Weaving Community: Memory & Archive

MAY 2023

INTRODUCTION This Zine is a culmination of two archive workshops facilitated by LAWRS and Latinidad LDN, for and with Latin American womxn living in London as part of WARMI’s wider Activism & Wellbeing Programme 2022.

The sessions explored Latinx memories and herstories; asking ourselves and each other why it is important to archive our diasporic stories. This coming together of women was an entry point for us to address some of these questions.

The sessions also gave us an opportunity to archive our thoughts, memories, origins, and identities. A reminder that our embodied memory is valuable even when we feel that our ancestral lineage has been lost.

Thank you to all of the womxn who took part in these workshops. Much gratitude to Maria Camila Banol Montoya for documenting the first day of the workshop and to Sumaty Hernandez-farina for putting this beautiful Zine together, which will be archived at the Southwark Heritage Library from September 2023.

The Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) is a human rights, feminist organisation run by and for Latin American migrant women living in the UK. We support women who are exposed to violations of their fundamental human rights, facing gendered violence, trafficking and enduring severe poverty and deprivation. We also advocate for women’s rights, migrant’s rights and the rights of ethnic minorities at local, national and EU levels.

WARMI is LAWRS’s grassroots Community Activism group. It centres the lived experience of women in our community as a powerful tool in the process of social change. It organizes in multiple intersections, focusing on all types of violence against women and on labour exploitation in lowpaid sectors.

Latinidad LDN is a submission based digital archive dedicated to preserving the personal stories and histories of London’s Latin American diaspora. Latinidad LDN also hosts archive workshops and film-screenings with the Latin American community, to use social memory, and the intentional act of remembering as a form of healing.

LA PORTAL LA PORTAL

The workshops took place on the 6th & 13th of August 2022 at LAWRS' office in SE5, Southwark

Que significa el archivo para mi?

O que o arquivo significa para mim?

Vimos tres películas de mujeres latinoamericanas

Assistimos a três filmes de mulheres latino-americanas

We watched three films by Latin American womxn

Los Cuentos del Archivo

by Archivo Trans

EL Precolombino by Alejandra Jimenez

A New Flavour in the Granville Arcade by Alejandra Jimenez

Archivando nuestras historias Arquivando nossas histórias

Thank you Obrigada Participants

Alex O'Brien Angelica Bello Antonia Vasquez Carolina Caicedo Claudia Ramirez-Julio Celeste Cardenas Eliete Reis Negre Jessica Luong Joana Rossi Cardenas M. Eugenia Chacón Martha Betancurt Mary Ann Vargas Simone Amorim Simone Souza Siomara Giraldo Bedoya Susana Stanford

Gracias

Team LAWRS Community Organising Officer: Carolina Cal Latinidad LDN Founder: Lina Caicedo Photographer: Maria Camila Banol Montoya Zine artist: Sumaty Hernandez-farina