“We have already won together. We have already demonstrated our strength. And we have the power to achieve much more,” Tania Chavez Camacho, president and executive director of LUPE, said.

On August 29, a wave of blue shirts began to fill the gymnasium of the Development and Research Center in Pharr, Texas, where La Unión del Pueblo Entero staff and members prepared to start the biennial “Cumbre de Miembros.”

What was historically known as “Cumbre de Colonias” until 2024 takes inspiration from the “Conventions” that were implemented by the farm worker movement, which aimed to address and advocate for structural changes they face in the fields. LUPE, a membership-led organization founded in 2003 under the powerful legacy of the farm worker movement, serves the Rio Grande Valley in order to ensure that hard-working families are afforded respect and dignity to live the lives they deserve. Consequently, the Cumbre is LUPE’s biennial membership summit where active members from across the RGV meet to vote on issues to prioritize LUPE’s agenda for the next two years.

At Cumbre, LUPE members take ownership of the movement and build collective power to decide what resources and campaigns will be focused on in the organization’s work. In an effort to honor its legacy and roots, the process for planning the Cumbre was led by the members themselves. 

Months before the August date, LUPE’s Organizing department encouraged its base to have conversations about the issues that are currently impacting them the most. From those conversations, “Working groups”, or groups of people who share the same values and interests in the issues that would be brought forward at the summit, were developed. Working groups then drafted “resolutions”, or proposals with whereas statements that explain the reasoning behind issues and their importance to members, and resolved statements with a specific change wanted and the actions that will be taken to achieve those goals. This year, eight resolution working groups prepared with multiple meetings and conversations ahead of the Cumbre.

On the Saturday morning of the Cumbre, over 190 LUPE members sat and listened to the resolutions brought forward by the working groups. Delegates representing each of the groups went up the stage to a podium and microphone to formally present their resolutions to all attendees. Testimonies followed after each resolution in support of every resolution presented. And halfway through the summit, members were directed to get their yellow ballots and head over to the polls to vote.

While votes were counted by staff overseen by Cumbre delegates, attendees enjoyed musical stylings from The Mariachi Brothers, a local mariachi group made up of the Gamez-Cuellar brothers and their father. As the popular song “México lindo y querido” finished, Executive Director and President Chavez Camacho made her way back to the stage with the voting results and prioritized resolutions.

The prioritization of the proposed resolutions was the following:

• Immigration
• Economy
• Health
• Civic Engagement
• Infrastructure
• LGBTQ
• Youth Education
• Fight and Solidarity

From these results, comités – committees in Spanish – were formed to intentionally create groups of people who would organize and lead the work around those issues. These results are also the foundational framework for what LUPE would be focusing on in the following two years. Even with these results, resolutions are only successful if they are worked on by the organization and the membership. In other words, what follows is the commitment to achieving the goals and results proposed in front of members that Saturday morning in August.

As the event ended, Tania Chavez Camacho shared the following words of encouragement.

“A round of applause for you, because these priorities did not come out of an office. They came from your homes, your neighborhoods, and your stories,” Chavez Camacho said. “And I want to be very clear about what this means. These resolutions are not a wish list. They are a mandate.”

LUPE’s commitment as an organization is to work on each of these priorities not for its members, but alongside them.