Before César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, there was Maria Moreno, a union organizer whose story all but disappeared from history until the discovery of lost photographs taken more than 50 years ago by George Ballis, one of the
Before César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, there was Maria Moreno, a union organizer whose story all but disappeared from history until the discovery of lost photographs taken more than 50 years ago by George Ballis, one of the leading photographers of the farmworker movement. It was a discovery that sparked the search for a woman that time had forgotten.
The story of Maria Moreno—a migrant mother of 12, who was elected by her fellow Mexican-American, Filipino, Black and Okie farmworkers to represent them—the first female farm worker in America to be hired as a union organizer, is now being told in a new documentary, "Adios Amor: The Search for Maria Moreno."
As Laurie Coyle, the film’s director, told Colorlines: “The search for Maria guides this documentary, where ghosts fade in and out and magic underpins a rawboned reality. In the end, whose stories get told may hinge on memories, coincidence and—in Maria’s case—an insistence on pursuing a path that touches the lives of others. From California’s great Central Valley, to the Arizona desert and U.S.-Mexico border, the journey yields buried treasure…and stories told with passion and humor.”
Ahead of the March 1 world premiere of "Adios Amor: The Search for Maria Moreno" at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, California, Colorlines talked to Coyle about the inspiration for the documentary, Moreno’s organizing journey and how her legacy lives on.
Let’s start with the basics: Who was Maria Moreno?
Laurie Coyle: Maria Moreno was a migrant mother who was driven by her 12 children’s hunger to become an activist in the late 1950s. She was born in Texas in 1920 and came to California during the Dustbowl Migration. Her father was an orphan of the Mexican Revolution and her mother was Mescalero Apache, so Maria was Mexican American, indigenous and a U.