Radical Love in Action: The Legacy of Luisa Buada
By: Samantha Villaseñor
The Center for the Critical Study of the Health of LatinX Communities
Radical love, a phrase used by social justice leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and literarity
activists like Jesús Gómez and Lídia Puigvert is a term to describe and inspire individuals to live
by a transformative force that challenges systematic oppression through compassion, equality,
and fearless action. King utilized this philosophy in many of his most famous speeches and
writings such as “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “Where Do We Go From Here?”. His core
idea was that love is not a passive emotion but rather one that inspires action and a persistent
force for justice that can confront and overcome systems of injustice. Gómez and Puigvert
explain in their book, “Radical Love: A Revolution for the 21st Century" how the decision to act
with courage and to resist oppressive social norms can profoundly shape not only one’s own life
but also the lives of those around them. When individuals embrace the strength of radical love,
they gain the power to dismantle traditional foundations of relationships that are often
constrained by gender, social class, or race (Gómez and Puigvert, 2014). In doing so, they are
able to live more authentically, liberated from immobilizing standards that limit human
potential.
The story of Luisa Buada, a community health leader, nurse, and retired founder and CEO of
several health centers around the Bay Area, embodies the boundless possibilities of a life
rooted in radical love. Her very existence is by a courageous act of radical love through her
parents interracial marriage that defy social prejudice and legal restraints during the time of
anti-miscegeneation laws which attempted to control and segregate even the most intimate
conditions of peoples’ lives. She was born to a white mother, a nurse at UC San Francisco, and a
Filipino farmworker father. Their marriage was an act of bravery and the kind of love that MLK
described as one of the greatest forces against hate and oppression, one that resisted unjust
laws and racist ideologies. These laws had devastating consequences for many, particularly
Filipino farmworkers, most of whom were men who had immigrated to the U.S. and, tragically,
often died alone without ever having the opportunity to marry or raise a family. Gómez and
Puigvert argue that radical love breaks through the silence of conformity and creates new
possibilities aligned with equity and a dialogue of change (Gómez and Puigvert, 2014). Luisa’s
parents looked beyond the risks to their economic stability and social standings in order to live
a life that was authentic to their personal desires, an action fueled by the power held within
those who live by the freedom of radical love rather than restrained by social norms.
In my Critical Study HLC’s interview with Luisa Buada, she expressed deep gratitude that her
father had the chance to marry her mother and raise their family, knowing how rare such a
union was at the time. Her parents endured many obstacles, living separately under the threat
of job loss if their marriage were discovered. Eventually Luisa’s mom left her job due to
pregnancy and in 1944, her parents purchased a home in San Francisco’s Bayview District, one
of the first neighborhoods in the Bay Area to remove ordinances that had prohibited non-white
residents from buying property. Their life was an act of social transformation that paved the
moral groundwork that Luisa inherited from them that created her into a fearless activist for
underrepresented and marginalized communities.
Luisa’s parents instilled in her a noble understanding of love and resistance, values she carried
throughout her life and wove into her career and profound community involvement. Despite
facing racism in her early education such as her high school counselor who told her that
“people like her” did not attend college, Luisa was not discouraged and earned admission to UC
Santa Cruz. Although the Bayview was ethnically diverse, college offered her a broader
community in which she began to understand herself in new and empowering ways. She felt a
new understanding of her identity and this sense of self ignited her commitment to activism.
During her first year, on evenings and weekends she helped picket stores to boycott lettuce and
grapes in support of striking farmworkers. After participating in a caravan to Coachella to bring
donations to striking grape workers, she decided to volunteer full time with Cesar Chavez and
the United Farm Workers (UFW). Her work with the UFW proved transformative, shifting the
course of her career. While volunteering as a triage volunteer at the original Salinas UFW clinic,
she discovered her calling in nursing and the power of healthcare as a tool for justice. Similar to
the ideas of Gómez and Puigvert, Luisa harnessed the power to connect with others through
empathy to combat their struggles. She understood how healthcare went beyond a technical
profession and could be used as a tool for social resistance. Her care for farmworkers and
undocumented patients exemplified how acts of love and empathy can challenge a
discriminatory system that allowed for those who were members of underserved communities
to suffer.
