In Juárez, Mexico, in December, Carly Aimi ’08 met with members of Casa Amiga, a nonprofit organization that helps women with everything from birth control to domestic violence prevention. Casa Amiga was the first crisis center for women on the Mexican side of the Mexico-U.S. border region.
In El Paso, Texas, Aimi talked with women from the Frontera Women’s Foundation, a group devoted to expanding opportunities and promoting positive social change for Mexican-American women and girls with bi-national ties.
“I went to shanty towns, to the poorest communities of Mexico,” said Aimi, an Anthropology and Latin American Studies major.
In addition to Juárez and El Paso, she traveled to Tijuana and Los Angeles with her research advisor, Associate Professor of Spanish Victoria Martinez.
Aimi is one of seven students who received funding through the Union College Internal Education Fund (IEF) to travel for work associated with their senior thesis or sophomore scholars research projects.
Her research in cities and villages along the Mexican-American border gave her a first-hand look at what women in those areas face today and how globalization is changing their daily lives.
“I met with grandmothers and mothers who spent their whole lives inside their houses, but who are now leaving and claiming their independence,” Aimi said. “They’re providing cake decorating and piñata classes as a way to teach women skills so they can make extra money for their families. These are small but important ways for them to be entrepreneurial in these poverty-stricken areas.
“They’ve also mobilized to fight for water. These women have been struggling for 10 years just to get running water in their communities, and now they have succeeded. It’s a huge achievement.”
Aimi also visited a woman who ran a children’s library after she was injured in an accident in a maquiladora, an internationally-owned factory. “Her hands were burnt and she didn’t get past sixth grade, but she was tutoring 150 boys and girls in this shanty town so they can have better lives.”
Aimi spent hours speaking with undocumented female workers in El Paso, and she met with a nun in Juárez who is helping mothers who have lost children to the “femicide.” The term refers to the city’s wave of unsolved murders of hundreds of women over the past decade. Most of the targets of this violence are young, and nearly all have been employees in the maquiladoras.
“Five hundred or more women have been lost in the past five years or so, young girls who have been brutally murdered. And the government’s done nothing about it,” Aimi said.
Calling the research experience “remarkable,” Prof. Martinez said the IEF grant made it possible for her to accompany Aimi, facilitate interviews on both sides of the border and act as a translator, when needed. She also expressed gratitude for the generosity of those who shared their stories.
“Carly and I both learned a great deal about how different groups and individuals are working to improve conditions for women in El Paso and Juárez,” she said.
Aimi’s IEF research is part of a larger study of Third World feminism. Her senior thesis is titled “A Cross Cultural Perspective on Women’s Rights in Fiji and Mexico,” and it focuses on how women’s organizations in these two cultures strategize to improve women’s rights.
“I want to see if these groups are effective in getting through, in speaking to the local women and their needs,” Aimi said. “Though not everything I saw was easy to understand, many of the women and organizations I met gave me inspiration. All I can hope for is that through my research, I can sincerely shed some light on all the things women are doing around the world to help one another. “
As part of her larger research, last summer Aimi took her second trip to Fiji with Professor of Anthropology Karen Brison, her thesis advisor. As an assistant researcher, Aimi helped Brison explore gender and racial relations among preschool Fijian children.
While there, she conducted her own research.
“I thought it would be interesting to compare the borderlands of Mexico and Fiji to understand and develop suggestions on the anthropological debate of universal human rights and how many identities of women in Third World countries do not comply with the ‘westernized’ universal standard,” Aimi said.