Jovita Idár: Fighting for Justice

by Linda Harris Sittig

I must admit that before this month, I had never heard of Jovita Idár. Nor did I know a Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement started in Texas back in 1911 and continues to this day.              

And I did not know that racial segregation of Mexican-Americans started in 1910.

As a history major in college, I am surprised and embarrassed that my educational training overlooked this facet of American history. Sure, I heard of Davy Crockett, but a Mexican-American woman fighting for human rights? No.               

I recently read this quote: ‘Authentic history, what really happened, often differs from what was recorded. It all depends on who is doing the recording’.

SO, I BRING YOU THE STORY OF JOVITA.

Jovita Idár was born in Laredo, Texas, in 1885. This was just 37 years after the end of the Mexican-American War and 40 years after the U.S. annexed Texas.

It might help to digress a bit here to record events important to the story. These events impacted the lives of Jovita and other Mexican-Americans living in Texas border towns.

As a part of Western Expansion (and perhaps the South’s hope that Texas would be admitted to the Union as a slave state), the United States government annexed the Mexican land of Texas in 1845. This set off the Mexican-American War lasting from 1846 – 1848. When Mexico lost the war, it also lost the land that today is California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming were also deeded to the U.S. In exchange for all that territory, the U.S. government gifted Mexico the sum of $15,000,000.

Then, in 1910, The Mexican Revolution broke out against the 30-year dictatorship of the elitist Mexican government. Emigration from Mexico into the United States began to soar as Mexicans sought what they thought would be a better life in America.

However, they were met with segregation, unfair labor practices, economic and educational disparities, racial prejudice and violence.

THE BEGINNING OF HER ACTIVISM

Born into a middle-class family of eight children, Jovita grew up in a household where both her parents advocated for the human rights of Mexican Americans in South Texas. Jovita’s father was the owner/editor of the Spanish-language newspaper La Crónica. He ran articles exposing the oppressive conditions for Mexican-Americans in the border towns. Jovita’s mother was a firm believer in a woman’s right to vote and was politically active about her beliefs.

At the age of eighteen, Jovita earned a teaching certificate in 1903 and began a career of teaching impoverished Mexican-American children. She soon quit, dismayed at the deplorable conditions of no books, supplies, or adequate buildings for the children’s education.

She believed that she could bring about more change through journalism and joined her father’s newspaper staff.

Often writing about the racism in southern Texas, Jovita worked with her family to establish the first Mexican Congress in Laredo, Texas. The goal was to unify Mexican American citizens to fight the social injustices they were forced to live with.

As a recognized journalist, she turned her energies into community activism.

Within a month, she helped to establish La Liga Feminil Mexicaista, the League of Mexican Women. As President, Jovita aimed to secure an equal and bilingual education for the poor Mexican-American children of southern Texas.

Once the League of Mexican Women was on firm ground, Jovita decided to go to Mexico and volunteer as a nurse, tending wounded soldiers in the Mexican Revolution. By the time her father died in 1914, she had returned to Laredo and worked with her brothers to manage the continuing success of La Crónica.

In 1917, she married Bartolo Juarez and moved with him to San Antonio, Texas. Once there, she picked up again on her social activist goals. She helped establish a free kindergarten for Mexican-American children, and translated for Spanish-speaking patients at a local hospital.

HER LEGACY

Jovita Idár died in 1946, just shy of her 61^st birthday. A strong proponent of women’s suffrage, she did not live long enough to see all Latina women gain the right to vote.

(In case this sounds confusing, the 19^th Amendment of 1920 only gave voting rights to white women. Native American, Asian-American, Latina, and African-American women had to continue campaigning for additional decades to get their voting rights.)

But Jovita Idár died knowing she had spent her life helping women and children improve their lives. My favorite quote of hers is, “When you educate a woman, you educate the family.”

Jovita Idár has been recently honored, being chosen for the new 2023 American Women Quarters Series.

If you enjoyed Jovita’s story and are not yet a follower of this blog, please sign up on the right sidebar. You will receive an email once a month alerting you to a new posting for Strong Women in History.

You can find out more about me and my five novels by visiting my website, www.lindasittig.com.

I am now working on a new novel that takes place stateside in WWII. It is about the strong women who joined the war effort and helped to build the Liberty Ships.

~ Linda