Throughout her career, Luisa embodied the principles of radial love as she led institutional
change for those who she witnessed suffer the most. Luisa went on to become a dedicated and
fierce advocate for poor, undocumented, and uninsured pregnant women who were denied
admission to the county hospital while in active labor. She spent many nights in the hospital
parking lot, waiting for women’s labor to progress and to then advocate for them to be
admitted when the baby’s head was crowning, about to be born. Luisa shared the deep pain
she carried for the mothers and infants who did not survive after being turned away, a pain that
only strengthened her resolve to fight for change. This anguish became fuel for her lifelong
passion of expanding healthcare access for vulnerable communities, particularly undocumented
and uninsured Latinos.
In 1977, Luisa completed her nursing degree at UCSF to continue her work with the serving
farmworkers in the Salinas Valley. While she was pursuing her R.N. degree, the UFW clinic in
Salinas unfortunately shut down. This setback did not slow down Buada’s determination to
break down barriers. Instead, she committed herself to working with other nurses and
advocates to create a non-profit community clinic in 1980, which became known as Clínica
Popular del Valle de Salinas. After gaining the skills and knowledge necessary to build a
community clinic from the ground up, and serving as its executive director, she went on to open
and run the Berkeley Primary Care Access Clinic (BPCAC) in 1991. Building on these successes,
she later co-founded Lifelong Medical Care in Berkeley as part of a merger between BPCAC and
Over 60 Health Center, a clinic serving low income seniors, in 1996. A major milestone in her
career was her remarkable leadership at Ravenswood Family Health Network, where she served
as CEO for twenty-one years. Although now retired from that role since 2024, she continues to
contribute as the Director of Capital Projects. In achieving these remarkable goals, Buada
actualized MLK’s philosophy of justice and compassion being the foundation of community and
just society. Her leadership and success in serving these communities in need became a
platform for how radical love is not only a moral principle but a force for redefining healthcare
for all people.
From birth, Luisa’s story has been one of fearlessness and resistance against social and
governmental oppression. From the courage of her parents who defied racial barriers to her
own challenges in expanding healthcare, she is a woman whose life demonstrates how life can
be a revolutionary force. The strength of radical love shines through Luisa and her work as she
took on every struggle with confidence and grace. MLK and Gómez and Puigvert teach how love
is much more than sentimental, but rather an active and a mechanism for resistance against
injustice. This is illustrated through the spaces Luisa created within healthcare even when she
herself was being pushed aside. Luisa’s unwavering commitment to radical love for her
community, extended to all people, regardless of race or class, has forcefully broken down
barriers in healthcare that might otherwise have remained.
The teachings of MLK, Gómez and Puigvert, and Luisa Buada remind us that radical love
continues to be an urgent need for our society. In the current climate which faces the United
States, Luisa’s achievements and progress for the health of the Latino community will never be
forgotten but is in jeopardy of returning. The unending struggles of undocumented Latino as
well as other immigrants has accelerated in recent months where damaging policies on
immigration, public health, and acceptance redefine the nation’s social and moral landscape for
the worse. New barriers to medical care, citizenship, and systemic discrimination have arisen
despite the great strides which leaders such as MLK and leaders in the community health center
movement like Luisa Buada, have made, yet their philosophies keep advocates vigilant and
unwavering. Their acts of radical love towards those in greatest need have left current and
future social justice leaders equipped with everything we need to overcome this moment of
hate and regression in order to continue to break down barriers old and new.
Bibliography
Interview with Luisa Buada, RN BSN MPH by Dr. Clara Mantini Briggs, MD MPH and Samantha
Villaseñor, research assistant- Center for the Critical Study of the Healthy of Latinx
Communities
Berkeley, CA April 5, 2025
Autor: Jesús Gómez, and Lídia Puigvert. Radical Love: A Revolution for the 21. Century. Editorial:
New York, Lang, 2015.
Monahan, Frannie, and Tizian Dearing. “Boston Pastors Reflect on MLK’s Legacy, “Radical Love”
and Striving for a Better World.” Wbur.org, 17 Jan. 2022,
www.wbur.org/radioboston/2022/01/17/january-17-2022-rb.
