Talk – ‘Life, Family and the Arizona Mining Community: A Gendered Perspective |UA News…

Anna Ochoa O’Leary, a professor in the University of Arizona department of Mexican American and Raza Studies, delivers the closing lecture held in conjunction with “Company Town: Arizona’s Copper Mining Communities During 100 Years of Statehood,” an exhibition at the Science-Engineering Library. The lecture will be titled “Life, Family and the Arizona Mining Community: A Gendered Perspective.”

Professor Ochoa O’Leary lived in Clifton, Ariz. during the copper mine strike of 1983. Ochoa O’Leary was also the president of the Morenci Miners Women’s Auxiliary in Clifton from 1985 to 1986. According to Ochoa O’Leary, the strike forever changed the lives of families who experienced it, as well as the social nexus that helped define the Clifton-Morenci communities.

The great Arizona copper strike against Phelps Dodge was a three-year struggle that ended with the decertification of 13 unions in 1986. During the course of events, the women of the community stepped outside the traditional roles that for generations had centered on the procurement and distribution of material resources to families. Faced with new challenges but encouraged by politics of equality, the women of the Morenci Miners Women’s Auxiliary came to contribute to political mobilization that received local, national and international attention.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, SEE ALSO:

*March 6, 2012: Life, Family and the Arizona Mining Community | Special Collections

*Transcript of Dr. O’Leary’s lecture (from Barriozona website)