Y Basta Ya! (Enough) New York is a community-engaged interdisciplinary project amplifying the lives and experiences of Latine and Indigenous immigrant women farmworkers living and working in rural Central New York. Immigration reform and illegality continue to garner critical and popular attention, sparking shouting matches, but few discussions address immigrant women’s farmworker experiences and the double sting that comes with any possible intra-immigrant genderbased violence negatively impacting women. Immigrant women, especially undocumented women of color, often stay in domestically violent relationships. They are driven to choose violence if it means the possibility of citizenship or simply a visa. Legal implications arise should they decide to leave their partners who are visa, green card, and citizenship possessing persons in the United States. Under reporting of domestic violence in general, and in rural immigrant enclaves specifically, makes it difficult to reach definitive claims about prevalence but it does not mean we cannot engage its impact. How do we tell these stories and the complexity linking racism and sexism across national borders amid the shouting matches of immigration reform? I am seeking support from the Rural Humanities initiative to host a series of free community workshops and two public performances in Spanish centering the experiences of immigrant women living in the Tompkins County and Wayne County towns, cities, and villages who, although not limited to, are farmworkers.
Performance is unique in its ability to offer multi-model entry points and avenues that account for the compounding intersectional disempowerment affecting immigrant women of color in rural areas who work in dairy ranches and agricultural fields. However, performance does not simply serve as a tool to raise awareness against isolation and domestic violence in immigrant communities and to possibly heal those persons affected—though these can be positive benefits.
The power is in its ability to name and offer legal and social support between the structural gaps leaving immigrant women dangling between dehumanizing laws and sexist communities united across national affiliations, as well as avoid or lessen the sting of revictimization in disclosing abuse. Y Basta Ya! (Enough) New York creative workshops and public performances will cultivate a space where community members take ownership of the poetic representation of their own stories.
Y Basta Ya! Nueva York will be held at the Kitchen Theatre on Friday, April 5th at 5:30pm. For more information visit www.kitchentheatre.org.
Collaborators:
- Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz (Performing and Media Arts)
- Isabel Padilla Carlo (Performing and Media Arts)
- Kitchen Theatre Company
