Anna Ochoa O’Leary

Anna Ochoa O'Leary: Oh, forget it. I remember asking my mother, because during the '60s, you had the protests, you could see them by that. We had a television. We were one of the first in our neighborhood to have a television. And, "Mom, are we Chicano?" And she goes, "No. I don't, what is that?" And I go, "Well, I don't know, people are saying Chicano or something." And, you know, and she just kind of... "I don't know. No, I don't think so." So I looked at myself, and I remember I looked at myself in the mirror. I go, "I don't know. I don't know what that is either." But I heard it, right? And there was a period of unrest in our high school. We had a walkout because we had a really harsh dress code. Yeah. Girls, couldn't have dresses that were more than four inches above the knee. Imagínate, right? Four inches is that much above the knee. That's four inches. And we couldn't wear pants.

Jennifer Nájera: Yeah.

Anna Ochoa O'Leary: Yeah. So we had a walkout. Okay. So that was kind of neat. My first political activism there, because of the dress code, how it was kind of harsh and it was behind the times. And we'd see the TV and go, "Well, how come we're kind of restricted?" The one other political moment that I can remember is that, I guess I was in the fourth grade, that I come from school and my mother looks at me and she goes, "Que tienes?" You know, "What's wrong with you?" "Oh, nada. Nada." And goes, "Algo tienes. There's something going on. Did somebody treat you badly?" That was the first conclusion. Like some kid must have said something to me, right? I go, "No, no. Nothing. Nothing." "There's something wrong. Sit down here and you tell me what's wrong." And I told her, "Well, I was just learning about the Alamo. I can't believe we did this to. You know, I can't believe." "What do you mean, we? What are you talking about?" "Well, you know, there was this fight in the Alamo, and we shot the gringos, and..." "Ay, mijita," she goes. "The Alamo was Mexican," she said. Then it comes out that she knew that history. But I didn't know that history. But I came out traumatized, so I was like, embarrassed. "Oh, my God, we did that." You know, "We, mexicanos, we did that." I mean, that's the kind of message there.

Jennifer Nájera: Yeah.

Anna Ochoa O'Leary: You know, bad Mexicans killed a lot of the heroes of the Alamo, which are the whites, the Davy Crocketts. And you come out feeling, "Damn, that's terrible. I hate, you know, I didn't want to learn that we had done something so terrible." "No, we were defending our land." I go, "Really?" Just like, that's not what I got from that history lesson. That's not what I got. And, "Pues no, pues no,están pendejos, you know? No, es verdad." And I go, "Well, okay. All right, all right. Thank you for setting me straight." Because I was traumatized, and she knew it. She saw me, and I just didn't know what to say, you know? You're just, you're there listening. You're thinking, "Shit. Yeah. You know.

Anna Ochoa O'Leary: Nobody comes to Clifton-Morenci unless you have to. Nobody comes there. Nobody goes. I mean, I don't even know why I was there that long, right? But I was born there. So that's what the battle is. But then once you become more and more aware, then we became more vocal, we became more sure of ourselves, in vocalizing our discontent. And by that time, the union leadership seemed like they were just, their hands were always tied. "Oh, we can't do that. No, we can't do that. We got to worry about the public and we got to worry about this. We got..." We go, "You know. Nothing's happening here. We've been on strike for months now. We don't... What's the end game here? What's happening? What are we doing?" "Well, no, we're working." We go, "Well, okay, but not good enough. You're not working fast enough or," you know. So we were the sharp critics here, until they finally throw us out of the... They didn't want us coming to the union meetings anymore. "No. You got, you know, you're not even union. Get out of here." "Oh, okay. So what are we asking you for permission for? If we're not union?" So we started planning our own things, and they said, "What are you doing here?" I go, "Well, you said that we're not part of you. So you're not part of us either." So we organize these huge, huge rallies. And they were huge. They were huge marches, right? And one of those last ones I kept... So there was the big one and the smaller one. But there was just so many people out there marching. And it did get a little out of hand for some people, right? There's this one picture on the cover of Life Magazine where... They call in the DPS, Department of Public Safety, right? So that drew attention, right? So things were getting just more agitated. People were getting desperate. You know, after months, people start to leave. Because we got to do something, and that, we're going to end up with nothing. So anyway, my involvement with the Morenci Miners Women's Auxiliary, as a non-union, we were in the face of the union members who didn't seem to be doing... Later on, I find out other things, but that's as a scholar. At that time, you don't know what's really happening behind closed doors. But we just kept doing, we just kept organizing. And one of those last marches was so huge and got so much out of hand, we had, actually, Governor Bruce Babbitt, governor of Arizona, call a cool-off period because people were very agitated. They were just very agitated. I can't remember now the timeline exactly. I might be a little bit off in terms of my dates. But they called the National Guard. Bruce Babbitt called for a cooling-off period and then... Forcing the company to negotiate. We thought, "Okay, now it looks like something's going to happen here." But instead of forcing, the company never came to negotiate, and instead we got the National Guard called on us. So that was a very huge betrayal. So then, we got to do our thing here. We did get the National Guard called in, twice, and it was very.

Anna Ochoa O'Leary: There was a few of us that became like spokespersons for the auxiliary and for the strike. We spoke at the CLUW convention, the Coalition of Labor Union Women in Chicago. There was another incident where... So we were there, and we had a game plan, and the whole thing. We were lined up for speeches. There was a Socialist Worker Party that really wanted us to kind of promote the Socialist workers agenda. I go, "You know what? We're not really quite ready for that. We want to talk about the strike. We want to talk about what's going on there and everything." Well, he got really mad. So he called my husband to tell him [laughter] by that time. "Yeah, she's not really," you know, this and that. I don't know what he told him, but my husband calls me. He's all pissed off, you know, just like, "What are you doing? You guys don't know what you're doing." "Yeah, we know what we're doing." You know? "Just leave us alone. Let's do our thing here." "I need you to come home right now." And I go, "Well, I'm busy." You know? But a lot of women were having troubles with... Because they would be going places, being invited, right? Being cared for, you know, hotel, or you stay at people's houses, or they help you with the plane ticket, or whatever. People wanted to hear our story, right? And by that time, the unions were just, basically, just kind of like not doing anything. And so we were the ones that were doing stuff, right? And so I think there might have been some jealousy, some competitiveness, or some plain old machismo at work. And there was women there who were having problems at home, because they were doing their things. And we already had kind of that... Understanding about our voices, the importance of women's voices. Feminists had come, we learned from them, and we became pretty much empowered. You know, that whole idea of auxiliary like, "Oh, yes, take our men some lunches out at the picket line, pobrecitos. Just help them." You know where the food is. [laughter] We're busy, right? We're writing statements. We're writing letters. We're doing the outreach. So we became busy in that role, right? Not necessarily, "Oh let's go feed our husbands. They're probably hungry," right? So that caused a lot of trouble in a lot of households. And then in my case, I go, "Well, we're busy. I can't go home right now. We're in the middle of stuff. I'm supposed to be speaking tomorrow." Whatever. And so then, kind of as a punishment, my husband always says, "That's not how it went!" I go, "I remember how it happened. Let me tell my story." So I come back. I come back from Chicago. There was three or four of us who went. We come back, I go home, and the house is dark. There's nobody there. So he left. He took all the kids. He brought them to Tucson. But I didn't know that. He didn't tell me anything. So I came home to a dark place. I didn't know where anybody was. Right? So that was kind of like the reprisal, right? "I'll show you. You don't listen to me. Well, I'll just take the kids and go somewhere," right? Basically, that's what happened. And of course, now he denies it. [Laughter] Of course.