A women's collective known as "Las Chicas Bravas" has banded together to bring jobs to their town after its only industry, a Levolor window blinds factory, closed in 2006. These are two of the women's stories.
Myrta Rico ArmentaArmenta says she wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for Las Chicas Bravas. The 38-year-old woman suffers from progressive hearing loss. She converses mostly by reading lips.
“I started working in Agua Prieta without saying that I had a hearing problem, because I knew they wouldn’t give me a job. I lasted three years,” she says.
Armenta decided to try her luck in the United States. She went to Willcox, Ariz., to pick tomatoes.
“I saw the sign in dollars, not pesos. I said to myself, this where I can save for my hearing aid.”
She was able to save enough money for a hearing aid, but lived in constant fear of the Border Patrol. When someone stole the visa she’d been using, she had to go back to Mexico.
But there she found Las Chicas Bravas who, she says, have welcomed her to work and assisted her with her hearing difficulties.
“It’s changed my life a lot,” she says.
Virginia Ponce Mercado
Mercado is the treasurer of Las Chicas Bravas. She says that before the collective formed, she and her husband were both unemployed.
Sometimes they would make tamales to sell, but it wasn’t a reliable living.
“We would cross the border looking for work, my husband and I. Sometimes it went well. Other times, not so well,” she says.
Sometimes, they would have to ask their children living in the United States for help.
“It was hard because we are older,” she says. “The older people are without work and without the illusions of finding work anywhere else.”
It’s Mercado’s hope that women in other communities can look to the Chicas in Fronteras for support and with questions.
“If other women want to start doing this, they can come to us,” she says. “We are here for them.
