I wanted to help La Bloga celebrate LGBT Pride month by profiling Amigas Latinas, an affinity group here in Chicago and one of its founders, Evette Cardona. I was lucky enough to meet Evette through her partner, Mona Noriega, both of whom have done groundbreaking work in the Latina and queer communities, with local and national impact. As a typical example of the kind of support the organization offers, when I, Ann Cardinal and Jane Alberdeston Coralin launched the release of Sister Chicas in Chicago in 2006, the Amigas were in full force at a reading they co-sponsored with a landmark Chicago independent bookstore, Women and Children First. With love and gratitude, I offer this post.

Find out more about this remarkable woman who is also an inductee in the City of Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame and this vital organization.

Evette Cardona's lesbian activism began in 1993 when she came out "publicly" and became a founding member of WACT (Women of All Cultures Together), a gathering of lesbians, bisexual women, and heterosexual women allies taking advantage of Chicago's diversity to bridge racial, ethnic, and cultural divides. The group has held monthly potluck brunches throughout the Chicago area. During Cardona's tenure with WACT, over 70 brunches gathered suburban and city lesbians together.

As an organizer, she has helped to lead or found several community groups, including Women of All Cultures Together, Amigas Latinas, the Lesbian Community Cancer Project, and the Center on Halsted Steering Committee. As a philanthropic administrator, she has been especially helpful in funding organizations serving historically underrepresented community sectors.

In the summer of 1995, Cardona helped to found Amigas Latinas as an organization for Latina les/bi/questioning women. Through a model of monthly dining and discussion groups, the organization has provided a celebratory environment for English- and Spanish-speaking women to learn about the Latina community's diversity. The group addresses such issues as immigration rights, language barriers, and homophobia in special relationship to ethnic discrimination. In 1999, Cardona helped to create the Aixa Diaz Scholarship Gift Fund, named after an Amigas Latinas founder, to aid a Latina lesbian or bisexual student fighting high school homophobia and to aid children of Mozart Elementary School, where Diaz had taught first grade.

In 1997 Cardona became a member of the planning council of Color Triangle, a consortium of persons from various organizations who meet to discuss racism within the Chicago lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. She also co-chaired the Leadership Development Institute, designed to foster leadership in Chicago's LGBT community.

In 1998, Cardona joined the board of the Lesbian Community Cancer Project, which addresses lesbians' and women's health issues. In the autumn of that year, she aided in producing El Sexto Encuentro, the annual conference of LLEGO, the National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender Organization, which was hosted in Chicago.

Most recently, Cardona has become a member of the Center on Halsted Steering Committee, which in conjunction with Horizons Community Services is developing a community center that is anticipated to open in 2004. The committee is seeking community suggestions and involvement.

Professionally, as a Senior Program Officer at the Polk Bros. Foundation, she co-chaired the Funding Lesbian and Gay Issues Group of the Donors Forum of Chicago, which is a regional association of grant-makers. She is a current board member of the national Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues and is an executive committee member of Chicago Latinos in Philanthropy. She received a master-of-arts degree from the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration in 1998. In 1997, Cardona received a Leadership Award for Community Service from Chicago's Association of Latin Men for Action (ALMA). In 2001, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois presented her one of its annual John R. Hammell Awards for her work in the LGBT community.


What is Amigas Latinas, and what need did it meet for Chicago area Latinas?

Amigas Latinas is a support, education and advocacy organization that provides safe spaces, educational opportunities and resources for Latina women who love and partner with women to explore, challenge and celebrate who they are as women, as mothers, as daughters, as comadres.

The need we fill is both to offer space for women to understand and explore their lives at the intersection of their identities - Latina and woman-loving-woman at the same time to just be in the same space as other women like themselves, speaking the same language and sharing
the same culture.

Can you talk about its constituency and the ways the organization is representational? What kind of outreach does Amigas do to meet its goals? Platicas? Events? Socials?

Our membership is close to 300 women from all Latina cultures and all ages. Our diversity spans the range from third-generation, monolingual English speakers to recently-arrived, monolingual Spanish immigrant women. Many are newly out, many have been out for years and years and seek us out for the friendships and affinity we provide. About a third have children from previous heterosexual marriages, some are still in heterosexual marriages, some have disclosed issues of domestic violence and struggles with alcohol/substance abuse.

In the past several years, we have seen a 50% increase in the number of immigrant monolingual Spanish-speaking women seeking services that are non-existent due to a chronic lack of bilingual, bicultural service providers that are sensitive to sexual identity issues.

We mail to our membership of nearly 300 once to twice a month to advertise our monthly platicas, workshops and events, we have a listserve with about 200 women on it that is a great way to advertise quickly and broadly. Our web site is increasingly becoming a way for women to find us, too. We also advertise somewhat in the gay rags especially around special events, but we rely a lot on word of mouth. We have linkages with other lgbt organizations and are present at public events be it LGBT or Latino events to ensure the Latinaqueer voice is heard.

Aside from social contact and support, what kind of community building is Amigas involved with in both the Latino and LGBT community?

We spearheaded the development of the Chicago LGBTQ Immigrants Alliance (CLIA) to look at the challenges, myths and realities that arise at the intersection of queer and immigration issues. (We're planning a town hall for CLIA on June 12). We also helped create Entre Familia, the first Spanish-speaking PFLAG in the Chicago area. It's been meeting for three years. We partner with ALMA ( a gay Latino men 's affinity group) to do that work. We also partnered with Center on Halsted to start the first Latinaqueer youth group that meets monthly at the Center's facilities.

This January we launched our Proyecto Latina survey to gather information about who we are and what our needs, dreams and challenges are. That data will be used to inform our future work mobilizing the Latinaqueer community to inform and challenge policyholders and legislators to respond to and improve our lives.

Our biggest non-queer partnership is with Mujeres Latinas en Accion (a social service/anti- domestic violence organization) and we have annually provided trainings and education sessions to help their staff better serve Latinaqueer victims/survivors of domestic violence.

Talk in depth about the organization's scholarship activities and it's significance.

In 1999, Amigas launched the Aixa Diaz Scholarship Fund in memory of founding member, Aixa Diaz, who brought vision and commitment to the Latina lesbian/bisexual community through her organizing efforts, and knowledge and encouragement to Latino children through her dedication as a teacher. Over the last 7 years we have raised money to provide financial assistance to a young, lesbian/bisexual student activist of Latina heritage entering or enrolled in college who actively works to fight homophobia in high schools. Awards have also been given to gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in high schools with large Latino student populations and to the Mozart Elementary School where Aixa taught first grade, served on the Local School Council and was the Chicago Teachers Union delegate.

This work reflects the commitment Amigas has to education as a means of empowering women. We have awarded 12 scholarships ($1,000 - $2,000) to date and will award 3-4 scholarships this June. Our biggest success with the scholarships was last year when we brought on a 2004 Aixa Scholar, Zaida Sanabia, to head up our youth group efforts. She has been a wonderful addition to the Amigas family and is doing excellent work reaching out to Latinaqueer youth.

There are been much invisibility in the Latino community for women who love women. How would you describe the importance of LGBT reality to our people.

Amigas is built on the philosophy that as Latinas who love and partner with women we cannot separate our identities and often are asked to do just that throughout our lives. Coming out is a life-long process and being able to successfully blend our identities to live as healthy and complete persons in our families, work environments and communities is the reality we strive for with every activity we provide. As our vision statement proclaims we "celebrate our lives with pride and acceptance, without boundaries or limitations, fearlessly and unapologetically."

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