University celebrates state’s “Latino Roots”

Dagoberto Morales grew up poor in Michoacán, Mexico, although he didn’t know it. Everyone was poor.

He migrated to the United States and settled in Medford, where he became an activist and community organizer. He founded a farm workers organization, Unete, now 16 years old.

In a video on his life, he is asked, “how would you describe your experience as an organizer?”

“There are some things that can’t be described,” Morales responds. “You will need to experience it in order to feel that emotion.”

It’s rich observations such as this that provide the power of Latino Roots in Oregon, a multi-faceted collaboration between the University of Oregon and partners to honor and preserve the state’s Latino heritage. The project was celebrated June 6 in the Knight Library, with university President Michael Gottfredson and others recognizing the Latino journey and the work still to be done.

The Latino Roots in Oregon project includes a traveling exhibit and booklet on seven immigrant families, video documentaries, a website, digital archive and university classes. All materials are bilingual in Spanish and English and the project, which is administered through the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, is part of the Americas in a Globalized World: Linking Diversity and Internationalization Big Idea initiative at the UO.

The celebration opened with a mariachi band from Springfield High School and ended with a socializing hour featuring burritos, chips and salsa on the library’s second floor.

The event showcased short documentaries such as the Morales piece, created by undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students in the Latino Roots course taught by journalism professor Gabriela Martínez and anthropology professor Lynn Stephen.

While the dominant historical narrative for Oregon has centered on the Anglo-American pioneer experience, the university course broadens the historical narrative through studying, theorizing and documenting the depth and breadth of Latino and Latin American immigration, settlement, social movements and civic and political integration in the state during the 20th century.

Speaking to a crowd of about 100 in the library Browsing Room, Martínez said the course “is a key to helping us all rethink this state and its history.”

“Each person who shares his or her story provides a world of information,” Martínez said. “The Latino Roots course liberates students to engage with community members who are willing to share their migratory stories.”

The project exemplifies the university’s commitment to building a student body consistent with the state’s demographics, Gottfredson told the audience.

There are about 1,600 UO students of Hispanic, Latino or Chicano ethnicity – about 6 percent of the student body. The state’s Hispanic or Latino population is about 12 percent.

“Since 2000, the Latino population at the university has tripled – that’s a great statistic,” Gottfredson said. “Our goal is to make sure the university keeps its doors open wide to the students of the future.”

That goal has become more realistic with Gov. John Kitzhaber’s recent signing of a tuition equity bill, championed by the university, which makes some undocumented students eligible for in-state tuition.

Ramón Ramirez, president of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregon’s farmworker union, attended the Latino Roots celebration and expressed “sincere gratitude” for the efforts of the university and its students to win passage of the bill.

The struggle for tuition equity was begun a decade ago by undocumented students who advocated in Salem fully aware that they would not enjoy the fruits of their labor, Ramirez said. He encouraged the young documentarians to train their video cameras on them.

“They knew that they were the ultimate sacrifice,” Ramirez said. “Their struggle was not for them but for their brothers and sisters.”

Perhaps Ramirez’s suggestion will resonate with Monserrat Alegria, a junior from Guadalajara whose experience in the Latino Roots course has inspired her to consider focusing on documentary production.

Alegria, who created the Morales video, told the audience that as a Latina, she knows all too well how it feels to have someone else tell her story. They assume that people all migrate for the same reasons and do it the same way, she said.

In the Latino Roots course, Alegria has developed the skills to enable Latinos to speak for themselves.

“As a journalist, my goal is to give a voice to those who don’t usually get to tell their stories,” she said. “Every single person has a different story to tell.”

- story and photo by Matt Cooper, UO Office of Strategic Communications