We’re continuing our Hispanic Heritage Month Spotlights this week with Aurora Castillo – a driven fourth-generation Mexican American environmentalist and community activist who helped co-found the Mothers of East Los Angeles (MELA), a grassroots community organization fighting to protect East LA from environmental and public health threats.
Aurora Castillo was born in 1914 to one of LA’s founding families. Known as “la Doña” – a title of respect she was given by her predominantly Latino community – Castillo did not actually begin her activist career until 1984, when she was around 70 years old. After learning of the state’s plan to build what would be the eighth prison in her minority-dominant community, she formed MELA with a few other local Latina women and fought to oppose it. The group held weekly protests, wrote letters to representatives, and educated the community about the threat of having another prison built in their neighborhood. After several years of fighting, their efforts were successful, and the state decided to relocate the prison.
This victory was just the beginning for the Mothers of East Los Angeles. In 1987, MELA took on another challenge opposing plans to build a toxic waste incinerator in the East LA city of Vernon. The group was concerned that permits had been given to build the facility without conducting any prior environmental impact assessments and filed a suit on behalf of the community. After three years of leading marches and crowding public hearings, MELA had finally put enough pressure on the company to make them abandon the project. Under Castillo’s leadership, they were also able to effectively prevent a hazardous waste treatment plant from being built near a local high school and got the company’s permits revoked for improperly storing hazardous waste. “They thought that if they picked a poor community, they wouldn’t find any resistance. But we proved them wrong, very wrong.” she said.
In 1995 Aurora Castillo became the first Latina, first LA resident, and oldest person to win the Goldman Environmental Prize – considered the Nobel Prize for environmentalists. She continued guiding MELA in resisting threats to their neighborhood until she died in 1998. Her unwavering devotion to protecting her community will always remain an inspiration for activists in the fight for environmental justice. This Hispanic Heritage Month, let us honor the legacy of Aurora Castillo by committing to environmental stewardship and helping our most vulnerable communities, as she did.