Claudia De La Cruz: Motherhood As a Part of Her Revolutionary Process
Written by: Ynanna Djehuty
Claudia was recently postpartum when she shared last year how supportive her community had been as she became a mother. She made mention of the remedios her mother and elders gave her that kept her healthy and well in a world where postpartum mothers often feel unsupported. I had known her as a powerful revolutionary woman in the movement and became deeply interested in listening to the most recent part of her evolution. I invited her this past May to elaborate on her experience. It was fitting then that I waited for her at Mothers On the Move (MOM) in the South Bronx, a social justice community organization that prioritizes four issue areas for base-building, local campaigns, and policy work: Housing Justice, Environmental Justice, Youth Organizing & Education Justice. Rebel Diaz shares a space with them so it is a space Claudia is familiar with; the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective is an important part of her community.
She showed up wearing her son Roque and she began to share about her motherhood journey. Claudia is a Bronx native (born at 139th and St. Annâs in the South Bronx and raised in the University Heights neighborhood) whose parents immigrated from the Dominican Republic. She is a graduate from Theodore Roosevelt High School, and a graduate with a BA (2001) in forensic psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and two Masterâs degrees; one in social work from Columbia University and the other in divinity from Union Theological Seminary (both in 2007). âIâve always identified myself as a Black Dominican or Afro-Caribbean. Iâm an educator and pastor.â Claudia has served as the pastor of Iglesia San Romero De Las Americas but currently does not have a church. âI will always be pasturing in whatever capacity or space I am in. Iâm a mom now, you know. I think itâs a part of my revolutionary work. I see [Roqueâs] life as something that is not solely mine individually or his individually but as part of the collective,â she said.
https://youtu.be/wwlqb6opMAQÂ Â â Claudia speaking about being a black afro Caribbean woman
âI called him Roque in honor of Roque Dalton. I went upstate [one] weekend with my family and one of my nieces learned one of the most famous poems that talks about âla sangre unĂĄnime de los que luchaâ y âel pan, como la poesĂa es de todos.ââ Claudia chose to name her son after the Salvadorian revolutionary and poet. âThe reason that I choose this name is because of that man, who was able to articulate a working class struggle, more than anything. And the beauty of our culture, being accessible and being for everyone. As someone whoâs an educator, I think a lot of the times there are languages that are created to leave people out and academia is definitely good at that. When you read Roque Dalton and he talks about la poesia igual que el pan es de todosâŠthereâs no better way for me to be reminded of a collective struggle and name my son Roque and know thatâs the reason that I named him that. Because weâre still in the struggle.â
She stayed active in her organizing work through her pregnancy. âAlthough I was quite healthy for most of my pregnancy, there were decisions in terms of my day to day that I needed to make. So as an organizer, you go to protests, you organizeâŠand I kept on doing that to the extent that I decided when I was 7 months pregnant to go to Ferguson because of everything that was happening around Mike Brown. And I remember my mom saying something like, âTu ereâ loca.â
https://youtu.be/JNSR0QYGepM?list=PLHeJvyejhWVLgSZvR-VVBUn--lS_oBEQX
Her mother was concerned with the tear gas that was being thrown, telling her daughter it was dangerous for the baby and asking why she was going. âWell, because itâs a reproductive [health] issue too. They are killing [our] babies out there. They are killing other womenâs babies and there are a lot of women out there, Iâm imagining, that are also pregnant. So Iâm gonna go.â Claudia describes her journey to Ferguson with the 17-hour ride going and coming back as spiritual for her. Regardless of what was happening, she saw that the protesting was grounded in family. She also went to the protest in support of Palestine with Roque still in her womb. âI think I found strength in another way. It has a certain level of more strength for me as a person of color, as a woman, as someone who thinks of herself as part of a Black radical tradition to say, Iâm a mom. To me, thatâs also part of a revolutionary process and I shouldnât exclude myself or exclude him from spaces that are about transformation, and so I kept on doing all this work while I still was pregnant, and I couldnât have done it if I didnât have community, those women, but also my partner. As un hombre consciente, he doesnât say, âNo, you canât go,â but instead, âletâs have this conversation, okay? Why do you want to go?â
Claudia took a different role after midnight and continued her work. âThe folks that I work with are mainly men in the collective, in the Ă Donât Stop project. You see all these men like, âOkay you gotta do this interview? Let me carry him.â Everybody assumes the responsibility that he is not only mine or his fatherâs but heâs part of the collective and weâre all responsible for him. It takes a village.â That village and community is and was of the utmost importance to her through her pregnancy and now in the postpartum. Being pregnant reminded her once again of the severe lack of quality in healthcare. She knew the hospitals in the South Bronx were not a good idea. âI also know what our reality is soâŠI went to New York Presbyterian, which isnât the greatest either but they offered the combination of a midwife and doctor. I felt comfortable there.â
