Marjorie Agosin

2004 National Mujer Award

Intro by Ruth Behar

Marjorie Agosin is one of the most important, original, eloquent, and productive Latin American woman writers in the United States. She is a poet, writer, editor, scholar, teacher, creative thinker, and activist in the field of human rights and women’s rights. She is a woman of integrity, passion and intellectual brilliance.

Marjorie has been an essential voice in the effort to redefine Latina/Latina-americana identity in ways that challenge stereotypes and simplistic constructions of our history. Thanks to Marjorie’s presence and the generosity of her work, she has created a space for Latin American Jewish and Latina Jewish writers in the United States. Just in the last few years, she has brought out an impressive number of anthologies of Latin American Jewish women poets and writers, in English, Spanish, and in bilingual editions. Her commitment to building a community of Latin American Jewish writing is one of the many ways in which she has shown that writing can be a form of activism.

The many anthologies she has lovingly edited are too numerous to name, but let me mention The House of Memory: Jewish Stories from Jewish Women of Latin America, which is the first anthology of Latin American Jewish women’s writing to be published in this country, and her two major collections, These Are Not Sweet Girls: 20th Century Latin American Women Poets and Landscapes of a New Land: Short Stories by Latin American Women Writers, which together offer the best general introduction in English to the spectacular poetry and fiction writing of contemporary Latin American Women writers.

Marjorie Agosin’s own stunning books of poetry, especially Zones of Pain and Other Poems, Dear Frank, and Noche Estrellada, explore the themes of memory, history, and exile with a generous sensibility that is attuned to the musical rhythms of poetic language and the philosophical depth of poetic reflection. Her poems are widely sought out and have been included in a wide range of anthologies, both in the United States and in Latin America and Europe.
Her short stories, especially the collection Happiness, have a richness of voice and sensibility that make them sing on the page. Marjorie is able to bring her poetic wisdom to bear on difficult political issues and her book, Ashes of Revolt: Essays on Human Rights, stands out for me as a singular example of a poet addressing key issues of our time. Her work in human rights was recently recognized in a rare and prestigious award from the United Nations, which gave her a Leadership Award in Human Rights.

Her two new memoirs, A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile and Always from Somewhere Else: My Jewish Father, are beautiful, unique accounts of the life stories while weaving them within the larger history of Jewish diasporan displacements and search for home during the twentieth century. Together, these memoirs offer a moving window onto the history of Jews in Chile. The memoirs are told in fragments that grow through a layering process that mirrors the ebb and flow of memory.

Marjorie is unique as a Latina writer in that she writes in her native Spanish while living in the United States, thus posing fascinating issues about language and loss, translation and border crossings. She is a brilliant thinker, a lyrical writer, and a humanist in the broadest sense of the term. She has always found time to be an eloquent human rights activist and has increasingly been recognized for that work both in the United States and, most recently, in her native Chile, which has honored her with the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor.

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Adelfa Botello Callejo

2004 Regional Mujer Award

Born in 1923 in the rural town of Millet, Texas, Adelfa Botello Callejo has participated in the struggles of Mexican-Americans every day of her life. In Millet, Mexican parents were required to send their children to segregated schools, which they usually attended only through the primary grades, and later, buried their dead in the segregated cemetery. Today Ms. Callejo is one of Texas’s most eminent lawyers, and her efforts have helped people of Hispanic heritage to advance as well.

The eldest of five children, she credits her early educational achievements to her parents’ firm commitment to education for their children and the efforts of her grade school teacher, who was able to teach students English while at the same time imparting the basics of reading, writing and math. Experiencing the indignities suffered by her family and neighbors encouraged the young Ms. Callejo to learn about government and civics in school and to develop three goals for her life:

• Become a lawyer
• Achieve financial independence
• Be an advocate for the disadvantaged

After graduating high school and moving with her family to Dallas, she overcame tremendous obstacles. Her father’s wisdom continues to guide her as she refers to his encouraging words from those years. She attended college and law school at night, working full-time to help support her family, first as a secretary and then in the import-export business she began, where she developed the business acumen that contributed mightily to her successful life. Fifty-four years ago, she married Bill Callejo, a supportive husband who, she asserts, not only helped her achieve her goals but later added a law degree to his credentials. They formed a partnership and have practiced together since.

After earning her law degree at age 37 from Southern Methodist University, where she was the only Hispanic student and one of only three women in her class, she was admitted in 1961 to the state bar of Texas, and opened her law practice in the areas of personal injury, criminal and family law.

Early in her career, she scored notable victories in the appellate courts, winning new trials for criminal defendants who had not had effective assistance of legal counsel in their trials. As a personal injury attorney, she has settled multimillion dollar claims against companies charged with not following safety regulations.
Throughout her career, she has been a powerful force in the community. Her success in the courtroom and boardroom has provided the resources she uses to fund educational endeavors and community programs, and also gives her the freedom to represent the low-income clients she has always served.\

She has won many awards for her years of service in the community and the legal profession, including the Texas Peace Officers Association Humanitarian Award “for dedication to the field of Law Enforcement and for the continuous support for equality under the law for all mankind” and the National Hispanic National Bar Association Lincoln-Juarez Award for “lifelong dedication and commitment to advancing the law and the Latino legal community.” She has also won the American Bar Association’s Spirit of Excellence Award.

She remains fully committed to her belief that advocacy is the most important aspect of lawyers’ work. Her practice now involves mostly catastrophic injury, family law, workmen’s compensation and immigration cases. She holds workshops in the community to help new residents learn U.S. laws and understand their rights. She also works to educate the non-Hispanic community about the plight of immigrants and the need to change attitudes toward immigration.

Reflecting on her early poverty and the lack of role models in her early years as an aspiring attorney, Ms. Callejo urges young people not to dwell on the obstacles they face but rather to focus on their objectives and goals and find a way to achieve them. She advises them not to be afraid of power, and to work hard, as she did, “to gain the arsenal of weapons necessary to make a difference-legal training, grass roots involvement, money and courage!”

Adelfa Callejo is a living testament to the achievements and contributions of Hispanic women in the United States.