The University of Arizona Press
Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Time: 6 p.m., MST
Where: Tumamoc Hill Boathouse (bottom of the hill), 1675 W. Anklam Rd., Tucson
Tumamoc Desert Laboratory Director Elise Gornish interviews Tucson author Michelle Téllez about a women-centered social movement in the borderlands. They will speak on “Women leading the fight for rights to land, health, and education” for the Tuesday Tumamoc Author Series. The discussion features Téllez’s book, Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas, and how women work together to address issues of health, education, housing, nutrition, and security in border communities. This is a book about hope, struggle and possibility on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico Border.
This event is free and open to the public, and it is co-sponsored by the Desert Laboratory at Tumamoc Hill and the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona.
About the book:
Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas tells the story of the community’s struggle to carve out space for survival and thriving in the shadows of the U.S.-Mexico geopolitical border. This ethnography by Téllez demonstrates the state’s neglect in providing social services and local infrastructure. This neglect exacerbates the structural violence endemic to the border region—a continuation of colonial systems of power on the urban, rural, and racialized poor. Téllez shows that in creating the community of Maclovio Rojas, residents have challenged prescriptive notions of nation and belonging. Through women’s active participation and leadership, a women’s political subjectivity has emerged—Maclovianas. These border women both contest and invoke their citizenship as they struggle to have their land rights recognized, and they transform traditional political roles into that of agency and responsibility.
