Born: 30 August 1907, Guatemala
Died: 4 November 1992
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Blanca Rosa López Rodríguez
Luisa Moreno was a labor organizer and civil rights activist in the United States. Born Blanca Rosa López Rodríguez to a prominent Guatemalan family, she changed her name to prevent embarrassing them. She worked as a reporter in Guatemala City before moving to New York in 1928, where she was beaten by police during a strike action. She joined the Communist Party in 1930 and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1934. Traveling through Florida, Louisiana, and California, she became a strategic and disciplined labor organizer, focusing attention on the horrible conditions in sweatshops, canneries, and agricultural fields, and the abuse of Mexican-American and Latina workers. She launched the Congreso de Pueblos que Hablan Español (National Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples), based in California, in 1938. This brought her to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and she was under constant surveillance by local and federal officials. She returned to travelling, organizing beet workers in Colorado and pecan shellers in Texas for the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA). In 1940, she persuaded the majority of California cannery workers—75% of them women—to join that union. During World War II, escalating violence against Latinos, particularly Mexicans, in Los Angeles by police and U.S. sailors on leave prompted Moreno to co-found the Citizens Committee for Defense of Mexican American Youth. Facing increased FBI harassment, she was offered a deal of citizenship in exchange for testimony against colleagues. She refused but, given the anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthy period, in which everyone was deemed guilty by association, labor leaders began to distance themselves from her. In 1950, on the verge of being deported, she left the U.S. for Mexico City, and she continued to organize workers in Mexico, Cuba, and Guatemala.