Zekveld, Richard. “MLK & Radical Love.” Covenant Fellowship Church, 2019,
www.cfcsh.org/content.cfm?id=151&blog_id=4108. Accessed 30 Sept. 2025.
---. “MLK & Radical Love.” Covenant Fellowship Church, 2019,
www.cfcsh.org/content.cfm?id=151&blog_id=4108. Accessed 30 Sept. 2025.
“Sana sana, colita de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana.”
My mother repeated the rhyme like a ritual, not just for me, but for herself. A quiet hope that I would heal, and that we could avoid the cold uncertainty of a system that wasn’t made for us.
Eventually, I did heal. But when the time came for us to step into a doctor’s office in the U.S, the coldness of this system became real. As the youngest of three, and the most assimilated, the most gringa of the family, per se, I was usually the one to go into the doctor's exam room with my parents. I became the translator, the cultural interpreter, the bridge.
But when we moved from the icy white winters of Connecticut to Los Angeles, everything shifted. We entered a different world. For the first time, my parents met a healthcare provider who could speak to them in Spanish. This doctor didn’t just prescribe medicine, he became a lifeline. He is still their doctor to this day, and he is one of the mere “5 percent of primary care providers in California who are Latino” (The Chicano Boom: Healing California 1965-1985).
What my family found in him didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was the result of decades of community-led health justice organizing born from Latinx movements that demanded not just healthcare, but recognition. As documented in The Chicano Boom: Healing California, the 1960s and 70s saw an explosion of activism in response to systemic medical exclusion. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and lived injustice, Latinx organizers pushed for culturally and structurally competent care and helped build California’s first community-based health centers.
The Center of the Critical Study of the Health of Latinx Communities (Critical Study HLC) continues that fight today. Through my work with the Critical Study HLC, I focused on the legacy of the United Farm Workers, led by figures like Dolores Huerta and César Chávez. By studying clinical records and testimonial archives, I saw how the UFW linked the struggle for labor rights to the right to health. Farmworkers organizing for fair wages also demanded access to care, exposing how those who fed the country were routinely denied basic medical treatment. Their organizing laid the foundation for clinics that would go on to serve working-class Latinx communities across California.
One of the most powerful examples of that legacy is La Clínica de La Raza, founded in 1971 in Oakland. Born out of the Chicano Movement, La Clínica redefined what community-rooted, bilingual care could look like. These clinics were never just about medicine. They were political spaces where farmworkers, students, and neighborhood residents came together to reimagine health as a collective right, not a privilege. They responded to both medical neglect and state violence, and marked a turning point in California’s public health history by building trust and offering care that spoke our language.
The creation of these clinics opened the door to healthcare for Latinx communities in California and, over time, for all communities of color. This movement, rooted in language, love, and community, ran parallel to the Black freedom struggle. While Latinx activists were fighting for culturally grounded care, the Black Panther Party was building its own network of free health centers across the country. These clinics were revolutionary not just in what they offered–screenings, treatment, education–but in what they represented. Like their Latinx counterparts, the Panthers knew that health is political, and that access to care is a form of power.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman.” Both the Latinx health movement and the Panthers took that truth seriously, and they acted. What connected them was not just a timeline, but a shared goal: la apertura del acceso a la salud. Opening the gates to care. Demanding systems that not only treated, but respected and reflected the people they served.
That legacy still beats in our communities today. While working at the Critical Study HLC, I saw the love in the eyes of those who gave everything to this fight. Through interviews and documentation, I witnessed the power that built this story, and that is still waiting to be heard. I recognized the same love I felt the moment I walked out of that doctor’s office, and the relief I saw in my parents’ eyes. And I met the people who fought to make that moment possible.
“Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana.”
Both the Latinx and Black health movements fought for that mañana. They believed in the love of community, in the radical idea that healing wasn’t just individual, it was collective. And they knew: if we do not heal today, we will heal tomorrow. Because we keep showing up. We keep building. We keep fighting.
Written By: Dafne Faitelson
University of California, Berkeley
Research Assistant at the Center of the Critical Study of the Health of Latinx Communities