El Centro Newsletter - Spring 2023 Issue

CLR FACULTY FELLOWS SPOTLIGHT Dr. Heather Montes-Ireland

Dr. Heather Montes-Ireland is an Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and affiliated faculty in Critical Ethnic Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies at DePaul University. She studies race, gender, class, and sexuality in global economic, finance, and labor systems through interdisciplinary and intersectional methods. Dr. Montes-Ireland’s research and teaching interests include transnational and women of color feminisms, intersectional economic justice movements, racial capitalism and the global economy, queer of color critique, and Latina/Chicana/Boricua studies. Dr. Montes-Ireland is currently working on her book manuscript that examines the cultural formation of entrepreneurialism and practices of global finance as these bear upon the lives of women of color in the U.S. and transnationally. She recently published the article ""She’s Been Doing Everything Right:" Mothers of Color and Economic Violence" in Women, Gender, and Families of Color vol. 10 (1).

Interview conducted by Josué Paniagua

The topic of your fellowship project, “Decoupling Work and Dignity in Latina Visual Culture,” sounds fascinating. Can you please tell me a little bit about the project?

It was really to work specifically on a chapter for my book, for my monograph. The chapter is about the concept of dignity. Thinking about human dignity specifically as it impacts Latine and Latinx communities, particularly in the U.S. I’m looking for texts out of visual culture or film texts that are by and for Latina viewers and feature Latinas, which, you can imagine, are too rare.

In addition to your own experience as a Latina, what part of your work resonated with you the most?

Before I even got to know that much about the amazing history of my ancestors, I had always heard that Latinos come to the U.S. to take wealth. This is a powerful narrative. There were people in my family that were economically insecure, single mothers in particular, and in general people without a lot of economic resources I couldn’t understand why there should be shame or stigma in getting to be able to feed your children, getting food stamps. This is really always falling on the bodies of women of color, the bodies of Latina, Black, and Indigenous women. I really wanted to understand why women of color in particular, were being demonized and that is really at the heart of my work.

How do you understand the concept of “dignity” in your research?

I’m interested in human dignity for several reasons. One of the biggest being that so often politicians and people in the mainstream who have power, who are typically not from communities of color, are ultimately saying: “To claim your dignity as a poor person, low income person, working class person, person of color, you need to work for it. You need to work for your dignity.” This has led me to conversations and research, thinking about the way that Latine and Latinx communities think about work generally and how we are pegged as workers. The brown body is a labor body. At the same time, Latinx communities also participate in these narratives in a particular way And it makes sense because it is a way of trying to claim a place in this society. At the same time, why do have to make that claim? Why, before our humanity can be seen or acknowledged, do we have to be able to do something for the person who’s in power?

Which films have you been able to explore in your research?

One of the films I look at is called Mosquita y Mari, directed by Aurora Guerrero. She is a feminist from the L.A. area and it really shows in her film. In it, we see two young Chicanas as well as their families struggling in their own ways. There’s these tensions that show both of their moms having their own dreams but we don’t really get to see them.

These films are showing us that human dignity is much more complex and beautiful than what is often allowed by mainstream political discourse for Latina workers, and particularly, Latina moms. What has been amazing to me is to see similar themes come out of these films as well as very different stories. That’s often what researchers are looking for when writing, to see what brings this archive together

What has your experience been exploring this archive?

One of the issues that does come up for me working in this field is what I term economic violence. It is certainly sobering and often painful to experience, in some ways, the vicarious trauma the subjects of my research are experiencing. So for me, there’s two things that I typically hold on to One is that it is my duty, in a way, and an honor to retell the stories and to highlight these lives. Then, I can offer insight for folks to help them understand more about these lives. Part of what I am trying to do here is bring these elements of the humanities and visual culture together so that we can think about issues within political economy and policy. Usually, the folks that are in economy and policy are economists and political scientists. This is another part of why I’m writing this particular chapter too, which is to say, if we look at the visions and the envisioning of Latina creators about Latina lives, it's going to reflect very differently on the ways we think about policy and politics. We need to look at these other sites. We need to look at the sites of cultural creation, cultural production, film, and other types of culture that folks from our community are making to see the ways they are envisioning more inhabitable worlds. That is where we’re going to find the inspiration to create the kind of world we want to live in.

We have seen the violence that migrant and undocumented women experience. There are definitely issues that come directly from the policies that we have in the U S And it doesn’t need to be this way At the end of the day, the hope is to influence policy because it’s helping people change their minds.

How has this kind of work influenced your pedagogy, specifically pertaining to your students?

I’m interested in student reactions to these films because sometimes their reactions are both disconcerting yet sobering. It’s also amazing because if a student is telling me they have never seen that before, they have no idea what is going on out there in the world, in this country, then this is so necessary. Necessary for our democracy. For young people to be able to see and understand that “human beings deserve dignity.” It opens up entire ways of being able to relate to other human beings when you can see and experience and know their stories. This is why I also continue to keep doing this work, exposing more people to these texts and these films.

Do you have any more recent or upcoming work you’d also like to share?

I recently published a piece in the University of Illinois Press on economic violence. It’s a piece called “She’s Been Doing Everything Right: Mothers of Color and Economic Violence.” I would love to highlight that work because it has been so important to me. I’ve worked a long time on it, and it is a different type of work. In that piece, I look at a variety of case studies where I cross historical moments. I start with highlighting the police killing of Eula Mae Love in 1979 She was a black, widowed mother. I connect that to how Black and Latina single mothers experience economic violence today.

I have another article that will be coming out soon where I’m writing about the decoloniality of Boricua feminism. I’ve also been able to finish that piece because of my time with CLR in the fall. I would just like to share the power of the humanities. I hope that people really think about that within marginalized communities and how important our cultural work is, our cultural productions, to be able to theorize from and to change the world. And I think I want to take that very seriously and change that with others.

Do you have any closing thoughts?

At the end of the day, this is what we’re all trying to do That’s what theory is too When we think about critical theory, critical ethnic studies theory, Latine/x theory, feminist theory, it’s really about trying to problem-solve for our lives. To be able to create solutions to human problems It’s not something that should stay in the academy. It should be something that we are able to apply in order to help our communities and just help ourselves. Sometimes to literally just see ourselves open up to more ideas and understand why.