For Angel Romero, each element of her automotive is a mirrored image of her historical past. The shining purple paint job accents modern gleaming chrome that flashes brilliant within the gentle of golden hour. Pinstripes adorn the hood and the roof of the automotive — which hovers mere inches from the street, floating on white-wall tires — and the trunk is emblazoned with a photorealistic portrait of her mom, the primary lowrider Romero ever knew.
Within the again window sits a steel engraving studying “Dueñas” in elegant script.
Six years in the past, Romero based a girls’s lowrider membership. Bored with listening to others say “that’s your boyfriend’s car” or “that’s your daddy’s car,” she named the membership Dueñas – that means “female owners” in Spanish.
“You can’t get any more straightforward than that,” she stated.
The membership turned one of many largest girls’s lowrider golf equipment within the area, making its imprint within the Bay Space by defying stereotypes and provoking different girls to get within the driver’s seat.
The group builds on an extended, wealthy historical past of lowriding, a multi-generational motion born out of Mexican-American counterculture within the ’40s with deep roots in San Jose. Lowrider tradition is most well-known for automobiles which might be modified to experience “low and slow” and infrequently have in depth, intricate paint jobs, however Romero says the motion goes past the automobiles.
“It’s not just about lowriding. With Dueñas, its also about community and giving back,” she stated.
For many years, lowriders have been related to gang exercise. Now, Romero sees a return of “ugly narratives” round immigrants and Latino communities, and hopes that Dueñas may also help push again towards them. “Our culture is so beautiful – the women, the lowriders – it’s art,” stated Romero. “We’re changing the narrative. We’re not the stereotypes people think we are.”
The seeds of the membership have been planted almost 50 years in the past when Romero’s mom received her first automotive, a 1977 Monte Carlo, for her quinceañera. Romero’s mom fell in love with lowriding and when she turned a younger mom of three, it provided an inexpensive escape for a household making an attempt to make ends meet.
“My mom didn’t have a lot of money, so for fun, a lot of what we did was ride and cruise around,” recalled Romero, for whom driving has been a supply of solace since she was pushed across the block as a child to assist her go to sleep. These childhood rides turned formative.
“That’s how all of us fell in love with the car culture, the lifestyle,” she stated.
When she was sufficiently old to personal her personal automotive, she started cruising herself and going to automotive exhibits. “There wasn’t too many women out there,” she remembered. “It was just me and a couple other women who had their own rides.”
When she did get into automotive golf equipment, she was the one girl member. And whereas the golf equipment have been “amazing” in how lively they have been, she says she was typically handled like a “receptionist,” a “pencil pusher” or “not a real lowrider.”
“(My voice) wasn’t really being heard or taken seriously,” she stated.
So on the encouragement of her household, she broke off on her personal and began Dueñas. In June 2019, the group formally turned lively and now has 11 members starting from Modesto to Hollister.
Within the early ‘70s, a wave of car clubs sprang up in San Jose, sporting the distinctive style that included the smaller wheels and spoked rims associated with lowriders. The era saw the birth of Lowrider Magazine, founded by students from San Jose State University, and Andy’s Hydraulics – the primary store to flip a automotive utilizing hydraulics. As cruising was stymied in Los Angeles, 1000’s gathered from across the state to cruise alongside Story and King roads in San Jose, driving low and sluggish up and down the road.
Among the many wave have been a number of all-woman automotive golf equipment, together with the Subtle Girls, whose chief, Rachel Flores, organized the primary model of a lowrider council and campaigned to permit lowriders to congregate alongside Story and King.
Quickly, nevertheless, crackdowns on cruising started and in 1986, San Jose banned cruising within the metropolis totally, citing visitors congestion, felony exercise and the “environment of fear” as causes for the ban. As cruising was pushed out of the limelight, a lot of lowrider tradition faltered, together with the legacy of all-woman automotive golf equipment.
Latest years has seen a resurgence of lowrider tradition, and after years of advocacy by teams just like the United Lowrider Council of San Jose, the town lastly repealed its ban in 2022, permitting golf equipment like Dueñas to cruise freely and rise to prominence.
After a long time of golf equipment being relegated to the shadows, Ricardo Cortez, Historian for the United Lowrider Council of San Jose, calls Dueñas essentially the most outstanding all-woman lowrider membership for the reason that ’70s.
“The only reason why we’re here now is because of the resilience of the community. There’s this cultural wealth,” stated Cortez. “Dueñas is a really cool example of that … and they’re changing the narrative again by being an all-female car club.”
Of the over 70 golf equipment within the United Lowrider Council of San Jose, solely three are all-woman.
Shortly after the membership was based, Romero’s mom died, and in reckoning with the loss, she returned to her mom’s instructing to “give with good intention.” With that as her inspiration, she and the membership started a flurry of exercise to present again to the neighborhood in Sunnyvale, San Jose and different cities. They collected truckloads of diapers and wipes for a company that helps younger and teenage moms referred to as Shine Collectively – impressed by a few of the members who additionally have been younger moms. They’ve gathered a whole lot of toys for Sunnyvale Neighborhood Providers and handed out hygiene merchandise at homeless encampments. Every year, the group raises 1000’s of {dollars} for breast most cancers analysis.
“The lowrider community is very giving, and San Jose is a big pillar of the lowriding community,” stated David Polanco, president of the United Lowrider Council of San Jose, who factors out how lowriders organized to present college provides to youngsters of farmworkers and did drive-by cruises to rejoice graduations throughout the peak of Covid. “It’s not a hobby, it’s definitely a lifestyle, and that lifestyle is being active and supporting one another. Dueñas is a big part of that, just adding to the legacy of lowriding. They’re a good group of people.”
Dueñas has impressed others to start out their very own automotive golf equipment for girls. Lola Perez of Hollister based Chulas Unidas — “beautiful women united” in Spanish — after having conversations with Romero and seeing Dueñas out in the neighborhood. In 2021, she joined with different girls from the South Bay and started to carve her personal path with the assistance of Dueñas.
“They had my back 100%. They are strong women. They are the ones that encourage. They are the ones that support. They are the ones that say ‘yes, you can do it’,” stated Perez. “Now, I hope another woman starts another car club.”
