Adios Amor: The Search for Maria Moreno | Film Screening

Join the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center in collaboration with Trinity University and UTSA for a film screening of Adios Amor – The Search for Maria Moreno.

Laurie Coyle, the Director/Producer of Adios Amor, will be joining us for a Q&A after the film.

Admission is by DONATION. Free for Trinity University and UTSA – The University of Texas at San Antonio students, but donations are appreciated!

This event is funded in part by Dr. Norma Cantú, Trinity University, and Mexico, The Americas, and Spain – MAS Program at Trinity University, the Mellon Humanities Pathways Program and the UTSA Mexico Center.

✨About the Film✨
Before Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, there was Maria Moreno. In Adios Amor – The Search for Maria Moreno, the discovery of forgotten photographs taken more than fifty years ago sparks the search for an unsung hero: Maria Moreno, a migrant mother who sacrificed everything but her twelve kids in the passionate pursuit of justice for farmworkers. Haunted by a personal tragedy and blessed with a gift for oratory, Maria rolled up her sleeves, collected signatures, and electrified audiences. Elected by her fellow Mexican American, Filipino, Black and Okie farmworkers to represent them, Maria became the first farm worker woman in America to be hired as a union organizer. Her charisma drew crowds, but her independence got her into trouble with her labor bosses, who fired her for her outspokenness.

Were it not for the maverick photographers and journalists who captured her story, Maria’s trailblazing legacy might have been lost. The search for Maria guides this documentary, where ghosts fade in and out and magic underpins a rawboned reality. In the end, whose stories get told may hinge on memories, coincidence and—in Maria’s case—an insistence on pursuing a path that touches the lives of others. From California’s great Central Valley, to the Arizona desert and US-Mexico border, the journey yields buried treasure…and stories told with passion and humor.

A deeply human drama also comes to life, of Mexican American farmworkers living in dire poverty at a time of unprecedented abundance, whose faith, family values, and working class culture sustained them. Adios Amor – The Search for Maria Moreno pays tribute to the people whose hard work feeds the nation, and celebrates the courageous woman who told their story to the world.

✨About the Director✨
Laurie Coyle is a documentary filmmaker and writer. Her last film was OROZCO: Man of Fire, which aired on PBS AMERICAN MASTERS and was nominated for the Imagen Award and National Council of La Raza ALMA Award. Laurie’s work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, San Francisco Arts Commission and Creative Work Fund, among others. Her writing credits include the PBS specials Speaking in Tongues, The Slanted Screen, Life on Four Strings and The Journey of the Bonesetter’s Daughter-The Making of an Opera. She associate-produced The Fight in the Fields, Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers’ Struggle, The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It, and AMERICAN MASTERS’ Ralph Ellison: An American Journey. Before becoming a filmmaker, Laurie majored in political theory at UC Berkeley and worked as an oral historian, focusing on the untold stories of women workers along the US-Mexico border. Her first connection to the farmworkers was through her father, who volunteered at the UFW clinic in Delano during the 1960s grape strike.