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SAN JUAN — Early last Saturday morning, about 100 Rio Grande Valley residents packed into a meeting room that has for decades been home to South Texas’ most vocal activists.

The walls around them reminded them of the their past. They were covered with murals of migrant farmworkers and the story of their labor movement in the U.S.

As the group finished their coffee and breakfast tacos, the last few stragglers checked in and collected a commemorative T-shirt.

Finally, the business of the day would begin.

Franciso Martinez, 67, rose to address the crowd. He told them he was a U.S. citizen. But he did not know that for a large part of his life, as he lived in Mexico. For years, he said, he was robbed of his most basic right as an American: the vote.

He pleaded with the audience to vote. And if they can’t vote, he said, fight for their community, regardless of their legal status.

"We pay taxes and those taxes are not labeled as immigrants. They are accepted," Martinez said in Spanish "The government has our money, we have the voice."

The people in the audience were members of La Union del Pueblo Entero, a community-based nonprofit founded by leaders of the farmworker movement, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.They were there to participate in a biennial convention known as the cumbre.

The union, established in the Rio Grande Valley in 2003, works to improve the lives of low-income residents They often focus on the needs of people living in colonias, low-income neighborhoods in unincorporated areas that lack basic necessities like running water and sewage, many of which began as migrant farmworker settlements.

LUPE, as the union is known now, began holding the Cumbre de Colonias in 2015, to gauge the priorities of its members who lived in the colonias. The event gives many non-citizens a chance to participate in a democratic process. While they can’t vote in November, they can help shape the future of their neighborhoods.

This year, LUPE opened up the event to all of their members, regardless of whether they lived. To account for the change, they renamed the event this year: Cumbre de Miembros.

There were changes in the process leading up to the convention too. In addition to opening up the convention to all of their members, they also began the process earlier, holding focus groups, led by members, in the communities during the week leading up to the main event.

Previously, members in leadership roles exclusively decided what to focus on.

From the focus groups, the member delegates formed 10 resolutions that were presented and voted on during the convention.

“This is the first time I’ve seen an organization really focus on including all parts of their community,” said Valerie Alsaldierna, 23, who served as a member delegate.

The decisions made Saturday would inform LUPE’s communication with elected officials, from speaking out during local city meetings and reaching out to state lawmakers.

Rooted in farm workers movement

The cumbre has become a staple of LUPE's organizing efforts since it was introduced around 2015, but its history in the Valley stretches back to 1979 when the United Farm Workers held their first convention in South Texas.

Rebecca Flores, the executive director of UFW at the time, heard about the conventions held by the United Farm Workers in California and wanted to replicate the idea here.

The conventions that followed were not just an occasion to discuss the issues that mattered with politicians who sought their endorsement. They led to important changes that improved the lives of members. Early successes included the prohibition of the short-handled hoe that caused back pain among farmworkers, and the establishment of water and bathroom facilities in the fields.

The United Farm Workers eventually became LUPE in 2003 and Juanita Valdez-Cox, who served as executive director from 2007 to 2023, reintroduced a smaller version of those conventions as cumbres.

"It's a beautiful mixture of people that are willing to take on what is unfair and unjust," Valdez-Cox said. "It's amazing what you can do when you say, 'Ya basta. We're not going to put up with this.'"

An issue that has consistently topped the list of priorities is immigration reform. With the ongoing contentious conversation surrounding border issues at the state and national level, though, achieving the broad reforms they hope for seems unlikely.

"We keep at it," Valdez-Cox said. "We win a little bit and we move it forward, but we don't give up."

Starting earlier

A month before the cumbre took place this year, Marcela Alejandre led a group discussion outside the home of Romana Mendez and her husband, Faustino Candelario Zarate in Donna, about six miles northeast of the LUPE offices in San Juan.

A member delegate for LUPE, Alejandre was there to lead a focus group of their members on the topic of colonias. As Mendez and her children filled out the circle, Alejandre asked them a series of questions on what issues affected them and what concrete changes they'd like to see.

Mendez is a mother to three children with epilepsy. She can’t afford medical treatment for them and has been unable to obtain financial assistance for them. But the family’s limitations haven't stopped them from trying to obtain improvements where they can.

A big issue for Mendez and her husband has been the lack of street lights in the neighborhood, which they believe allow crime to persist in the neighborhood.

Candelario Zarate said organizing enough of his neighbors to call attention to the issue was difficult, as very few wanted to follow through on taking action. But by participating in the focus group and through their involvement in LUPE, they hoped something could finally get the attention of their local elected officials.

"We want them to listen to us," he said.

The vote

For four hours on Saturday, 10 member delegates took turns presenting one of the resolutions. They ranged from better living conditions in the colonias, expansion of education programs for adults, government and police accountability, youth engagement, to addressing climate change. Then, it was time to vote.

Row by row, the members lined up to slip their ballots –– rectangular pieces of red paper with the faces of Chavez and Huerta –– into large blue boxes that represented one of the resolutions. Each member could cast three ballots.

After a brief reprieve to tally the votes, the results were in: immigration reform, broader health care access, and labor protections emerged as the top three issues.

While those three would be the group’s priority for the next two years, they would continue to advocate for the remaining seven when resources allowed, assured LUPE Executive Director Tania Camacho Chavez.

After the vote, the members trickled out of the grand hall, each collecting a white sticker on their way out. In Spanish, the sticker read, "I Voted in the Member Summit 2024.”

This version of the "I Voted" sticker, which might be the only kind that many of them would ever be able to wear, symbolized their commitment to what they wanted to achieve for themselves with the help of LUPE’s leadership.

Camacho Chavez reminded them of the importance of their participation in the work that lay before them, day in and day out.

“Don’t leave all the work to me, don’t leave the work to the organizers,” she said. “You do have your own voice, you do have your own vote.”

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/19/lupe-rio-grande-valley-latino-organizing/.

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