TERESA LEAL--TRANSNATIONAL INDIGENOUS WOMEN'S ORGANIZING--

TERESA LEAL, OPATA-MAYO, is one of my teachers and mentors. She is a community leader in an urban border community, along the Sonora-Arizona international boundary, AMBOS NOGALES, and she, along with numerous women from more than 60 indigenous women's comunidades in Ambos Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, and Arizona, U.S. We have been comadres (matrilineal sisters-in-solidarity) since 2002. Teresa advocated for me to follow 'next steps' required by an indigenous women's network along the U.S.-Mexico corridors, and she urged me to support the communities' goals and objectives to gain access to academic knowledge. "Go for your PhD---we need you to grow even more and to work to improve the situations of Indigenous women through the university," Teresa said to me.

So, here I am with you, my students, ... I followed the advice of my teacher, mentor, and elder comadre.

Thanks to Reilly (!) for sending this Youtube of Teresa and her important work in Nogales. Teresa, like my mother, is always on the move, and even I, who studies and researches her work for my PhD, cannot keep up with her!!

She exemplifies how indigenous women's organizing for human, social, economic, political and cultural rights is robust and here to stay!