{"id":12274,"date":"2016-01-29T20:22:59","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T20:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=12274"},"modified":"2023-10-02T11:37:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T18:37:48","slug":"renee-tajima-pena-on-the-women-of-the-madrigal-vs-quilligan-case","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/dipsy.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/renee-tajima-pena-on-the-women-of-the-madrigal-vs-quilligan-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Renee Tajima-Pe\u00f1a on the Women of the Madrigal vs Quilligan Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Filmmaker Renee Tajima-Pe\u00f1a\u00a0<\/strong>was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary for her film\u00a0Who Killed Vincent Chin?<\/a><\/em>, which aired on PBS back in 1989. She’s hardly sat still since then; her\u00a0films have premiered at Sundance, Cannes, San Francisco International, New Directors\/New Films, Toronto, the Whitney Biennial and other festivals around the world. And as she tells it in the interview to follow, when something shocks her, makes her angry, and fascinates her, Tajima-Pe\u00f1a won’t sit still then, either.<\/p>\n

Her film No M\u00e1s Beb\u00e9s <\/a><\/em>was born from shock and anger, but also the determination to make a balanced film about a little-known but landmark\u00a0event in reproductive justice, when a small group of Mexican immigrant women sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the late 1960s and early 1970s.<\/p>\n

When did you first learn of this story about the women who went through the unwanted sterilization at LA County-USC Medical Center?\u00a0 Were you familiar with other cases like this happening elsewhere?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I knew about the sterilization of Puerto Rican women. It was a massive number. A study in 1968 found that over a third of Puerto Rican women between 29-40 years old were sterilized. Like many other people, I learned about that history from Ana Maria Garcia\u2019s classic documentary, La Operaci\u00f3n<\/a><\/em>. It was made over 30 years ago, around 1981, and it\u2019s still one of the only films about unconsented sterilizations in the U.S. A really powerful film.<\/p>\n

I grew up in the Los Angeles area, but I had never heard about the L.A. County Hospital case. We\u2019ve been doing a lot of screenings, including right here on the eastside [of L.A.], and most people are shocked to learn of the story. Even family members of the plaintiffs either didn\u2019t know what had happened, or the full impact of what happened.<\/p>\n

I first heard about this\u00a0case\u00a0from our producer, Virginia Espino, who\u2019s a historian. We\u2019re neighbors and our kids are the same age. We used to have play dates when they were little, and we\u2019d talk about our work, and Virginia told me about her research on Mexican American women who\u2019d been sterilized at L.A. County Hospital. Our neighborhood is just a few miles from there, so it was amazing to me that I’d never heard of the sterilizations.<\/p>\n

The story really struck me in a very visceral way because at the time I was a new mother, and I was in such baby bliss about the whole experience of pregnancy, childbirth, and being a parent. I embodied every clich\u00e9 about the joys of motherhood. So when Virginia told me about women who\u2019d been sterilized without their consent, it hit me in the gut. I couldn\u2019t imagine having that taken away from me. I make films when something pisses me off, and this pissed me off. Of course, once\u00a0you start researching and talking to people, you always realize there are different layers to the story, there are complexities and shades of gray, and competing perspectives. But at the start of a film project, there\u2019s often just the outrage.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

They ultimately lost the\u00a0Madrigal vs. Quilligan court case but do you think having this film made helps them feel a sense of justice after all?<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Spoiler alert!)<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t honestly say. Can a film help to bring a sense of justice or \u2014 and this is a word I hate to use \u2014 closure? They lost something that is so fundamental to their humanity \u2014 the ability to have a child. The idea of family, and the investment we make in imagining a child, trying to get pregnant, building a home, the planning and care and love, it\u2019s at the core of being a parent. One of the mothers, Melvina Hernandez, told us that she and her husband waited several years to have a second child. They wanted to be financially secure, and they understood it was healthier for the second baby if they were spaced apart. So a few years after giving birth to their first child at the hospital, they decided the time was right to have another baby. But Melvina couldn\u2019t get pregnant. She went to the doctor and found out she was sterilized. How do you make up for that kind of loss?<\/p>\n

I think it does make a difference that their voice is finally being heard. Four of the mothers came to the premiere of the film at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and they brought their extended families. The response from the audience, and from their families, was powerful. At the premiere, the sister of one of the women stood up during the Q&A and said she had no idea, and now she understood what [her sister]\u00a0went through. It was incredibly moving. We were worried that they might be unnerved being on stage in front of a big audience in a theater, but they were as funny and moving as they were on camera. They\u2019re really rock stars with an audience!<\/p>\n

I know the film took awhile to complete; what were some of the challenges and obstacles you had to overcome to tell this story as a finished film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This story had been almost forgotten for decades, and just a handful of scholars and activists like Virginia had kept it alive. When we started looking for the mothers, we had a really hard time tracking them down. No one had talked to them in all these years, and all we had to go on was the old court record. So we literally walked the streets and knocked on doors trying to find them. Someone told us Dolores Madrigal went to mass every Saturday at a church in Mid-City [L.A.], so we\u2019d just go there and wait for her and ask if anyone had seen her. Of course, when you do that, you have to do a lot of groundwork first, like letting the pastor and the people who work there know who you are so they don\u2019t think you\u2019re a bill collector or stalker, while at the same time maintain the woman\u2019s privacy.<\/p>\n

Luckily we live on the eastside, and we\u2019re close to the neighborhoods where the women lived at the time so we didn\u2019t have to travel far. We also have two friends who are private investigators, and they were invaluable in helping us find the surviving plaintiffs. Some of the women had already passed, like Mrs. Acosta, who had a very tragic story. When she went to the hospital to give birth, her baby was stillborn. And then she was sterilized.<\/p>\n

Once we actually found some of the plaintiffs, the real challenges began. The women were reluctant to revisit that time in their lives. They had tried to move on, with varying degrees of success. Mrs. Madrigal\u2019s family had really been torn apart by the sterilization, and you can see how that trauma lingered all these years with her and her sons. Other women had very supportive husbands, and they\u2019d been able to move on. But even they were reluctant to go back to the past.<\/p>\n

Virginia, in particular, spent a lot of time gaining their trust. Also, their children made a huge difference in convincing them to go on camera. Most of their kids and extended families had no idea [these women] had been sterilized, even 35, 40 years after it happened. Consuelo Hermosillo told us she would always avoid baby showers when she was younger. She couldn\u2019t take the inevitable question, \u201cWhen are you having another?\u201d Frank Cruz, who was the only TV reporter who covered the trial, talked to many of the women at the time. He told us that it was extremely difficult for them to be exposed in public forum. There was the shame of talking about such private matters as reproductive organs and sterilization, and having lost their ability to have children. So it took a lot of courage to even participate in the lawsuit in the first place, much less agree to be interviewed so many years later.<\/p>\n