March 24, 2000
Two San Diego scholars are scheduled to deliver papers in May at a Texas conference entitled U.S. Latinos and Latinas and World War II: Changes Seen, Changes Wrought.
The conference is a component of the U.S. Latino & Latina World War II Oral History Project at the University of Texas at Austin. In San Diego, Gus Chavez of the Office of EOP and Ethnic Affairs at San Diego State University is a local contact for the Project. Mr. Chavez is seeking referrals to men and women of the World War II generation who can be interviewed for this project. He can be reached at (619) 594-6298.
The two local presenters at the conference are: Richard Griswold del Castillo, of San Diego State University and Rita B. Sanchez, of San Diego Mesa College, Professor Griswold del Castillo will focus on Latina workers in San Diego during World War II and Professor Sanchez will present a paper on five members of the Sanchez family.
Professors Griswold del Castillo and Sanchez are among dozens of nationally-renown scholars will be featured at a two-day conference that will focus on contributions and issues. There will also be roundtable discussions with men and women of the World War II generation who will discuss their own interpretations and recollections of the War and its impact on U.S. Latinos. And in a more informal setting, there will be sessions for short presentations by anyone who wants to address an aspect of the topic. A selection of academic papers from the conference will be edited into a volume for later publication.
Over 30 scholars from throughout the country will focus on various aspects of the Latino experience in the United States, including:
"The five professors who selected the academic presentations were extremely pleased with the high quality of submissions," said Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, conference co-chair. "We received entries from people we academics consider giants in their respective fields: People like Rafael Chabrán, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Richard Griswold del Castillo, Jorge Rodriguez Beruff, Jose Limón, Rita Sanchez, to name but a few. And we are getting an opportunity to showcase graduate students still working on their dissertations. This will be a wonderful celebration of some of the outstanding and ground-breaking research about U.S. Latinos and Latinas.
"It has also been very rewarding to see how the larger Latino community has also wanted to be involved," Dr. Rivas-Rodriguez said. "As we went along, we realized that this went beyond the confines of an academic conference and that the gathering would be enriched greatly by the involvement of the general community."
The conference is a component of the U.S. Latino & Latina World War II Oral History Project at the University of Texas at Austin. The World War II generation of Latinos and Latinas was largely responsible for many of the civil rights advancements of U.S. Latinos —school desegregation, voting rights, public accommodations, etc. They formed organizations, like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the American G.I. Forum, that were instrumental in fighting for Latino rights. For the Puerto Rican community, it was the generation that fought in the war, saw the mainland U.S. for the first time, and began a mass migration to the mainland. As individuals, U.S. Latinos made tremendous strides for their people and for their families.
The stories of U.S. Latinos and Latinas do not appear often in academic or popular accounts produced during the War years, or even in recent representations of the period. The Project is dedicated to recording stories of U.S. Latinos and Latinas of the World War II era so that future generations will have a better appreciation of the many contributions made by Hispanics who came of age in a difficult time.
The core of the Latino & Latina World War II Oral History Project is a archive of videotaped interviews, all to be transcribed. The archive will be housed at two UT libraries: the Nettio Lee Benson Latin American Collection and the Center for American History. The archives will be available to scholars and other writers. A community-access component to the archive is under development.
Beyond the archive, the project has several components besides the conference:
The newspaper narratives, produced mostly by UT students in a class dedicated to the project. Narratives will also feature stories about interview subjects conducted by volunteer interviewers in other parts of the country. One advantage of the newspaper is that interview subjects, as well as interviewers, will see an immediate product from their labor.
A Website which includes information about all aspects the project, as well as stories printed in Narratives. The URL is http://www.utexas.edu/projects/latinoarchives
A documentary, to be produced by Austin-based documentarian Hector Galán.
A general interest book, to be published in the next few years.
The conference is scheduled to be held at the Lila B. Etter Alumni Center at the UT-Austin campus on Friday and Saturday, May 26 & 27, 2000.
For more information, please contact conference co-chairs: Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, Asst. Professor, Department of Journalism (512) 471-0405 or David Montejano, Director, Center for Mexican American Studies, (512) 475-7237.
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