‘I am Senorita Rita’, so hailed a vibrant self-defined drag queen at the opening night of the first Festival of Latin American Women in the Arts (FLAWA) in London. As Senorita Rita made her way to the stage in a cabaret-style performance, she warned the audience about her accent, act and dress code. It was a bold act from Peruvian artist Pepa Duarte, with a strong commentary on gender inequality, racism and cultural difference achieved by challenging and interrogating preconceived ideas of what being a Latina is all about.
The first Festival of Latin American Women in the Arts took place in a range of venues across London between 15 and 19 May 2019, aiming to celebrate the creativity of Latin American women, ‘whether cisgender, transgender, queer or non-binary creators’. Organised by a group of four Latin American migrant women settled in the UK, this group is comprised of a young generation of professional Latin American women creating a cultural space and voice for under-represented UK Latinx women in the arts.
Latin Americans in London gain empowerment through culture and the arts. They do so by creating cultural spaces to recover and heal their memories of the past—whether it be positive memories, or memories of violence related to oppressive dictatorships or civil wars. Such is the case of Sin Fronteras, a youth group led by Latin American Women’s Right Services; the Latin American Women’s Aid Change Makers programme; the cultural magazine Ventana Latina by Latin American House; and more grassroots projects such as Bordando la memoria by Jimena Pardo and other self-organised poetry and reading groups such as Sonia Quintero’s Poetry groups across various East London libraries. These programmes use art and crafts as a catalyst for empowerment, resistance and healing. They are safe spaces within which discussion about identity and everyday experiences to enrich and build common ground around migration can take place. It is about gaining visibility as much as it is about providing a space for greater recognition, and an opportunity to build communities of resistance, belongingness and a sense of social justice.
Music and dance are also used as forms of resistance and assertions of spatial justice. For example, Talentos Group takes over urban landmarks in the capital (e.g. Tower Bridge or Big Ben) to assert a form of Latin American identity through its dance and colourful folkloric costumes. This takeover of city space invokes a fusion of styles by overlapping folkloric rhythms, dance and dress on London’s most recognised urban landmarks. New generations of DJ’s and music promoters such as Movimientos, Latinos in London and Latino Life or music groups such as WARA and music festivals such as Cimarron, all use dance and music as a means of expressing solidarity through resistance practices by supporting charitable causes.
The development of local and translocal media outlets is another way of creating spaces of recognition and solidarity for a group whose everyday news consumption needs are almost absent from the UK’s mainstream media outlets. Multimedia consortiums such as Express News and Extra Radio, for example, appear as a combination of platforms providing mostly local and transnational news and events. More specialist news outlets such as The Prisma provide bilingual digital content and in-depth analyses of current affairs; or the political news magazine, Alborada, which mostly provides in-depth analyses of Latin American politics.
These expressions are about new ways of belonging by invoking cultural heritage and fusions in London’s familiar, and less familiar, urban surroundings. It is about creating spaces of self-representation, of having a voice and unravelling trajectories of migration. Again, it is about asserting greater recognition and belongingness to the city that Latin American migrants now call home.
Whilst cultural and media spaces emerge as a response to past and current events and as a way of forging networks of solidarity, Latin Americans also become empowered and bring significant cases in support of workers in the cleaning sector, through trade union memberships. Take, for example, the following legal cases represented by the relatively new trade union, United Voices of the World.
‘Topshop 2: Victory!’1 ‘Former Topshop cleaner Susana wins bumper pay-out’2 declared United Voices of the World Union after Carolina Caceres3 and Susana Benavides,4 two of its trade union members, won their legal cases for unfair dismissal by Britannia Services Group Limited due to their trade union activities in demanding the London Legal Wage for subcontracted cleaners at Topshop’s flagship store on London’s Oxford Street.
The cases of Ms. Caceres and Ms. S. Benavides (Claimants) against Britannia Services Group Limited (cleaning services contracting company for Arcadia group—which includes Topshop) were led by United Voices of the World (‘UVW’), a relatively new union that represents predominantly low-paid migrant workers—many of whom are Latin American cleaners. Both cases were heard separately by the employment tribunal, and, in the case of Ms Benavides, it concluded that: ‘it is clear beyond any argument that the Claimant was dismissed for the reason that she had taken part in the activities of the independent trade union’ (Employment tribunal case 2208186/2016, p. 15).5 The court ruled that both workers were unfairly dismissed because of their trade union activities.
These two Latin American women found solidarity and were empowered to demand the London living wage, through their trade union activities. Their gains were significant for workers in the cleaning sector who were demanding better working conditions and union representation in a sector that is largely operated by subcontracting firms. Unionism amongst low-paid workers, and particularly in the cleaning sector, is almost non-existent. United Voices of the World fills an important gap in unionist work amongst low-paid, and often subcontracted, work in the cleaning sector in high street chains, office blocks, hospitals and universities.
These are just a few examples of the many voices and diverse experiences emerging from politically aware groups of Latin Americans in London who are challenging institutionalised everyday racism and sexism via the arts, media, unionisation and protest as a way of asserting their rights and place in London.
In this book, we try to capture some of the many narratives through which Latin Americans recognise themselves as such in diasporic and transnational spaces, and how they develop strategies to navigate the city and the system whilst also capturing how they claim their space in the global city. The next chapter provides a conceptual map that allows us to think through the myriad of spaces, narratives and practices we engage with whilst doing the research that informs this book. The chapters that follow capture the journeys undertaken by Latin Americans in their migratory circuits: from arrival through to gaining recognition and claiming their right to the city. Chapter 3 begins by capturing some of the mega narratives around migration of Latin Americans to Europe, and London in particular. The fourth chapter builds upon this by navigating some of the narratives we encounter whilst exploring routes and routines into and across London, some of which are traumatic, others, less so. The participants of the experiences highlighted in this chapter are often embraced on economic and political matters that either stimulate or constrain their movement and thus, possible migratory circuits. We capture a diversity of experiences that are testament to journeys into London. Some are stories of enjoyment and adventure, whilst others are stories of resilience and endurance. We soon realised that most people we spoke to spend a long time travelling to and from work, and so Chapter 5 explores narratives of solidarity and conflict in the workplace. Chapter 6 moves into mediatic spaces to explain how Latin Americans are creating spaces of recognition, self-representation, production and consumption through digital channels, now more available than ever, in diasporic transnationalism conditions. This occurs despite, and because of, the underrepresentation of Latin American-related issues (whether in London or in Latin America itself) in London’s media spaces. Chapter 7 captures contemporary struggles over space which are due to gentrification processes that are affecting London’s largest Latin American business clusters and spaces. It focuses how cultural expressions are used as tools to resist gentrification and invoke equity and equality around spatial justice.
At times when large sections of the population face uncertainty and displacement due to gentrification, stronger female voices emerge to capture an active community where, through their activism, women are the drivers of social change. This is seen in most leading charities in cases of gentrification where women outnumber men and lead significant campaigns against gentrification; it is also seen in attempts to resist exploitation by multinational corporations, aided by strong unionisation and also by celebrating the myriad of perspectives emerging from the arts and cultural spheres.
These contrasting examples capture the diverse experiences and discourses emerging from Latin Americans in London, whilst asserting their right to the city from cu...