Janet Martinez and Odilia Romero

Romero was born in the highlands of Oaxaca in a Zapotec community and credits that early sense of belonging as key to surviving the difficult transition to the U.S. When she crossed the border with a stranger at 10 years old, Romero did not speak English, Spanish or even consciously remember the parents who had gone ahead of her to the U.S. years earlier.

Today, Romero advocates fiercely for Indigenous migrants through the non-profit Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo (CIELO), which she co-founded with her daughter, Janet Martinez, whom she included in activism from an early age. Romero is a trilingual interpreter of Zapotec, Spanish, and English. She cites the formation of CIELO—the first Zapotec women-founded organization—to be one of her proudest accomplishments and considers CIELO’s work around language rights to be a powerful means of defending Indigenous human rights.

Her daughter and co-founder, Janet Martinez, is proud of CIELO’s distribution of $2.2 million in pandemic solidarity funds to the communities they serve. As part of this distribution process, CIELO made note of the preferred languages spoken by recipients and with this data created the first map of Indigenous migrant communities in Los Angeles.