self-Help Graphics in Los Angeles.
In the following case study I will give a brief biographical sketch of each member of the collective, discuss the historical context of Chicana artist collectives and cultural work in the Pacific Northwest, Make a brief intervention on the discussion of
high vs. low art followed by some literary analysis of the poetry of the Mujeres in Motion collective.
What I
hope to demonstrate through this case study is to give voice to a particular style of resistance culture contextualized within an anti-imperialist, anti-patriarchal, New Tribalist, WaXicanista
aesthetic de mentalidad toricida. What I
hope to accomplish is to encourage other cultural workers by demonstrating that there are folks out there, who are collectively working to make a world where many worlds can exist.
