It is tempting to describe the complex of cultural and social service spaces that Mujer Obrera manages in the three-block radius by invoking some of the predictable terms of the nonprofit safety-net nomenclature: empowerment, quality of life, grassroots, and community-based. But while those words seem appropriate in the larger scheme of ideologies of social change, the sum of the rhetorical parts do not necessarily add up to capture the whole cloth of cultural meaning that Mujer Obrera seeks to promote through its diverse activities.

We were repeatedly told by several of the women that we met during our visit that Mujer Obrera is not just a CDC (a community development corporation), or just a social enterprise project, or just a housing developer, or just a job-assistance and English learning center, or just a museum. They felt strongly about the need to blur the lines that divide these grant-making silos.

But it was their claim to what they believe Mujer Obrera actually is that seemed most intriguing and compelling. “Our mission is artistic,” said Lorena Andrade, one of the key leaders in the organization, “in the broadest sense of the meaning of the word art.” It is precisely “the art of everyday life,” she added, what “gives us the energy and vision to be creative in our economic, social, and cultural projects.”

Over a gigantic salad of black beans, fresh cheese, and “nopalitos” (cactus leaves) at the restaurant that Mujer Obrera opened in their main building, Irma Montoya, Executive Director, used the opportunity of our lunch setting to expand on Lorena’s earlier point. “Look for example at this place” she told me in Spanish, “why did we trust that we could open and manage a restaurant? Well, because as Mexican women cooking is a part of how we express our creativity; for us, food is not just food, it is the art of living. We sought training for the business aspects of the idea, but not for the spirit of what this place is all about; that, we already carried inside ourselves.”

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