Women in Resistance

Shall Not be Moved

The dance film Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall Not Be Moved links the shared histories of racism and colonial capitalism in Virginia and Puerto Rico.

Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall not be Moved, 2020
Work by Alicia Díaz, co-created with Patricia Herrera, Christine Wyatt, Christina Leoni-Osion, Luis Vasquez La Roche, Héctor “Coco” Barez, Yaraní del Valle, and David Riley
Single channel digital video (color, sound, 17:21 minutes)

Filmed in one of the last standing warehouses of the American Tobacco Company in the Southside of Richmond, the film honors the spirit of resistance and liberation of Black female tobacco stemmers who worked in segregated facilities in Richmond and invokes Puerto Rican tobacco factory readers and radical activists Dominga de La Cruz Becerril (1909–1981) and Luisa Capetillo (1879–1922), as inspiration for the present. Both were hired as lectoras, readers in tobacco factories where they read classic literature and union newspapers out loud to the workers. The practice of reading in tobacco factories played an important role in the Caribbean and parts of the United States for raising political consciousness amongst workers.

While we were filming, the ATC warehouses were being demolished to create a mixed income housing complex. As the physical space disappears, we honor and dedicate this film to the Black women who worked in tobacco factories in Richmond and who organized to denounce the injustices they faced.

The film is bilingual (Spanish and English) with subtitles and combines biography, poetry, and ritual, with the energy of live performance.

Alicia Díaz
Direction & Concept

Patricia Herrera
Conceptual & Creative Project Collaborator, Dramaturg, Script Writer

Christine Wyatt & Christina Leoni-Osion
Movement Researcher/Choreographer, Costume Arranger, Creative & Cultural Organizer/Facilitator, Performer

Luis Vasquez La Roche
Set Designer, Research Assistant

Héctor “Coco” Barez
Music

Yaraní del Valle
Voice

David Riley
Producer and Editor

Tyler Kirby, Janelle Proulx, and Dana Ollestad
with Departure Point Films
Videography

Metta Bastet for Digital Fruit Snax
Color Correction & Sound Mixing

Matthew Thornton & Esther “Ñequi” González
Project Consultant

Special thanks to Jack Berry at Port City, the former American Tobacco Complex, for allowing us to film on location.

Christine Wyatt and Christina Leoni-Osion in production still from Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall not be Moved , 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist and collaborators. — Christine Wyatt and Christina Leoni-Osion in production still from *Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall not be Moved*, 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist and collaborators.

Christine Wyatt in production still from Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall not be Moved , 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist and collaborators. — Christine Wyatt in production still from *Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall not be Moved*, 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist and collaborators.

Dancers in production still from Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall not be Moved , 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist and collaborators. — Dancers in production still from *Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond: Women in Resistance Shall not be Moved*, 2020. Photo courtesy of the artist and collaborators.

Featured Publications —

Issue No. 2

Commonwealth

Read Publication / Download PDF +

This work was featured in the second issue of Commonwealth. The issue featured bio-poems by Dr. Herrera, which can be read by clicking the links below.

Dominga de la Cuz Becerril

Read Poem

Luisa
Capetillo

Read Poem

Black Female
Tobacco Stemmers

Read Poem

Issue No. 11

Esferas

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Dr. Lourdes Dávila writes about Entre Puerto Rico y Richmond Women in Resistance Shall Not Be Moved in Spanish in Esferas, the Journal of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The coronavirus pandemic has propelled the reevaluation, at the global level, of the spaces we inhabit together and the forms in which we relate to one another. Issue 11 of Esferas takes the very concepts of discontinuity and interruption as a potential for making sense, for the power with which they can make visible that which stops being present: in this case, our capacity and tendency to live in society, our desire for sociability. Certainly, this issue explores how we manage, as social individuals, periods of interruptions or dramatic changes like the one we face today. At the same time, Esferas 11 takes advantage of the space that interruption opens to perform a collective reevaluation of society, of the norms that rule over it, of the processes that modify it.