The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, María Dolores Corujo Berriel, presided this Wednesday over the "Tribute Event to the workers of the canning industry of Lanzarote: Recognition of their role in the social and economic transformation of the Island", an event organized by the Cabildo of Lanzarote and held in Optuna 42, on Avenida de Naos in Arrecife. The event represents a look at an endearing fishing industry that boosted the island's capital for decades.
Corujo said in her speech that "this tribute seeks to do justice to the memory of those women who have been totally invisible for 66 years, dressed in blue overalls and gowns, who then opened the way that others have been able to remember today." "That role played by our canning women allowed the existence of an industry that has now disappeared, while improving family economies," Corujo detailed, making a semblance of the honorees.
"For many of those women, working in the cannery meant that first job with which to help the battered family economy; and it was also often the first step to buy or build a house and start a new family. Sometimes, in addition, it became the only way to support their children," said the Cabildo leader.
She appealed to the need for institutions such as the Cabildo of Lanzarote to "lead the recovery" for the collective memory of those identity aspects that, due to the vertiginous growth that Lanzarote and La Graciosa have experienced in recent decades, leave in oblivion "stories that are part of our community legacy". And for this reason, she also evoked that image of the time that immortalized the entry and exit of the canning workers to the factory. "Authentic crowds of women, with their blue uniform, today part of the collective imagination." "Women, by the way, who were still responsible for household chores when they returned home," Corujo recalled.
These words of the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, who also referred to issues such as female vulnerability at work or the hard road in the conquest of labor rights, occurred almost as the closing of an evening in which the organizers had prepared several activities that vertebrated the Tribute Event.
The most emotional moments occurred when María Dolores Corujo and the island councilor of Fisheries, Andrés Stinga, presented the awards to the proud honorees. Previously, as an initial activity, an interesting photographic exhibition entitled "The canning workers of Lanzarote: images, narratives and nostalgia" was inaugurated and visited, a graphic way to walk through those times of socio-economic transformation for the Island.
Immediately afterwards, and under the presentation of the event by the journalist Techy Acosta, came the turn of the historian Mario Ferrer, who offered an entertaining talk entitled "Fishing: the first great modernizing lever of Lanzarote", including the projection of an audiovisual on the fishing sector in the 70s-90s.
To the documentary contribution on that Arrecife industry was added the intervention of the expert Gloria Cabrera Socorro, director of the project "Semblances, memories and nostalgia; the women workers in the canning industries of Lanzarote", an exhibition that she seasoned with the documentary entitled "Stories of workers in the canneries". Before the president closed the day with her institutional speech, a round table called "Those wonderful years" took place, with the participation of María Ángela de la Cruz Gutiérrez, María del Pilar de la Cruz Gutiérrez and Inmaculada Delgado Tejera.
Finally, the numerous attendees to this Tribute Event organized by the Cabildo of Lanzarote had the opportunity to taste in a showcoking some culinary creations created evoking the elaborations produced in the capital canning factories.