Join us for a discussion centered on the newly released “Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands” by Dr. Lina-Maria Murillo. 

The first birth control clinic in El Paso, Texas, opened in 1937. Since then, Mexican-origin women living in the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez have confronted various interest groups determined to control their reproductive lives, from Planned Parenthood to the Catholic Church. Faced with a family planning movement steeped in eugenic ideology, working-class Mexican-origin women strategically demanded additional health services and then formed their own clinics to provide care on their own terms and for their own communities. The book’s research focuses on the history of these working-class women’s fight for autonomy, human dignity, and power.

The book’s author Dr. Lina-Maria Murillo will be joined in conversation by Amelia Castillo, a key activist in the movement, and Christin Apodaca, the book’s illustrator.

More information on the book may be found here: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469682594/fighting-for-control/

Frontera Reads is an ongoing series at the El Paso Museum of History that highlights new book releases related to the rich history of El Paso.