Her pregnancy was awesome. The first three months were challenging because of the morning sickness but it never felt like pregnancy was a deficit. The men around her were protective of her and didnât want her to lift or do certain things. âIâm pregnant. Iâm not sick. Itâs not an illness, itâs a condition. Iâm pregnant, it happens and Iâm going to continue to do the work that I do.â Claudiaâs labor was hard for her due to laboring for three days and acknowledging the difficulty of being so hormonal and experiencing so many changes. Becoming a mother changed the relationship with her own mother completely. She has much more value and a bigger sense of her motherâs wisdom. Their relationship has been strengthened and has moved into a space of sisterhood. âI had to get a C-section because his heart rate dropped when I was in the hospital but my mom had three C-sections.â She was in a lot of pain and mused that she was whining about it. âMy mom is like, âI did that shit three times!â That gave me strength to be able to get up and walk around cause Iâm like, âyou did it, I could do it.â Letâs get this popping.â
The wisdom of her mother and community has been incredibly nourishing. âI understand that the reason my mom was able to provide for me some of that counsel is because she got it from her mom. And her mom got it from her mom, and thatâs the case for a lot of the women that are around me. Unfortunately in the larger scale, in our community thereâs so many levels of disconnect.â Claudia spoke about the reality that the immigrant experience includes sometimes being separated from mothers. Women have sometimes left because of socioeconomic or political reasons, leaving entire families behind while theyâre here on their own. That separation can cut them off from old school wisdom during their pregnancies. âThereâs a level of also just assuming or thinking that conventional medicine is the way to go and that ancestral medicine has no strength or depth or value. And then there are the folks that choose not to listen to ancestral guidance. For me, as someone who believes in liberation and transformation, ancestral wisdom has a very big place in my life.â
There was no way for Claudia to receive the fullness of her lifeâs work without that connection to her elders. Her mother stayed on top of her daughterâs diet during her gestation period, âque si una sopa de esto, que si una sopa de lo otroâŠâ and has continued to nourish her and Roque to this day. âAs soon as I gave birth, she came and she brought me tĂ© de tres anis to help with the gases and the release of water.â This knowledge of what and how to care for women is part of the Black indigenous tradition that is lost, unfortunately, in a country where thereâs no value for blackness or indigenous cultures. âIn terms of that community, I feel like itâs always been there and itâs always led me. My pregnancy and my birth were not gonna be the first time for me not to value it; if anything, es donde yo mas he asumido mi negritud y ese tipo de sabidurĂa ancestral.â
The same way her son became a part of her lifeâs work while she was pregnant, he continues to be present. As Claudia mentioned how it takes a village to raise a child, she spoke about motherhood and the ideas about it. The society in which we live has a bad idea that children are bothersome. âYou go to a meeting, you donât take your child because va a molestar. For me itâs like, if it bothers you, then you have a problem. Because, my child goes where I go. Y eso es muy de nuestra tradiciones. No necesariamente para las sociedades que se han creado ahora, en estos siglos, pero antes del colonialismo, antes de todo eso, andaban las madres con sus niños cargaditos.â She knows there is strength in that and the council of women in the meetings affirms her. â[They] go, âRoque!!!!â and they carry him around and they play with him, and we carry on with business; heâs not alien or heâs not isolated or heâs not seen as an impediment. Whereas we live in a society or country where there are spaces like meeting spaces or working spaces where they see a child and itâs like âoh, thereâs a baby.â And the feeling is like, âwhy is he here?ââ
Claudia thinks many women have felt excluded or have been excluded from spaces because these are not created for children. âNo se crean espacios para que un niño pueda participar en eventos. Now that Iâm in a new phase as a mom, even though I was more conscious about it before with my work with women, now Iâm even more conscious of it. We have a speaking engagement? Oh, Iâm bringing my son. And if you donât want me to speak with him on the podium, then Iâm gonna have to bring somebody else whoâs gonna take care of him. Iâm not excluding myself from the work that Iâve always done because I am mom. Heâs part of it.â One of her practices that merges her sociopolitical views and motherhood are her letters to Roque. âHis life is a project. Itâs a social political project because he is part of something that is larger, something that I may not be able to see someday but he will, and maybe he wonât be able to see it. Thereâs hope that something will change in this society. Iâve always thought of him as part of that hope.â
Though, it is not lost on her that Roque is both a part of the collective and her responsibility. âI never thought about him as like, my child. My kid, my boy, right? So it wasnât until he was born and the nurse came and gave me my son. âHereâs your son,â that I was like âoh shit, heâs my son!ââ Claudia knows he is not solely a socio-political project. She has most of the responsibility of guiding him and facilitating a process by which he understands himself as part of a collective. âAnd so I started writing to him con esa nociĂłn. He probably wonât even pay attention to those letters until heâs in college. But I wanted him to know the social, political, economic, spiritual space in which he was born.â For Claudia, giving her son the context in which she is raising him is important. âA lot of the times we donât know why our parents migrated, what was happening in the countries where weâre from or we donât know why our parents were forced to live in the conditions that they live here.â She shares about her own life and parentâs history: âI was born in the South Bronx and my parents had to make the choice when I was five and my oldest brother was eight to send us back to the Dominican Republic to be raised by our grandmother because where they were living, the social conditions of the space when they were on 149th and St. AnneâsâŠweâre talking about the 80s. It was a neglected community, theyâre immigrants. Theyâre like, âwait a minute, they donât need to be here where they could be in open land with their grandmaââŠliving more of a quality life and I was able to understand their choice when I first learned history. What was happening at that moment in time historically that made my parents make the decision that they made.â
