Colectivo Chilpancingo
Pro Justicia Ambiental
Active since the mid-1990s, EHC’s community action team in Tijuana’s Colonia Chilpancingo took the name “Colectivo Chilpancingo Pro Justicia Ambiental” in 2002. Almost all women, Colectivo members are united by a commitment to social justice and to improve health and the environment in the communities where they live – Colonia Chilpancingo and the adjacent Colonia Campestre Murúa and Nueva Esperanza.
The group started when BEJC’s community organizer Magdalena Cerda began knocking on doors in the neighborhood to invite residents to join others in the struggle for social and environmental justice. In 2002, EHC opened its first office in Colonia Chilpancingo and conducted the first SALTA Chilpancingo training workshop there. Through SALTA (Salud Ambiental, Líderes Tomando Acción), Colectivo members learn about toxics in the home and the community, about contamination from the maquiladoras, trade agreements, globalization, and how to work together to create change. SALTA graduates recruit and conduct the training for new Colectivo members. As the Colectivo grows in numbers, so does the sense of solidarity and empowerment.
Colectivo meetings begin with hugs and laughter as everyone catches up on the news and shares homemade snacks the women take turns bringing. The children then gather in the child care area, and the meeting begins by selecting a facilitator and note taker, and setting agenda items. The full Colectivo is the decision-making body, while a rotating, elected committee of five is charged with coordinating activities and representing the Colectivo. Colectivo activities range from marching for labor rights and environmental justice to measuring air pollution from diesel trucks, from strategic planning to speaking to the media, from hosting tours to negotiating with government officials. The key activity for many years for the Colectivo has been the Metales y Derivados toxic site cleanup.
One Colectivo member, Lourdes Luján, began working with BEJC in Colonia Chilpancingo in 1997. “I’m in the justice struggle for life” (“Estoy en la lucha de por vida”), she asserted, when asked a few years later how she saw herself in the colonia where she has lived all her life. Today, she’s a Colectivo veteran, an EHC board member, a grandmother, and her daughter is a member of the Colectivo.
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