Tenayuca’s drive to lead and organize union workers stemmed from her personal understanding of their plight. “It wasn’t by coincidence,” Marla Ramírez, assistant professor in the Department of History and Chican@ & Latin@ Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells Teen Vogue. “She knew the people she was organizing. She grew up with them. She had similar experiences of discrimination, inequality, hunger, and poverty,” Ramírez explains. “She was fighting for herself when she was fighting for others too.”
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