Luisa Moreno
| Luisa Moreno | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 30, 1907 Guatemala City, Guatemala |
| Died | November 4, 1992 (aged 85) Guatemala |
| Nationality | Guatemalan |
| Alma mater | College of the Holy Names |
| Occupation | leader in the United States labor movement and a social activist |
Luisa Moreno (August 30, 1907 – November 4, 1992) was a leader in the United States labor movement and a social activist. She unionized workers, led strikes, wrote pamphlets in English and Spanish, and convened the 1939 Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española, the "first national Latino civil rights assembly", before returning to Guatemala in 1950.
Moreno was born Blanca Rosa López Rodríguez to a wealthy family in Guatemala City, Guatemala. While still a teenager, she organized La Sociedad Gabriela Mistral, which successfully lobbied for the admission of women to Guatemalan universities. Rejecting her elite status, she went to Mexico City in her teens to pursue a career in journalism. While there, she also wrote poetry. She married Angel De León, an artist, in 1927, and together they moved to New York City the following year. There, her daughter Mytyl was born.
While in New York, the Warner Bros. movie Under a Texas Moon (1930) was protested as anti-Mexican by a group of Latinos led by Gonzalo González. Police brutalized the picketers, killing González. The murder sparked a Pan-Latino protest, in which Moreno participated. She later told Bert Corona that the experience "motivated her to work on behalf of unifying the Spanish-speaking communities."
She was a graduate of the Catholic women's university College of the Holy Names in Oakland, California.
The Great Depression struck in 1929, and in order to support her daughter and unemployed husband, Moreno worked as a seamstress in Spanish Harlem. She organized her co-workers, most of whom were Latinas, into a garment workers union.
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