âTu tienes hambre, papi?â She took a moment to breastfeed Roque and we continued. She wants her son to hear history from her because what is taught in school is more often than not inaccurate and lacking analysis. In her letters, Claudia shares life lessons that she hopes heâll share with the world. âThatâs his choice because heâs also an individual and heâll grow into his own man.â She reflected on how in her own journey growing up, she had a period in her life in which she lost sight of the value in her communityâs wisdom. âI grew a lot but at the same time I devalued a lot of what I was coming from. A lot of what I was coming from was so popularâŠtan del pueblo, tan bĂĄsico. My grandmother used to say, âtu no eres mejor que nadie y nadie es mejor que tu. Tu eres Ășnica.â Como cosas sumamente simple, and I was likeâŠnew knowledge and new way about doing shit and nobody knew better than I did, right?â
As she continued to grow, Claudia understood that it was the foundation she was given from her family and community the reason she was able to capture many feminist, communist and radical principles. Â Particularly, she realized her mom was exactly the type of woman she was trying to save the world for. âThis is some straight up colonizing way of dealing with this. I feel a lot of folks in different spaces or just in movement in general, we get so far from the ordinary folks that weâre supposed to be struggling with and for. Luckily I had folks around me that were like, but your mom is great. She cooks great, she raised you three, sheâs done this, sheâs done that. The idea that everyone, everyone has value.â
Her homegrown values were only heightened by these political ideologies.  âAs young people of color, we need to, again, acknowledge that we come from a long Black radical tradition that is prior to enslavement, prior to the process of colonization, prior to imperialismâŠand we need to look back, like the Sankofa movement.â She believes we must look back to be able to know how to hold the present and the future. This requires research and investigating, reaching out to our elders who are still with us. âAsk those questions. If mom is alive, ask mom. âCual era los consejos que tu mama te daba?â One of the things that I started telling my mom, and this is just because she has an ability to memorize remedies and stuff, I was like, why donât you just write a recipe book, like write it down because ultimately my grandmotherâs gone, youâre still around but who knows?â
She would want to pass that information to a daughter, should she have one. âI would want to leave her that in the future as something that is a living testament of this is how we carry on. I think thatâs important, like have folks write down ese remedio.â She feels the movement of doulas and midwives coming up in contemporary times is a reflection of claiming that ancient knowledge. âI think these women are looking for that ancestral wisdom to share with other women. And thatâs something that the system has also broken, you know, the sisterhood. The ability of women sharing with other women.â Claudia cites the way the system pushes for women to compete with each other as a reason we have lost some of our ties. âThatâs not what this is about. Weâre not here to say, fulanita llego a tal sitio, yo quiero llegar mas lejos que fulanita. Itâs about complimenting each otherâs strength and also helping each other strengthen our weaknesses. When weâre able to see ourselves in those lenses then weâre able to share more and grow more as a community.â
In concluding my time with Claudia and Roque, she shared some wisdom and words she is gaining from her process. âThereâs a need to build with other women and Iâm talking based on my experience in a heterosexual relationship because again, there are partnerships where, or relationships where, there are two women about to have a baby, right? When you talk about a heterosexual relationship, the dynamic changes. Thereâs things that women go through that men will never understand, regardless of how good they are and how supportive they are and how present they are, theyâll never understand. But when you speak to a sister, even if she hasnât given birth, thereâs a certain level of sensitivity you have to say that is there that I think, not only when weâre pregnant we need it but we need it all the time. So I think building that core group of women whom you trust and who are there for you, que estan en solidaridad con el proceso tuyo. I think that thatâs highly necessary and probably the most important thing that I would say and it doesnât go only to the extent of the nine months but it carries through. It should carry through because youâre going to have to find out like, okay if Iâm gonna breastfeed him, right, how do I stack breastmilk so that I could be able to have a life? Thatâs another thing right, I want to be able to take him to different places but thereâs also the space of mommy needs time. So when mommy needs time, you need to be able to delegate or share the work with your compañero and compañera if you have one or if you donât have a compañero or compañera, someone in that core circle needs to step up or needs to be able to say, âokay, I need help.â That only happens in community. That you feel the trust to say, okay I need time for myself and now I have to share him with someone else. Yo creo que la coletividad es sumamente importante, entre mujeres es importante.â
Links to Claudiaâs Work:
Claudia de La Cruzâs outreach work helps teens and young women soar like âUrban Butterfliesâ
Latinas Celebrate Their Womanhood In Washington Heights
Statement for Mumia Abu-Jamal from San Romero de Las AmĂ©ricas Church â Pastor Claudia De la Cruz
People Power Movement â Free The Mind â Claudia De La Cruz
